I've been poking at Peter Medeiros' book a bit recently and noticed that he's got diagrams for open and closed positions on the 5th & 4th strings in Taropatch.
This got me wondering: what bass strings do you play when you're playing the bass strings in these positions?
Sometimes when I'm playing melodies on lower pitched strings I'll use a higher pitched string as a drone & substitute for the bass note. Maybe you could use that concept when you need the "G bass" as part of the alternating bass pattern. Just use the "G octave" third string as needed. I don't see why that wouldn't work. In C6th Maunaloa tuning the 3rd string which is tuned to "G" is used as part of the alternating bass patterns. There are many times when you alternate both G's ( 5th & 3rd ) strings in C6th.
I haven't posted in quite a while. Okay. In the key of G, the two-note positions (in this case, open and closed on the bass strings) are used in runs usually while playing the D chord. Bass alternation is dropped and in its stead, a single D bass note (pedal note) may be played at the beginning of the run to establish the chord. The bass runs are usually brief in traditional slack key. This approach is not limited to G tuning but can also be used in other tunings as well. Peter Moon would utilize the entire slack key fretboard in G tuning, Maunaloa or its hybrid. Sonny Chillingworth would also use these positions often times using a leading tone (i.e., a one fret hammer on or slide) before establishing the position. Ledward Ka‘apana also uses bass runs in his playing, quite often. It is another way of extending a descending run starting on strings one and three. I do not hear any of the younger players using it. Most of the younger players don't have as much experience and the playing is fairly predictable.
I was curious about it because I'd heard the bass runs in Led's playing (and also in Fran's version of My Grandfather's Clock), and was curious about how they worked.
I'll give it a whirl soon and see if I can make sense of it myself. (Being relatively new to playing guitar at all means a lot of this stuff still confuses me a fair bit sometimes).
Taropatch tuning question
Posted - 07/14/2016 : 2:10:02 PM
Duke
