Three Finger Guitar Technique

[christianm77]

It's not specific to the bebop thing, but I made a video about left hand technique for arpeggios, in which I also demonstrate and talk about the different fingering approaches as I understand them... Hope it's of some use!

[mrcee]

In my arrogant opinion any guitarist that only plays with three fingers is not playing at their complete potential. Regardless of how good they are.

[targuit]

While it may depend on hand size and neck scale length, I think the 'secret' of getting good extension in terms of fret span, whether the 3-finger or 4-finger approach, is the position of the fretting hand thumb which imo should be roughly down the middle of the spine of the guitar neck posteriorly. Not the thumb over the neck style of Pat Metheny to use a well known example. I don't understand how he can play and not develop a repetitive motion disorder in his left hand with his 'idiosyncratic' approach, but sometimes one's personal physiology comes into play in terms of flexibility and hyperextension. Anatomy as destiny.

In any case I tend to think this whole 3 versus 4-finger thing is overblown. I honestly don't have much problem "swinging both ways" - at least as regards fingering only. I think the three finger thing 'forces' you to make more transitions, which might affect the subsequent phrasing. Kind of like inducing more variety in your solo note runs, but I think four finger approach is vastly superior for chord and CM style playing. Just an opinion, but again I'm not convinced that any one approach should be considered inherently superior.

As I recall Birelli Lagrene is a four finger player, no? I'll have to watch a couple of videos.

[christianm77]

Birelli's right hand is certainly not 'classical' - he does sometimes use the fourth finger, but in common with most gypsy players he plays with his thumb over the neck, a pronated left hand and with lots of shifts.

Perhaps he changes when he plays electric, haven't really checked out his electric playing much TBH.

Anyway, I've spent enough time on this thread. I hope people who are open to it find my video interesting, and those who aren't probably aren't going to extract any further information from what I say.

[bobsguitars09]

Monk, is this the book?

Own The Legacy ? GEORGE BARNES: THE METHODS | The George Barnes Legacy Collection

[bobsguitars09]

Tuck Andress talks about how he came to start using the three finger technique here

[monk]

Monk, is this the book?

Own The Legacy ? GEORGE BARNES: THE METHODS | The George Barnes Legacy Collection

Hello Bob,
I think that this is a different thing altogether. At the time of his death, Barnes had been working on another method that was intended to be interactive with the student periodically mailing in an audio tape for GB to critique.

Here's a link to a blog with a picture of the cover and a description.
https://bucknerguitar.wordpress.com/...r-method-1943/

I've seen the book from time to time on eBay. I found mine in a used bookstore, a friend found his at a church yardsale. I just scored a stack of old guitar folios (with some nice Harry Volpe stuff) at a mom & pop music store in a small town in Georgia. Be patient and beat the bushes.
Regards,
Jerome

[christianm77]

Tuck Andress talks about how he came to start using the three finger technique here

'Wes did it so we do it.'

[lawson-stone]

'Wes did it so we do it.'

I didn't realize Tuck Andress was so old! He really seems to have aged rapidly.

[monk]

I didn't realize Tuck Andress was so old! He really seems to have aged rapidly.

He's 64 this year. He needs to update his haircut.

[bobsguitars09]

A study group based on the George Barnes approach would be great. Since its out of print for now.. Maybe a group focused on playing lines within chord shapes or something.

[MarkRhodes]

A study group based on the George Barnes approach would be great. Since its out of print for now.. Maybe a group focused on playing lines within chord shapes or something.

Interesting idea. There's a study group about Herb Ellis' "Swing Blues" but it is not very active. In part because if one has the book, one learns the lines or doesn't. Herb gives his fingerings, so there isn't much to discuss.

A broader look at playing out of shapes could interest many people though. I nominate Monk for leader!

One matter of crucial importance is fingering. The two hands (right and left) must work together. Put another way, a three-finger approach with strict alternate picking is not going to be the same thing as a three-finger approach that uses economy picking. (Charlie Christian used mostly downstrokes.) It's not JUST the shapes--it's how you pick them.

[MarkRhodes]

He's 64 this year. He needs to update his haircut.

