Fingerstyle Starting To Sound The Same...

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by dneal

I'm scratching my head over that one. I don't know if it's condescending, or ignorant. Maybe it's a mix.

Of all the genres, blues speaks for itself. BB King explains it quite well with just one note. No intellectualization needed.

It was neither. Blues are not an automatic to today's urban youth. For them to "get it" someone has to explain the long guitar solos and what to listen to. Te same is true of many types of music. Music is a language, but the syntax can vary and need to be interpreted.

Bob

[dneal]

What is "urban youth"?

[tbeltrans]

In the movie "My Cousin Vinnie", Vinnie with his overly thick New York
accent kept talking about "yute" in the courtroom (he was saying "youth"), and the judge kept asking "what is a yute?".

So, what is an urban "yute". Just a city kid, I would guess.

Tony

[rogthefrog]

Special tunings, techniques and harmonies aren't (necessarily) used to be different, or to draw attention to oneself, or show off.

I can only speak for myself (though I suspect Antoine Dufour and Don Ross and Thomas Leeb many others feel the same), but the tunings and techniques I use are dictated by the music I hear in my head. If there's a melody above the 7th fret on the high strings and chords or a bass line that need to happen at the same time, then I'll use both hands on the neck. Or I'll tweak the tuning so it's easier to play. If there's an ostinato line, maybe I can do it with one hand and free up the other to embellish the chords or play a melody. The result is that all my tunes are in different tunings, and my hands move around more than most fingerstyle players, but that's a function of the music--not because I want to impress guitar nerds or be different. In fact I'd prefer it if people didn't look too closely and listened with their ears and asked questions about the notes rather than the fingers, because that stuff is just mechanics and pretty boring.

Sure, there's some copycatting and gratuitous technique and percussion on Candyrat, but it's true of any genre and any specialized label. All Travis picking songs and players sound the same to me. All electric blues players sound the same to me. Same with bluegrass. Clearly they're not, so the issue lies with me. Music by Ornstein, Varèse, Holdsworth, Schönberg, Hedges and other "different" composers, art by Pollock and Picasso brings me great visceral joy (not just intellectual stimulation--i find that stuff genuinely moving and beautiful), yet to many it's just noise and chaos and ugliness.

So I'd caution against impugning the Candyrat guys' motives and assuming they're just different because it's hip or they like to show off. More likely they just play that way because that's what comes out of them. What music your mind and heart conjure up is not something you can help any more than you can help the foods you like to eat or the way you write or the shape of your doodles. Of course it's influenced by your culture, parents, radio, etc and not completely raw and unprocessed, but what comes out is what comes out, and sometimes it doesn't sound like Chet Atkins. There's nothing sacred or inherently superior about *not* hitting your guitar, or playing alternating Kottke bass lines with a thumbpick, or EADGBE, or a verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge song structure. And knowing standard tuning and popular chord progressions and The Water is Wide isn't a prerequisite to being a good musician. The guitar is a canvas.

As a side note, we should celebrate this resurgence in interest in the acoustic guitar, because anything that inspires younger generations to play our venerable instrument is a good thing.

All this is IMO and IME.

[Monk of Funk]

Originally Posted by rogthefrog

Special tunings, techniques and harmonies aren't (necessarily) used to be different, or to draw attention to oneself, or show off.

I can only speak for myself (though I suspect Antoine Dufour and Don Ross and Thomas Leeb many others feel the same), but the tunings and techniques I use are dictated by the music I hear in my head. If there's a melody above the 7th fret on the high strings and chords or a bass line that need to happen at the same time, then I'll use both hands on the neck. Or I'll tweak the tuning so it's easier to play. If there's an ostinato line, maybe I can do it with one hand and free up the other to embellish the chords or play a melody. The result is that all my tunes are in different tunings, and my hands move around more than most fingerstyle players, but that's a function of the music--not because I want to impress guitar nerds or be different. In fact I'd prefer it if people didn't look too closely and listened with their ears and asked questions about the notes rather than the fingers, because that stuff is just mechanics and pretty boring.

