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#16
07-06-2018, 10:42 AM
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But I'd say you don't need an online resource, you just need to map it all out yourself. It's not hard. It can be time-consuming, but online resources wont make it quicker - there's no short cuts. E.g., you know the open strings are EADBGE (duh, right?). You know the ABCDEFGA formula (1/2 steps between BC and EF, whole steps everywhere else)? If not, you do now! Good: now you can work out any note on any string on any fret. (The missing frets are sharp versions of the note below, or flat versions of the one above.) You know that (say) a C chord contains the notes C-E-G? Now you can find shapes for a C chord anywhere on the fretboard. And you can do the same for any other chord. You can certainly find fretboard maps online to show you all the notes, but you won't remember it until you internalize by playing it. And mapping it out yourself is the best way to do that. I'll address one or two of the examples you posted shortly, but one thing I spotted was they seemed (sometimes) to be playing chromatic passing notes to link chords. A good rule there is that, when changing chords, you can always introduce half step transitions anywhere you like. To take a very simple example: if changing from C to F (open position), you can insert a passing G# on string 3 to link the G in the C to the A in the F chord. (0-1-2 on the G string if you're not familiar with the notes yet.) Another: going from F to G, insert an F# in the bass on the way up - and if you have time, there could be a D7/F# in there. You keep the A-C of the F chord, so essentially you're introducing F#dim (F#-A-C), but adding a D (open string) is usually no problem. The secret here is to regard a chord sequence as a series of fixed markers, or stepping stones. But any other transition marker can go between, if it makes the change smoother in some way - and normally that means passing half-steps. No need to learn any theory rules. But I'll take a listen to a couple of your posted examples and come back...
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. 
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#17
07-06-2018, 11:11 AM
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Code:
E A6 (F#m7 B9) E6 ------|------------|---------------|------------| ----7-|9-----------|---------------|------------| -/9---|------11--9-|11-------9---6-|--6---------| ------|------------|---------7---4-|--6---------| ------|---7--9--11-|12--12---9---6-|----7--6--7-| ------|0-----------|---------------|0-----------| The "F#m7-B9" chords are partial and implied, but the shapes are obviously simple. The melody comes down a minor 3rd (9-6, E-C#), and it happens that the same shape on strings 4-5 will harmonize it from the same key: F#-A under the E note D#-F# under the C# note. He could have played just roots on for those two beats: Code:
E A6 F#m7 B9 E6
------|------------|---------------|------------|
----7-|9-----------|---------------|------------|
-/9---|------11--9-|11-------9---6-|--6---------|
------|------------|---------------|--6---------|
------|---7--9--11-|12--12---9-----|----7--6--7-|
------|0-----------|-------------7-|0-----------|
* *
There's nothing chromatic here. He's sticking with the key scale, because that suits the "sweet" nature of the melody. Obviously he can do this because he knows (a) the E major scale all over the fretboard - or (b) shapes for E6, A6, F#m7, B9, etc, all over the fretboard (including workable partial shapes) - or more likely (c) both! So he can work out various ways he might play the melody, and which of the possible positions (for each note of it) allow him the easiest or best sounding harmonization. (I doubt he used online resources to work all that out. I mean, I didn't and I know all that. I worked out a few other ways of accompanying that bit of melody just while I was laying all this out.) Give me a moment and I'll see what I can find in the second video....
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen.
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#18
07-06-2018, 11:21 AM
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This is pretty tough to answer in a post. There's no specific formula, these guys are arranging music, and drawing on their ears and musical knowledge, not to mention a lot of physical technique.
I'd suggest a few books to get you started: Muriel Anderson's "Building Arrangements from the Group Up" Mark Hanson's "Arranging Fingerstyle Solos" DVD There are endless DVDs and books available that go into this. Check out Homespun Tapes, and Truefire. Pete Huttlinger goes into his playing/arranging in his truefire course, "The Lone Arranger". Tommy Emmanuel has several good courses there, too. TrueFire's a great online resource. Another approach (or an additional approach) is just to learn lots of tunes, like these ones you like. You will get the idea of what they're doing after you learn a few dozen tunes like this. There is tab available for almost everything these days, and if there isn't, working it out yourself can be even more instructive. For the tunes, you've posted, you have video, so you can see and hear exactly what they're doing. You can slow down the videos using Transcribe as well.
