Three fingered jazz guitar?

[ScottM]

Over time, I have discovered that certain things I have practiced for years to achieve my usual level of mediocrity and inconsistency became a little more consistent or solid when I swapped out my 4th finger for a 3-fingered approach. It's almost always when I'm trying to adapt someone else's music to my fingers (Bird, Jimmy Raney, Joe Pass...) I have since realized when trying something new, I will "give it a go" with both 3 and 4 finger technique. Whatever works works.

I used to be a classical left hand position snob, but I grew up. :-) It's kind of amazing what I've had to un-learn over the years in an attempt to improve.

[citizenk74]

Thanks for watching. There is no one best way; although, people do seem to get wedded to this or that system and mistake the transmission of that system for 'pedagogy'.


And as anyone tell you jazz is all about heutagogy anyway (although maybe not using that word exactly haha....)

What, please, is "heutagogy"? OED coming up Thanks.

[charlieparker]

Cool.

The question wasn't quite that though.

To put it another way, does position playing serve a purpose other than teaching?

I guess the question is how would you teach someone without using positions? What would you start with? Chord shapes? Licks? Shapes that span multiple positions?

[djg]

What, please, is "heutagogy"? OED coming up Thanks.

it's basically my sig

[christianm77]

I guess the question is how would you teach someone without using positions? What would you start with? Chord shapes? Licks? Shapes that span multiple positions?

Good question :-) I don’t really know. I think encouraging students to try different ways of fingering things is probably a good idea once the basics have been mastered.

I think early on you kind of have to get fingers trained.

[Jonah]

Is it even possible to do the thumb over position on a classical width neck with small hands? I do practice limiting my fingers (even to just one!) but all of that was done classical style.. I might be willing to try though

Actually thumbover is common technique on Russian 7-string which has very similar neck thickness as classical guitar...

[Jonah]

if I want to sound rootsy , bluesy ,
swingin , groovey , cool etc
ie most Jazz and Bop (i do)

then I have to use the three finger thumb
over thing ....
——————
if I wanted to sound classical with all
the multipart counterpoint etc etc
(not so much)
then I would use classical left hand

Nice poem...But I would have changed 'sound' to 'look'

[JakeAcci]

I guess the question is how would you teach someone without using positions? What would you start with? Chord shapes? Licks? Shapes that span multiple positions?

The science of the unitar!

(See: Mick Goodrick's section on single-string playing in "The Advancing Guitarist"

[DavidKOS]

Actually thumbover is common technique on Russian 7-string which has very similar neck thickness as classical guitar...

Thumb-over techniques are also used in balalaika, baglama saz, dombra/danbura, etc. folk instruments - and by a lot of older country git-tar players.

[Reg]

Yea... I dig different fingerings, they can help create... Feels, styles grooves etc.

personally I've always just looked at fingerings as a process to learning the fret board.... which becomes a simple 12 fret repeating pattern.... and you can use whatever fingerings you want.

I mean licks... most are short, but I use two and four bar Licks all the time. (with variations to fit context )

The biggest problem seems to be... Most just don't ever finish the process. Guitarist seem to always be visually glued to the fretboard. And struggle to play what they want... or think they want because in the time that they need to realize what they want to play, or think they want to play... it's too late. Because they can't figure out how to finger etc...

Most end up being... memorize and perform type of ... rehearse and down that rabbit hole.

But yea I love 3 finger bounce around groove feels... i typically have fun when playing in that style.

[emanresu]

[xavriley]

Throwing this in here, I think there's an anatomical basis for some of e.g. this This Is Why It'''s So Much Harder To Move Only Your Ring Finger On Its Own Than Other Fingers The third and fourth fingers share a connection which makes it harder to move them independently human biology - Bending your little finger without bending ring finger - Biology Stack Exchange (a common complaint among pianists).

While it's possible to overcome this with diligent practice etc. it does seem like a lot of energy to expend when (at least on guitar) there are many things that are playable with three fingers on the left hand.

I got into this idea after taking a lesson from Richie Hart who is the man for all things Wes Montgomery. Working on Wes transcriptions and keeping this in mind made things click for me. I've got a transcription of D Natural Blues here

where I try to apply this idea.

Another thing to consider is players who use either 3 or 4, but rarely both together. Pat Martino and George Benson spring to mind for this. Again, I think this goes back to anatomy and what feels comfortable to play. In the gypsy jazz world Jimmy Rosenberg is also interesting in that he prefers 1 and 3 to create Django type lines. This solo is a great example (starts at 1:40)

(Jimmy in his prime - untouchable...)

[Reg]

Yea xariley... Great points, over a decade ago, I posted or started a thread about fingerings, one of my decisions about why I decided on 7 position fingering movable position playing was based on your basic points with physical realities of hands, fingers etc... and I went on with all the other BS to show my reasons for making that choice.... which I made over 50 years ago.... I could already burn back then using mainly 3 finger technique.

Again... like I posted above, the movable position fingerings are just a mechanical tool to learn the fretboard. No one just used one set of fingerings....

....nice post of D natural, sounded great and looked like your having fun, cool. Not a knock..... but try and play without backing track and see if you can lock in the feel. Feeling the subdivisions will help created a more bluesy feel. (the triplet subdivision). Not typical jazz swing 8ths

[citizenk74]

Throwing this in here, I think there's an anatomical basis for some of e.g. this This Is Why It'''s So Much Harder To Move Only Your Ring Finger On Its Own Than Other Fingers The third and fourth fingers share a connection which makes it harder to move them independently human biology - Bending your little finger without bending ring finger - Biology Stack Exchange (a common complaint among pianists).

While it's possible to overcome this with diligent practice etc. it does seem like a lot of energy to expend when (at least on guitar) there are many things that are playable with three fingers on the left hand.

I got into this idea after taking a lesson from Richie Hart who is the man for all things Wes Montgomery. Working on Wes transcriptions and keeping this in mind made things click for me. I've got a transcription of D Natural Blues here

where I try to apply this idea.

Another thing to consider is players who use either 3 or 4, but rarely both together. Pat Martino and George Benson spring to mind for this. Again, I think this goes back to anatomy and what feels comfortable to play. In the gypsy jazz world Jimmy Rosenberg is also interesting in that he prefers 1 and 3 to create Django type lines. This solo is a great example (starts at 1:40)

(Jimmy in his prime - untouchable...)

[kofblz]

I've found that after a long stint playing contra bass and violin my fingering on guitar goes:

index, middle, pinky and last the ring, which I consider to be the weakest.

The pinky receives support from the ring, ala Robben Ford's "claw" grip. I seem to be avoiding the ring finger but I don't think about it.

I think I started playing this way when doing a lot of minor 7th arpeggio exercises.