Around The Neck

In guitar we are constantly trying to keep up with our chops or other just learn another, harder song. This is good for a while but we must remember to not let this become our focus. We must be consummate learners!

A consummate learner does not just learn a song to learn a song. A consummate learner asks the why and how questions of every piece or technique. What are the chord changes I am playing? Why do the chord changes work? Why do I like this sound? Why does it appeal to me? What does this technique do for the song I am playing? Does this technique actual add to the song or is it just for show? Could the notes be played in different and more effective place on the guitar? Why do I want to play this music? Do I even like this music or is just for show? Or, do I just think that everyone plays this and so should I? What time period does this come from? Does the version I have heard demonstrate a knowledge of the time period practices? What tempo is appropriate and is their room to change it according to how I like it to sound?

That is the mind of a consummate learner of the guitar. It does not matter what style you play or type of instrument you use. You should always be asking these questions and more. The most important question to keep asking is always, “Why?”

Ida who? I am not refering to slang either (i.e. “I da one.”) I am refering to one of the forgotten guitar greats of the 20th century.

Her name is Ida Presti and she was born in Suresnes, France on May 31, 1924. Suresnes is very close to Paris and at the time Paris was quite a musical center. In any case, she was a young prodigy and gave her first recital at the age of 8. As she gained prominence, she toured extensively throughout France.

She was know for her great technical facility and speed. Andrés Segovia even gave her the nickname “Ida Prestissimo.” Her interpretations of the music she played were sometimes not accepted due to their distinctive and profound nature.

She met Alexandre Lagoya in 1952 and were married a year later. This couple became a guitar duo that is arguably one of the greatest ever. They performed around the world to thousands of fans and admirers. Their recordings can still be found on the Philips record label.

Sadly, Presti died in 1967 at age 43. It was a great loss to the guitar world and to her husband and duo partner Lagoya. He took a five-year break and then returned with more passion than ever.

Below is a a rare clip from YouTube of Ida playing Villa-Lobos’ Prelude No. 1.

No matter what genre of music you play, duets will improve every aspect of your playing. It will even improve your solo playing. Why do we not play them more? Most of us are too shy and unsure of ourselves to attempt it. Therefore, you need to pick music that is easy enough to handle for both those involved (the duet).

Once you begin you will notice that playing in a duet is much different than solo. You find that you have to stay in time and count. This is usually a downfall of most amateur musicians. They say, “I just want to feel the music.” The problem is that when we feel the music, we forget about where the music might actually be going. Therefore, your rhythm and timing will become fine tuned whenever having to play with (and not over) another musician.

If you are interested in performing, then duets make a great avenue to move into this field. Playing with a partner takes a load of pressure of both of you. If you miss your mark, then your partner can cover and vice versa. Also, giging as a duet makes you hear better. It forces you to not focus entirely on your part and focus on the music as a whole. Many people think that solo playing is the peak of performing. I tend to disagree. Solo playing is hard but playing as a part of a larger entity requires the most of you as a musician.

No matter your level, it is time to start playing with other musicians.

The guitar had a large boom in popularity after the sixth string was added. With this boom came the performer composers of the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. The four main figures were Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829), Fernando Sor (1778-1839), Ferdinando Carulli (1770-1841), and Matteo Carcassi (1792-1853).

All of these figures were virtuoso performers. But they left us with something of greater value, methods and pieces furthering the understanding of this new instrument of the time. They hailed from Italy and Spain. Their work for solo and ensemble guitar laid the foundation that we now use today in our repertoire. They also gave us methods by which the great pedagogues have built their understanding of the instrument.

The guitar, again, faced a downturn after these players left the scene. But along came another great from Spain, Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909). Tárrega brought great interest to the guitar not so much in his reputation as a player but more as a composer and arranger. He decided use the entire guitar unlike his predecessors who only used the lower part of the guitar (usually up to fret five). Do to him ingnoring the predefined limitations of the guitar, he founded a school of thought that influenced every player and composer following him.

No brief history would be complete without mentioning the next great icon of the guitar, Andrés Segovia (1893-1987). Segovia took this little instrument called the guitar around the world in high fashion. His one purpose in life was to make the guitar acceptable on the concert stage just like the piano. His ability of musicianship and virtuosity at the time were above any of his contemporaries. It is due to his efforts that today the guitar is seen as a serious instrument for musical study.

Finally we get to a full twelve bar blues with some changing bass notes. There are few changing bass notes in order to facilitate an ease of movement as you learn to play a fingerstyle 12 bar blues.

Watch the changing treble notes. They give a basic melody that can be improvised upon as you get better at the process. You will notice that I have used “1 t t, 2 t t, etc.” to indicate the use of triplets in the rhythm. I have also used “1 &” to indicate the use of an eighth note. But remember, when you play this your eighth notes will be “swung” like the triplets. This means that the first note will be longer than the “&” of the beat.

I hope you enjoy this and the final version which will incorporate a bit more movement in the right hand fingers.

We all play this instrument in its many different forms, but have we ever thought about where it came from? Whether electric, acoustic, or nylon the guitar’s roots are the same. Without them, none of us would enjoy the music we play on it today.

Let’s go back to the 13th century. At this time there were two basic instruments beginning the lineage of today’s guitar, the Latin guitar and the Moorish guitar. The Latin guitar had a similar shape to our acoustic guitar shape of today. You know, the hourglass shape. Due to the great record keeping of the time (not!), we now have to skip ahead a couple hundred years to the early 16th century.

