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12toneman
Akahai
USA
97 Posts |
 Posted - 05/27/2018 : 3:00:44 PM
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Do you use these?
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thumbstruck
Ahonui
USA
2168 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2018 : 05:41:35 AM
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| No. I do use a D9 form at the 4th fret of the middle D, the 5th frets of the G and B strings with an open high D. Otherwise, I let the D string ring open when I can. My kumu back in '74 said that it helps the guitar to ring out. |
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sirduke58
`Olu`olu
USA
993 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2018 : 3:30:04 PM
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I use that 2nd D7 shape a lot. Learned it from Ozzie a long time ago. Ozzie told me that D7 never clashes with the other shapes or when another guitarist in playing stuff in the D7 chord.
Oz also has a couple of variations to that 2nd figure. In the first variation you don't fret the low G string & therefore don't play it. So index finger frets 2nd string/3rd fret, middle finger 4th string/4th fret & ring finger 3rd string/5th fret. Bass is the Low D string & you skip the 5th string. You also have a nice "add on" by adding your pinky on the 2nd string/5th fret right beneath your ring finger
2nd Variation: Fretting the D7 as noted above, drop your middle finger down to the first string/first fret (keep your index & ring at the same place. Again you can pluck all the strings except the 5th. You'll have cool "add ons with your pinky at the 5th fret/1st & 2nd strings. From there you can slide up to the 5/7--7/9--9/10--11/12 parallel 6ths with you Low D bass.
You can go from the first shape I described to the 2nd by just dropping your middle finger from the 4th to first string. I always do both in succession adding embellishments with the pinky as described above then slide into the parallel 6ths. You could also do a vamp in parallels after the change from one shape to the next instead too.
Cool D7 shapes Sebastian. Glad you brought it up.
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Eynowd
Lokahi
Australia
181 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2018 : 5:45:00 PM
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I guess this is another instance of where learning to play tunes from tab alone doesn't give one the whole picture  |
Geoff - g'day from Canberra, Australia. |
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sirduke58
`Olu`olu
USA
993 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2018 : 7:36:16 PM
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Don't get discouraged, Geoff. It's just another instance of "variations" Tabs will give you the basics and foundation of the song. Watching others do their renditions of songs you may already have in your repertoire will give you multitudes of options to incorporate into that song to make it your own.
For instance, in my rendition of "Maori Brown Eyes" I took bits & pieces from Leonard Kwan, Peter Moon & even non slacker Chino Montero. I also found a lot of original riffs & incorporated that with the above mentioned "bits & pieces" When I played it for Oz he was very impressed with my rendition. He recognized most of the parts by Kwan, Moon & Montero that I used. When I tried to downplay it by saying I just stole material from the guys mentioned above, Oz told me. "It's like you took pieces of random clay and sculpted it into a piece of art. You made it your own"
I saw where you said you're finally getting the hang of "Ku'uipo Onaona" Well you'll learn that it's one of the songs with seemingly infinite variations. I have so many that I often forget great verses that I've found. Ledward never, ever plays it the same way. If he ever played all his variations, the song would literally last a couple of days!!!
I've told my students to watch as many different videos of Led playing "Ku'uipo Onaona" and take all the riffs that appeal to you. Everybody will come out of that project with a different bag of goodies. It's because we all have different preferences. This is how you make a song your own.
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Eynowd
Lokahi
Australia
181 Posts |
Posted - 05/28/2018 : 7:44:44 PM
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I'm not really discouraged. More confused and/or frustrated.
I came to music late in life (only four years ago, now). I know where I want to end up. I just don't know how to get there. Without a teacher, I learn from books and tabs and flailing around in the dark a lot.
Strumming chords in standard turning isn't where I want to stay, but it's what most people in this town seem content to do.
So many questions, and I usually find I don't have the words to ask the questions I have in the right way to get the answers.
I want to understand, not just learn by rote. (But the latter works in the meantime, and gives people the impression I'm a lot better than I think I am  ). |
Geoff - g'day from Canberra, Australia. |
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thumbstruck
Ahonui
USA
2168 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 03:24:15 AM
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| Never underestimate the value of having YouTube or a CD or an internet music service with the appropriate artists on in the background while doing other tasks. Listening that way allows you to hear the tune differently. That always helps me. |
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Earl
`Olu`olu
USA
523 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 03:58:39 AM
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Eyednow, one or two hints I've accumulated at guitar camps over the years. For taro patch and other G family tunings, find several D7's, G's, C's etc. That way you'll have them as variations for later. When learning a new tuning, do the same for the root (I), fourth (IV) and fifth (V) chords in the progression, as they will appear the most often. The II7 (two chord, seventh flavor) appears in vamps, and is handy to know as well.
