Category : guitar

Guitar Extended

I love stomp boxes and editable pedal boards. But the problem is that regardless of what sound you build with them, you still get a guitar sound, and everyone knows it.

Twenty different distortion sounds all point to one thing: overdriven guitar and the particular styles of music that this sound implies. The same applies to any effect: they all lead the imagination in the direction that whoever designed them wants to go.

None of this is a problem if you want to make music that sounds like other music. In fact, you need these tools if you want to do that. But what if you don’t want to do that? What if you want to build your own sound?

Guitar Extended is a blog that can help if you want to go beyond the standard effects that we all find in guitar stores. Check it out.

http://guitarextended.wordpress.com

 

 

 

7th chords

You can use the chord-making technique I’ve been talking about to make 7^th chords too. All you do is add the 7^th note of the scale to 1, 3, and 5 that you already have.

 

E   F#   G#   A    B    C#   D#

1    2    3       4    5    6      7

 

That gives you E G# B D#. These are the notes of an E major 7^th chord.

 

Invent some chords

Find three different groupings of those four notes. This a bit more challenging than doing it with triads, but in some ways it’s more fun. Sometimes you get three of the notes, but can’t get the 4th because your fingers can’t stretch that far. So you’re faced with a puzzle.

 

Is there another way to play that 4th note if you can’t reach it with a left hand finger? The answer to that question will take you in directions you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

 

Two possibilities:

1. Play the three-note chord by itself and then play the 4^th note by itself.  This means that you have to let go of the chord to play the note. You get something more like an arpeggio. You can invent some interesting chord/note patterns this way (i.e. chord – chord – note – chord – note –note, etc).

The more comfortable you get moving between chord and note, the more interesting the rhythm will become.

2.Play the three-note chord, hold it, and then play the 4^th note by tapping it. This is like playing chord and melody together. Try                 tapping other notes besides the initial note you couldn’t reach.

 

Can you think of any other possibilities for playing impossible chords?

Making Chords in Every Key

If you want to do this, you need to know your key signatures. Good news. It’s not that complicated.

 

Take a look at the image below.

Notice how, as you go clockwise around the circle (starting on C), you gain one sharp every time you change letters. The key of C has no accidentals (sharps and flats); the next letter/key – G – has 1 sharp; the next letter (key of D)  has 2 sharps, etc.

 

Go counter-clockwise and you gain a flat every time you move.

 

So that means that you can take any key – say E major – and do the same thing that you did with the key of C. The key of E has 4 sharps (check this out above) so…

 

E   F#   G#   A    B    C#   D#

1    2    3       4    5    6      7

 

Start on E, take the 1, the 3, and the 5, and you get an E major chord – E  G#  B.

 

Now make five E major chords. Now move between them. Now move between them and the C major chords you made. This is a lot of work, I know. But worth it.

Making your own chords

Things to know if you want to make chords:

 

• Know the notes in the chord
• Know the notes on the neck of the guitar

 

Knowing your key signatures is good, too. I’ll address that in the next post. For now I’ll just use the key of C major. No sharps or flats to worry about.

 

Figure out the notes in any 3-note chord

 

The key of C

C   D   E   F   G   A   B   C    D    E    F

1  2   3   4  5   6   7   8    9  10  11

 

I take the scale up to the 2^nd F (11) so you can visualize leaping every other note starting on every scale degree.

 

Take the 1^st note (C), the 3^rd note (E), and the 5^th note (G). You’re just leaping over every other note. Those three notes make a C major chord. If you know where all the notes are on your guitar, you can now start making a whole bunch of C major chords. A lot of people think there are only two – the open string C major and the barre chord. As it turns out, they’re wrong.

 

 

Make some chords

See if you can make 5 different shapes using C, E, and G. That’ll give you 5 different C major chords. All you have to do is find those three notes, and play them together.

 

Now do this starting on D. Take the D and skip over every other note and you’ll have D, F, and A. That’s a D minor chord. Make 5 different shapes for this chord.

Interview with Colin Labadie on augmented guitar

Colin Labadie is a composer/guitarist who began working on a prototype for an augmented guitar in 2010.  He’s currently working on a second augmented guitar with a wider variety of sensors and more complex signal processing effects. Check out his website for more.

http://www.colinlabadie.com/projects/prototype_augmented_guitar.html

 What does augmented guitar mean for you in your work? Is it a way to create a new sound palette for the instrument? Do you see it as a way to present the guitar in a less conventional light? Do you approach it as a guitar, or do you think of it more generally as a sound-producing interface?

 

I’ve always loved the potential of the electric guitar for finding new and interesting sounds. When I discovered Max/MSP, I felt that it was a bit of an untapped resource since it hadn’t been used much with the electric guitar despite being extremely powerful in terms of sound processing. The problem was that I when I was performing, the only control I had over the processing was with a computer mouse, and I was tweaking the sounds so often that I felt like I was playing the mouse more than the guitar. Augmenting the guitar was really a solution to that problem, as it freed up my hands from the computer so I could play the guitar while still manipulating its sound the way I was imagining. It has the added benefit of allowing more subtle real-time control than the feet (where processing is usually controlled), since as a guitarist my hands are naturally more dexterous.

 

The augmented guitar definitely presents the guitar in a less conventional light, not only in terms of sound but also in terms of visuals, since it can look a bit like a Frankenstein. I like pretty guitars as much as the next person, but I also really like the DIY aesthetic of an augmented guitar. There’s something about it that instantly arouses curiosity. But ultimately I don’t see it as being unconventional for its own sake; for me it’s really a byproduct of seeking out new sounds.

