Practising/Playing melodies on a single string.

[brent.h]

..

[grahambop]

Yes I do it sometimes, it’s something that’s also advocated by Mick Goodrick, John Abercrombie and Jim Hall.

The main benefit is that it trains your ear, because it’s harder to find the notes instantly (since you can’t rely on familiar position-based patterns).

Also if you try improvising on one string, it tends to lead to more motif-based playing (like Jim Hall) rather than playing your usual licks etc.

[kris]

When you play on one string, you simply play linearly.
Like on Sitar:

[GuyBoden]

Yes I do it sometimes, it’s something that’s also advocated by Mick Goodrick, John Abercrombie and Jim Hall.

The main benefit is that it trains your ear, because it’s harder to find the notes instantly (since you can’t rely on familiar position-based patterns).

Also if you try improvising on one string, it tends to lead to more motif-based playing (like Jim Hall) rather than playing your usual licks etc.

Yes, it's from Mick Goodrick's legendary book "Advancing Guitarist"

See below:



Interestingly, this "single string playing" was the way we learned Pop/Rock as teenagers when we knew nothing (We were actually children, but we would never admit that.)

Edit: I was taught this single string playing again by Paul Bollenback in a masterclass in Wales about 20 years ago.

[bako]

1. Develop greater ease shifting, and just landing on the intended note
2. 3 motions: horizontal, vertical and combined
3. Each string has a unique string color, a chance to explore this
4. Each string requires a different attack to engage, a chance to explore this
5. It teaches organizing notes into coherent groupings-
6. Messes with our ability to rely on more practiced finger patterns.

[JazzPadd]

I also do this from time to time, especially when learning a new GAS standard. I agree, it helps with ear training. It also helped me to get a handle on the guitar having the same pitch in various places to navigate the fretboard.

And beyond guitar, it’s a main feature of some world musics. The sitar was already mentioned and I’d add the Iranian tanbour, which I studied for some time. It’s essentially a one stringed lute. It has three strings, one is a drone (mostly) and the other two are a double string on which melodies can be played linearly.

I think Gabor Szabo had brought some of that back to the guitar. I don’t use it much playing jazz, but it provides another way of looking at the guitar fretboard.

[AllanAllen]

Kind of similar thing.

I've been listening to a lot of Ed Bickert, Kenny Burrell and Bruce Foreman. They all do this harmonized melody thing going up and down the neck. I think Wes Montgomery did it too, but I don't listen to him as much for some reason. So I've been working on playing up the b string with a string jump around the 7th fret. This way I can add a handful of chord inversions under the melody.

Right now, everything is worked out for the heads.

[pamosmusic]

There were a few mentions in this forum about doing this and how Frank Vignola recommends this.

I've been trying it out, and man, it's hard... especially those large interval jumps.

Has anyone done this extensively? What benefits did you notice in your playing as a result of this?

I do this ALLL THE TIME. Been doing it for years. Got if from The Advancing Guitarist (naturally).

Great for the ear. Makes you really know the intervals and the skips and the contour of the melody. I love it. It's my desert island practice. If I only had time for one thing.

[Jimmy blue note]

Mick called this the skating rink. You learn to move all directions with equal facility. It was the most decisive step leading to me feeling confidence in moving anywhere in the melodic realm without positional convenience shutting down the ear being in control.
I can get speed across the fingerboard by using position (across the neck) playing but I get lyrical freedom by always being aware of pitch movement. For me, it's much more natural for me to find the lyrical line by moving up and down the neck lengthwise. Combine movement in both directions and you've got control of your guitar.

For whatever reason, it seems to be an essential tool in the kit of modern players.
Check out The Advancing Guitarist and spend some time exploring the guitar as a Unitar. If it's new to you at this point, it'll change your life.

[Mick-7]

Mick Goodrick's solo on this tune illustrates a benefit of this exercise, it's one of my favorite guitar solos on a ballad of all time.

[pamosmusic]

Mick called this the skating rink. You learn to move all directions with equal facility. It was the most decisive step leading to me feeling confidence in moving anywhere in the melodic realm without positional convenience shutting down the ear being in control.
I can get speed across the fingerboard by using position (across the neck) playing but I get lyrical freedom by always being aware of pitch movement. For me, it's much more natural for me to find the lyrical line by moving up and down the neck lengthwise. Combine movement in both directions and you've got control of your guitar.

For whatever reason, it seems to be an essential tool in the kit of modern players.
Check out The Advancing Guitarist and spend some time exploring the guitar as a Unitar. If it's new to you at this point, it'll change your life.

the science of the unitar!

[bako]

I don't quite understand. Could you explain with an example?

Something like this:

Learn a melody on a single string.

Organize the notes into the most coherent fingering you can come up with, grouping notes into position (on 1 string)
when possible and organizing the shifts to be as efficient as possible,

Take that exact fingering organization and apply it to playing it inside a single position.

The basic idea on a single string is to shift when we run out of available fingers.
In a position, the concept is the same but instead of shifting we change strings.

[befiddled]

Mick Goodrick's solo on this tune illustrates a benefit of this exercise, it's one of my favorite guitar solos on a ballad of all time.

Goodness! That really is quite beautiful. Singing melodies and amazing instrumental tone.

[Mick-7]

Goodness! That really is quite beautiful. Singing melodies and amazing instrumental tone.

I shared a transcription of it in another thread -- https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/attachments/guitar-technique/110318d1712126011-mick-goodrick-hand-carry-technique-goodrick-solo-coral-01-jpg

[befiddled]

I shared a transcription of it in another thread -- https://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/attachments/guitar-technique/110318d1712126011-mick-goodrick-hand-carry-technique-goodrick-solo-coral-01-jpg

Very cool, thanks. Metheny transcribes with a nice hand. Obviously, using a fountain pen which is likely the right tool - but you have to be sure of yourself..