At the beginning of the 16th century we find a descendant of the of these first two instruments called a vihuela. This instrument was very close to the guitar in that it had six courses of strings. Courses are similar to what we see on the modern twelve string guitar. You play each course like you would be playing a single string. These courses, however, gave the instrument a larger sound than could otherwise be attained. For those of you who like tableture, you’ll be happy to know that music for the vihuela was originally written in a similar form of tableture. To the vihuela’s demise, there was a similar instrument being used at the time with only five courses and the underdog won in the long run.

This guitar with five coursed became known as a Spanish guitar quite possibly due to the use of it in dances of Spain. But it was used throughout Italy as well. There are some great composer/players from this time period on this particular instrument. Most notable are Francesco Corbetta (c.1615 – 1681) and Robert de Visée (c. 1660 – 1720). As a matter of fact, Robert de Visée played regularly for Louis XIV of France.

As the 18th century came upon the guitar, there was a decline in its use and development. I imagine the new instruments of the harpsichord, organ, and the emerging orchestra instruments added to the decline. But, we owe it to this time period for dropping the double courses and adding a sixth string. The higher strings at this time were made from the gut of an animal and the basses were silver wound around a silk core. This is the beginning of the new wave of guitar playing and composing about to begin at the end of the 18th century.

Today we will add the bass notes played with the thumb to the previous exercise presented in Part 1. The chords are identical to the previous version. The bass note is added on the first beat of each triplet. The thumb alternates between the different bass notes but the fingering can be established at the beginning of each measure. You can put this into the boogie progression or twelve bar blues progression to get a bit more movement from t he chords. From here we will present an entire fingerstyle blues with moving bass in Part 3.

Since we have previously discussed the twelve bar blues and the boogie style of rock guitar playing, I thought it would be nice to give some beginner fingerstyle blues ideas. The fingerstyle and pick style blues really are the same. They use the same chord progressions and a lot of the same licks. The one exception, as should be obvious, is that fingerstyle is done with, here it comes, the fingers of the right hand instead of a pick (revelation I know).

Before we begin to put the chords on the guitar let’s remind ourselves of the right and left hand finger identifications. The right hand uses letters to indicate the thumb (p or T), the index (i), the middle (m), and the anular (a). The ring finger is usually never used unless you advance to hybrid picking (using a pick and fingers simultaneously). The left hand fingers uses numbers to indicate the index (1), middle (2), anular (3), and pinky (4). The thumb in this case is going to be behind the neck and not used.

The basic exercise below presents three chord shapes. They are all missing one note from each chord. This is because a 7th chord has four notes in it and these all have three even though we are calling them 7ths. If you have questions on that, check out Breakdown of 7th Chords. We will add the rest of the chord in Part 2 as we add bass notes. Above the chord tab you will see a series of numbers indicating the rhythm. This rhythm is in triplets. That means for every beat there are three notes played of equal distance in time. This is the common way to play blues and specifically the blues shuffle. Each bold number is where the beat begins followed by two other notes equally seperated. For now, learn the chords and be able to shift from one to the other easily.

In fingerstyle guitar playing we focus a lot on right hand independence. But what about the left hand (or right hand if your a lefty)? And does it apply to a guitarist using a pick just as much as a fingerstyle player? By the way, those were rhetorical.

Right hand independence allows for the execution of movements in fluid manner. Let’s say you want a note to continue to ring on the bass side while adding some fill movement on the treble side. This requires us to have independence of movement between the fingers in order to make this possible. I have also found that working on independence causes our licks, scales, and arpeggios to increase in speed as well. I assume this is because we now have more control of the fingers’ execution overall.

I have used the following exercise many times to develop independence of the left hand. The movement is akin to an arpeggio in that you should play the right hand while holding the left in one place throughout each four note group. You will see that you should hold the outside two notes in each set while you change the inner two notes. When you play through it, you’ll hopefully get the idea.

The goal is to develop a smooth transition between each group. Start at a slow tempo and work your way up. You can then move the exercise to different sets of strings and frets to vary the distances the fingers have to travel (i.e. the distance between the first and fourth frets is different than twelve and fourteen). Remember this is not a musical exercise. It is entirely finger gymnastics which in turn will allow an easier execution of the musical ideas you want to play.

I am not about bashing large companies in favor of smaller ones. I know that if large companies did not exist, then I would not have a car, a dishwasher, or a washing machine. However, I would like to say that many times quality can be lost the larger the company gets.

I live in Pittsburgh and enjoy the music stores in the area. I visit mostly locally owned but every now and then the pocketbook needs something I can get for cheaper at a larger store like Guitar Center.

Upon my last visit, the usual feeling began as I walked in…overwhelmed. There is a lot of noise and, for me, it is not a pleasant shopping experience. What do I do? Go directly to the sound reduced acoustic section. There are over a fifty guitars hanging on the walls and some nice ones in the higher end section. It is great to be able to have this kind of selection when I am trying to find a new instrument.

Picking up a couple of instruments, I notice that they need to be set up. Not just one of them, but all of them. Curiously, I ask about the humidity control in the building. You would have thought I asked about sushi. Apparently they don’t know the humidity in the building. Why is this a problem you ask? They are dealing with instruments made from organic substances and these substances change with humidity and temperature. My first guitar cracked because I did not properly humidify it during the winter.

This is a huge profit driven store. I would think that keeping the guitars in prime playing condition would increase sales. However, I am obviously wrong. Some stores deal with companies that will terminate their dealership without having the proper humidity. Furthermore, no one at the store even knew that humidity was important in the care and maintenance of a guitar.

Like I said, I buy some things at Guitar Center. But due to this one issue, I will think twice before doing it again.