Sure, there's some copycatting and gratuitous technique and percussion on Candyrat, but it's true of any genre and any specialized label. All Travis picking songs and players sound the same to me. All electric blues players sound the same to me. Same with bluegrass. Clearly they're not, so the issue lies with me. Music by Ornstein, Varèse, Holdsworth, Schönberg, Hedges and other "different" composers, art by Pollock and Picasso brings me great visceral joy (not just intellectual stimulation--i find that stuff genuinely moving and beautiful), yet to many it's just noise and chaos and ugliness.

So I'd caution against impugning the Candyrat guys' motives and assuming they're just different because it's hip or they like to show off. More likely they just play that way because that's what comes out of them. What music your mind and heart conjure up is not something you can help any more than you can help the foods you like to eat or the way you write or the shape of your doodles. Of course it's influenced by your culture, parents, radio, etc and not completely raw and unprocessed, but what comes out is what comes out, and sometimes it doesn't sound like Chet Atkins. There's nothing sacred or inherently superior about *not* hitting your guitar, or playing alternating Kottke bass lines with a thumbpick, or EADGBE, or a verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge song structure. And knowing standard tuning and popular chord progressions and The Water is Wide isn't a prerequisite to being a good musician. The guitar is a canvas.

As a side note, we should celebrate this resurgence in interest in the acoustic guitar, because anything that inspires younger generations to play our venerable instrument is a good thing.

All this is IMO and IME.

I personally, make it a point not to practice any technique that can't be improvised.

Some of those candyrat techniques fall into that, like drumming on your guitar. In order to keep a beat, I find that you need to have a sort of specific guitar part. You need at least one hand free at specific intervals in order to do percussive hits, which is limiting on your rhythmic freedom for the musical part. It's also a chore on the mind. I find it difficult to improvise beatboxing and guitar simultaneously. For some stuff it's not so bad, but it's still quite limiting I find.

I also find that, although I could see how people could get to know different tunings, and what sorts of sounds you can get from them, something like knowing your modes well, different tunings have their own sets of what is or isn't possible, and by virtue of that, influence what you play.

Not saying that's bad, but it's just that way. I find even switching key on a piano influences the music because of the layout. So, once you've decided on a tuning, that influences the whole piece you are playing. Sure, maybe for an idea you have for a certain passage, you might elect a given tuning, but that tuning will influence the entire piece. It's not like you can switch tunings after a few bars, although that would be totally awesome.

I agree with you though, in that I don't believe that looking cool is the primary determining factor behind their pieces, I think it is the music, but I think that the look goes into it also. I mean, I don't think that they would choose to do something that looks cool, just for the sake of it looking cool, when they could play that exact same thing in a less flamboyant way, but I find it hard to believe that hearing people cheer when you employ a given technique or something doesn't affect you.

I think there is some of that in all instrumentalists. It's entertainment after all. You're there performing, it's not only sound.

I also agree with you that in general, styles, bye virtue of being a style, will sound alike. It is just that way. They are all acoustic guitars, limited by what can be done with acoustic guitar, and at this point, a lot of what is possible with an acoustic guitar has been done by somebody. So, it is normal that it all sounds kind of similar in a way.

But I think open tunings, and hammer on, tapping techniques, do heavily influence the sound of the music, and I find that alternate tunings will open up some new possibilities, but they are ultimately more limiting in what you can do. For me, it is also a big thing that in standard tuning I know lots of chord shapes, what they sound like, and I know the key scale, and all that, so I am personally more free in that way also.

That's why partial capos are interesting to me, because they could give me the freedom standard tuning provides me, and also some nice opportunities for playing around with things a different open tuning can allow me to do.

