Comments, &c. by ana (4.00 / 2) #2 Wed Sep 06, 2006 at 04:26:30 PM EST
OK, the strings (unfretted) are, from the bottom (lowest notes; actually higher off the floor the way most people hold a guitar) are E, A, D, G, B, E. So you've created a G chord and you want to augment it (sharp the 5th, right?), figure out which string is sounding D (it's the unfretted D string), and then figure out how to get a finger to the first fret on that string. Simple? As simple as it was learning to do what you do on a keyboard, I'm thinking. Some of it is rather acrobatic, but hey.

Specific voicings of chords may or may not be reachable, given the length of your fingers. Sorry about that. Do feel free to leave a string unplucked if it violates your sense of proper voicing. Finger-picking or flat-picking lets you do stuff like that, while (of course) simple strumming does not.

Re: left-handers... I've never understood why they make right handers fret with their left hands; there's in general more dexterity required there than on the plucking hand, at least at the level I've reached. So you have the advantage.

Hm. Must remember to take my guitar to the shop soon.

Regular, or decaf abomination? --Kellnerin


oh, and... by ana (4.00 / 1) #4 Wed Sep 06, 2006 at 04:31:00 PM EST
finger numbers, of course, omit the thumb, which is (all but) useless in fretting stuff. It can be made to sneak around the other side of the neck...

Regular, or decaf abomination? --Kellnerin
[ Parent ]

Well yes by komet (4.00 / 1) #7 Wed Sep 06, 2006 at 04:40:16 PM EST
Of course that's what I end up doing, or more usually I don't bother. I think I just don't have a good mental model of the instrument yet. I wonder if I'll ever gain one.

Yes, I suspected I may have the advantage, too, but there must be some reason why the instrument got to be standardised this way. The lute was already that way, and I assume the majority of people were right handed in the Middle Ages too, so what's up?

--
<ni> komet: You are functionally illiterate as regards trashy erotica.
[ Parent ]

well that's where you're wrong by lm (4.00 / 1) #10 Wed Sep 06, 2006 at 04:45:25 PM EST
``there must be some reason why the instrument got to be standardised this way''

If you're including rationality as part of reason, no there musn't be some reason. It may have been accidental and it just so happened that everyone copied the accident.


There is no more degenerate kind of state than that in which the richest are supposed to be the best.
Cicero, The Republic
[ Parent ]

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