The Steel Guitar Forum

Over a lot of years here I've read most all of the Franklin replies and I have noticed a continuing interjection of music theory, so casually it goes unnoticed. If it were noticed no one would ask about the comment for a lot of good reasons, self preservation being one of then I'm sure.
This is not intended to be an indictment of Franlin, only an observation.
Let me give you an example: In a reply, Franklin out of the blue dropped in the the phrase "drop 2" nothing else regarding just wham! "drop 2s" to no comments or questions.
Several questions come to mind. Did we all know what he meant by "drop 2" ? Did Fanklin just invent the phrase or learn about it when one of his jazz buddies said use "drop 2" ?
Did Franklin ask about it or not and just fake it from then on? Did he get some books and study up on it?

I can't speak for Franklin but from just reading his replies I'd would say he read a few books and applied it to the PSG.

Those little golden nuggets run all through all his replies and they go seemingly unnoticed.
Drop 2 voicing's are just a start. Go back through Franklin threads and study all of them.

It was just pointed out to me that "Stuart you're an idiot" is the obvious choice" So lets assume that as a given and pick one of the other options please!

I would have thought you would have 150 Don't give a craps by now!
Should have started a poll asking if they would rather read one of your topics or come down with Covid-19.

I thought some one might just accidentally wonder about "Drop 2, 3, 4 etc. since I pointed out that it was something Franklin felt worthy of mentioning.

OK I ripped my 2nd string off my E9 and dropped it, now what?

(lol, Bo)

I’m sure Paul Franklin read, studied, listened, played, and was friends with some of the best musicians who ever lived. That is no doubt how he became one of them. And now here he is, graciously contributing to this forum as well as offering his own method of study. When someone of this stature uses a term like “drop 2”, I wouldn’t just nod my head, pretend I know what he’s talking about, and move on with the comment. I’d look it up and then try to play it.

I wasn't familiar with the term Drop 2. here's what I found:

Drop 2 chord voicings are formed by taking a chord and then dropping the next to the highest note, or voice, to the lowest note of the chord. Similarly, there are drop 1, drop 3, drop 2 & 4, etc. Drop 2 voicings are important because most of these chords are easy for a guitarist to play on 4 adjacent strings.

if I'm understanding correctly, the 2 refers not to the 2nd note of the scale (like a 2 chord) but rather to the 2nd note down from the top note of whatever chord is being played.

I found those last three posts worth reading.

The most obvious examples of drop 2 on pedal steel are the 3,5,8 and 4,6,9 grips on C6; and 3,5,8 and 4,6,10 on E9 (4,6,9 on universal)

also consider, Paul or whoever, probably 100's of us included, we studied early on and probably did not apply what we learned immediately, even though it was tucked away in the upper cavity. We started applying it after a while or as we performed over the years.


While obviously we play with theory in mind , but we may not be THINKING theory as we practice or play, we may be in the regular auto pilot rut.

The last few years or so I have gone theoretically backwards and now as I practice and play I am indeed viewing the theoretical system in front of me. Instead of playing in odd pockets I now play in simple pockets that make total sense ! Why didn't I think of this 30 years ago !


But Of course, nothing else I do makes any sense at all :

If you are interested in exploring chord voicings like drop 2, Monk voicings, So What quartal voicings, and many more check out the excellent theory videos on the "walk that bass" channel on youtube.

I have found drop 2 on E9 as a 4 note chord to be a nightmare. If you use the chart and leave out the Route note in each inversion it is very useful on E9.
The band should be covering the tonic!
This is only for the Cmaj7. I have notation for Dom7, Minor7, flat 5s, flat 9s etc.

Note that the Route and 5 and inverted are adjacent and the 3 and the 7 and inverted are always adjacent.


E9 neck view Cmaj7 drop 2 without route note. This is the positions I use for Maj7s I'm sure there are more!

Bo I like another only liked the posts of others before yours. So your drop 2 turned into drop the R off the face of the earth after you drop the 2. Is that really a drop 2 or a triad drop 1.
Surely you're not implying that guitar players get great sounding chords with drop 2 and E9 players just can't cut it?

I never heard of the term “drop 2 chord” until a few years ago when somebody mentioned that he liked the way I was using them (on guitar) when we were playing whatever song it was we were playing. To me they were just the inversions on different string sets.

