Who sports unconventional ways of playing?

Svengali · 2011-04-25T13:41:46+00:00

Hey all. I just watched a video of me playing guitar couple of years back. The lapse of time has allowed me to be a little more critical of my playing. What jumps out at me is my violin vibrato ? (I've been playing for 20+ years, a lot longer than I'm playing the guitar) and try as I might, I can't shake it. In fact, my way of doing seems to hinder me from being able to excecute vibrato like most guitarist (bar the classicaly trained) does it through bending of the string rather than rapidly exerting more presure. BTW, on violin your finger "moves" so to speak up and down (ever so slightly becuase of the angle against the string) which is not the way the same action would affect the pitch on the guitar (because of fixed frets), but the results are the same. To me it just looked wrong!!! Nothing serious though, but made me wonder, who here may display similarly quirky ways of playing? Gordon Mote, a brilliant session pianist in the US and blind since birth crosses his fingers backwards at the piano. That is he would cross a second over a third finger or the other way around whereas pianists normally only cross a thumb under another finger. Looks totally strange but his playing doesn't suffer a bit, he's SO good. If someone can maybe teach me to vibrato properly in five steps (thats how I learned on the violin).... ?

flatfourfan

Mannemarak wrote Do you then still anchor your hand by placing your palm on the bridge or do you support your hand with the other 3 fingers below the strings (like a pool shoot move ? Heck, can't phrase it otherwise) ?

My palm rests on the bridge.............

ZarK

Sho I have a few...

I am classically trained which left me with the classical vibrato and preference of having the instrument on the left leg. After that I went through a long phase of electric guitar using the whammy bar more than left hand vibrato. After I snapped the whammy in half one day, I started to work on left hand vibrato control and ended up with a technique which I later found out couldn't be too bad seeing as Mr. Clapton uses the same... I still cannot get the same amount of feel and control with the more conventional electric guitar vibrato method but I'm slowly but surely incorporating this into my style as well.

A majour change I've had to make was how I used to hold my pic which was born out of my metal-playing phase. I used to angle the pic in the opposite direction to the correct angle. This gave me incredible speed for alternate picking runs but it meant I had to switch between this technique and standard when I wished to access art-harmonics and certain other techniques. It also didn't offer enough grip for some techniques and I prefer the tone I get in standard form...

I've spent the last year focusing on 'standardizing' my technique to a large extent with good success to date. I'm still holding on to the clapton style vibrato, however, which I still prefer at present.

Keira-WitherKay

technique changes as one develops...... and i find technique is also affected by our body size /arm length/finger length and hand size, hendrix could do things on the guitar technique wise that suited his long fingers and large hands , steve vai also has long fingers...... then BB king has body size to contend with .......cos it's all mechanics........ where the engineering students ? and how much pressure the fingers apply ecet ect depends on the angles of hands and weight exerted on it by body mass........ .

and also depends on what guitar you play , what gauge strings ect

i use 3 guitars professionally , a nylon classical with a wide flat neck , a ES175 jazz guitar with flatwound super heavy jazz strings on it ,and a huge body to get my arm around and a strat with super light strings 9 -42 and i often play all 3 on the same gig at different times in the show........ and yes i adapt my style to accomodate all 3 .......afraid in music one style does not fit all........... so sometime one uses the more traditional classical technique and at other times one adapts to suit the instrument and piece you performing or get creative and break all the rules to make whatever sound you want to happen .......

so i really think what technique gets the sounds you want on a particulare instrument in a particular genre is what works ..so adapt to suit your needs........and the only point i will make is be careful of a technique that can damage your hands/fingers .ect cos thats my only rule. if a weird/alternate technique hurts in some way or can cause long term damage ...forget it and find another way

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