I love lots of music, lots of new and interesting things, and I don't see why anyone would complain about fingerstyle becoming monotonous, I find we have come to a point where people have done so much with the acoustic guitar, and that's awesome. But I understand the statement that it is often quite similar. I'm sure they learn and build off of each other also.

But that's cool, that's how music can progress and evolve. They can find some cool techniques there, learn and develop it, guys doing hard rock can find other stuff, guys like chet atkins, different stuff, guys like BB king, Jimi hendrix, santana, different things, and we can look at all of this glorious variety of how people make music with guitar, and take from it, to make a new blend.

It's pretty awesome. But, I mean, if you're gonna take a technique and become an expert at it, and try to maximize it's possibilities, you're gonna have to make some similar music. But that's awesome. So, thank you all the guys at candyrat, for making awesome guitar music, and taking an aspect of acoustic guitar to a new level. That's a beautiful thing. All new and fresh things become old and normal eventually.

[Doug Young]

Originally Posted by rogthefrog

Special tunings, techniques and harmonies aren't (necessarily) used to be different, or to draw attention to oneself, or show off.

I can only speak for myself (though I suspect Antoine Dufour and Don Ross and Thomas Leeb many others feel the same), but the tunings and techniques I use are dictated by the music I hear in my head..

Nice post, Roger, and great to see you on the forum here. For what it's worth, I've attended several workshops by Don Ross, and tho he's never quite said it exactly like this, what I came away with was the impression that he (sometimes) thinks of the guitar as a 6-player band. A big-band composer might think "I need a trombone to play this part, a flute to play this one", and so on. Don thinks "I need a low Bb player (6th string) to play this part, a high F# player to play another, and so he lines up the "players" he needs to create the ensemble.

The other thing I think is relevant to some of the discussion here is that to me, a big issue for solo guitar (not limited to fingerstyle and really much the same with any solo instrument) is the relative limited range of sounds compared to what people hear in more common music. We're limited by the notes we can reach, the tonal range is small, the dynamic range is small, etc. So it's harder to hear melodies, for example, compared to listening to a full band, where each instrument has it's own space. And people miss the drums or the deep bass and so on. A lot of what people who use extended techniques, tapping, percussion, etc, seem to be doing is to break out of those limitations and expand the range of instrument so that it's less limiting, less boring, less "all the same".

[CyberFerret]

I have fairly conclusive evidence that sites such as Candyrat et al are inspiring younger guitarists to take up the 'old mans instrument', the acoustic guitar.

These younger guitarists are the people in the future who will be fuelling the demand to buy up our collections when we eventually need the funds to pay for a nurse to spoon feed us mush and change our diapers in the nursing home.

Just keep that thought at the back of your mind...

[AZ Slacker]

"Fingerstyle is for people who can't sing. I'm one of them. I think melody can take a player farther than dexterity. My opinion."

Nothing could be further from the truth. I will say that for me fingerstyle, especially at a higher level of technicality is harder with vocals, than simple rhythm and vocals.

Listen and look at great fingerstyle and vocals and be amazed.....

http://youtu.be/jj9EK1QMlUg
http://youtu.be/q8xjNT0gd_s
http://youtu.be/HCXuriEV-0Y
http://youtu.be/rlP_aMsJ-rI

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by AZ Slacker

"Fingerstyle is for people who can't sing. I'm one of them. I think melody can take a player farther than dexterity. My opinion."

Nothing could be further from the truth. I will say that for me fingerstyle, especially at a higher level of technicality is harder with vocals, than simple rhythm and vocals.

Listen and look at great fingerstyle and vocals and be amazed.....

http://youtu.be/jj9EK1QMlUg
http://youtu.be/q8xjNT0gd_s
http://youtu.be/HCXuriEV-0Y
http://youtu.be/rlP_aMsJ-rI

Actually those are all pretty simple pieces while the singing is going on. Now you can sing and also be a good player doing pretty intricate stuff,
but while the singing is going on the playing will be toned done.