I noticed he mentioned the Beatles, Stones, and Chuck Berry as his early guitar influences. Mine too, though I am a little younger than him and heard Hendrix when I was ten years old; Tuck wouldn't have.

That was an interesting exercise he set himself: taking a tape recorder to the library and listening over and over to a guitar part until he could transcribe it (without touching a guitar).

[lammie200]

...though I am a little younger than him and heard Hendrix when I was ten years old...
That was an interesting exercise he set himself: taking a tape recorder to the library and listening over and over to a guitar part until he could transcribe it (without touching a guitar).

About the same here. My older brother was in a garage band when Hendrix became popular. He was the keyboardist and they had a lanky lad with long greasy hair and pimples that played left handed guitar. I think it was a cherry SG. I did drum and keyboard set up and some percussion things because they reluctantly let me be involved. One of the songs that we (they) covered was "Wild Thing" a la Hendrix style. I remember hearing that Hendrix had died and we were all like - "Shit, I guess we won't get any more new cool music to listen to again." You gotta remember that there were a lot of high profile tragic deaths in that decade, or so, then. Also the Beatles had already split. Our expectations were tempered.

As far as Tuck's method for learning by transcribing (listening and writing) without touching his guitar, that is damn impressive, and something that I cannot ever envision being able to do myself. Shear torture.

[targuit]

Just for fun I spent some time this morning watching a fun video of Bireli Lagrene and Sylvan Luc playing duets from a concert in Marciac 2000. It would appear that Bireli uses the three finger attack predominantly, while Sylvan uses fifth digit more extensively. Bireli does, however, use the fifth digit at times. In any case, the three finger approach seems to lend itself to playing bebopish lines.

Here's a link to a cool concert lasting an hour.

[targuit]

One more link to a nice concert with Bireli and Didier Lockwood, plus accordion master, Richard Galliano. Besides the beautiful music one can note the violin technique of Didier. And Galliano is a monster as well.

[bobsguitars09]

Charlie Christian, George Barnes, Wes Montgomery, George Benson, Oscar Moore,T-Bone Walker, B.B. King and Bucky Pizzarelli all use (or used) a predominantly 3 finger left hand approach. This is because they employed a chord shape based method of looking at the fingerboard.

Swing, blues and bebop guitarists used this approach because it's a "natural" way of organizing the fingerboard.

The scale fingering/mode approach started to gain currency in the early to mid 1970s due in part to articles that were printed in Guitar Player magazine and later, Guitar World. Those articles were aimed at rock and blues players who sought entry into the world of jazz improvisation. Most of those articles were not written by jazz guitarists and had a classical slant. As a result, some players began to organize the fingerboard as scale fingerings rather than chord shapes. This gives rise to not only a different way of visualizing the fingerboard but also a different way of playing.

In his 1941 Guitar Method, George Barnes uses chord shapes to outline the fingerboard touching only once on the major scale before diving into lines and phrasing.

Likewise, in his excellent book Jazz Improvisation for Guitar, Garrison Fewell comments on Wes Montgomery's 'blues guitarist" fingerings. A careful examination of the phrases in Fewell's book reveals that most of them are played with 3 fingers and are also shape based.

Some of you may disagree but I believe that the best way to understand the evolution of jazz guitar is to approach each era and it's players from their perspective not ours.

If you want to sound like Christian or Barnes or Wes it's necessary to understand how they approached the guitar. It's not just a matter of getting the right notes but getting the notes right.

Regards,
monk

P.S. If you really want to put stretch marks on your brain, spend a few months figuring out how Django used his left hand. The benefits are enormous.

This

[joe2758]

I didn't really catch what his point about 3 finger technique was, but I was watching this and thought of this thread.

edit: start at 20:30

[guitarbard]

I can't not throw in a post here. It is one of the best threads I've ever read(over several days, with nothing less than sheer enjoyment, and epiphany, I'll add), and come back to it and re-read too. Having done a semester at Berklee in the Spring of '72, when I was a mere 20 years old, and having never gone back(tho at times I wish I had), reading this thread has disabused me of some of the 'dark regret' I've expressed over this 'missed opportunity' of mine. I started playing guitar in 1965, when I was 13, tho had been playing piano and cornet for a few years before that, so theory and the ability to read have been with me all my life.