Then try to identify the third note of the scale and the seventh note. The third determines minor or major chords (not that many minors in Hawaiian music) and the seventh helps when you get to the V (five) chord in the progression, which is often a V7.
I have not used the two D7's that you diagrammed, but will try them next time I play some slack-key. |
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Eynowd
Lokahi
Australia
181 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 1:15:12 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Earl
Eyednow, one or two hints I've accumulated at guitar camps over the years. For taro patch and other G family tunings, find several D7's, G's, C's etc. That way you'll have them as variations for later. When learning a new tuning, do the same for the root (I), fourth (IV) and fifth (V) chords in the progression, as they will appear the most often. The II7 (two chord, seventh flavor) appears in vamps, and is handy to know as well.
Then try to identify the third note of the scale and the seventh note. The third determines minor or major chords (not that many minors in Hawaiian music) and the seventh helps when you get to the V (five) chord in the progression, which is often a V7.
Thanks Earl. I understand the first para, but the second one is confusing me a bit right now.
While I was driving to work this morning (and listening to Jim "Kimo" West playing slack key - I have a big ki ho'alu Spotify playlist on my phone), I realised that one gap in my musical knowledge relates to moving from single note melody lines into richer, fuller sounds.
If I'm playing in standard tuning, then I can either strum chords, or travis pick fixed patterns them and get things sounding reasonably good. But that lacks the melody playing.
But if I want to play a melody, I'm largely stuck moving beyond a single note line. I lack the understanding of what else to play with it.
Now, in slack key, I understand that I can use the alternating bass notes along with the single note melody line to give it a bit more oomph. That much I can grok (although that collapses if I try to play it on the uke, but that's a different story).
But beyond that? I'm lost. I don't know which other notes to play - and when - to really lift the tune into something decent.
It's that space beyond single note melody lines that no one ever seems to talk about in tutorials (or if they do, I don't recognise it).
Does that make sense? |
Geoff - g'day from Canberra, Australia. |
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thumbstruck
Ahonui
USA
2168 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 3:25:05 PM
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| Check if you can get Oz or Duke on Skype. |
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Earl
`Olu`olu
USA
523 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 3:39:28 PM
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Think of it this way. The alternating bass is your rhythm section - bass and drums, setting the beat and laying down the chordal structure. The treble strings are your melody (lead singer). The interior part would be the harmony singers, mostly filling out the chord. That is what finger picking patterns are generally doing, and they often do not feature the melody note at all.
In flat picking / strumming terms, you have the "boom-chuck" element of the bass, with the brush being the harmony singers in the choir. The melody is placed on top of all that, and can either be the singing voice or the flat picked solo notes. The way our ears are wired, the highest pitched note is usually perceived as the melody.
This is not going to work as well with a ukulele (particularly with a high G string) since the whole range of notes is narrower and less defined than on a guitar with those extra lower strings. That is part of why my ukulele are all low G strung, so I can get that boom-chuck strumming feel.
In terms of chords, songs often follow a I-IV-V (one-four-five) chord progression, and those chords can be major, minor, seventh or other flavors. Building the major chords themselves uses a series of the first, third and fifth notes (1-3-5) in a given scale. Add the flatted seventh note and you have what we call a 7th chord (1-3-5-7b) or dominant seventh. Flat the third note and you have a minor chord (1-3b-5) instead of a major chord. Many people get confused about I-IV-V chord sequence in a song versus a 1-3-5 stack of notes that build the individual chords.
Hope this explains it all a little more clearly. And apologies for getting your name wrong before. "Auto-error" struck again with "corrections", combined with the inability to edit once posted. |
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Eynowd
Lokahi
Australia
181 Posts |
Posted - 05/29/2018 : 7:08:32 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Earl
Think of it this way. The alternating bass is your rhythm section - bass and drums, setting the beat and laying down the chordal structure. The treble strings are your melody (lead singer). The interior part would be the harmony singers, mostly filling out the chord. That is what finger picking patterns are generally doing, and they often do not feature the melody note at all.
In flat picking / strumming terms, you have the "boom-chuck" element of the bass, with the brush being the harmony singers in the choir. The melody is placed on top of all that, and can either be the singing voice or the flat picked solo notes. The way our ears are wired, the highest pitched note is usually perceived as the melody.
This is not going to work as well with a ukulele (particularly with a high G string) since the whole range of notes is narrower and less defined than on a guitar with those extra lower strings. That is part of why my ukulele are all low G strung, so I can get that boom-chuck strumming feel.
