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Ive been at the fingerstyle cord melody thing now for about 5 years..I didn't start out learning the classical fingering system, or any system at all..Just did what felt natural...I had read that many guys do that...and figured,there is enought to learn, I'll just go with what seems to work...Beginning to wonder if that was a mistake, as the arrangements get more complex the fingers stumble over each other...making the process sometimes frustrating...I would like to know the opinions of you fingerstyle players out there...Should we learn a system or just keep plugging away at it...trying to get it as clean as possible?
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08-19-2012 10:10 AM
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When playing fingers only, I stick to intuition uess I come across something I want to do that's tripping me up...then i usually go back to what I learned back in classical lessons...
Are you arranging yourself or are you playing other people's arrangements? If so, can you adapt them to suit your comfort? This is jazz after all, nothing is set in stone.
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i honestly don't know how classical right hand training would help very much if you are playing fingerstyle on a steel string guitar with narrow nut width.
why not go the direct route and see what Martin Taylor teaches?
but if you're playing on a nylon string instrument with wider nut width then that's a different ball game.
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I find that with fingerstyle, the posture of the right hand/wrist makes a huge difference for me. Mimicing the classical posture seems to help with tone, clarity, and volume. With fingerings on the other hand, I just experiment and find what is natural, comfortable, and affective. When I'm stumbling on something, I'll look for different approaches to try, but often find that just practicing through it works best. Good luck.
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People tend to learn what you call the "classical fingering system" very unsystematically, not by learning rules or principles but one piece at a time. Those rules or principles do exist I suppose, but I have never seen them codified or even collected (could be ignorance on my part, of course). So I'd say, keep plugging away. The basic thing, if your fingers are stumbling over each other, is to be sure that you always use the same RH fingerings, because that stumbling is probably due to uncertainty. Learn things slowly and build up speed, taking care to use the same fingerings - if you need to change a fingering, you need to slow down and relearn that bar or phrase or section.
Originally Posted by artcore
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I fall in the 'comfort first' camp. I do practice flamenco (poorly in comparison to my steel string chops) and I have found that just playing a lot of nylon string acoustic guitar has started to wire fingerstyle techniques into my brain, much like alternate picking and economy picking becoming second nature. I'd say just keep doing what's comfortable for you, and if you hit a tricky section then slow down and find something that works. Over time you'll build a system that works well for how you play.
To sum it up, I agree with JohnRoss, +1.
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While we're on the topic of chord melody, can anyone recommend a few good books of chord melody arrangements? Having quite a bit of classical theory I am clear on the concepts on voice leading and chord melody, I just need some repertoire to work on my chops.
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Thanks guys for the input...Matt, I do a mix of my own arrangements and others...As expected, seems to be a wide opinion on right hand technique.
As john points out its important to always use the same RH fingering..and that could be my problem....Working through Howard Morgans arrangements was a revelation...I realized my fingers were not organized..and with Howards arrangements you need good independent finger ability....As for books I would say, Robert Yelin for block cord type arrangements, Howard Morgan if you fingers work better them mine...Barry Galbraith's arrangements are very nice, a good mix of block cords, single notes, and cord fragments...
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There is a kind of method for deciding which right-hand fingers to use which I thought I had posted about before, but I'm danged if I can find it again, maybe it was a different forum. It gets a wee bit complicated, bear with me:
We are supposing there are no repeating notes:
Higher strings are played with the fingers further away from the thumb. E.g., a for the first string, m the second, i the third. You need to be able to do this on different string sets, e.g., a 2 m 3 i 4, etc.
Now, here's the nub. For notes on the same string, play the lower notes with the fingers nearer the thumb. So if you are ascending and have two notes on the same string, play the first with, e.g. m, and the second with, e.g., i. Three ascending notes on the same string, a - m - i. Descending, the opposite, three descending notes are played i - m - a.
The main advantage of this is that the same note is always played with the same finger. The second advantage (this is a clincher for me) is that you don't have to stop and change your mentality when changing between arpeggios and scale runs, because essentially you're doing the same thing. For example, if you play an ascending G7 arpeggio in position III starting on the F on the third fret of your D string, you'll play that with a finger further away from the thumb than the following G, probably m - i. That i puts your right hand in position to play the B and D on your third and second strings, using m and a, then you can play the F on the second string with i and, hey presto, you are back in position again to play the top G on the first string with m. Descending is exactly the same process in reverse.
The disadavantage is that it initially requires a little more thought than conventional alternate picking, i - m, i - m, but when you have it off, you will never need to think very hard about right-hand fingering again.
More than three non-repeating notes on the same string is either chromaticism or a position shift, if it's a position shift, start again in the new position, if it's chromaticism, it's probably four notes, so, e.g., m - i - m - i up, i - m - i - m down. Or your own formulae. Five notes only happens occasionally, cope with it when you get to it.
Repeating notes is a different kettle of fish, makes things much more complicated.
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Anybody looking to control the right-hand fingers needs a system of practice, no matter what it's called. Any book of arpeggios, any collection of scales, any chord-melody studies, including classical pieces, will do. Then, are you going to use thumb and two, three or four fingers? I can suggest practicing thumb, index, middle (p-i-m) on triads, then p-m-i. In the meantime, practice some scales with i-m alternating, slowly and with a good sound, making sure to go across the instrument as well as all the way up to the high positions. Segovia scales are good for all the formulas, jazz scale studies may be more useful. Add the a finger to arpeggios with 4-note chords, pima, then pimami. Just use 1st position C and G7 until your right hand is in decent control, then you can use moveable chords, and try working triads against alternating root-5th bass patterns, like a bossa-nova. The point is to keep a log with metronome markings so that you can gauge your practice, maximize your accuracy, and see which techniques need more practice and which might be fine with a little less. You will make much faster progress if you can zero in on what to focus on, and can see measurable progress. As little as 15 minutes of scales and 15 of arpeggios done with focus will start honing your technique.
