And since it was a fact that the guitarists often experienced speaker failure when using their amps, he convinced the Lansing company into making tougher speakers. For without tough speakers, the amp wouldn’t be very trustworthyh.

Though famous as the developer of electric guitars, still recorded in studios around the world, Fender’s eternal quest was electronics. As you may be surprised to discover, though he once played piano and saxophone, he couldn’t play a note on a guitar.

Following World War II, the small band did better in the changing economy. The part of an orchestra called the rhythm section (drums, guitar, and bass) was suddenly the entire band. With increasing competion from radio following the electrical grid extending to farms after 1940, and with the diminishing of the large and extravagant night spots in favor of the smaller roadhouses while the expanding paved highway system reached out, the economics of the small band were obvious.

And how could the guitarist be heard in the noisy roadhouse environment than to simply use a Fender amplifier?

The time was ripe for the guitar and the amplifier, with the right sound, plus the amps held up on the road. He made guitars, and basses and the key to their popularity was probably — Fender’s guitar amps.

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Traktor Topaz does most web-design and online articles for Mobius Megatar Touchstyle Basses, and for other online music sites.

For anyone interested in how the electric guitar evolved, he has written an online article about Leo Fender’s Guitar Amps, and another article with more extensive history and shopping information, with more details about the Fender Guitar Amplifier.

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I once had an instructor who referred to Smoke on the Water as “modal jazz with bad voice leading”. Taking this with a grain of salt (as it was the same guy who told me to “quit playin’ them a**hole notes”), he was onto something. Voice leading is a big part of what makes different genres sound the way they do. Whether you listen to Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Alex Lifeson, or Willie Nelson, learning how to connect the harmonic structure of a song will improve your sound and give you greater control of your instrument.

As a concept, voice leading deals with how notes flow from one chord to the next. For the touch guitarist, learning the basic voice leading techniques, and the particular voice leading style of your favorite genres or artists will give your playing greater economy of motion and a more connected sound. To achieve a smoother sound, find chord voicings that have as many notes that are the same, or within a small interval (minor 3rd or less), as the previous chord.

Let’s start with a basic blues in C to see how voice leading works. In Example 1a, you can see the first 2 chords of a C blues, C7 and F7 played without consideration given to voice leading. This example shows the equivalent of playing the C7, and them moving your hand up a string (if you’re in a fourths-based tuning). Each note in the C7 chord moved up 5 half-steps (a fourth) to make the corresponding chords in the F7. The 3rd of C (E) moves to the 3rdof F (A). The flat 7th of C (Bb) moves to the flat 7th of F (Eb). It gets the job done, but sounds a little disconnected. This type of motion between chords, where every note moves by the same interval, is a voice leading technique called parallel motion. It may not sound very smooth or sophisticated, but it is very muscular and powerful. This is the type of voice leading used in the aforementioned Smoke on the Water riff, and everywhere else guitars are chugging through power chords.

Example 1.a : First two bars of a blues without voice leading

Now we’re going to take those same two chords and apply some basic voice leading concepts to smooth out the sound. When playing 7th chords that move in fourths, as is the case with C7 to F7, the 7th of the first chord can move to the 3rd of the second chord, and the 3rd of the first chord will move to the 7thof the next chord. In Example 1.b, the 3rd of C (E) moves down 1 half-step to the flat 7th of F (Eb). The flat 7th of C (Bb) moves down 1 half-step to the 3rdof F (A). Note the difference in sound between the two examples. In both of these examples, the movement of the root of the chord didn’t change. That’s OK for basic voice leading.

Example 1.b : First two bars of a blues with voice leading

Next we’re going to look at a chord progression where some of the notes don’t move at all. In Example 2a, the 3rds will lead to 7ths, and 7ths to 3rds, just like in the previous example. The difference in this example is that one note will not change between each set of chords. The 7th of the Dmin7 (C), resolves down 1 half-step to the 3rdof G7. Meanwhile, the F, which is the minor 3rd of D remains in place to become the flat 7thof the G7. As the chord transitions from G7 to the CMaj7, the B remains consistent and the F moves down a half-step to the E.

Example 2a: ii-V-I in C Major

This type of movement is not limited to 3rds and 7ths. The same concept can be applied to upper extensions like 9ths and 13ths. In Example 2b we add an E, which is the 9thin a Dmin9. That E will become the 13thof the G13. Then, the E moves down 2 half-steps to become the 9th of the CMaj9. Depending on your tuning, this example may be very tricky to play with just one hand. Try playing the 9th/13thas a melody note in your right hand while playing the rest of the chord in your left hand. Also, consider varying the octave individual parts, such as lowering the bass notes by an octave. Good luck and good tapping.

Example 2b: ii-V-I in C Major with a little extra flava

- Ben Rose (Phobucket)

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– Tappistry Site Staff

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Flamenco guitar is a fascinating world. The sound of the guitar is full. The rhythm is exciting and extremely accurate. How can we adapt the techniques of flamenco to our tapping instrument?

