| Author |
Topic: Scale crazy |
Dom Franco
From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
|
Posted 14 Mar 2020 8:51 pm |
|
Due to the coronavirus most of my gigs have been cancelled. I play at dozens of senior care facilities. But now I have lots of spare time to practice. I am working on my songs and arrangements. That's good but when I start playing scales, I'm going nuts... There are many ways to play the same notes on multiple strings. I can play the same scale note moving up 2 frets or up a string down 1 or 2 and I have 13 strings with some reentrant (cool options) and cross picking... I am overwhelmed. I guess I just have to memorize all the possible positions for each key. It's crazy.
_________________
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYG9cvwCPKuXpGofziPNieA/feed?activity_view=3 |
|
|
 |
David Knutson
From:
Cowichan Valley, Canada
|
Posted 14 Mar 2020 9:40 pm
|
|
Ya, and then you get to go and find all your triads on 13 strings with re-entrants. Better you than me, my friend. 
_________________
David K |
|
|
|
Dom Franco
From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
|
|
|
|
Michael Butler
From:
California, USA
|
Posted 15 Mar 2020 8:18 am
|
|
steel crazy after all these years. ha!
play music!
_________________
please see my Snakeskin's Virtual Music Museum below.
http://muscmp.wordpress.com/ |
|
|
|
Dom Franco
From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
|
|
|
|
Fred Treece
From:
California, USA
|
Posted 15 Mar 2020 9:34 am
|
|
I love fretboard maps ðŸ¤
Strings 1&2 appear to be re-entrants. Which is your highest pitch, string 3 or 4?
It’s an interesting tuning. Looks like a lot of fun. |
|
|
|
Dom Franco
From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
|
|
|
|
Fred Treece
From:
California, USA
|
Posted 15 Mar 2020 11:57 am
|
|
So, ascending the tuning, the string order would be
13-12-11-10-9-8-4-7-3-6-2-5-1 Right? Cool little half-whole run in the middle there. I might be crazy enough to try your top eight on one of my Stringmaster necks. |
|
|
|
Dom Franco
From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
|
|
|
|
Fred Treece
From:
California, USA
|
Posted 15 Mar 2020 3:46 pm
|
|
| Dom Franco wrote: |
| I did it so the standard A6th tuning is right in the middle. Diminished and augmented on the top strings |
Yeah, those are nice convenient grips for all the essential chords. And no slants ðŸ‘
But that 8-4-7-3 single note half-whole run with a straight bar is not something you see every day on non-pedal. |
|
|
|
Dom Franco
From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
|
|
|
|
Bill McCloskey
|
Posted 15 Mar 2020 6:03 pm
|
|
What I do is spreadsheet it. Map out every C major triads. You will find that you have a lot of duplicates in different octaves. Which one of these duplicates make logical sense to practice as a scale, ie some duplicates make it hard to get non chord tones, or you might like the sound of heavier or lighter gauges for the same triad octave
But basically only one or two choices within each octave will make sense to practice. |
|
|
|
Ken Pippus
From:
Langford, BC, Canada
|
Posted 15 Mar 2020 6:14 pm
|
|
https://steelsidekick.com/
This app works like an interactive spreadsheet, and you can build multiple custom "guitars," with or without pedals. Bad news is I think it tops out at 12 strings. Price is right, though. |
|
|
|
Fred Treece
From:
California, USA
|
Posted 15 Mar 2020 8:21 pm
|
|
| Steel Sidekick is The Bomb! I’ve been using it for two years, and lately almost every day. |
|
|
|
David Matzenik
From:
Cairns, on the Coral Sea
|
Posted 16 Mar 2020 4:35 pm
|
|
I have noticed that people who are good at math seem to get a kick out it. Not me. They lost me at Trig. I found the scale possibilities on 8 strings overwhelming, and boring. Like math, its all about pattern recognition, and guess I am only average. With the steel guitar, Mike Neer's Tetra chord studies helped a lot. Now I only study scales in the context of a particular piece.