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar
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#19
07-06-2018, 11:51 AM
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At 1:15 it's really just the A chord on 5th fret and the B chord on 7th fret, adding melody notes on the top strings where he can reach them, and back to the E chord (4th position) at 1:19. At 1:21 he begins an interesting run up to get to the A chord. No melody here (at least not Jingle Bells!). E bass all the way (really just a muted 6th string thump) starting with a C#m triad on top 3 (0-x-x-6-5-4) then a D (0-x-x-7-7-5), then an E7 (0-x-x-7-9-7) which becomes E7#5 (0-x-x-7-9-8) and finally at 1:23 A6 (but still with the E bass thump, 0-x-x-11-10-9, adding a top 12th fret E). The knowledge there is: (a) he's in E major, but wants to get to A, and E7 (to use some theory jargon) is the "secondary dominant", V of A. E mixolydian if you like, but all it is is just using D natural instead of D# - that's enough to signal that an A chord will be arriving shortly. Essentially this is just knowing that an E7 sound will lead to A. (b) he knows his triads up the top 3 strings. And knows he can use that chromatic C natural (B#) to add a little dissonance to resolve into the C# of the A chord. Notice - like Pete Huttlinger - he's using 6th versions of his major chords (adding C# to the E and F# to the A), to provide that kind of "country warmth", you might call it. (Major 6th chords were all over early rockabilly, and major pentatonic is a classic country scale.) OK, that stuff at 2:14 (back in key of C) is a "line cliche". The chord is C with the melody on E, and to make that static harmony more interesting he's adding a chromatic line up the G string. In essence, it's this: Code:
C C+ C6 C7 (CM7 C7 F Fm6)C -0-0-0---|0-0-0----|0--3-------|0- ---------|---------|------1--3-|-- -0---1---|2-2-3----|4--3--2--1-|0- ---------|---------|-----------|-- ---------|---------|-----------|-- ---------|---------|-----------|-- How does he know this? Well, "line cliche" is well named: it's a very common effect in jazz - sometimes known as "CESH" (chromatic elaboration of static harmony), and he would have heard it in various places and worked it out. And then worked out how and where he could apply it in tunes like this (where one chord is played for a couple of bars at least). IOW, a lot of this kind of knowledge comes not from theory books, but from learning lots of other people's tunes. Scores, 100s, by heart. By ear if you have to. You don't do that in a few weeks or months, it takes years. Not to mention the technical skill which allows him to play it all that fast!
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen. Last edited by JonPR; 07-06-2018 at 11:59 AM.
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#20
07-07-2018, 09:29 AM
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Thank you Doug Young and JonPR.
JonPR you've given me a lot of food for thought. I have some immediate questions that've popped into my mind but I'm going to reserve them until I've digested this for a bit. It is clear to me that you have an understanding of theory that I do not. I've never learned any except the stuff I learned kinda forcibly over the years playing the piano. Tritones, chord extensions, etc. But I don't have the ability to just watch what someone is playing an know the theory (ie. 'line cliche') To be honest, I learned to play the piano by Doug's suggested alternate technique. I copied a lot of songs until I could play them. Then I used those ideas in other songs to eventually create my style. Of course, the problem was/is that I always play stuff I have no idea what I'm playing. HAHA I just know it works. Not why or how. I guess that is as viable a path on guitar as it was on the piano. Again, thanks for the info and your time.
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Tom (DEGG) ____________________________________
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#21
07-07-2018, 11:34 AM
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 I learned to do this stuff before I had most of that knowledge - mainly by learning tunes that did it. Theory knowledge just means I know all the names of what I'm doing. It doesn't help me play it, it just helps me talk about it! BTW, I tabbed it out with the help of Transcribe software - https://www.seventhstring.com/xscribe/screenshots.html - it not only slows down, but makes it easy to isolate and loop short sections.
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"There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen.