Keep in mind that literally nobody you think is really good has done anything but this sort of regimen for many years. Every master practices, quite a lot. The fastest ones practice more slowly than the rest, understanding that speed is a result of coordination within each hand and between both hands. It's very rare that fast players look like they're working, from Paco de Lucia to Joe Pass, they all make it look easy. It isn't.
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Thanks for the advice...its appreciated....JohnRoss, I see the advantage to your system but it sure does require some rethinking....
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John, Is this method something you worked out or did you pick this up from somebody else?
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'Tis mine own. I worked it out, in principle, believing there to be guitarists around who were using something like it, but now, I doubt it. There are guitarists around using it, but I'm not sure there is anyone important doing it - when people talk about the currently fashionable three finger-scale technique, they usually mean a - m - i , ascending and descending.
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a-m-i...is the way I more or less do it....but I'm working on your system,
I'll see how long it takes to retrain the brain to using i-m-a...on the way
down!....
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There are some things that help to get the hang of first:
The Giuliani RH studies, of course.
There's a three-finger RH scale fingering which I think comes from Segovia (Andrés, not the town), which is or used to be required for certain exams, don't remember which. Anyway, it's i - m - a - m, both up and down, and with practice is much easier than it looks and quite fast (not that I'm anything like a fast player). I have practised a - m - i - m, and other combinations as well, purely on the basis of why not?
Scott Tennant (Pumping Iron) would have you practise tremolo as the conventional p - a - m - i, as the less conventional but still normal p - i - m - a, and (this is a real bugger) alternating them: p - a - m - i, p - i - m - a. It is a particular sod in triple time.
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ok, thats good...not having much trouble running scales...but, you have me a bit confused on the Arp. example you gave in your post explaining the system. An accending arp. G7...to follow your system...your fingers should be in sequence a-m-i...( ascending meaning low to high notes)....your example has -m-i-( m-a-i)-m-.....the m-a-i is descending....if I have this right.......
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The fingering for notes on different strings is decided first and there is no need to make it difficult, it is intuitive, more or less as I said before: Originally Posted by artcore
(That's good for 3 strings, of course, you need to be prepared for 4 or 5-string arps, which require you to hitch a finger or two up, start again, so to speak, but it's still intuitive.) Originally Posted by JohnRoss
It's only the fingering for notes on the same string that is not so intuitive, and even that is really only hard on the brain when the run is descending. Look, play A - B - C - B - A as a roll on the third string, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 4th, 2nd, with a - m - i - m - a. Do that a few times until it comes naturally. Then add a D on top, played on the second string 3rd fret. Now you'll be doing A - B - C - D - C - B - A with a - m - i - m - i - m - a or a - m - i - a - i - m - a, whatever, the important thing is that the string change is always fingered as an arpeggio, the higher string played with a finger further away from the thumb. And that applies both ascending and descending.
I'm not saying this system will turn you into P. de Lucia (for fast, you want i - a alternation), just that it largely eliminates doubt, so your fingers don't stumble over each other, as you put it. And when I say it's my own system, I mean I've deduced it, but it it pretty well corresponds to how classical guitar fingering must be worked out, because I've found very few cases of pieces where a stipulated RH fingering doesn't fit my system.
Ask away if I'm still not explaining myself properly.
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JohnRoss: for fast you want i - a alternation? Whyso, if you can explain it?
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Ok, thanks John, I think you explained it well....I'll work on it and hopefully it will bring some decipline to my right hand fingers......
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Your fingers are not completely independent, your hand is a gripping mechanism and your fingers are set up to help each other. If you tense one finger, moving it towards the palm of your hand, adjacent fingers tend to do the same. In theory at least, the further apart they are, the less they interfere with each other. Whether that's true or not, I have often heard that Paco de Lucia uses i - a a lot, which is enough for me. Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
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LOL: I spose I am last person to ask because I am not in any way experienced with professional fingerplay techniques, but I still can offer advice, and reasons why I love it. I like to feel the strings and feel that pics take away that option--though I also like unplugged to.
I love Brazilian music and also Delta Blues and as you know these players use the free right hand technique a lot
I like the things you can do with free right hand with strings
I am impressed with Flamenco techniques of fingerstyle and would encourage you to experiment with learning those extraordinary meticulous and soulful techniques also
I read an interesting article by a famous guitarist which I have somewhere, and would have to search, about how he got pain from using picks and this encouraged him to learn fingerstyle.
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The thing I have found in reading up on fingerstyle, there is no one technique....In fact, it seems, even classical players use different fingering systems to some extent...When you look at jazz players, the fingers are all over the place...If you want to play fingerstyle jazz or whatever, I would not do what I did, which was more or less, ignore the right hand and concentrate on just about everything else ...At some point it will catch up to you and its frustrating to have to go back and learn somthing I could have been working on a few years back....
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what I struggle with--as in tending to a-void it for now, is the action of the thumb being 'independent' of the fingers when playing fingerstyle Blues, and also Brazilian styles. it bugs me because i love to dance and consider myself being able to do stuff like that with the body but with the hand.....? LOL
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Its not easy, keep at it....I found a guy on Utube that seems to use the John Ross method...Name is Eric Henderson...At least as far as arpeggios is concerned...
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I recently bought a Hal Leonard book of Chord Melody Tunes (about 40) the title was something like Chord Melody Jazz Standards. It's spiral bound with plastic cover; I'll get the exact title and ISBN late next week, if you wouldn't mind sending a email. Originally Posted by HighResolution
Regards, Jim
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