In terms of chords, songs often follow a I-IV-V (one-four-five) chord progression, and those chords can be major, minor, seventh or other flavors. Building the major chords themselves uses a series of the first, third and fifth notes (1-3-5) in a given scale. Add the flatted seventh note and you have what we call a 7th chord (1-3-5-7b) or dominant seventh. Flat the third note and you have a minor chord (1-3b-5) instead of a major chord. Many people get confused about I-IV-V chord sequence in a song versus a 1-3-5 stack of notes that build the individual chords.
Hope this explains it all a little more clearly.
From a theory perspective, I kinda understand all of that.
I think this is another one of those situations where I'm lacking the words to adequately explain in text where I'm stuck. Without the right words, it's hard to find the right answers
To build on your analogy above, when playing slack key particularly, what notes do the harmony singers sing, and when?
I keep having the strong feeling that there is some fundamental piece of the puzzle that I'm missing that will bring everything into sharp focus, but I can't find that piece.
I've been tempted to go pay for guitar lessons (as opposed to learning from books and the net), specifically so I can ask questions. But there's no slack key teachers in Australia, and I have no desire whatsoever to learn the Blues (which, for some unknown reason, there seems to be this unspoken thing that if you want to learn to play guitar, you automatically want to learn Blues...)
quote:
Originally posted by Earl
And apologies for getting your name wrong before. "Auto-error" struck again with "corrections", combined with the inability to edit once posted.
No offence taken. It's a deliberate misspelling of a Unix operating system term ("i node"). So, people misspelling it happens. Much like my real name, which gets misspelled in some very creative ways a lot of the time. |
Geoff - g'day from Canberra, Australia. |
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Earl
`Olu`olu
USA
523 Posts |
Posted - 05/30/2018 : 04:26:32 AM
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One trick I heard at a workshop was to choose a particular string and sing whatever note occurs on that string while shifting chords in the song. That will be a harmony part, and sometimes the melody note. The chord itself is built using the harmony parts.
The harmony singers will sing the root, third, or the fifth note of the chord typically, either above or below depending on their vocal range, while the lead singer carries the melody itself. Think of the right hand on a piano which plays the melody, while the left hand plays the underlying chord. Just listen and feel and try not to think about it too much. The beauty of an open tuning like taro patch is that the other notes in the chord are there, so even if you hit a "wrong" string it is still a note in the chord. Guitar in standard tuning works that way too with duplicated notes and different stacking.
Don't confine your self to slack-key on this concept. Any song that has a familiar chord structure and harmonies will generally work this way. What we define as conventional Western music is based on certain scales (the "do-re-mi" major scale) and certain chord progressions. Other world music such as Asian, Arabic, African, etc goes by some different rules and uses different scales with more than twelve intervals.
Guitar can be difficult to understand because the fret board is two-dimensional. When illustrating the concept, it is useful to have a piano around because keyboards are linear. Then the root-third-fifth-seventh-octave lineup is very obvious.
I kinda doubt you will find guitar lessons that will clarify this for you. Unless classically trained, most guitar teachers will simply lead you down the path they took, where harmony is based on chord "grips" and shapes, not a deliberate knowledge of how the chord is made. If you want to pursue it, ask about triads and chord inversions. |
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Eynowd
Lokahi
Australia
181 Posts |
Posted - 06/07/2018 : 5:14:14 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Earl
I kinda doubt you will find guitar lessons that will clarify this for you. Unless classically trained, most guitar teachers will simply lead you down the path they took, where harmony is based on chord "grips" and shapes, not a deliberate knowledge of how the chord is made. If you want to pursue it, ask about triads and chord inversions.
I think I've found something that will really help fill in the missing information I have. I was searching for a fingerstyle guitar forum a few weeks ago, and stumbled across PlaneTalk. My birthday was coming up, so I ordered it.
I've read through the book once and watched some of the video and the lights are starting to come on. It's designed for standard tuning, but it's a relatively simple matter to modify things for the various slack key tunings. After my first read through of the book, I was still a bit confused, but the video has really started to help me see the stuff I was missing.
Of course, I'll need to do an awful lot of practice in order to internalise all this, but I do think this a good step in the right direction for me. |
Geoff - g'day from Canberra, Australia. |
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Fran Guidry
Ha`aha`a
USA
1579 Posts |
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Eynowd
Lokahi
Australia
181 Posts |
Posted - 06/09/2018 : 10:22:01 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Fran Guidry
Chords and partial chords (inners and outers) are tools for finding harmonizing notes.
Inners and outers? |
Geoff - g'day from Canberra, Australia. |
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Two forms of D7 in Taro Patch I don't hear often
