ripock
Well-known member
Hello world. I have been playing so much that I haven’t chronicled my progress for posterity’s sake. It does beg the question of why do people create engaging content that would earn likes. That would be a full-time job. Or, if not quite that, it would at least take a great portion of time which could and should be devoted to playing.
I re-string my Yorkie with Fremonts. I always feel a bit wasteful doing so. I mean...I didn’t have a broken string. The old strings were merely six months old and I put new ones on. Originally I was going to use Living Waters strings but at the eleventh hour I changed my mind because
1. Living Waters sounds like some non-denominational Christian sect and that annoys me generally
2. Living Waters strings are clear and that presents a few problems to me. First of all, I associate clear strings with a brighter sound and I am desperately trying to distance myself from that Tiny Tim, trebly, island sound. Secondly, I don’t like the look of the clear string on a dark fret board. My Viburnum fret board is dark and dark strings look better.
Regardless, I put on the Fremonts and doing so was quite a task. The Yorkie’s bridge is rather idiosyncratic. When you push the string through the hole in the bridge, it hits a perpendicular wall that leads up to the saddle. Therefore, you have to bend the strings so that they inch up the wall so that you can get the string for tying.
Initially I tuned it DGBE because that E felt good to me. With the A string down-tuned to an E I could still bend the strings and perform my adornments such as the glissando/portamento. It is hard to fathom tightening the strings up to GCEA. That would make the strings like piano-wire. As the strings stretch out, there is a chance I will tune up to something like an EAC#F# as long as the tension still allows me the slack to do what I want. And here are some of the things I want and have been doing.
1. I am still trying to build a personal connection to the highest frets so that I can have those notes memorized. Intellectually I know what they are. They are an iteration of the lowest 7 frets. I know that but I am not feeling that. Thinking slows the music down. I want to be able to just slide my finger down a string and know when I get to a certain point that I am at, for example, an E. I am not quite there yet. However I am making progress because quite fortunately for me that C# on the 13th fret starts off my favorite mode, the aiolian. I love playing all varieties of it: the straight version, the melodic, the harmonic. I love playing chord progresions based on aiolian harmonizations. The only problem is that I know all the shapes so that sometimes I am not actually thinking about what I’m playing. I have to stay disciplined and think about the notes.
2. I am starting to think outside of the box. When playing the C# aiolian, I am starting to slide down to notes that are diatonic to it and make melodies that way. In essence, I am sliding down into the B mixolydian. Nevertheless, the lines are starting to get blurred. I can see that eventually the lines won’t matter and I’ll just be playing notes that are in the same key and exploring the possibilities. For example, I was playing with the G# Phrygian on the 13th fret, but instead of stopping on the octave note on the E string, I went on to the A and played more diatonic notes until I hit that D. Once I attain that, I can continue playing in the tonic pentatonic shape.
3. I have started doing an exercise which I have dubbed riffling. Just as you riffle two stacks of cards into one pile, I have been attempting to riffle together two scales into a pile of notes. I tried this at the fifth fret, using the C aiolian (starting on the G string) and the F ionian (on the C string). I play the first note of the aiolian, then the first on the ionian, then the second of each...etc. At this point I am very slow because I am still wrapping my head around it, so that I don’t know if it sounds good. I picked the root notes of C and F because they are a fourth apart and I thought they would cooperate with each other. But if the sound isn’t pleasing I might try other modes which don’t share the same frets. Something like an A lydian and a F ionian.
4. I also re-introduced myself to an older exercise in which you take a mode and plays notes 1,2,3 then 2,3,4, then 3,4,5 etc. If you can do this fast enough it sounds really good. I believe heavy metal guitarists do this sort of thing. I am not electrified and shredding; I do this because it breaks associations. I tend to group the notes of a mode played on the string as a unit. And that’s fine. It has put me in good stead for improvising. However, when you play one or two notes on one string and another note from another string, it opens up new avenues.
5. As for progressions, I have been hovering around the harmonic minor harmonization. I’ve been experimenting with different chordal qualities without much luck.
I received the ubiquitous email that many other customers of Daniel Ward received advertising his new finger style book. I of course purchased it because it sounds so well adapted to my tastes. It teaches techniques that I can use as a spring board to my own creativity. It may seem solipsistic but it is always about me. I don’t want to learn songs from a song book because those are other people’s songs. I want my own.
Lastly, as per usual I noticed what a freak I am. There was a nice thread, which I didn’t taint with my presence, about whether a person should get a Kamaka or a Koaloha. The advice centered around sampling the ukuleles or getting sound files or getting the clerks to play them over the phone. That all seems silly to me. Ukuleles are ukuleles. You know what they sound like. They’re ukuleles. Flip a coin and buy one of these two exquisite brands. Then, over time, bond with the one you chose. That is why I don’t play ukuleles even when I am at a music store. It takes time to snuggle up to the instrument. I would need to take months at the music store to come to the conclusion. Therefore I usually just go to the store, point to the one I want, and have the techs set it up so that I can take it home and start the process. I have had my Yorkie about six months and I am now getting to the point where I feel I couldn’t live without it and that playing something else would be like an awkward adulterous affair in which I clumsily run my fingers over a body that I am not familiar or comfortable with. But, as John Lennon said, whatever gets you through the night is alright.
