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BobTheDog
Joined: Feb 28, 2005
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Location: England
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seraph
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Joined: Jun 21, 2003
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Location: Firenze, Italy
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 Posted: Sun Dec 20, 2009 3:09 am Post subject:
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| Sethares wrote: | I've spent years mastering one tuning, why should I try others?
Because there are musical worlds waiting to be exploited. Once you have retuned and explored a single alternate tuning, you'll be hooked by the unexpected fingerings, the easy drone strings, the "new" open chords. New tunings are a way to recapture the wonder you experienced when first finding your way around the fretboard - but now you can become proficient in a matter of days rather than years! |
 http://eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu/~sethares/alternatetunings/someintro.html
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| Quote: | | Don't die with your music still in you - Wayne Dyer |
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Acoustic Interloper
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
Posts: 2067
Location: Berks County, PA
Audio files: 89
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Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 4:28 pm Post subject:
Subject description: banjo tunings and finger picking patterns |
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Oskar wrote
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Folks, I'd love to hear you extol the virtues of alternative tunings, both open and otherwise, over at our Strings'n'Things sub-forum!
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Andy's nice tuning reference has this for the 5-string banjo:
Banjo Tunings
G Tuning X G D G B D Open G
G Minor X G D G Bb D Open G Minor
G Modal X G D G C D Modal G
Open C X G C G C E Open C
Open C Minor X G C G C Eb Open C with string 1 lowered 1
Old-Time C X G C G C D Open C with string 1 lowered 2
D Tuning X A D F# A D Open D
X F# D F# A D Open D with string 5 lowered 3
For the uninitiated, the 5th string (leftmost above) is tuned to a higher pitch than the strings beyond it (that is backward, since it lies next to the lowest-pitch string) and it is usually plucked without fretting as a pedal point, although not always so. So much for the strings.
From the above list I use G, G min, "G modal," Open C and D in about that order of frequency. Also this variant of G:
Ab D G B D
lets me play in E while using both the Ab and the B as alternate pedal points -- they are both in the E major chord.
What is happening with my right hand is important. I learned to play bluegrass, 3-finger up-picking style in 1971-72 when I also learned to play "clawhammer" down-picking style (brush down with back of nails, timing 1 2 and 3 4 and where the "ands" are off-beat done by catching the thumb on the 5th string during the downstroke, and then pull-releasing on the up stroke).
Bluegrass harmony is mostly diatonic, melody lines built on full chords or rapid melodic arpeggios that fit a diatonic chord sequence, while a lot of frailing (clawhammer) is modal, making use of "church modes" (especially Mixolydian and Dorian) and drone strings. Frailing mostly plays melodies and interval pairs on the first two strings and uses the other strings either as drones or chord fill. Mosc is a good frailer!
I got bored playing bluegrass and got busy going to university while working full time during the 80's. In the 90's I went back to frailing because you don't need a rhythm section to ground you the way you do in bluegrass. Frailing supplies its own rhythm.
Then after 2000 when I started listening to a lot of modal jazz, I found the harmonies to be very similar to frailed modal Appalachian music, but the banjo rhythm was too basic (square-dancy). So I started up-picking again, made up some of my own finger picking patterns with irregularities and swing in them that you'd never find in bluegrass, and most importantly, started moving the drone (pedal point) strings around, even during a tune. You cannot do this so well with frailing because the backs of your fingernails generally hit adjacent strings, but with up picking I can arpeggiate intervals on non-adjacent strings and used the strings between them for drones. The drones move around, the melodic intervals move around, and the relationships between them move around.
I don't know anybody else who picks banjo this way. The late John Hartford's technique sounds akin, but not identical. I hope to pass this onto my son Jeremy before I go. He will be getting some good banjos to play it on!
I also do some of this on retuned six string guitars, although I miss the high, out-of-order 5th banjo string when playing them.
The key to all of this is to give oneself about 2 open strings that can serve as pedal points in the piece being played, typically no adjacent strings, although not always using them for that. They can certainly be fretted and chorded as desired. Go back and forth between drony-modal harmony and full-chord-diatonic harmony is an interesting dynamic to play.
Frailing also has a technique called "drop thumb," by the way, where every second time the thumb plucks a melody string on the off beat instead of the 5th, drone string. I never got any good at drop thumb. Need practice!
Thanks for the reference, Andy!
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BobTheDog
Joined: Feb 28, 2005
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Location: England
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 5:02 pm Post subject:
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Wow, I understood very little of that, I will read it again tomorow when it is easier to focus!
What's really bugging is what a pedal point is? |
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Acoustic Interloper
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
Posts: 2067
Location: Berks County, PA
Audio files: 89
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2010 5:22 pm Post subject:
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| BobTheDog wrote: | Wow, I understood very little of that, I will read it again tomorow when it is easier to focus!
What's really bugging is what a pedal point is? |
Pedal point is just a pedal on an organ.
| Quote: | | A note, usually in the bass and on the tonic or the dominant, sustained through harmonic changes in the other parts. Also called organ point. |
In clawhammer banjo it's not the bass, though, its actually higher pitch than the other strings, and it has very little sustain; instead it is played repeatedly.
I usually think of pedals as possibly-non-sustaining drones.
I move my pedals around, though. Usually my pedal is a 3rd or 5th, and at a given time it may be a 3rd or 5th of an implied chord other than the root chord, although usually it's a note in the root chord. The root chord itself may be implied.
I have an old story somewhere about Thelonius Monk instructing his band to play a minor chord without the 3rd. Some of this has to do with implying tones without playing them, by playing leading and trailing intervals that imply them.
EDIT: The song "Farewell" at http://virb.com/dparson uses this approach in a fairly obvious way. Three of the banjo strings are drones (pedals) rooted in G major, and I play arpeggiated intervals on the other 2 strings. The guitar track is standard tuning, by the way  The refrain, in contrast, uses full chords. The instrumental break part way through starts out very pedal pointy!
EDIT 2: Actually "Ordinary Machinery" and "Opposing Force" on the virb site use this approach in places, the latter on MIDI guitar with my son Jeremy on electric bass and also my "MIDIME" software generating the explosions and sirens, triggered by my playing. I wrote it a few evenings after Bushy was reelected in 2004.  
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