Yep, on a guitar, for instance, it's easy to slide your chord fingering for a diminished 7th chord up or down the neck in three fret intervals. You get the same four notes no matter which position you are playing in, just in a different order.
The augmented chord does this also, only repeating its same 3 notes every 4 frets.
Works the same way on steel. Just maintain your grip and bar slant, and move these chords about. You only have to adjust your slant angle a little by ear and sight as you move higher up the neck into the narrower frets.
I love somethin' for nuthin'. Learn one chord, and get four or five free ones out of the deal. Slap that baby up and down the neck, and you look like you know what you're doing.
And John, once you get the diminished chords, arpeggios , scales and how and where to use them under your belt you also become a better clarinet player into the bargain. Steve
Stephen wrote: ''........you also become a better clarinet player into the bargain.''
No doubt I would.........and want to...............the problem is that I have 40 years of clarinet playing under my belt.....strictly non-legit style. That is, I play by feel.....or muscle memory....or whatever other terms may best describe a non-reading style.
I think that some of our SG correspondents, play in a similar fashion, but perhaps they rely on tabs rather than dots, however I don't think that tabs or dots are for me really.
I am slowly grasping the patterns for scales and melodies on the neck, but I couldn't necessarily name the notes I'm playing - the names of chords are slowly coming to me though.
Danny,
Not to be confusing, you meant to say a "Split Bar" where the tab would read from high to low 2,2,3. Saying a forward slant presumes something like 4, 3, 2.
No I meant (what I call) a forward slant. String 1 and 2 are on the second fret an string 4 is on the 1st fret. BTW, I'm a fan of yours for many years.
Not to belabor the point, but a forward slant or a reverse slant is always applied to notes on different frets wether they're 2 string slants or 3 or more string slants.
The very different and difficult split bar slant means that 2 high notes are on the same fret and a lower note is a fret or 2 lower than the high notes.
You said it correctly as far as what happens to the low note, it's just not called a forward slant.
Strings 1 and 2 are on one fret and string 4 is one fret below. It's probably the easiest (slant or whatever you want to call it) there is. The bar is slanting forward. When I'm playing the guitar, people see what looks like a forward slant. Not a reverse slant. My poor terminology is not meant to confuse people and I appreciate the correction, but I'm trying to help people instead of confuse them.
Well, I ain't no expert but I'm pretty sure that a slant that straddles 2 adjacent strings on one fret and a 3rd string on a fret lower or higher is called a split string slant to differentiate it from a forward or reverse slant. Jerry Byrd, Lorene Ruymar, Ray Montee, Mike Neer and Jimmy Roy, just to name a few, call them that. I, for one, am not about to argue with the any of those folks. My hat is off to you tho, Danny, for finding the split string slant easy. I fought with that darn thing for 2 years and I still mess it up sometimes.
I don't think so John, I use a 918 or a 920 both are good bars. I didn't have as much trouble with regular slants as I did [do] with the split string. One or the other strings on the top were out all the time. I was pressing too hard I think, and not using enough vibrato. I got some lessons from Jimmy Roy in Vancouver last Dec.,made a big difference in my education.
Yes Danny, vibrato is like a 5 gallon overhaul,covers up lots of stuff.
The way I read Ray's chord is a first inversion Fmin6. This may be because playing the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th string barred straight read as a first inversion of a F6. Then dropping the fifth string down into this split bar gives us the min6. I guess we would need the presence of a 5th or a flatted 5th to determine whether it would be a min6 or a dim6. Wow, this is fun!
One thing key to three string slants is knowing it's not enough to just place the bar across all three selected strings. The rounded tip of a bullet type bar must be the part that frets the two adjacent strings. The rounded tip acts much as if it were a steel marble supported between two strings. If placed correctly, this rounded tip will automatically get these two notes pretty close to in tune, no matter which way the other end is swung around.
When I first started attempting 3 string slants, both split and not, I was so busy concentrating on the angle, the correct fret marker, and right hand grip, that I would fail to pull my bar back so that I was using the proper part of the bar tip for the adjacent strings. It took quite a bit of practice before I began to feel comfortable with slants. Once you got'em, though, you got'em. They really aren't and harder than straight bar once you get used to them, and they open up a whole world of possibilities that I am still exploring.
Then there are all the discussions on the forum about how certain scale lengths, string spacing, bar diameter, and phases of the Moon, all factor into how easy it is to achieve ear pleasing slants.
It's a lot to grok, but worth the work.
