AN INTERLUDE ON HANDS
I have given
you as much fingering as you need to know at this stage and I think you
will be able to finger most exercises by yourselves, but don’t worry I will
still give you some tablature and some fingering. You should by now be experimenting
with your own way of getting about the fingerboard by using your own fingering
that comes natural to you. The point is each one of us has different physical
attributes. Our hands and fingers are different sizes, the length of fingers
and also the span of the fingers differ. I look at some guitarist’s long
fingers with envy. The palms of my hands are quite long but my fingers are
short, especially my little finger. This gives me quite a lot of strength
in my hands but limits my finger stretch. I remember when I studied classical
guitar, one of the pieces I was studying happened to be the Chaccone by
J.S. Bach, transcribed by Segovia. There is a Bb chord later on in the piece
with a Bb on the 5th string
an F on the 4th
string, a D on the 2nd
string and a Bb on the 1st
string. Without a very long little finger and a good wide finger
span you had no chance in hell to be able to play this chord, especially
moving at the pace that it’s going when you have to change to this chord.
I happened to see and hear Segovia play at about this time and was amazed
at the size of his hands. His fingers were like great big hairy banana’s,
but what a touch this man had, to hear him you would think that he had beautiful
long slender fingers that were chiselled out of some ethereal material and
“touched by the hand of God”, that’s what
Segovia said about John William’s. John on the other hand has what I would
term as Guitarist’s fingers, long and slender. I’ll give some more examples.
Tal Farlow, a great Jazz guitarist of the 50’s and 60’s, had fingers so
long they could almost wrap around the finger board and still play from
the other side. All of us have hands that are special
to our own character and build. Steve Via has long subtle fingers,
Larry Carlton has medium long but powerful hands, I could go on and on but
I will stop. I think you have the idea and should make the best out of your
own hands. Oh! just one more, in case you think that your hands are no good
to play the guitar just think of Django, two fingers almost useless! I think that’s all I need
to say on this subject so make the best of what you have.
As we can see
from the previous exercises there are patterns that repeat themselves over
and over. Our aim is to find as many of these patterns as we possibly can
to develop our co-ordination between mind, fingers and guitar. I can’t stress
enough that we are going through this process to train our fingers and our
ears, to become accustomed to the sounds and the patterns that these exercises
create. The final goal, is to be able to call on any fingering or combination
of fingering to get the effect that we need, to express ourselves in the
way that we want to.
These next few
exercises are basic patterns to develop your co-ordination a lot more. I
have put the basic chords with this exercise just to show you how exercises
can develop your ear and timing. If you play these chords and record them
on to a tape recorder, with a metronome to keep time, and play the tape back, then play the exercises
in time with the recording you will be developing
your ear, co-ordination and timing. It is so important to be able
to keep time, not only with other people but with yourself because good
time and tempo are two of the main factors in making good music.
The
1st example is repeated 2 notes.
The 2nd example is repeated 3 notes.
The 3rd example is
repeated 5 notes.
The 4th example is
repeated 6 notes.
The 5th example is
repeated 7 notes.
FINGER EXERCISE
2.
The second of
these exercises is virtually the same except for one note. But the fingering
changes quite dramatically. Go through the same recording procedure as with
exercise 1 and then try playing the 2’s, 3’s etc. by adding the starting
note to the end of the triad. For example here we have the 3 notes ascending
with the starting note added to the end of the phrase. Also here we can
start to accent the notes to get you used to a basic form of syncopation.
The dictionary definition of syncopation is “To displace beats or accents
in (passage) so that what was ‘strong’ becomes ‘weak’, and vice versa”.
If you can work that out in practical terms you will understand more than
most. My definition of syncopation would be to accent beats in combination’s
on and off the basic beat. Don’t quote me though my grammar ain’t to good
and I don’t want to get hung by the academics. Do not forget these exercises
should be played up the scale to top E string. I have only given you the
first 2 or 3 bars for you to get the idea of the exercise.
1st
Example 2’s. The accent of the notes are
accentuated the 1st and 3rd of every 3 beats. You can play all of these
exercises without accents to get used to the notes. When you are familiar
with the notes try to accent each note by playing the note a little harder
with the plectrum.
2nd
Example 4’s. Because the 3’s are covered
with EX 2 above. The accents here are on 2 and a half beats, which makes
the timing in a 5/8 feel. e.g. 1-2-3-4-5-1-2-3-4-5. To play this exercise against a
4 in the bar feel will help you to syncopate your improvisations. This will
be covered in more depth later in the book.
3rd
Example 5’s. Here the
accents on a 3 feel again but this time it goes 1
- 2 - 3 and 1 - 2 - 3 and, so every 1st and 6th quaver (or 8th beat)
is accented. Again play this in 4/4 time so you can get used to the misplacement
of the accents.
4th
Example 6’s. Here the accent becomes a 7/8
feel. e.g. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 and 1 - 2 - 3
- 4 - 5 - 6 and. Its like 6 8th notes with an odd one stuck at the
end. Play this against a 4 beat bar and you will really understand syncopation.
The accent comes back from the 4th beat one 8th note every bar.
5th
Example 7’s. Here contrary to what it may
look like we have a strait ahead 4/4 bar with accents on the 1st and the
8th note in the bar.
As can be seen
from the above exercises the notes of the scales go across the beat in a
different way in each exercise. One addition to the above exercises that
I always think will develop the ear is to
sing along with what you are playing. I even sing along silently to get
an idea of the pitch of the intervals firmly implanted in my mind. It is
so important to develop a good sense of pitch because we can then have a
good idea of what other musicians are playing when we listen to them. If
we apply this approach to all of our patterns we will develop a good sense
of pitch and rhythm. I will deal with the rhythmic aspect of our playing
later on in the book, so for now let us go back to our study of the basic
scale exercises. We have seen how we get quite a lot of exercises out of
one basic pattern. Later I will give you some more patterns to work with.
Don’t forget that each of theses patterns will make the fingers work in
a different way and help develop the independence that your fingers will
need. All of the exercises in chapter 5 are mixtures, in part, of the patterns
that I will give you in chapter 6. Now we can take some of this knowledge
and apply it to improvisation. To do this we will explore the 2-5-1
sequence, as it states the sequence is built on the 2nd
interval, the 5th interval and the 1st or root interval. These intervals use the chords
as a basis for improvisation and the chords we get, in A major, are 2nd
interval Bmin7, 5th interval an E7 and the 1st interval of coarse is an Amaj7.
