Unique Chord Voicings will be launched to only Site Members on May 18, 2020!
In the early eighties, after 3 or 4 years of messing with various altered tunings, I came to the conclusion that my approach was counterproductive because it negated the years of study and work I had done to understand the instrument and master the neck. Change the tuning and I was back to hunt-and-peck; learning by trial-and-error. I knew by experience that that was a very deficient way to learn.
So...I decided to analyze what it was about these tunings that made them sound the way they did and then figure out how to get the same types of sounds in standard tuning. I came up with three characteristics that produced what I was looking for:
One or two drone notes occurring on top of the progression, usually open strings.
Close intervals (2nds or minor 2nds) in the middle of the chord. When played alone these intervals are very dissonant but when placed in the context of the chord they become beautiful. Many times the dissonant interval is an inverted 9th. One note of these close intervals is frequently an open string. If not, a big stretch in fret-hand fingering is required.
Liberal use of inversions to create smooth bass lines. The bass line often "walks" like in jazz.
The types of chords that I came up with that exhibit some or all of these characteristics I call "Unique Voicings" because they usually involve open strings and so cannot be transposed. The context for the term is very guitaristic. They are available in only one position on a single root - thus the term "Unique."
In 1999 I published a book containing my findings, Unique Chord Voicings. In the forward I said,
It is by no means complete. In general, each page deals with a concept that is given in seminal form and the reader is directed to pursue that concept for themselves. I did not have the time or motivation to clearly define every possible application for each concept.
In April of 2017 I began revisiting Unique Chord Voicings as part of the Master Guitar School monthly newsletter. I realized pretty quickly that I have reams more material now than what's in the book - I had been organically doing (mostly on the gig) what I had suggested my readers do; pursue the concepts for themselves. The book became a bare-bones outline and the monthly newsletter became the vehicle for defining and organizing all the material I have come up with since I wrote the book over 20 years ago.
I have created a PDF download of all the Unique Voicings lessons from the monthly newsletters. The PDF contains:
32 lessons
155 pages
1,303 Fretboard diagrams
35 video links
The videos have embedded dynamic fretboard diagrams - that's in addition to the diagrams in the PDF. Here's a short clip to illustrate what I mean by, "embedded dynamic fretboard diagrams."
Here is what the PDF looks like:
It has taken almost 3 years to codify the material contained in the PDF I am getting ready to offer you and I am very excited about it; as far as I know there is nothing else like it!
Interested?
Sign up to be a MasterGuitarSchool.com site member and you will get the notification with the link to access this new lesson series from Master Guitar School on May 18. Sign-up is FREE!
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