Left hand finger stretching exercise

Here's a simple stretching exercise that really helped me. Remember don't push your fingers too much, just enough to feel them stretch, never to the point of pain. If you do feel pain then stop and continue the next day. Better to rest one day than to have to stop all together for several weeks because you've torn ligaments and tendons, right?

A few rules to follow with this exercise:
1) Keep your fingers on the fret board at all times. Don't "pick up and put down" any fingers.
2) Keep your fingers as close to the frets as possible. It'll be hard to do when you go to move finger 2 (middle finger) because it'll want to drag finger 3 (ring) with it.
3) This is a stretching exercise so sound is not that important. Don't get hung up on fret noise or if one string doesn't sound 100%. Get the fingers on the fretboard and just do it.
4) As the exercise progresses down the fretboard the harder it'll get because the fret spacing is wider. Hang in there.
5) Good luck!

Guitar arrangements: How to do them (5)

Let's continue with our arrangement of All the things you are. I'm going to introduce a walking bass line at this point. I was debating whether to temporarily stop the arrangement lessons of this tune and do several on guitar walking bass or continue with the arrangement and at a later date do the walking bass lessons. I've opted to continue with the arrangement for the sake of continuity. So I'm going to write out the walking bass part and explain later how to construct one and how it works.

Again there are several ways of combining the three elements (bass/harmony/melody). I'll go from simple to complex.

This first version contains just bass and melody. It lends itself to speed since at any given moment you're only playing two strings or just one if the melody is resting or has a long note value as in the first bar of this tune. It can be used as a nice interlude, solo break, intro, use your imagination.



There is no actual harmony as you can see. It is implied by the relationship between the bass and the melody. Keep the melody sounding for the duration of its notes!

Some of the fingerings are real stretchers but are doable. Don't force your fingers if they won't stretch, you can end up hurting yourself. It might take some players a little longer to achieve this. That's OK, it took me quite some time. Here's a good video on how to do this. I'll write out in a post some of the excercises I've used (see the post above this one titled "Left hand finger stretching exercise").

A word on bass lines. Bass is one of the least understood and most important instrumnets in any group. Bass lines create smoothness and a firm foundation on which everyone else in the band builds their creation. If the bass lines are not working the whole band sounds like muck. So, it is very important to keep the bass sounding for the full length of its value. Avoid short bass notes (in this style) and keep the transition from one to the next as smooth and uniform as possible.

Listen to Tuck Andress, Martin Taylor, Joe Pass, etc..... they are masters at it and it gives the music so much movement.

Guitar arrangements: How to do them (4)

At this stage it's important to say that the melody is first and foremost. If you start to get so complex in the bass and/or harmony areas that the melody is now choppy, indistiguishable, weak, or any other thing that makes it not clear, then you need to back off on bass and/or harmony. Keep that melody strong, clear, full, make the notes last their full value, etc..... Remember: bass and piano accompany the melody player.

There's nothing worse than somebody saying "Nice, what tune was it?" and you say all proud "Autumn Leaves" and they respond, "Oh, it sounded like ............." Get the picture? Listen to the great solo jazz guitar players (Joe Pass for example) and that melody is ever present.

Guitar arrangements: How to do them (3)

Now that we have the bass giving us some movement we'll look at some ways whereby we can get the harmony to move and fill in some of the blank spaces that are not taken up by bass or melody. The example I'm going to show you here is used alot by Martin Taylor. It reminds me of a more classical approach in which you arpegiate instead of playing block style.



This is a little more complex and requires some studying of fingerings to get it to sound fluid and uniform so take your time. Often when I come across a hard passage I'll learn it just two notes at a time and repeat it over and over, then take the next note and add it in. Go slow, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Guitar arrangements: How to do them (2)

The arrangement up to now is starting to sound decent. Played as written however it sounds a little "classical". Not to put classical music or guitarrists down...maybe I should say it doesn't sound like jazz. Let's look at different ways to make this sound hipper. We'll work on the bass part first because bass players (good ones) add alot of movement and interest to any musical piece.

The most basic bass part, like the one that's in the previous arrangement, plays the root (or tonic note) on beat one of every new bar. A more interesting bass line would have the bassist playing on beats one and three of every bar. On beat one the bass would play the root and on beat three (for now) the note played will be the 5th of the chord being played at that moment. (The 5th of a chord is determined by counting up 5 notes from the root which is 1. So, for the first chord of our arrangement, which is Fm7, the root is "F", which is played on the fifth string. The 5th of "F" is "C". (F=1 [Root]; G=2; Ab=3; Bb=4; C=5; etc...). Now I'll show you how the 5th of each chord is played in the arrangement we've done so far.



Take care to hold each note and give it its full value. Notice that in some chords you're holding down notes while others are being played. Here is where you need to work on finger independance if you don't have that down yet.

Guitar arrangements: How to do them (1)

I've always liked solo guitar chord melody playing. It's like a puzzle that has several different pieces that fit to make the big picture and depending on what pieces you choose, your big picture will look a little different than if the same puzzle was done by another guitarrist.

I'm going to do a step by step arrangement of the jazz standard "All the things you are". I'll try to make it progressive, from beginner to advanced. Remember if you have questions send them to me. I might take some concepts for granted and assume that you know them and that's wrong.

I'm going to start with the first four bars (measures) of the tune. The way the tune appears in fake books is like this (click on the image to make it bigger):



Since guitar is a transposable instrument (like trumpets and saxes) if we played what is written above then it sounds too low, so the first thing we need to do when making an arrangement for guitar is transpose the melody up an octave. That gives us:



So far we don't have anything that resembles a chord melody, that's the next step. When doing chord melodies you must keep in mind the chord that's supposed to be sounding at the moment the melody is being played. Think of the guitar as being a bass (low end), piano (harmony), and sax (melody) players all in one. That's quite a challenge! So, we want the root (tonic) of the chord on the 5th or 6th string (because they sound the lowest), the melody on the 1st or 2nd string (they sound the highest and best bring out the melody) and the harmony somewhere in the middle. These are guidelines that can change depending on the arrangement or effect desired. Nothing in music is written in stone.
You will soon find out that there are several ways to harmonize bass, chords and melody. I'll do one, which is usually the one I use the most, but that doesn't mean it's the "best" or the "right" way. Farther on down the line I'll go into variations on harmonizations. Do whatever works and sounds best to you.



The above arrangement is made to be played with all 5 fingers of the right hand, in other words without a pick (plectrum). If you're using a pick, then the Bbm7 in the second bar can't be played completely, you'd have to leave out a string in the middle. Don't let this discourage you, experiment, the arrangement will still sound good!

What this blog is about

My name is Robert Ransley, I have a degree in music from the University of Miami. I started this blog so I could upload different lessons, excercises, arrangements and offer experience learned over the years in the hopes that it will help other guitarrists or musicians. So dig in, it's all free. If you have any questions, send them to me and I'll get back to you as soon as I'm able.

Over the years I've done many things inside the music field to make a living, playing, recording, music notation and copying, teaching, etc... Unless you're one of the lucky few who can make the big bucks in this business, it's a day to day struggle and the more you know and the more styles you can play the better you'll survive.

With the advent of internet, which has fascinated me, I have always tried to find ways to make some more money through the web. For a musician, internet is a shoein, it's almost custom made for us. Anything from downloading music, programs, videos, concerts, classes, myspace, youtube, and on and on. One of the places I found is the "conservatorio virtual", in Spain, where I teach improvisation and you get official credits for the courses offered there.