Guitar Enthusiasts

Joe Maphis was also a reasonable guy, with a good perspective on the flash.

I'm a sound guy, myself - virtuosity is almost a handicap, in that it draws the player's focus away as well as the audience's.

Fahey was technically the least accomplished, most awkward, professional musician I've ever seen play anything - nobody played better music.

This is the guy I use now as the standard for talking about a guitar player's sound - it's warmer and deeper live, the recording cuts some bass and definition both:
(title refers to Michael Hedges, iirc)
And how it works with a song:

Every player has one of these - C to G with the occasional F:
Here's Doc going C to G https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YS9oRdOfGDI
And Fahey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWlA8J_JEuY Notice that the picks have gone away - he can't find them either. Embarrassing as it is to admit, after seeing him play live (a mess of a concert, late in his alcoholic fogtime) I took up wearing my watch like that when playing on stage.
 
Just downloaded the LOST John Fahey Zabriskie Point tapes.

The story (as told by Fahey to Byron Coley--also a jerk, incidentally):

“Antonioni says, ‘What I want you to do is to compose some music that will go along with the porno scene.’ I kept saying, ‘Yes, sir.’ Then he starts this, ‘Now, John. This is young love. Young love.’ I mean, that’s young love? All these bodies? ‘Young love. But John, it’s in the desert, where’s there’s death. But it’s young love.’ He kept going, ‘Young Love/Death’ faster and faster. I was sure I was talking to a madman. I’m still sure I was.

“So I experimented. I had instrumentalists come in and told them just to play whatever they felt like. They had to pretend to understand what I was talking about, especially if Antonioni came in the room. That was fun. They were very cooperative. I came up with some sections of music that sounded more like death than young love. It was actually pretty ominous. I played it for Michelangelo and he thought it was great. So he took me out to dinner at this really fancy restaurant and started telling me how horrible the United States was. We were drinking a lot of wine and I don’t remember which one of us started cussing. It started real fast and ended in a fistfight. You have no idea how much that guy hates the United States. What a jerk.”


Anyways, Jerry Garcia ended up doing that bit. Zabriskie may have been a prick, but he certainly inspired others to greatness, as evidenced also by the complete Pink Floyd Zabriskie tapes. The Fahey tapes are (so far--I've only listened to about three minutes) pretty awesome and of more than adequate quality. Will provide a link to the blog for any interested. The links to the recordings are Dropbox, hence safe.


Edit: Don't know what I was thinking. The recording is not licensed in any way, so I'm not encouraging illicit activity by providing the link--so here goes:


http://delta-slider.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-zabriskie-point-tapes.html
 
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Frank Marino

Frank is a legend amoungst guitar enthusiasts .

Well.. listen to his albums ; you'll know what I mean .

From the abstract to jazz .

He does it all extremely well .
 
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iceaura said:
Joe Maphis was also a reasonable guy, with a good perspective on the flash.
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I remember Joe Maphis. I still have his 1950's vinyl album "King of Strings." He plays almost every stringed instrument.

Last Sunday we went to the Renaissance Faire and saw a Middle Eastern band. The lead singer, who is also the leader, composer, arranger, belly dancer and sword dancer, also plays the hurdy-gurdy.
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
I remember Joe Maphis. I still have his 1950's vinyl album "King of Strings." He plays almost every stringed instrument.

Last Sunday we went to the Renaissance Faire and saw a Middle Eastern band. The lead singer, who is also the leader, composer, arranger, belly dancer and sword dancer, also plays the hurdy-gurdy.
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Interesting ; curious

What kind of music is this and Can you still get any album by him ?
 
Bowser are you still playing guitar? You mentioned something earlier in the thread about barre chords and your fingers not being flat (or the right shape).

