Hey guys,

I've stumbled upon The Eightfold Path of visualizing and thinking about intervals on Stick (with apologies to the yoga world

A) start with one side, treble or bass.
1) think of, or picture, an interval
2) invert it, and imagine within a handspan of 1)
3) compound 1), again within a handspan (add an octave)
4) compound 2)

and hold all of these intervals within your mind, thinking of them, visualizing them, and singing them.

B) Now, do all this with the same interval on the other side.

If you can do this for the standard diatonic intervals, in, say Ionian, then it will strengthen how you put chords together, improvise, and probably help with everything on the mental side of your playing.

What do y'all think?

R

I really like this, thanks

Each interval is a piece, each chord is a move each song in a game, moves on a chessboard, moves on a chessboard...

Yeah, that's kind of the right-brain approach for what is, in my thread, a definitely left-brain exercise.

But the whole point is to make this intuitive, to get it second nature, so that in your compositions, arrangements, improvisation, you can think really fast in a key, and your hands can dance across these visualized patterns quickly.

Sorry, I'm beginning to verge upon the obvious here, but I like doing this exercise and I think it's going to pay off.

R

Everyone's brain and the way they process music is unique. How they visualize where things are on an instrument and how they train their fingers to get at it can vary wildly too. I do better with a hands on approach. Although it adds up to much more than this,my mental map of Stick is a mandocello under my left hand and a guitar under my right hand. The intervallic instincts for those instruments are already there in my case. Now it's shed time exploring the best ways to actually finger scales,shift positions,cop changes,integrate bass lines and organize timing between hands so I can play it like a piano. It took about a year studying the great Stickists & trying different Sticks w/different variations of the 4ths/5ths tuning to deduce I'll have the most elbow room & left hand extensions playing a 12 string in MR w/hi bass 4th. Now that I've got my tools my energy is best used learning tunes and building repertoire. For me too much theorizing is a bit of a distraction and after a certain point it's time to get physical. But as I said everyone has their own path and they should follow it.

Yeah, I'm not spending enough time playing lately. I'm too cerebral! Oh well. It's my path. I've always wanted understanding more than anything.

R

Hello rodan07...

....one day, one start...

....means that we have only once the warm up period in a day, after warm-up the start is passed and gone...
...next day, next chance...

...this is the reason why I try to start evey practising with an other start up...

Interesting idea! However, I rather relate to all notes (including scales, chords, melodies etc) as vibrations rather than to start by the fretboards. This means I'm not dealing with the two fretboards as "two systems", I simply realise that all my (well known) notes are available at certain points on those two boards and I tap the notes I want at the most convenient fret/board/hand for the music I'm about to make. The current choice of sound processing of course also affects where I chose to play certain notes, but my preferred setup is to have a very similar timbre coming out of both fretboards, so I can use it all as one big overlapping/layered canvas with lots of useful ways of dividing melodies between the two hands for poly rhythm - or simply for conveniance.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah, Per, that sounds like a great way to jump off into an improvisation, or begin a composition. And I can see how that would help me as well.

Your reference to "well-known notes" is where it intersects with my interval inversions, and the work on my grimoire. Expanding the known territory is good for arranging, composition, and improvisation. As Jeff Berlin says "Either I am a genius, or I've gotten to know my instrument really well. Which do you think?"

R