 

For me, I think of the augmented guitar as either a guitar or a sound-making interface to more-or-less degrees depending on the context or even the mood I’m in. When I was first using it, I was so fascinated with the sensors that I would usually just use the guitar as a drone and played more with the effects, but lately I’ve started to incorporate more guitaristic playing. It really varies.

 

 Have you modified the electronics of the guitar itself? Or have you added controllers/sensors to the guitar? Both? Describe these modifications.

 

I’ve just added controllers/sensors to the body of the guitar. The first prototype I build had a couple of buttons, knobs, a switch, a force-sensing resistor (FSR) for pressure, and an accelerometer for tilt. I could map these onto the processing parameters however I wanted, and I could also change those mappings on the fly. I’m working on a second version that will have a few more controllers/sensors, and these will be able to communicate wirelessly with the computer via XBee/arduino so that I’m not bogged down with additional cables, and so that the laptop can potentially sit off-stage.

 

At some point I do want to modify the actual circuitry of the guitar. I work a lot with lo-fi op-amp chips and it would be great to be able to switch into a hard-wired lo-fi guitar mode. I’d also like to wire up the frets and strings so that my body’s capacitance can alter the sound, like a kind of circuit-bent guitar.

 

 Describe the work that you have done as a performer on augmented guitar.

 

I’ve used it mainly in improvisation, either in my improv duo MUGBAIT, solo, or ad-hoc performances with other improvisers.

 

Have you composed any music specifically for augmented guitar, either solo pieces or as part of an ensemble? If so, how would you categorize this work? Improvisation? Ambient? Noise?  All of the above? Other?

 

I haven’t yet composed anything specifically for augmented guitar; like I mentioned earlier, it’s been mainly for free improvisation in both solo and group settings. But, I’m currently working on integrating the augmented guitar as part of my doctoral thesis, where I’ll compose three structured improvisations that will act as transitional interludes between the larger movements for acoustic instruments.

 

Is the way that you’ve set up your augmented guitar suited only to an experimental approach, or do you see it as compatible with a variety of  situations (pop, jazz, metal, classical, avante-garde, etc.)?

 

I’ve used it primarily for an experimental approach since it lends itself to that kind of playing. Because you can control things simultaneously, you sometimes get weird intersections between effects that you wouldn’t have found otherwise, and it becomes a launching point for exploring odd sounds, especially in free improvisation. That being said, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be used in other musical situations since it’s really just a system for controlling sound, and you can map that control to whatever you want. It’s not a surprise that Moldover (one of the better known augmented guitar guys) is using it mainly for pop music, or why the commercial augmented guitar product “Guitar Wing” is being marketed to all kinds of genres (check out http://createdigitalmusic.com/2014/02/augmented-guitar-final-hours-crowd-funding-watch-guitar-wing-can/ to see what I’m talking about).

 

The only potential problem with incorporating it into established genres is that it has a certain aesthetic that doesn’t always fit the mold, and that can be met with different reactions. It’s not as big of a deal in experimental genres since people tend to be more open, but in certain contexts you might not get called back to play again. That’s not to say you shouldn’t do it, depending on how bad you need the paycheque.

 

 Do you think that the electric guitar is better suited to augmentation than other instruments? If so, why?

 

There are some practical aspects that make it marginally easier to augment than other instruments. Certainly, having the pick ups built in makes for less of a hassle. It’s also relatively easy to integrate the sensors and electronics into the body of the guitar, and being able to find a decent instrument for relatively cheap makes for less qualms about drilling into it. Beyond the practical aspects, there’s also a rich history of experimentation and tinkering with the electric guitar that’s more publically visible than other instruments, which makes it seem somehow more “normal.” All that said, I don’t necessarily think that it’s useful to say whether the electric guitar is better suited for augmentations, since there have been many other fascinating projects that don’t use the guitar. I think we can learn things from people who have augmented instruments other than our own, and we don’t really stand to gain anything by having overly detailed conversations about which instrument is better suited for augmenting.

 

 Do you think that the idea of an augmented guitar brings the guitar closer to being a type of sound sculpture? In other words, does the idea of the guitar become more abstract, less tied to its conventional performance modes? This is related to the comment above about the guitar as sound-producing interface.

 

I think it depends to what extent you’re trying to subvert the electric guitar’s strong cultural associations. There are so many different forces at play when it comes to those associations that I don’t think augmentation alone is enough to completely abstract the guitar, though they can help. Ultimately I think the degree to which the guitar is abstracted relies more on the approach of whoever’s playing it, and how they treat things like performance context, playing technique, the types of sounds they’re creating, and all of the idioms therein. In general I see tabletop guitar as being a more abstract form of the guitar, since by laying the guitar flat they’re completely subverting how you’re supposed to even hold a guitar, which is pretty fundamental, not to mention conventional playing techniques and sound.  Augmentations definitely have the potential to abstract the guitar, especially in terms of sound; the types of processing you’re able to get are sometimes so far away from the typical electric guitar sound that those associations becomes blurred. On the other hand, you have artists like Moldover, who has a very sophisticated augmented guitar and interesting effects, but still plays idiomatically in a lot of ways, and so I think the use of augmentations is perceived as a kind of extended virtuosity that doesn’t affect the fundamental essence or “guitarness” of his instrument. For me it really depends on the goals, approach, and perceived intent of the performer that dictates how abstract the guitar is, and it varies from performer to performer.

 

 

 

Super Simple Fretboard

 

This is kind of useful. Displays note names in a particular key, or the intervallic relationship of each note on the neck to the tonic note.

Super Simple Fretboard – StumbleUpon.