Monday, March 12, 2012

Good News/Bad News


News sometimes comes with two sides to it; as with the current abundance of jokes, there is the bad news, and then there is the good news. The Law of Compensation seems to manifest itself everywhere, even in humor. Some aspects of the guitar, which make it a relatively easy instrument to play also make it a difficult instrument on which to sight-read, compose or transpose. This is because, unlike keyboard instruments, not all types of chords and chord voicings are attainable on the fingerboard of a single guitar. The guitar has, like all other instruments, its own inherent limitations; those limitations, along with its possibilities, must be fully understood in order to compose or arrange music that puts the guitar in its greatest light.

The "good news," regarding the guitar, is that it is a chromatic instrument; therefore, any chord form, scale form, or melodic figure that is played in a lower position, and which does not involve any open strings, can be shifted up the fingerboard, utilizing the same pattern of fingering and string involvement, to obtain as many half-step higher transpositions as the practical range of the fingerboard will allow. The "bad news" is that, by doing so, one can easily fall into the trap of playing those transpositions without really understanding them, i.e. without fully grasping what notes are being played, what each note's relationship is to the key and chord involved, and how the tones should look on score paper. This apparent "ease," and the pitfalls it engenders, is no doubt the reason why some guitar players end up being such poor sight readers, or shall I say “terrified” sight readers.

Consider the duties of the keyboard players, on the other hand, who are required to think about all kinds of theoretical considerations, in order to effect a similar series of transpositions. Keyboards are diatonic in design, and so arranged to make playing in the keys of C Major and A Minor the physically "easiest" of all. Each of the remaining major and minor keys all require one to dig one’s hands in, and angle one's wrists a bit, in order to reach the smaller black keys. In playing a scale, the point at which one must sneak the thumb underneath the fingers, to reach the next natural note (key) is slightly different for each key. The use of chromatically raised, or lowered, embellishing notes only serves to further complicate matters. Any kind of scale, played in octaves, with two hands, requires a different pattern of fingering for each hand, simply because the left hand thumb is to the right, while the right hand thumb is to the left. Guitar players do not have this complication with which to to deal.

On a keyboard, even those who play by ear cannot transpose a scale, chord or melody without having to think about the actual notes being played. They also must think about voicing, since they have no "movable chord forms" such as we guitar players have. The piano player's "bad news" is that he must think and work hard; his "good news" is that he becomes a relatively more accomplished musician (than perhaps most guitar players) in the process.

The best advice I can give to a student of the guitar is to slow down and name each note as (s)he plays it. It is also wise to name the chords, name their relationship to the key, identify their voicing and inversion, identify the intervals involved, etc. It is best to avoid the temptation of racing through one's scales, etudes, exercises or pieces. No real benefit comes from merely dazzling one's peers with amazing speed and dexterity. Do not allow the "good news" (the chromatic ease of the guitar fingerboard) to become the very thing that cheats you out of becoming an accomplished, guitar-playing musician.