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 Confessions of a beginning Stickist… 
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
This is great guys, and exactly what I was hoping to stimulate with this thread. As a true non-musician, I often feel like a first grader attending a college math class here. Discussions on how you guys starteded out are incredibly valuable to me. They give me hope, new ideas of areas to explore, and help me avoid problems (if I listen :lol: )

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#6877 Rosewood, 12 String Grand, PASV-4, turquoise linear inlays and Pearl Gray tuners, tuned in Mirrored 4ths


Sun Dec 04, 2016 6:13 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
Whatever you do, if you're going to make adjustments to the bridge and nut screws and the intonation (which you will HAVE to do if you change string gauges, tuning, or string position), make very careful and detailed notes of all the changes you make, so that you can return to original settings and positions if needed.
I'm not sure that the bass relief will really allow you to swap sides between bass and melody; you might end up with some funky buzzing issues in the largest strings. I'd send Emmett an email on that one, if you haven't already.

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Sun Dec 04, 2016 6:41 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
ArmyDoc wrote:
This is great guys, and exactly what I was hoping to stimulate with this thread. As a true non-musician, I often feel like a first grader attending a college math class here. Discussions on how you guys starteded out are incredibly valuable to me. They give me hope, new ideas of areas to explore, and help me avoid problems (if I listen :lol: )



Lol could be scary, because I am a kindergartener, two years running on this instrument. All I can do is join in on the discussion. If I had one regret (No ragrats!) it would be that I hadn't developed my keyboard skills further prior to digging into the "two hand tapping or bust"cycle.

When do we get to see some playing clips?

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Sun Dec 04, 2016 9:42 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
Luc wrote:
Whatever you do, if you're going to make adjustments to the bridge and nut screws and the intonation (which you will HAVE to do if you change string gauges, tuning, or string position), make very careful and detailed notes of all the changes you make, so that you can return to original settings and positions if needed.


Good idea. When I get the MR strings, I will definitely do this.

Luc wrote:
I'm not sure that the bass relief will really allow you to swap sides between bass and melody; you might end up with some funky buzzing issues in the largest strings. I'd send Emmett an email on that one, if you haven't already.


I'm not planning to do this...but it does bring up an interesting question.

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#6877 Rosewood, 12 String Grand, PASV-4, turquoise linear inlays and Pearl Gray tuners, tuned in Mirrored 4ths


Sun Dec 04, 2016 1:01 pm
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
Jayesskerr wrote:

When do we get to see some playing clips?


Lol. When I can play? Actually I have one, and only one song that actually is starting to sound like music. (I tend to over shoot and pick songs that are way to difficult, realize it, tone it back, repeat. Eventually I find something I like that I have a hope of doing.)

When I can play it through 10 times without a mistake, I'll try to tape it.

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#6877 Rosewood, 12 String Grand, PASV-4, turquoise linear inlays and Pearl Gray tuners, tuned in Mirrored 4ths


Sun Dec 04, 2016 5:31 pm
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
I don't have my instrument in front of me, later I can try to make specific suggestions regarding arm/wrist angle, but I've been playing mirrored 4ths without pain for about 12 years now (and I wouldn't call myself a great example of disciplined ergonomic technique).

If you haven't seen it, here's some information from an old post of mine, common major/minor chord shapes that might be worth trying to see how comfortable they feel.

If there is one disadvantage in terms of comfort with mirrored 4ths compared to 5ths, it's that many of these shapes require the middle or ring finger playing the root to curl up quite a bit. All the fingers tend to be more open (thus more freedom of movement) with chord shapes in 5ths. But I find it's a small compromise because of how useful I find the tuning overall.

I tried parallel 4ths at first but found it too limiting in terms of accompaniment possibilities - you're having to do a lot more finger scrunching to get many chord shapes, much harder to do all the pull offs and other melodic movement that mirrored 4ths opens up.

