Jimmy Raney's solo on All God's Children Got Rhythm (Nardis) - fretboard advice

[rlyacht]

I'm transcribing some of the first solo and having trouble figuring out where to play some part in order to have it flow properly. I assuming the first soloist is Jimmy. I'm having particular trouble with the attached section, which starts at 52.7s. He plays some cool outside stuff, I find it most natural to play it in 12th position. going up to 14th fret of B for the high Eb. OTOH, I wonder if Jimmy would have played that high on the fretboard. Also a lot of what comes before it feels good in 7th position. Below, I've put a link to the full song, and the clip (70% speed) is below it.

Here's the specific part, slowed down:

[rlyacht]

I think I found a way that works for me. It makes me jealous of instruments that have fewer choices (likely 1) about where to play notes :-)

[grahambop]

Don’t know if it helps, but my understanding is that Jimmy Raney would use quick position shifts when necessary to get the lines out, i.e. expressing the musical idea was more important to him than making the fingerboard mechanics easier.

The beauty of his playing is that none of this effort is discernible, everything just flows.

At least that’s how I see it.

[rlyacht]

Thanks that *does* help. Sometimes when I'm figuring something out, I can really tell that something is humanly impossible, but I can see that someone good could make that kind of jump. I can make the jump, but I don't always land in the right place!

I assume that the new book about Raney doesn't go into detail about this :-), but I will probably pick it up.

Don’t know if it helps, but my understanding is that Jimmy Raney would use quick position shifts when necessary to get the lines out, i.e. expressing the musical idea was more important to him than making the fingerboard mechanics easier.

The beauty of his playing is that none of this effort is discernible, everything just flows.

At least that’s how I see it.

[grahambop]

I’ve got the Raney book but I haven’t really had a chance to go through it properly yet (thanks for reminding me!)

I don’t think it covers fingering much, the examples are all in notation and the emphasis looks to be purely on musical content.

But the amount and quality of the content looks very good, from what I’ve seen so far.

[ragman1]

The notes he's playing are

F A G Eb C# A B D C A E D

So I don't think you need to go up further than the 12th fret on the second string for the B.

Notice that he's slurring or hammering some pairs of notes to get speed so they are being played on the same string. I've joined them with hyphens, i.e. A-G.

3rd string: F (2 finger)

2nd: A-G (3-1)

1st: Eb-C# (3-1)

2nd: A B (2 3)

1st: D-C (move 1st finger down)

2nd: A (3)

3rd: E D (2 1)

That's Jimmy's playing slowed down. I'm not saying he played it this way but it looks sensible to me.

[rlyacht]

Thanks for taking the time to send such a detailed (and useful) response. This works nicely!

[ragman1]

Glad you could follow it. Best of luck with the rest of it!

[BeboppeurUSA]

Yes, I think it's beautifully put, namely that with Raney, the effort is not discernible. As he is my favorite guitarist, I have spent so many hours, perhaps years, trying to pull off his long lines. The weighting of his grace notes, hammer-ons, hammer-offs, etc, is simply magical. I have small hands so the task of replicating his lines is even harder, but I'm not sure if he actually had large hands. People like Tal Farlow, and current wizards like Pasquale Grasso, have huge hands which certainly gives them an advantage. But Django is a good reminder that you can't really blame things on one's physique: it's mainly about talent and great persistence. Perhaps genetics is also important, given that Raney's son, Doug, was an amazing guitarist who often played similar lines to his father's.