The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Also shifting almost always sounds better.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #27

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    Well, both. I've been going through the Johnny Smith approach to guitar books in a very desultory fashion; he stretches with chords but shifts with lines. His patterns for shifting are specific and logical.

  4. #28

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    Realizing that size of hands are critical in this discussion, much of what we do is based in memory and practice. For example, try playing a Cm7flat5 chord/6th string root in a progression and playing it cleanly every time. It's a great sounding chord but requires your hands to do a Chinese twist to hit it cleanly when shifting. It is slightly easier on a CG, but on an EG it's difficult--especially if you have big hands. Much of what we do requires time; some of what we do is not always consistently attainable. Good playing . . . Marinero

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob MacKillop
    Few pro classical guitarists play the Segovia fingerings these days.
    I’ve heard that Segovia fingerings were an adaptation to gut strings. The same note could have a quite distinct timbre depending on which string was used, and Segovia fingerings were chosen based on this.

    I have wondered about this explanation as gut strings predate Segovia, and you would expect earlier guitarists to have chosen a similar fingering method if the wide variability of gut strings strongly affected the tone.

  6. #30

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    Well, Segovia was an advocate of Nylon strings, and he was extremely peculiar about his fingerings.

    They were all chosen for optimal sound on a Classical guitar. I can assure you that even with nylon strings, notes can sound quite different depending on where they are played (heck, they sound different on my Tele and I use it for effect).

    (As to earlier guitarists, none of them had Segovia's technique or repertoire and hence, difference needs.)

  7. #31

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    Single line playing? What kind of lines are we talking about? If the lines are not "guitaristic" (ie, horn or piano like lines), then you have to find your own way. I spend a lot of time trying lines, devices etc, several different ways before deciding on a preferred way to finger them with the fret hand, which will then force decisions about how to negotiate said lines with the pick hand. Even after years and years of doing this, I still need to test several solutions to everything I play.

    Despairingly, I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours re evaluating old techniques and replacing them with more efficient ones. For example, economy picking can sound more musical than a strictly alternate approach, or a predominately slurred approach. Now this very definitely will change how you need to finger lines because you may wish to play 2 consecutive notes with a continuous down stroke (mini sweep) which will mean you may need to play a note on an adjacent string instead of the same string the last note was played on. Especially when using a lot of chromatic approaches and enclosures. This is always hard work and often means you need to unlearn what you thought were good solutions in the past, which is frustrating and time consuming! All in the interests in sounding more authoritative, which is the hardest thing to achieve on our instrument.

    So shift or stretch? I wish it was that simple! For me it's absolutely both, probably 50/50, whichever facilitates the most musical effect in any given situation. But it's both hands that can be improved when considering technique, and it may end up being a highly idiosyncratic series of choices that you make that no one else will. That's OK, that's called "style" ...

    When I listen to CC, Django, Wes, GB etc, the thing I hear that I don't hear in most modern players is flawless, authoritative, dynamic expression. Interestingly, without exception, their techniques are unorthodox, and certainly have been self taught. They too would have asked themselves thousands of times " Do I stretch, or do I shift? Do I pick, sweep, or slur?" etc. Sounds to me like they would not have settled for only the first solution they could think of...

  8. #32

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bach5G
    I am studying with a new teacher. He advocates keeping four finger on four frets and occasionally stretching a finger to get the out of reach notes. For example, stretching the index finger to play F (on the top string), middle finger on G and stretching the little finger up to the A.

    This is opposed to what I’ve always practiced, which is to shift position. See Segovia diatonic scales, for example.

    Thoughts?
    Don't overthink these things.

    Do what works and sounds best for you.

  9. #33

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    Quote Originally Posted by princeplanet
    Single line playing? What kind of lines are we talking about? If the lines are not "guitaristic" (ie, horn or piano like lines), then you have to find your own way. I spend a lot of time trying lines, devices etc, several different ways before deciding on a preferred way to finger them with the fret hand, which will then force decisions about how to negotiate said lines with the pick hand. Even after years and years of doing this, I still need to test several solutions to everything I play.

    Despairingly, I have spent hundreds if not thousands of hours re evaluating old techniques and replacing them with more efficient ones. For example, economy picking can sound more musical than a strictly alternate approach, or a predominately slurred approach. Now this very definitely will change how you need to finger lines because you may wish to play 2 consecutive notes with a continuous down stroke (mini sweep) which will mean you may need to play a note on an adjacent string instead of the same string the last note was played on. Especially when using a lot of chromatic approaches and enclosures. This is always hard work and often means you need to unlearn what you thought were good solutions in the past, which is frustrating and time consuming! All in the interests in sounding more authoritative, which is the hardest thing to achieve on our instrument.

    So shift or stretch? I wish it was that simple! For me it's absolutely both, probably 50/50, whichever facilitates the most musical effect in any given situation. But it's both hands that can be improved when considering technique, and it may end up being a highly idiosyncratic series of choices that you make that no one else will. That's OK, that's called "style" ...

    When I listen to CC, Django, Wes, GB etc, the thing I hear that I don't hear in most modern players is flawless, authoritative, dynamic expression. Interestingly, without exception, their techniques are unorthodox, and certainly have been self taught. They too would have asked themselves thousands of times " Do I stretch, or do I shift? Do I pick, sweep, or slur?" etc. Sounds to me like they would not have settled for only the first solution they could think of...
    It is posts like this that really catch my interest. The differences between how we all approach and play the guitar, and how we think of how others play, is always fascinating.

    From the beginning I never spent a minute thinking about how to finger or pick anything and still don't. I discovered decades later that what I taught myself was called economy picking, like Chuck Wayne, with kind of a mental musical attention focused on the end of notes' duration rather than on their initiation (I'm not describing this very well).

    To me it feels like the main feature of economy picking is that it coordinates both hands without having to think of either of them. The fretting hand is free to use whatever it wants because it "tells" the picking hand which string, and the pinking hand is automatic - no learning, evaluating, unlearning, reevaluating going on , just the hands and fingers figuring it out for themselves. I never figure out how to finger and pick something; they already know.

    I've mentioned above that shifting to reach a note and stretching to do so are the same mechanical motion for me.

    I think Wes did work on fingering because my sense is that he needed to position and shift his fingers on the finger board in a way that optimally "set up" each subsequent note or phrase for using his thumb, the fretting hand always a planing step ahead of the thumb, and that process became natural and automatic, and became a big part of his sound - phrasing, pauses, timing...

  10. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by docsteve
    Well, Segovia was an advocate of Nylon strings, and he was extremely peculiar about his fingerings.
    Segovia certainly played a role in nylon strings’ acceptance, but nylon strings became available only after WWII, and so well into his career. He had established his reputation with gut strings.

  11. #35

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    Quote Originally Posted by pauln
    ...
    From the beginning I never spent a minute thinking about how to finger or pick anything and still don't. I discovered decades later that what I taught myself was called economy picking, like Chuck Wayne, with kind of a mental musical attention focused on the end of notes' duration rather than on their initiation...
    Ah, then consider yourself lucky! In my early lessons I was taught "finger per fret" logic as well as strict alternate picking. You can spend 10 years perfecting that, and the next 20 years unlearning it all...