2's company, 3's a crowd, 4's too many, and we don't have 5 not allowed 5 to have to worry about. Now, this has become SO interesting. I've been a thumb behind the neck, very strong 4th finger player for years, tho I had dabbled with only 3, for rock/blues/fusion(my own music, there, I guess one could say, I did a fair amount of recording 2008-2010, need to get back to it) styles, for fun a few years back. However, being enlightened, lately, to the presence of the tendon conflict, with regard to the 3rd and 4th fingers, of which I was not aware, served to explain some things. How things have always felt clumsy, at times, depending on the situation, with regard to those two fingers. SO:

As of late, I've been forcing myself to play with only three(mainly,,is silly not to use 4th for a thing or two, tho I keep my chording simple, assuming that the alterations, if present, may be easily played, and heard, in the lines,,unless it's a root), and find it opens new vistas, and does indeed feel rather natural. Also, the 'chord shape' approach to noting becomes all too comfortably obvious.

I have rather big hands, and find that the 4th is almost 'in the way', at times, IF used for noting, and I can actually play almost, tho not quite, with thumb behind the board for a bit of the 3 fingered approach,(stretching between 2 and 3!) although I DO start coming above the board edge(though not in a position to note), with my thumb, and angling my fingers diagonally. I'm used to traveling all over the neck, so this is not a problem. I anticipate much fun and serious usage with this approach.

With regard to fiddle/violin, one does indeed need to use the 4th finger, tho fiddlers who use only 3 are out there. They are in the minority, though. I've been at this instrument for 23 years now, and a deal of study of classical violin has served to make this quite clear. I've played in a university orchestra, back in the 90's. I would not recommend that anyone take up the fiddle at age 41, though that is what I did. Strange to say, I have done fairly well with it.

Back to the guitar, my greatest pull is towards the older and early bebop of all the players herein mentioned, tho I try less to copy them than I do to just bear them strongly in mind. All my guitar playing life, I've been an improviser, if only to do so with leads, in rock tunes, or in blues,,etc. so that is built in. I guess you could say I learn in a rather sponge-like, subconscious, manner, tho my theory knowledge is fairly well established. I have all three of the early Real Books and back in the 80's did go through many of the tunes therein, and knew a lot of chord forms I've since forgotten, tho this will come back, as I know, from experience. My attempts at line playing were less successful back then, tho I AM a line player, and to me, melody reigns supreme. I'm better at the lines now. I did throw down for one installment of Jimmy Bruno back 2010 or so, and found it expanded my knowledge in a nice way. This was when he was running into some problems with getting the school to continue, so I didn't continue, either, tho I ran into Sheryl Bailey's pedagogy thru that site. But the three finger playing,,,now here we have something, I trow. From a physiological standpoint, it has occurred to me that the main reason for the presence of the 4th finger is to balance the weight of the thumb,,,,,

Cheers,

[destinytot]

It's not specific to the bebop thing, but I made a video about left hand technique for arpeggios, in which I also demonstrate and talk about the different fingering approaches as I understand them... Hope it's of some use!

Great video, Christian.

[princeplanet]

Can anyone do this with 3 fingers?

[joe2758]

holy shit

[Jonah]

And can anyone do this with 4 (5? 10? 12? 20?)

[princeplanet]

And can anyone do this with 4 (5? 10? 12? 20?)

Hehe, nor can they emulate Django's 2 finger mastery with 10 fingers....

I suppose my point would be that some lines are probably not possible with 2 or 3 fingers. I guess it depends what you're hearing in your head. If you listen to heavily "chromatic" horns or piano a lot, getting those sounds down with less than 4 fingers might be a bit of a stretch ... so to speak

[pingu]

Can anyone do this with 3 fingers?

incredible jazz guitar !
I don't know how he can remember all that
let alone actually play the thing !

i need a little rest now ...

aren't humans amazing tho ?