| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| 12toneman |
Posted - 05/27/2018 : 3:00:44 PM
Do you use these?
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| 15 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| sirduke58 |
Posted - 07/08/2018 : 6:28:37 PM
Ozzie told me that proper slack key etiquette calls for playing in a different position from whoever has the lead or pa'ani. Say the lead is playing in the first position G then the accompaniment should play rhythm in the 2nd or 3rd position of that chord. If the lead is playing in the 2nd position then you accompany in the 1st or 3rd position of that chord, etc. Reason being that you don't want to muddy the water for the lead. You want the listener to be able to hear the lead without having to try & filter out what the accompaniment is playing. |
| 12toneman |
Posted - 07/07/2018 : 08:43:22 AM
Ah, yes yes yes...4th fret. Thanks again.
Do you have anything to recommend in the way of a non-clashing G chord? |
| sirduke58 |
Posted - 07/07/2018 : 08:02:43 AM
Actually I did mean the 4th fret. In your original post the 2nd variation picture is the one I based Ozzie's variation. The fretting on that variation starts on the 2nd fret. So your index is fretting 2nd fret/5th string, middle is 3rd fret/4th string, ring 4th fret/3rd string, pinky is 5th fret/2nd string.
Ozzie omits fretting the 2nd fret/5th string. So your index frets 3rd fret/2nd string, middle is 4th fret/4th fret & ring is 5th fret/2nd string. Be sure to skip plucking the 5th string as with most D7 shapes. From the shape I described above, drop your middle finger from the 4th string/4th fret to the 1st string/4th fret. Now your pinky is free to embellish the chord at the 5th fret 1st & 2nd string. From there you can also go seamlessly into the parallel 6ths & walk all the way up to the 11/12 closed position on the 1st & 3rd string using the D chord alternating bass. |
| 12toneman |
Posted - 07/06/2018 : 3:03:42 PM
Sorry for the delay in my reply to your post, Duke. Thanks for the free lesson, those variations are great-- I've been getting them under my fingers. I think you meant third fret here:
quote:
Originally posted by sirduke58
2nd Variation: Fretting the D7 as noted above, drop your middle finger down to the first string/third fret (keep your index & ring at the same place. Again you can pluck all the strings except the 5th. You'll have cool "add ons with your pinky at the 5th fret/1st & 2nd strings. From there you can slide up to the 5/7--7/9--9/10--11/12 parallel 6ths with you Low D bass.
The first chord I mentioned in my OP looked unfamiliar when I first saw Led using it. But it can be derived from a very common taro patch version of D7 by using the same process that you mention in your post-- moving the note from 1st string to the 4th to create a new voicing.
See the below example-- move the note from the 1st string of this common version of D7 to the not so common but very interesting voicing:
When I noticed this, I started to experiment with the other 3-note chords (on the first 3 strings) that I commonly use, and tried moving the note from the 1st string to the the 4th and got a few cool chords that I had never thought of.
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| Fran Guidry |
Posted - 06/10/2018 : 08:43:08 AM
Many slack key teachers start off showing harmonized scales, patterns on two strings ascending/descending through the scale with a melody note and a harmony note. In taropatch the outers are on the first and third string, inners on the second and third.
The scales are also called the "open and closed positions," I think Ozzie uses this terminology but I don't have my book handy.
There are quite a few YouTube videos that demonstrate the idea, here's one: https://youtu.be/WfEk0HH9zGA?t=259
Uncle Harry Koizumi has a lot of slack key tutorial videos on YT, this one demonstrates the "outers" harmonized scale: https://youtu.be/JO4TCqeEQeI?t=241
And here's Harry teaching taropatch chords: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COJahNuLRU8
One more look at the outers harmonized scale: https://youtu.be/g2f3vYfTlHs?t=138
I didn't see the "inners" demonstrated but perhaps you can figure out the harmonization of the 2nd and 3rd strings, using two notes on the same fret or one fret apart (clear as mud, eh?)
Fran
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| Eynowd |
Posted - 06/09/2018 : 10:22:01 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Fran Guidry
Chords and partial chords (inners and outers) are tools for finding harmonizing notes.
Inners and outers? |
| Fran Guidry |
Posted - 06/08/2018 : 07:37:17 AM
Chords and partial chords (inners and outers) are tools for finding harmonizing notes.