I haven’t gone through the inversion learning process on pedal steel yet, so thank you for the charts, Bo. You and Stuart are a couple of the more interesting characters on the forum and I would never consider either of you an idiot, so you might as well just get rid of that choice in your poll.

Thank you Fred. Most folks on here are married to the steel guitar and they treat it like a wife but others of us like Stuart and I we just treat it like a date and just want to have fun. Married to it or dating it is loving it so we all have that in common.

my favorite chord progression
click here

Stuart Legg wrote:my favorite chord progression
click here

That is a beauty.

Bo, I am a bit confused by your drop 2 formulas. My understanding of drop 2 is that you take the second highest note in the chord and drop it to the root position.

Wouldn’t that make the formula

Root: 5 R 3 7
1st inversion: 7 3 5 R
2nd inversion R 5 7 3
3rd inversion 3 7 R 5

? Or am I misunderstanding something?

I believe Paul has said he has a strong background in classical piano.

Stuart, Paul just gave an interesting explanation of part of his background in music theory in another thread:
https://bb.steelguitarforum.com/viewtop ... 32#2938632

Let's say I drop 2 on a R 3 5 7 major 7 it is then a 5 R 3 7. I'm all done with drop 2 at that point unless I go to another chord or create some inversions of the chord then I can do a drop 2 on each of the inversions if I wish.
The notation shown is how it would look on a piano and the chart is of ascending inversions of the Major 7 chord. If you look at the chart in descending order you will notice each is a drop 2 of the previous. The inversions were formed by moving each note of up to the nearest chord note on the same string.
The R 5 or 5 R stay together and the 7 3 or 3 7 stay together so the inversion can be played on 4 adjacent strings on the the guitar. Lots of luck making it happen on the E9
The chart was supposed to be a more practical way to look at Drop 2 but I think I failed.

Disclaimer: Stuart and I create a lot of images and files we also download a great number of illustrations. Unfortunately we don't file by author so I have no way of knowing if I should give Stuart or myself or whomever credit. In other words we can't take credit for all this crap!

Bo, having played a Stage One like you do, I can sympathize with your assessment on finding M7th chord inversions. The 5-R-3-7 voicing on standard E9 3x4 starts and ends with open strings 10-8-6-2. Not a great grip!

On my Carter 12-string, I have the F#-G# raise which provides 2 other options for that voicing, as well as a lower voiced AB pedal one with the root on string 9.

Bill McCloskey wrote: Wouldn’t that make the formula

Root: 5 R 3 7
1st inversion: 7 3 5 R
2nd inversion R 5 7 3
3rd inversion 3 7 R 5

? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Yes I think so. In conventional music theory anyway, the inversion of a triad or seventh chord is determined solely by reference to the bass note, no matter how the upper tones are reshuffled. In an ensemble, the lowest note would typically be played by the cello, bass guitar, etc.

If the lowest note of the chord is the root, the chord is in root position. If it is the third of the chord, the chord is in the 1st inversion. If it is the fifth of a chord, it is in 2nd inversion. For a seventh chord, if the seventh is the lowest note, the chord is in the 3rd inversion.

This notion arises initially in the analysis of European music of the "common practice period," i.e., roughly, the music of the 17th through 19th centuries. How it might be applied to other kinds of music, like 20th century classical music, jazz, pop etc. might be more variable (non-standardized) depending on the context - I haven't much looked into that.

John,

Now I'm really confused. I was talking about doing the drop 2 of the standard inversions, which is what I thought Bo was talking about. for instance: https://www.guitarlessonworld.com/lesso ... -2-chords/

Bill McCloskey wrote: I was talking about doing the drop 2 of the standard inversions, . . . for instance: https://www.guitarlessonworld.com/lesso ... -2-chords/

No confusion on that, but whether or not mentioned in the article you linked, doing the "Drop 2" procedure changes the inversion of the chord by changing the lowest note, unless of course there is another instrument such as bass guitar that is supplying a lower bass note.

Wikipedia has it right, I think. Go to Inversion(music), which the second link shown on the "disambiguation page" linked below and see section 2.1 on chords. (For some reason the forum doesn't seem to let me link directly to the Inversion(music) page):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inversion

I hope this helps.