I re-string my Yorkie with Fremonts. I always feel a bit wasteful doing so. I mean...I didn’t have a broken string. The old strings were merely six months old and I put new ones on. Originally I was going to use Living Waters strings but at the eleventh hour I changed my mind because
1. Living Waters sounds like some non-denominational Christian sect and that annoys me generally
2. Living Waters strings are clear and that presents a few problems to me. First of all, I associate clear strings with a brighter sound and I am desperately trying to distance myself from that Tiny Tim, trebly, island sound. Secondly, I don’t like the look of the clear string on a dark fret board. My Viburnum fret board is dark and dark strings look better.
Regardless, I put on the Fremonts and doing so was quite a task. The Yorkie’s bridge is rather idiosyncratic. When you push the string through the hole in the bridge, it hits a perpendicular wall that leads up to the saddle. Therefore, you have to bend the strings so that they inch up the wall so that you can get the string for tying.
Initially I tuned it DGBE because that E felt good to me. With the A string down-tuned to an E I could still bend the strings and perform my adornments such as the glissando/portamento. It is hard to fathom tightening the strings up to GCEA. That would make the strings like piano-wire. As the strings stretch out, there is a chance I will tune up to something like an EAC#F# as long as the tension still allows me the slack to do what I want. And here are some of the things I want and have been doing.
1. I am still trying to build a personal connection to the highest frets so that I can have those notes memorized. Intellectually I know what they are. They are an iteration of the lowest 7 frets. I know that but I am not feeling that. Thinking slows the music down. I want to be able to just slide my finger down a string and know when I get to a certain point that I am at, for example, an E. I am not quite there yet. However I am making progress because quite fortunately for me that C# on the 13th fret starts off my favorite mode, the aiolian. I love playing all varieties of it: the straight version, the melodic, the harmonic. I love playing chord progresions based on aiolian harmonizations. The only problem is that I know all the shapes so that sometimes I am not actually thinking about what I’m playing. I have to stay disciplined and think about the notes.
2. I am starting to think outside of the box. When playing the C# aiolian, I am starting to slide down to notes that are diatonic to it and make melodies that way. In essence, I am sliding down into the B mixolydian. Nevertheless, the lines are starting to get blurred. I can see that eventually the lines won’t matter and I’ll just be playing notes that are in the same key and exploring the possibilities. For example, I was playing with the G# Phrygian on the 13th fret, but instead of stopping on the octave note on the E string, I went on to the A and played more diatonic notes until I hit that D. Once I attain that, I can continue playing in the tonic pentatonic shape.
3. I have started doing an exercise which I have dubbed riffling. Just as you riffle two stacks of cards into one pile, I have been attempting to riffle together two scales into a pile of notes. I tried this at the fifth fret, using the C aiolian (starting on the G string) and the F ionian (on the C string). I play the first note of the aiolian, then the first on the ionian, then the second of each...etc. At this point I am very slow because I am still wrapping my head around it, so that I don’t know if it sounds good. I picked the root notes of C and F because they are a fourth apart and I thought they would cooperate with each other. But if the sound isn’t pleasing I might try other modes which don’t share the same frets. Something like an A lydian and a F ionian.
4. I also re-introduced myself to an older exercise in which you take a mode and plays notes 1,2,3 then 2,3,4, then 3,4,5 etc. If you can do this fast enough it sounds really good. I believe heavy metal guitarists do this sort of thing. I am not electrified and shredding; I do this because it breaks associations. I tend to group the notes of a mode played on the string as a unit. And that’s fine. It has put me in good stead for improvising. However, when you play one or two notes on one string and another note from another string, it opens up new avenues.
5. As for progressions, I have been hovering around the harmonic minor harmonization. I’ve been experimenting with different chordal qualities without much luck.
I received the ubiquitous email that many other customers of Daniel Ward received advertising his new finger style book. I of course purchased it because it sounds so well adapted to my tastes. It teaches techniques that I can use as a spring board to my own creativity. It may seem solipsistic but it is always about me. I don’t want to learn songs from a song book because those are other people’s songs. I want my own.
Lastly, as per usual I noticed what a freak I am. There was a nice thread, which I didn’t taint with my presence, about whether a person should get a Kamaka or a Koaloha. The advice centered around sampling the ukuleles or getting sound files or getting the clerks to play them over the phone. That all seems silly to me. Ukuleles are ukuleles. You know what they sound like. They’re ukuleles. Flip a coin and buy one of these two exquisite brands. Then, over time, bond with the one you chose. That is why I don’t play ukuleles even when I am at a music store. It takes time to snuggle up to the instrument. I would need to take months at the music store to come to the conclusion. Therefore I usually just go to the store, point to the one I want, and have the techs set it up so that I can take it home and start the process. I have had my Yorkie about six months and I am now getting to the point where I feel I couldn’t live without it and that playing something else would be like an awkward adulterous affair in which I clumsily run my fingers over a body that I am not familiar or comfortable with. But, as John Lennon said, whatever gets you through the night is alright.