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#22
07-07-2018, 12:41 PM
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What you need to arrange tunes is a bit of practical knowledge of harmony. You don't absolutely need to know all the names for things. I know one fairly well-known guitarist who was *completely* self-taught, made up his own names for things. He figured out the "Bob" scale, and the "Joe" chord. He plays, writes and arranges complex tunes very well. (That's definitely the hard way to go about it, tho! This stuff is all readily available, and written down) You say you already know chord construction, so you're mostly there as far as music fundamentals. Just dive in and try to create some arrangements - pick out a melody, then find a way to finger the root of each chord while you play the melody, then see what else you can add. It's 99% trial and error. You get better with practice, both trying it yourself and just learning others arrangements. You're better off trying to internalize the sound of what they're doing and making sense of it in your own way than learning names for things, in my opinion (tho both together can be very effective) I don't know if this would be useful to you, I'm not Robert Bowlin, Pete or Tommy, and I'm using an alternate tuning, but I walk thru an example of arranging a christmas tune in this video. I'd use this same process in any tuning, any song, and you can see how I deal with trying to figure out how to get all the notes in: There are lots of videos on how people arrange for solo guitar. Check out Rolly Brown, for example: here's a simple example, again walking thru arranging a basic tune: Search on "arranging fingerstyle guitar" on you tube and you'll find a lot of possibly useful stuff. These will all be simpler than the tunes/players you're asking about - those guys are the masters of guitar - but even they started simple and ramped up. All this stuff of moving chords and so on is just an artistic choice and knowing/applying various options. You might also look into "chord melody" tutorials, which tends to be more jazz related, but usually leads to a lot more chord movement, which is what you originally asked about, even tho your examples are all more folk/pop players.
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Music: Spotify, Bandcamp Videos: You Tube Channel Books: Hymns for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), Christmas Carols for Fingerstyle Guitar (std tuning), A DADGAD Christmas, Alternate Tunings book Online Course: Alternate Tunings for Fingerstyle Guitar Last edited by Doug Young; 07-07-2018 at 12:53 PM.
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#23
07-07-2018, 01:14 PM
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Just a small hint - guitarists are prone to think of groups of notes as chords, and say " what is that chord, how can I make a shape to play that chord?". Think of multi-voice harmony instead - barbershop quartet harmony is a good example. think of playing two or three harmonic lines - a bass line, a melody line and a harmony line (or two). You are still technically playing chords, but the thought process changes from shapes to notes, to extending the harmonic thought from just a melody with a backing chord to an arrangement like a big-band section might play. Stop playing chords and start playing harmonic lines.
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Brian Evans Around 15 archtops, electrics, resonators, a lap steel, a uke, a mandolin, some I made, some I bought, some kinda showed up and wouldn't leave. Tatamagouche Nova Scotia.
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#24
07-07-2018, 03:48 PM
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Really good stuff. I appreciate the links, youtube videos and suggestions.
Taking it all in.
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Tom (DEGG) ____________________________________
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#25
07-07-2018, 04:25 PM
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Anyway an old pro taught me to look at chord patterns that are used BROADLY in tunes and practice them in smaller chunks, eventually to be able to use them as "subs" for single chords in other contexts. If they are eight measures, you might later repurpose for a 2- beat pattern. There are other ways to analyze the example, like that basically it's contrary motion , with bass going up /melody going down, but the PRINCIPLE remains the same : simply view it as an example of ONE way to get from one place to the next. The "what you can do with it?" part of that is to , now, go apply that same walk up pattern to several tunes which have that IV as part of the progression. Play that walk up pattern every time you go to the IV (other chords as well actually) for a week or two, until you're sick of it and can hear it/play it in your sleep. It's basically the same process as the "just play hundreds of tunes" process which most pros have gone through, except that you're focusing on ONE element for a concentrated period of time. Then, examine the Doyle Dykes "out" chord in that example, and do the same. What's the chord which follows that chord? D, I think. Spend a week in proceeding every D chord at the end of tunes with that type of walk down, again, until you can hear it in your sleep. Do it in other keys, transposing it. so that walkdown basically becomes sub for the target cord . Also doesn't hurt to note that it's another good way of getting from the four chord etc., but you've picked up one more substitutionary sound for your library. It's probably more confusing if you focus too much on the chord or chords which PRECEDE the substitution your hearing. (The fact that great players are also so good at making the connection on the FRONT end is almost distracting at earlier stages.) Bit, focus on the TARGET, or where they GO. If it's bluegrass, walk up's or walk down's pretty much always work when they go TO another target chord that fits, regardless of where they're coming FROM. The same is true with 6251 progressions in jazz. Stitching the front end well it's important, but maybe later. So, when you find something interesting in someone else's playing, find the target which follows, and spend a week putting that type of thing in FRONT of the same chord in other contexts. Again, you don't have to be limited by the original rhythm either. Once you can play that HALF- note progression, you can then use it as quarter note FILLS in a single measure, kind of like the first example. The pros have just played this stuff so much that standard PROGRESSIONS at slower tempos become FILLS for playing over single chords. It would be cool if there is a website that covered all of this. I don't know when. If you find one, please post it. Seems like you'd be getting more into detailed type arranging COURSES, as mentioned above , with that kind of thing. Last edited by mattbn73; 07-07-2018 at 04:51 PM.
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