Quote:
Originally Posted by Grinning Boy
I would never qualify as a soprano so I was not personally insulted 
I was just responding to some of these generalities about higher notes on guitars don't lend much and how all the good stuff is in the fret 3-8 range. The instrument would get pretty boring, at least for instrumentals, if the whole spectrum of notes aren't used. One of its strengths is in its range.
And the comment about Earl Klugh. He is one of may favorites, but he plays a 12-fret classical, so he does run out of road quickly. But if you listen to him he's reaching for those 14 and 15 frets quite often and they sound great!! |
Well, to be more specific about what David Qualey was telling me...
He mostly plays a high quality nylon string classical guitar. He prefers the sonorous sounds he can get from it, and therefore looks for any opportunity to utilize open strings where possible. He told me he prefers that most of an arrangement of his would be in the middle and lower areas of the fretboard. That does not mean that he never approaches the 12th fret, but that he prefers not to stay there very long.
Qualey does an arrangement of "Jesu" in which he puts a capo somwhere up around the 7th fret. When he plays it up there, it has a nice ringing quality to it. However, most of his arrangements are in the mid and lower regions of the fretboard, occasionally going up to the 12th fret because that is simply how he likes the sound of his music.
I think that when talking about something like this, interpreting or adapting an all-or-nothing stance is not going to be accurate and could cause completely unnecessary disagreement. Instead, looking at it as a matter of preference on the part of the arranger and musicians involved makes (at least to me) much more sense.
So some of the comments in response to what was said about playing higher up on the fretboard seem a bit unnecessary in the big picture. Not everybody has the same ideas as to what sounds good, and that really shouldn't be offensive, nor interpreted as they have been here, to anybody.
Tony