_________________
Don't go in the water after lunch. You'll get a cramp and drown. - Mother. |
|
|
|
Fred Treece
From:
California, USA
|
Posted 17 Mar 2020 4:05 pm
|
|
David,
When I first started playing steel, I felt locked in to a couple or three “home†positions. With Steel Sidekick, you can see both the linear patterns in groups of adjacent strings as well as the triadic patterns that may involve wider grips, all up and down the fretboard. For me, it literally opened up the possibility of utilizing the entire neck in the context of a given song if I wanted to. The program’s capability to label the notes of scales and chords as intervals is also extremely valuable.
Ted Greene said something to the effect of, learning scales is not so much about what you are going to play, but more about where you are going to play it. Running scales and melodic tetrachord patterns has value for building technique too, but it is only one tool in the big box of tools for learning your instrument.
If you want some reinforcement for the inadequacy of scales as a tool for improvisation, check out some of Paul Franklin’s commentary on the subject:
https://paulfranklinmethod.com/tipping-the-scales/
https://paulfranklinmethod.com/threes-and-fours/ |
|
|
|
David Matzenik
From:
Cairns, on the Coral Sea
|
Posted 18 Mar 2020 12:46 pm
|
|
Hello Fred. I downloaded Steel Sidekick yesterday as soon as I saw the link. I used to go to great lengths to do this all on paper. SS is a great asset, and generously offered free. Whomever wrote it, I thank them. I will look at Paul Franklin today. Thanks.
_________________
Don't go in the water after lunch. You'll get a cramp and drown. - Mother. |
|
|
|
Mike Neer
From:
NJ
|
Posted 18 Mar 2020 7:13 pm
|
|
| Fred Treece wrote: |
David,
Ted Greene said something to the effect of, learning scales is not so much about what you are going to play, but more about where you are going to play it. Running scales and melodic tetrachord patterns has value for building technique too, but it is only one tool in the big box of tools for learning your instrument.
|
Fred, no one should be running scales as a means of improvising--that seems like something that should be understood. But I can remember being a kid when I first learned a scale and, being in a band, I used that scale to take a solo--yup, up and down the scale. But it was new to me then and that process lasted about a week before I figured out it wasn't hip.
It's like the alphabet. We learn to recite the alphabet (backwards comes in handy too, especially for roadside sobriety tests) but that's not how we use the alphabet. Same with scales. All of our melodic ideas can be traced back to scales and non-scale tones. I don't think it's any revelation to say running scales is not musical. But if you don't know them, know where to play them, can't hear the notes, don't know how to use them and can't do it mindlessly, good luck!
_________________
Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links |
|
|
|
Allan Revich
From:
Victoria, BC
|
Posted 18 Mar 2020 7:59 pm
|
|
My head nearly exploded just LOOKING at that 13 string tuning. I’ve stopped at 7 strings, and that’s been more than enough for my simple mind! I think it’s amazing that some of you guys can work with so much tonal data at once.
_________________
Current Tunings:
6 String | G – G B D G B D
7 String | G6 – e G B D G B D (re-entrant)
https://papadafoe.com/lap-steel-tuning-database |
|
|
|
Dom Franco
From:
Beaverton, OR, 97007
|
Posted 19 Mar 2020 6:59 am
|
|
| Quote: |
My head nearly exploded just LOOKING at that 13 string tuning. I’ve stopped at 7 strings, and that’s been more than enough for my simple mind! I think it’s amazing that some of you guys can work with so much tonal data at once. |
Fred, 13 strings may seem overwhelming when you look at individual notes. But the way I have been using it is mostly for chords. I play 90% of the time on the lower and middle strings which are just pretty standard A6th / E6th tunings.
The top 4 strings give me augmented and diminished chords. They are easily avoided when playing simpler Country or Hawaiian tunes. I added them so I could get some Jazzier cool chords, but now I am finding some amazing options for picking and skipping strings to get licks, intervals, runs, scales etc.
_________________
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYG9cvwCPKuXpGofziPNieA/feed?activity_view=3 |
|
|
|