[Mick-7]

Very cool, thanks. Metheny transcribes with a nice hand. Obviously, using a fountain pen which is likely the right tool - but you have to be sure of yourself..

So... Pat transcribed a solo of the guitarist (Mick Goodrick) in the band he would soon join (Gary Burton's band), and he played with Mick on Gary's next album, i.e., this one -- Ring - Gary Burton Quintet | AllMusic

Pat would have been about 19 years old at the time.

[rpjazzguitar]

Now and then I drill my scale/mode knowledge by playing on one string.

So, for example, play all 12 melodic minor scales starting on the lowest scale note on the B string. Go around the cycle of fifths that way.
I can get some of the modes by ear, but for others I have to know the notes by name. It drills that. Of course, not everybody thinks like that.

[pauln]

I do this for a few tunes; anyone else?

- the B section melody of Girl From Ipanema
- the melody of Blue Bossa
- the A section of Cheek To Cheek
- the central interlude of an artsy original A Suffusion Of Yellow*, with lots of reverb and volume swells sounding like a conversation between dolphins and seagulls.


*The device [electronic I Ching calculator] also functioned as an ordinary calculator, but only to a limited degree. It could handle any calculation which returned an answer of anything up to 4. ...anything above 4 it represented merely as "A Suffusion of Yellow."
Douglas Adams, "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul"

[charlieparker]

I don't quite understand. Could you explain with an example?

I've heard people talk about 6 different pianos.

[Jimmy blue note]

I've heard people talk about 6 different pianos.

Steinway
Fender
Honky Tonk
Toy
Pianississimo (extremely soft)
Pianissimo (very soft)
Piano (soft)
Mezzo-piano (moderately soft)

One of these things is not like the others...

[pauln]

The six pianos means this kind of thing:

Some conceive it more comfortably like:

[bako]

Consciously work on a few intervals at a time with different fingering configurations, slowly.
Knowing the sound of what you are shifting to helps immensely.

Playing melodies of songs that you already can play in position which are often a mix of scale steps and leaps.

[Jimmy blue note]

How do I do wide interval leaps (5th and higher) on single strings with more ease?

Visually, use the presence of neck dots or fingerboard inlays to mark the "landscape" of the fingerboard. Familiarity with where the actual notes are for each and every key will allow you to know exactly where you want to go.

Aurally, train your ear so you know which intervals are involved in the leap. It's important that you can hear where on the scale you want to go in making a wide leap. Train your ear to recognize absolute and relative intervals; see and hear the fingerboard as a map or a living landscape. It's not an arbitrary void and nor is it a gut leap...or least not at first.

Kinesthetically, be aware of the physical movement that is required for a specific amount of sound. This is the product of PRACTICE, TIME, PATIENCE and PERSISTENCE. Pick tunes for their combinations of narrow (scale up to 4th) and wide (5th and above) leaps and like any practiced artist or sports, learn to visualize with your body.

Learn to visualize, hear, move and think ahead musically. This is a combination of all of the above but I believe most of the time people don't make wide interval leaps cleanly is because that precision hasn't been learned. You see a mosquito flying, you swat it, your body knows. You reach for a cup of coffee, you grab it while you're reading the morning paper, your body knows. Use your ear, fret markers, visualization of the scale on the string, you'll get it.

[pauln]

How do I do wide interval leaps (5th and higher) on single strings with more ease?

There is a popular phrase now days used to answer questions like how did you go bankrupt?, how did this institution crash?, etc. "Gradually, then all at once." Sometimes that is the same answer to describe a success when the last step was a conceptual realization that changes everything.

Fingering is always conceptual as well as mechanical. Both invoke constraints on the other. Constraints are not automatically negative, depending on their effect.

Mechanical constraints involve body parts:
- how many fingers (three or four)
- stretch or move
- positions or free
and for right hand
- picking styles
- finger styles
- thumb

Conceptual constraints involve "I have to know";
- note names
- interval names
- the key
- functional harmony
- what it sounds like
- what am I about to play next

If you watch Wes playing, his self imposed mechanical constraint is to use his thumb which other's close observations conclude is almost entirely down strokes.

In order for his lines to flow he developed a mechanical solution which involved the conceptual constraint of having to know what and where he was going play after the present phrase (needing to know where he was about to be). This is why Wes never sounded like he was "noodling"; the mechanical requirement for planning ahead promoted gorgeous sounding execution. It is clear to me that because of this, conceptually he does not "play positions" - just plays "the neck".

Watch him here... my favorite version of 'RM.

- starts with an open string(!) and successive phrases are new "positions"
- when he starts his solo about 2:40 the camera is wonderfully in close. Notice not that he is just all over the neck, but that his fingering (constantly "shifting positions") is specifically setting up and placing the mechanically best strings from which to launch each phrase for the thumb to play...

Anyway, I think in general the playing on one string thing makes a lot more sense if one releases themselves conceptually from the idea of playing positions. It may feel like the problem is that of changing positions fast enough, but the real problem may be thinking of positions at all (at least when singling stringing it).

I'm a self taught ear player and never conceived of positions; I have always mechanically moved freely as needed (and moved freely even when not needed).

[MiniMerckx.22]

Yeah, you should know the notes horizontally up and down the string and do some practice improvising melodies like this, outside of common shapes or patterns. But as far as performing with such restraints, I will say that I greatly enjoyed John Abercrombie for years, had several well worn albums. But when he started doing the one string thing at length, I lost interest pretty quickly. Checked back some time later and he was the same thing. I say work on it for what you can get out of it then move on.