Fran |
| Eynowd |
Posted - 06/07/2018 : 5:14:14 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Earl
I kinda doubt you will find guitar lessons that will clarify this for you. Unless classically trained, most guitar teachers will simply lead you down the path they took, where harmony is based on chord "grips" and shapes, not a deliberate knowledge of how the chord is made. If you want to pursue it, ask about triads and chord inversions.
I think I've found something that will really help fill in the missing information I have. I was searching for a fingerstyle guitar forum a few weeks ago, and stumbled across PlaneTalk. My birthday was coming up, so I ordered it.
I've read through the book once and watched some of the video and the lights are starting to come on. It's designed for standard tuning, but it's a relatively simple matter to modify things for the various slack key tunings. After my first read through of the book, I was still a bit confused, but the video has really started to help me see the stuff I was missing.
Of course, I'll need to do an awful lot of practice in order to internalise all this, but I do think this a good step in the right direction for me. |
| Earl |
Posted - 05/30/2018 : 04:26:32 AM
One trick I heard at a workshop was to choose a particular string and sing whatever note occurs on that string while shifting chords in the song. That will be a harmony part, and sometimes the melody note. The chord itself is built using the harmony parts.
The harmony singers will sing the root, third, or the fifth note of the chord typically, either above or below depending on their vocal range, while the lead singer carries the melody itself. Think of the right hand on a piano which plays the melody, while the left hand plays the underlying chord. Just listen and feel and try not to think about it too much. The beauty of an open tuning like taro patch is that the other notes in the chord are there, so even if you hit a "wrong" string it is still a note in the chord. Guitar in standard tuning works that way too with duplicated notes and different stacking.
Don't confine your self to slack-key on this concept. Any song that has a familiar chord structure and harmonies will generally work this way. What we define as conventional Western music is based on certain scales (the "do-re-mi" major scale) and certain chord progressions. Other world music such as Asian, Arabic, African, etc goes by some different rules and uses different scales with more than twelve intervals.
Guitar can be difficult to understand because the fret board is two-dimensional. When illustrating the concept, it is useful to have a piano around because keyboards are linear. Then the root-third-fifth-seventh-octave lineup is very obvious.
I kinda doubt you will find guitar lessons that will clarify this for you. Unless classically trained, most guitar teachers will simply lead you down the path they took, where harmony is based on chord "grips" and shapes, not a deliberate knowledge of how the chord is made. If you want to pursue it, ask about triads and chord inversions. |
| Eynowd |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 7:08:32 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Earl
Think of it this way. The alternating bass is your rhythm section - bass and drums, setting the beat and laying down the chordal structure. The treble strings are your melody (lead singer). The interior part would be the harmony singers, mostly filling out the chord. That is what finger picking patterns are generally doing, and they often do not feature the melody note at all.
In flat picking / strumming terms, you have the "boom-chuck" element of the bass, with the brush being the harmony singers in the choir. The melody is placed on top of all that, and can either be the singing voice or the flat picked solo notes. The way our ears are wired, the highest pitched note is usually perceived as the melody.
This is not going to work as well with a ukulele (particularly with a high G string) since the whole range of notes is narrower and less defined than on a guitar with those extra lower strings. That is part of why my ukulele are all low G strung, so I can get that boom-chuck strumming feel.
In terms of chords, songs often follow a I-IV-V (one-four-five) chord progression, and those chords can be major, minor, seventh or other flavors. Building the major chords themselves uses a series of the first, third and fifth notes (1-3-5) in a given scale. Add the flatted seventh note and you have what we call a 7th chord (1-3-5-7b) or dominant seventh. Flat the third note and you have a minor chord (1-3b-5) instead of a major chord. Many people get confused about I-IV-V chord sequence in a song versus a 1-3-5 stack of notes that build the individual chords.
Hope this explains it all a little more clearly.
From a theory perspective, I kinda understand all of that.
I think this is another one of those situations where I'm lacking the words to adequately explain in text where I'm stuck. Without the right words, it's hard to find the right answers 
To build on your analogy above, when playing slack key particularly, what notes do the harmony singers sing, and when?
I keep having the strong feeling that there is some fundamental piece of the puzzle that I'm missing that will bring everything into sharp focus, but I can't find that piece.
I've been tempted to go pay for guitar lessons (as opposed to learning from books and the net), specifically so I can ask questions. But there's no slack key teachers in Australia, and I have no desire whatsoever to learn the Blues (which, for some unknown reason, there seems to be this unspoken thing that if you want to learn to play guitar, you automatically want to learn Blues...)
quote:
Originally posted by Earl
And apologies for getting your name wrong before. "Auto-error" struck again with "corrections", combined with the inability to edit once posted.