You just need to turn your finger so that the bone goes across the frets.
 
river said:
Interesting ; curious. What kind of music is this and Can you still get any album by him [Joe Maphis]?
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His genre was country & western. Like many of the younger country artists of that era, he dabbled in rock and roll, or at least what came to be called "rockabilly" -- always a twelve-beat, never an eight-beat, often with solos from the other band members on their traditional instruments: usually pedal steel guitar, fiddle, piano and mandolin, and occasionally the dobro. The banjo never quite fit into rock music. ;)

As for finding a Joe Maphis album today, start with Amazon.com, then look at other online retailers. Since Maphis was considered one of the stars of the country and western community, I'd be surprised if there weren't at least one compilation of his work on CD.

You might also check YouTube. Music lovers upload their own favorite tunes every day!
 
Seattle said:
You just need to turn your finger so that the bone goes across the frets.
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There are people - and guitars - for whom that doesn't quite work.

I'm one of them - my first phalanges and knuckle bones are significantly wider, as well as thicker, so rolling doesn't solve it - doesn't quite nail a full barre on the neck I play. I don't barre much anyway - not a consequence, a style factor - so it's not much of a handicap.

This is less of a factor on skinny-necked wimp-stringed electric "guitars", of course.
 
Bowser said:
spidergoat said:
No. I play clawhammer banjo.
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I had to look that up. Interesting. How long have you been playing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clawhammer
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It's at least possible to adapt a semblance of that "bum-ditty" rhythm of clawhammer banjo to guitar. In a somewhat different way than Maybelle Carter tried to do by preserving the strum. I choose to go purely with fingerpicking individual notes to express the rhythmic pattern. I avoided venturing into this the first time around because I wasn't sure this kind of scant account would be of much use. But maybe you can fill in the blanks. There are no thumb-picks and fingerpicks used here, but that's still an obvious option (on the guitar, anyway).

Pick a downward melody note on the upper bass strings (6th to 3rd) -- that quarter note duration. Then replace the second beat strum and what would be the thumb sounding the 5th string of a banjo with a series of two eighth notes on the 1st and 2nd (treble) strings in that rapid order, with upward picks of the fingers rather than downward motions.

There's a lot of other rhythmic variations you can blend in there too that will still mesh well with a return to the old "bum-ditty bum-ditty" standard. They can be used to accommodate more complicated intervals of the melody.

While you can use your thumb, I actually pick downward with the back of my index finger on the melody notes (with my thumb placed on the other side to give it more push and stability). If there's a rapid series of melody notes I just alternate my forefinger up and down like it's a flat-pick (the treble-strings rhythm disappearing for those intermittent passages isn't going to ruin anything).

You can also pluck a melody note and a note of the treble string rhythmic pattern together at the same time when a hammer-on or pull-off is inconvenient (though it takes some practice when you replace the forefinger with the thumb as I do; just use the thumb and it's far less difficult).

I simply like the tonal texture that the back of the nail delivers when using the index finger for downstrokes as opposed to that of the typical thumb nail / flesh combo.
 
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C C said:
It's at least possible to adapt a semblance of that "bum-ditty" rhythm of clawhammer banjo to guitar. In a somewhat different way than Maybelle Carter tried to do by preserving the strum. I choose to go purely with fingerpicking individual notes to express the rhythmic pattern. I avoided venturing into this the first time around because I wasn't sure this kind of scant account would be of much use. But maybe you can fill in the blanks. There are no thumb-picks and fingerpicks used here, but that's still an obvious option (on the guitar, anyway).

Pick a downward melody note on the upper bass strings (6th to 3rd) -- that quarter note duration. Then replace the second beat strum and what would be the thumb sounding the 5th string of a banjo with a series of two eighth notes on the 1st and 2nd (treble) strings in that rapid order, with upward picks of the fingers rather than downward motions.

There's a lot of other rhythmic variations you can blend in there too that will still mesh well with a return to the old "bum-ditty bum-ditty" standard. They can be used to accommodate more complicated intervals of the melody.

While you can use your thumb, I actually pick downward with the back of my index finger on the melody notes (with my thumb placed on the other side to give it more push and stability). If there's a rapid series of melody notes I just alternate my forefinger up and down like it's a flat-pick (the treble-strings rhythm disappearing for those intermittent passages isn't going to ruin anything).

