How Many Tones Tones You Need To Know??

Lawrence Sullivan · From: Granite City, Illinois, USA

I was looking at my single neck steel, with ten strings tuned E9, with 20 plus frets, three pedals, five knee levers, how many tones will need to be remembered to be a proficient player???

With six numbers in the lottery they say the combinations possible run into the millions, how many do we have???

Respectfully

Larry

chas smith R.I.P. · From: Encino, CA, USA

Depends on how proficient you want to be. Ideally you would want to know where every note is with pedals and knees for at least the first 12 frets ( it starts over again at the 13th fret, or the 12th if you count the open strings).

When I have to read single lines, usually they aren't very complicated and don't have a lot of accidentals, so I've memorized the C scale notes around the 8th fret on the E9 neck and at the 7th and 12th frets on C6. That way when there's a sharp or a flat, it's either up or down a fret.

Easier to remember than the tones are the patterns of pedal and knee lever combinations around the frets of the key that you're in. That way you don't have to know specifically what notes you are playing, but that what ever they are, they'll fit in and you sound like you know what you're doing. And the beauty of this is, when the next tune is in a different key, you can just shift the patterns up to those frets, mix them up a bit and you sound like you know what you're doing again. Later you can learn what the notes are if you need to.

So you first need to know what the main key of each fret is, like (on E9) the 3rd fret is G, with no pedals or with pedals down, it's C, and so forth.

In the long run, if you are really going to do this, you need to make the effort to learn as much as you can. It's a bit of work, but once you know it, you probably won't forget it.

Bengt Erlandsen · From: Brekstad, NORWAY

There are only 12 notes to remember.
The alphabet has more than twice the number of different letters but we don't use all possible combinations to form a sentence. We need to know the language. Letters can be used to express Norwegian/english/spanish/german/italian language and so on.
Just as the 12 musical notes can be combined to form country/jazz/blues/classical and so on.
The grammatics of music means combining two notes to form an interval. Interval are halfstep, wholestep, minor3rd, 3rd and so on. Intervals are combined to make longer words chords. Most chords are built by stacking a combination of minor3rds & major3rds.
A major chord would be a combination of two intervals.
Maj3rd+min3rd=Major chord
Min3rd+Major3rd=minor chord
min3rd+min3rd=diminished chord
Maj3rd+Maj3rd=Augmented chord.

Just because there are 24frets and 10 strings which means 240 different positions to choose from, not to mention what happens when you start using pedals and levers, there is no need to confuse oneself more than necessary, so start lerning the 12 different notes and how to combine them. A whole lot easier than learning the alphabet and how to use that.

Bengt Erlandsen

[This message was edited by Bengt Erlandsen on 15 January 2004 at 12:58 AM.]

Eric West · From: Portland, Oregon, USA, R.I.P.

On each 10 string neck, 10x9x8x7x6 etc =352,880 combinations of one or more strings in the open position.

That times 8 for four standard knee levers in any combination would be 146,313,216,000. All in the open position.

Times 12 frets, you'd have. 70,084,264,565,145,600,000.

Then, times that by 3x2 for three pedals and you'll have 425,055,873,908,736,000,000.

That doesn't count the stuff up in 'Hughey Land', or account for "bent notes" or imperfect bar slants. My Windows Calculator doesn't go up that far.

In short, I wouldn't worry too much about it, I'd just Dive In.

If nothing else, you'll never run out of
new things to try.

Just play what you feel like playing, and sooner or later, you'll hit all of them.

The average bar band or crowd can be handled by about 2 or three hundred of them. Those usually come to a person in a couple months.

"The Muse" usually takes care of most of the "details". That's one of her jobs. Just watch out for her "demands"..

Enjoy.

EJL

[This message was edited by Eric West on 15 January 2004 at 01:51 AM.]

Dave Van Allen · From: Souderton, PA , US , Earth

quote:
"The Muse" usually takes care of most of the "details". That's one of her jobs. Just watch out for her "demands"..

David L. Donald · From: Koh Samui Island, Thailand

Ideally you should be able to play a C maj (w 6 + 7)and C minor scale (w 6+7) with all your combinations of pedals.
Open, A-B, A-F lever Eb lever, Eb lever with B etc.

If you can do that, then all others scales and notes in between will make sense by transposing them.

And it is also useful to have the relative minor or relative major scales for the same sets of chords created by your copedent.
IMHO.
So, who said it was gonna be easy!

Tony Prior · From: Charlotte NC

I think David makes fine sense here..

For me, from my 6 string education ,I have always prescribed to learning everything in at least 3 positions on the neck being chords , licks, etc...

Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't, sometimes it doesn't even make sense to do that..but the process of doing it opens up what can be done, as David stated..IN Between the positions . Everything opens up.

This in actuality is playing out of different scale positions. I personally don't think of it as scale positions but rather "Home Positions" or my favorite pockets but can identify which scales I am playing out of..

It doesn't matter what Instrument you are playing on..just apply as much as you can within reason..but don't try to apply so much so fast that you can't have fun playing.

A good friend commented to me one day that I had a good command of the guitar neck..I quickly replied...not true.. I just play the exact same thing up here that I play down here...and over here..

It all comes with seat time..

good luck

t

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[This message was edited by Tony Prior on 15 January 2004 at 05:44 AM.]

[This message was edited by Tony Prior on 15 January 2004 at 05:48 AM.]

Bengt Erlandsen · From: Brekstad, NORWAY

Good rules IMO
1 learn the scale on 1 string
2 learn the scale across the strings
3 learn what the pedals/levers do to each string and which strings they dont do anything to.
4 learn how to harmonize the scale as intervals.
5 Learn how to harmonize the scale as chords w 3 notes and chords w 4 notes.
6 Play the guitar as much as possible.
7 Don't forget to have fun.

If you know step 1 & 2 then after learning step 3 using pedals/levers will be intuitive and easy.

Step 4 & 5 connects all positions between chords and scales together.

Step 6 & 7 is what will take you to a higher level.

Bengt Erlandsen

[This message was edited by Bengt Erlandsen on 15 January 2004 at 06:18 AM.]

Lawrence Sullivan · From: Granite City, Illinois, USA

Thanks for all the replies fellows and all the good information

I read this great forum every day and it is a big help, lots of things are way beyond my level but as I learn, then I an able to understand more

Eric thanks for taking time to make the calculations I showed the numbers to the wife and she assures me I have plenty of space left for all this, Reckon she was trying to tell me something???

Have a great day and many thanks to all

Respectfully Larry

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