No offence taken. It's a deliberate misspelling of a Unix operating system term ("i node"). So, people misspelling it happens. Much like my real name, which gets misspelled in some very creative ways a lot of the time. |
| Earl |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 3:39:28 PM
Think of it this way. The alternating bass is your rhythm section - bass and drums, setting the beat and laying down the chordal structure. The treble strings are your melody (lead singer). The interior part would be the harmony singers, mostly filling out the chord. That is what finger picking patterns are generally doing, and they often do not feature the melody note at all.
In flat picking / strumming terms, you have the "boom-chuck" element of the bass, with the brush being the harmony singers in the choir. The melody is placed on top of all that, and can either be the singing voice or the flat picked solo notes. The way our ears are wired, the highest pitched note is usually perceived as the melody.
This is not going to work as well with a ukulele (particularly with a high G string) since the whole range of notes is narrower and less defined than on a guitar with those extra lower strings. That is part of why my ukulele are all low G strung, so I can get that boom-chuck strumming feel.
In terms of chords, songs often follow a I-IV-V (one-four-five) chord progression, and those chords can be major, minor, seventh or other flavors. Building the major chords themselves uses a series of the first, third and fifth notes (1-3-5) in a given scale. Add the flatted seventh note and you have what we call a 7th chord (1-3-5-7b) or dominant seventh. Flat the third note and you have a minor chord (1-3b-5) instead of a major chord. Many people get confused about I-IV-V chord sequence in a song versus a 1-3-5 stack of notes that build the individual chords.
Hope this explains it all a little more clearly. And apologies for getting your name wrong before. "Auto-error" struck again with "corrections", combined with the inability to edit once posted. |
| thumbstruck |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 3:25:05 PM
Check if you can get Oz or Duke on Skype. |
| Eynowd |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 1:15:12 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Earl
Eyednow, one or two hints I've accumulated at guitar camps over the years. For taro patch and other G family tunings, find several D7's, G's, C's etc. That way you'll have them as variations for later. When learning a new tuning, do the same for the root (I), fourth (IV) and fifth (V) chords in the progression, as they will appear the most often. The II7 (two chord, seventh flavor) appears in vamps, and is handy to know as well.
Then try to identify the third note of the scale and the seventh note. The third determines minor or major chords (not that many minors in Hawaiian music) and the seventh helps when you get to the V (five) chord in the progression, which is often a V7.
Thanks Earl. I understand the first para, but the second one is confusing me a bit right now.
While I was driving to work this morning (and listening to Jim "Kimo" West playing slack key - I have a big ki ho'alu Spotify playlist on my phone), I realised that one gap in my musical knowledge relates to moving from single note melody lines into richer, fuller sounds.
If I'm playing in standard tuning, then I can either strum chords, or travis pick fixed patterns them and get things sounding reasonably good. But that lacks the melody playing.
But if I want to play a melody, I'm largely stuck moving beyond a single note line. I lack the understanding of what else to play with it.
Now, in slack key, I understand that I can use the alternating bass notes along with the single note melody line to give it a bit more oomph. That much I can grok (although that collapses if I try to play it on the uke, but that's a different story).
But beyond that? I'm lost. I don't know which other notes to play - and when - to really lift the tune into something decent.
It's that space beyond single note melody lines that no one ever seems to talk about in tutorials (or if they do, I don't recognise it).
Does that make sense? |
| Earl |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 03:58:39 AM
Eyednow, one or two hints I've accumulated at guitar camps over the years. For taro patch and other G family tunings, find several D7's, G's, C's etc. That way you'll have them as variations for later. When learning a new tuning, do the same for the root (I), fourth (IV) and fifth (V) chords in the progression, as they will appear the most often. The II7 (two chord, seventh flavor) appears in vamps, and is handy to know as well.
Then try to identify the third note of the scale and the seventh note. The third determines minor or major chords (not that many minors in Hawaiian music) and the seventh helps when you get to the V (five) chord in the progression, which is often a V7.
I have not used the two D7's that you diagrammed, but will try them next time I play some slack-key. |
| thumbstruck |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 03:24:15 AM
Never underestimate the value of having YouTube or a CD or an internet music service with the appropriate artists on in the background while doing other tasks. Listening that way allows you to hear the tune differently. That always helps me. |
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