Dayton Osland
From:
Lake Havasu City, AZ
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Posted 5 May 2002 3:19 pm |
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Another member or the forum e-mailed me for an explanation of pockes, in response to my previous posting "C Blues - 4 pockets/tabs".
To me, a pocket is place on the neck where most of the strings can be used to solo in a given key. Some people might want to define a pocket as two or more frets close to each other with a lot of notes that fit the key. Also, if you can find a fret or two that has most of the notes you'll want to use, you can minimize bar movement. To me, bar movement provides an excellent opportunity to play out of tune. I'd rather keep the bar in one place for a faster passage and glide it out for a slower more expressive passage.
In thinking about it, I don't think my post really described any pockets directly. However they are there.
I also didn't really explain that each 12 bars is a complete verse of a 12 bar blues, following a very standard chord progression. This particular riff is played on the C mixalodian scale (ie. with Bb played instead of B).
Anyway, in example 1 most of the song (except the last measure) is played on all fret 13 (could be played on 1 as well). The only strings not used in the example are 9 and 1, but they could be used in a different riff. String 1 is a G note and string 9 is a D# or Eb, the minor third in the C scale - a wonderful note to use in a blues song.
Example 2, is played using three different frets. However, if we were to play the 4th fret up on the sixteenth fret (up one octave), we could use these positions together with the fret 13 notes. Now we have frets 16,13,11 and 9 all with lots of notes usefull in a C Blues song.
Example 3, is played on fret 6, using B on all the time and C rocked in and out. All the strings except 2 and 9 are use here.
Example 4, is played on fret 11, this time all three seventh chords are played on the same fret.
If we look at all four examples, we see that frets 1,4,6,9,11,13,16 all have lots of notes available for a C blues song. The close frets are 4 and 6 and 9,11 and 13. To me those are pockets for playing a C blues song.
The really nice thing about steel is that to change this to D we move up 2 frets and the pattern stays the same.
I hope this helps.
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Dayton Osland
Shobud S10 |
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