You can also pluck a melody note and a note of the treble string rhythmic pattern together at the same time when a hammer-on or pull-off is inconvenient (though it takes some practice when you replace the forefinger with the thumb as I do; just use the thumb and it's far less difficult).

I simply like the tonal texture that the back of the nail delivers when using the index finger for downstrokes as opposed to that of the typical thumb nail / flesh combo.
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Thanks
 
C C said:
It's at least possible to adapt a semblance of that "bum-ditty" rhythm of clawhammer banjo to guitar. In a somewhat different way than Maybelle Carter tried to do by preserving the strum. I choose to go purely with fingerpicking individual notes to express the rhythmic pattern. I avoided venturing into this the first time around because I wasn't sure this kind of scant account would be of much use. But maybe you can fill in the blanks. There are no thumb-picks and fingerpicks used here, but that's still an obvious option (on the guitar, anyway).

Pick a downward melody note on the upper bass strings (6th to 3rd) -- that quarter note duration. Then replace the second beat strum and what would be the thumb sounding the 5th string of a banjo with a series of two eighth notes on the 1st and 2nd (treble) strings in that rapid order, with upward picks of the fingers rather than downward motions.

There's a lot of other rhythmic variations you can blend in there too that will still mesh well with a return to the old "bum-ditty bum-ditty" standard. They can be used to accommodate more complicated intervals of the melody.

While you can use your thumb, I actually pick downward with the back of my index finger on the melody notes (with my thumb placed on the other side to give it more push and stability). If there's a rapid series of melody notes I just alternate my forefinger up and down like it's a flat-pick (the treble-strings rhythm disappearing for those intermittent passages isn't going to ruin anything).

You can also pluck a melody note and a note of the treble string rhythmic pattern together at the same time when a hammer-on or pull-off is inconvenient (though it takes some practice when you replace the forefinger with the thumb as I do; just use the thumb and it's far less difficult).

I simply like the tonal texture that the back of the nail delivers when using the index finger for downstrokes as opposed to that of the typical thumb nail / flesh combo.
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Or just string the 6th string up where the first one goes, then move them all over one. That's how I learned clawhammer before I got a banjo. And you get an extra bass string out of it!
 
spidergoat said:
Or just string the 6th string up where the first one goes, then move them all over one. That's how I learned clawhammer before I got a banjo. And you get an extra bass string out of it!
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I've heard of different, interesting ways in which players try to make a guitar amenable to a more legitimate clawhammer style than what I've been experimenting with. Really mine doesn't even qualify since I'm only trying to mimic that "bum-ditty" rhythmic pattern to back-up the melody, rather than using the clawhammer techniques.
 
iceaura said:
There's an eyewitness account of Hendrix, handed a righthanded strung guitar, playing it both left and righthanded - well.
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The story I've heard is that Jimi's father believed left handedness was a sign of the devil. Therefore Jimi learned to play right handed when his father was around. The result is that he wound up being able to play a left or right handed instrument, left or right handed.
 
I play a bit with a few of the young aboriginal men in my area, well its been a while, and they simply turn the guitar around and dont restring so the strings are upside down.
We just jam but if you want to work out something you can only go by ear cause it is totally confusing if you try and work out the fingering.
Alex
 
I have taken to playing a three string fretless cigar box guitar.
I enjoy it because it is a chalenge.
I have just finished a three string I made using a small guitar not muchbigger than a uke and added a plank a little long scale it sounds rather good.
I have a gibson lucile style I think its called, a chuck berry without f holes is my description and a solid top seagull acoustic which is as fine a guitar I have ever played.
It was second hand, I played it and thought it was better than the new Matons I had been trying out so I decided to buy it.
I took it to the desk and the sales clerk said the guy that owned it bought it in Canada and travelled North and South America with it.. I did not care I thought he was telling me a story to greese the sale.
Funny some time later I heard something rattling around like a pick or string end so I shook the thing and got it out.. It was a 50 peco note from Columbia.. So the salesman was probably right.
I still have the bill.
Alex
 
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