In order to explore this technique, I have decided to start the project, ‘Tala, guitarra & compas,” with guitarists Antonio Segura, Jesus Aunion and tabla player Sandip Banerjee.

All the students of the E-Tap seminar have met the great Antonio Segura, as he is the flamenco guitar teacher there. Another interesting guitar player is Jesus Aunion from Spain, who has also studied at the E-Tap Seminar in Belgium. Jesus taps on an ordinary 6-string electric guitar, but he uses many techniques which are also used in flamenco.

Open strings

The main thing with flamenco guitar is its great ‘open’ sound. The chords resonate mainly because the players almost always use an open string in their chords. For instance, suppose you choose to play the famous flamenco (close to Phrygian) scale in G. Play a chord of G on the standard classical. After that you will need a chord of Ab. A flamenco player will often just move the hand one fret higher. See the following table for the result.

In fact the Ab chord has retained the two open strings D and G of the G chord. Actually, this chord is now major 7th, augmented 4th., which you could write AbM7+4.
Of course the flamenco player does not play it with the intention of producing a complicated chord, but just because the open strings are there. This concludes the discussion of harmony.

On our tapping instruments, specially the ones with two regions, we have almost forgotten what ‘open strings’ mean. Therefore, the idea is to arpeggiate or divide one chord on both regions. Also we should try to use as many repeated notes on both sides. For instance to reproduce the AbM7+4 chord, we could play Ab2 G2 D3 with the LH, and C3 Eb3 Ab3 with the RH. So in this chord we can hear the C3, D3, Eb3, three notes close together which produce a kind of rich resonating ‘open’ sound.

Arpeggio or chord spread out between two hands

The idea is to play one chord, for instance G, by alternating fingers. For instance finger 1 LH, then 1 RH, 2 LH, 2 RH, and so on. Many players, like Wolfgang Daiss and myself have produced studies for developing this technique. Teed Rockwell, plays a tiptar with both regions practically at the same pitch in order to produce many doubled notes. Bob Culbertson has mastered these spread out arpeggios on both regions, in order to perform his Latin pieces.

Jesus Aunion uses this technique practically all the time. He has quite an idiomatic technique because he uses the classical electric guitar. There is a lot more tension in the strings. That means that he can retain advantages ( and of course disadvantages) of both worlds.

Golpe: Antonio ( we take him as the prototype of flamenco guitar) taps with the four fingers on the body. Jesus does it on the strings. Purely percussive without pitch.

Rasgueado: strumming a chord held by LH, with 4 fingers in succession. There are many varieties. This can not be done on a dedicated tiptar because the strings are too close to the board.

Slap: A technique developed initially on the bass guitar, but which is also used now on the guitar. On the tap-guitar it can also be used to some extent near the bridge.

Harmonics : Are used extensively, mostly the natural ones.

Hammer on: What the guitar players call ‘hammer on’ is in fact just the same as our tapping action. So we shall call it ‘tap’ for the facility.

Pull off comes after a hammer on. First hammer the string on the board, then leave the string with a “pluck off”. We prefer to call this action ‘cut’.

There are three types of tap – cut:

1 – tap and cut on finger 1: tap with finger 1 and hold it on the string. For example play an A. While holding 1, you can now tap with finger 3 and produce a B. Pull off or ‘cut’ the string, by plucking the string with finger 3, you hear now again an A, the one held by finger 1. In short we call this tap 1- tap 3- cut 3. A variant of this is: tap simultaneously with fingers 1 (on A) and 3 (on B), on the same string. You hear only the note B. Then cut, you hear A.
Of course you can perform these tap-cut actions with fingers 2 on 1, 3 on 1 or 4 on 1. You can also cut on finger 2. Notice that this action is usually performed with one hand, but it can be as well with two hands.

2 – tap and cut on an open string. tap with whatever finger you want and then cut on the open string. Suppose you choose string #2, the open B. You tap on fret 3, producing D, then cut on open B.

3 – tap and cut on harmonic. This is performed with two hands. Touch gently an harmonic (for instance at fret 7) with finger 1 or 2 of LH . With RH tap above this fret, for instance at fret 9, and cut on the harmonic.

During the preparation of ‘Tala, guitarra and compas’, Jesus, Antonio and myself have worked extensively together in order to produce written scores. I have personally arranged the compositions of Antonio Segura and Jesus Aunion for the two-region tiptar. These scores are available with clicmusic.be

The fact that we have worked also with tabla player Sandip Banerjee is not the real subject of this article but you will find more on the tala-compas subject on the clicmusic.be site.

Article written by Daniel Schell with the help of Jesus Aunion and Antonio Segura, November 2003

Daniel Schell, a well-known touchstyle guitarist, educator, and composer, is host of the annual E-tap seminar in Belgium (www.tapguitar.com/tapseminar.html).  Contact Info: www.clicmusic.be

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