---------------

Maybe this will help, these are the basic major and minor triads you can do with the root note on the lowest three bass strings. The diagrams assume a Grand Stick though. The "X" is the root (1) of the chord, and "3" and "5" the third and fifth. "O" represents an optional doubling of a chord tone. To get 7th chords you can shift the 5th to the nearest 7th (on the same or adjacent string).

Note that these are really just variations of the close voiced triads you would do on the melody side, with the root dropped an octave to create more space.

Code:
Major:

-|X|-|-| (low string)
-|-|-|-|
-|-|-|O|
-|-|3|-|
5|-|-|-|
O|-|-|-| (high string)

-|-|-|-|
-|X|-|-|
-|-|-|-|
-|-|-|O|
-|-|3|-|
5|-|-|-|

-|-|-|-|
-|-|-|-|
-|X|-|-|
-|-|-|5|
-|-|-|O|
-|-|3|-|


Minor:

-|X|-|-|
-|-|-|-|
-|-|-|-|
-|3|-|-|
5|-|-|-|
O|-|-|-|

-|-|-|-|
-|X|-|-|
-|-|-|-|
-|-|-|-|
-|3|-|-|
5|-|-|-|

-|-|-|-|
-|-|-|-|
-|X|-|-|
-|-|-|5|
-|-|-|-|
-|3|-|-|


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Tue Dec 06, 2016 2:37 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
Thanks for posting Rob. Was hoping to hear from you!

I need to watch your videos again and try to figure out what you're doing that I'm not. Based on your picture though, it looks like you have your stick mounted at more of an angle than I've been using. It looks like it goes more from in-front of your right hip to left shoulder, where as I think I've been more straight up and down - in front of left hip to left shoulder, or at most dead center to left shoulder when sitting.

Will have to check when I get home to night.

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Tue Dec 06, 2016 7:14 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
So I was watching some of your videos, and you definitely hold your stick differently than I have been. I was emulating Greg Howard's positioning, which is more up right, and higher. In your Gentle Giant video, your left shoulder is at the level of the 1st fret, and the base of the stick is actually out side the front of your leg - guessing that the belt hook is just in front of your hip bone.

Greg's position varies a bit in height in tomorrow never knows, hes got it about at the first fret at the shoulder, but the belt hook is midline and the base doesn't extend past the middle of his right thigh. In Finding home, he's sitting so its not really the same, but his shoulder is at the third fret and the base is midline. 'course he's playing lower on the bass in this song too.

Both of your left hands come into the stick at ~90 degrees, so I'll have to make sure I'm doing that too. Going to try this and see if it helps

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#6877 Rosewood, 12 String Grand, PASV-4, turquoise linear inlays and Pearl Gray tuners, tuned in Mirrored 4ths


Tue Dec 06, 2016 8:55 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
ArmyDoc wrote:
Jayesskerr wrote:

When do we get to see some playing clips?


Lol. When I can play? Actually I have one, and only one song that actually is starting to sound like music. (I tend to over shoot and pick songs that are way to difficult, realize it, tone it back, repeat. Eventually I find something I like that I have a hope of doing.)

When I can play it through 10 times without a mistake, I'll try to tape it.


Meh, not being able to play never stopped me... lol

Seriously though, why not try recording yourself doing 10 different attempts; I find the act of videotaping/recording does wonders... lol forces one to "hurry up" hahaha Even if you never release it to anyone but yourself, it's a valuable tool...

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Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:03 am
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Post Re: Confessions of a beginning Stickist… Part I: The Purcha
We have a name for guys like you in medicine. We call them occupational torturists... therapists! I mean therapists!

They challenge patients to do more than they think they can. And push them to try harder, often causing cries of duress and "I can't" other whiney nonsense... followed by accolades of "I couldn't have done it without you" when they succeed.

Will try to set something up this week. Not promising you (or anyone else) is ever gonna see it, but will give it a try.

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#6877 Rosewood, 12 String Grand, PASV-4, turquoise linear inlays and Pearl Gray tuners, tuned in Mirrored 4ths


Tue Dec 06, 2016 10:25 am
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