Thread: Regret
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Old 01-10-2017, 11:39 AM
charles Tauber charles Tauber is offline
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An additional though on fingerings that you might find helpful.

Play the open high E string. Play the same pitch on the second string (5th fret). Play the same pitch on the third string (9th fret). Note that although all three are the same pitch, their timbre changes considerably. Which one do you want?

That depends upon your preference and your interpretation for the piece of music you are playing. If you want "sweet and mellow" with some vibrato, you might want the 9th fret version. If you want harpsichordish, you might want the open string.

But, getting there is half the fun. What do you have to do before and after that note - fingering wise - to be able to play that note? You might be able to use a "guide finger" to slide your finger up to that fret (not glissando) by playing a preceding note of the music on the 3rd string. Might be you can play an entire phrase up in that region of the neck, making the entire phrase "more mellow". Might be that you want a repeat of the same phrase to have a different timbre and you can play it using the open E string and other open strings and notes near the nut.

Might be that you don't want the open string to ring beyond its intended duration. In that case, either you stop it from ringing with either right or left hand techniques or you avoid playing that note on the open string, instead opting, say, for the 5th fret second string.

And so on. All of these interpretive and "practical" things go into the decision of what left hand fingerings to use. There is no right or wrong answer, beyond the "basics", simply how you want the music to sound.

Unlike, say, the piano or flute, where a single pitch can be created in only a single way, on the guitar, a single pitch, depending on the pitch, can be created in a multiplicity of ways and locations on the fingerboard. That this is so is both the joy and the frustration of playing the instrument. It is one of the important tools in the classical guitar player's toolbox for expressing the music one plays.
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