The Chetboard

One nuance that Chet frequently used was color in his playing, I mean the way he used his right hand when he would attack the strings. For some passages he would pick hard real close to the bridge and then the next passage over the fingerboard. This subject is talked about a lot in the Classical Guitar field. I wonder if he picked that up from the Pascal Roch books that Ezra Carter gave him early on? I really don't see too many guitar players that do that. Its just another facet of Chet's beautiful playing that made it so distinctly his. Al

just talking here.. you'd think he would have stumbled across it just in his daily practice. One of the reasons guys like Chet and Paul attained their marvelous technique was due to a determination to do something other than farm and to them music was the most promising way out of it.

This requires practice on a scale the living room guitarist cannot even vaguely imagine. I know I noticed the difference in tone when I was a kid but exploiting it was something else. When you put in eight, ten hours a day for really long periods of time you figure those things out. Merle Travis exploited his P-90 tone by playing near the end of the fingerboard and having his Bigsby finger-loop designed to be handy when he picked there. Chet could have figured out the nuance there. "radio was king" and he scoured the radio every day/night listening for guitar players.

That's right Norm, I forgot to mention Merle but, boy he got a great sound out of that big Super 400, sometimes it almost sounded like a steel guitar. Al

Segovia and Julian Bream were both good at this. Chet listened to them both. Merle played near the sound hole as good as anyone but didn't play near the bridge that I'm aware of.

Always interesting to watch the bluegrass guys like Doc Watson and Tony Rice make those flattops work. Playing acoustic to where it can be heard in a group deifnitely means finding a sweet spot.

I've long felt that nothing can come out of a guitar unless it came from within the person playing. I'm sure that Chet experimented with various right hand techniques but I'm equally certain that the techniques he used were a product of his personality. The sheer beauty of his music and the sweet timbre he produced had to be the product of a kind-hearted man.

Muriel Anderson told a story about tone.
She had been a prize-winning bluegrass guitarist and decided to take up classical guitar. She went to her classical teacher and he asked her to play something and immediately stopped her.

"Your tone is terrible! Go home and don't come back until you improve it." She did, of course.

Getting good tone is something some people never achieve. There are so many factors. The guitar. The action. The way the left hand frets a guitar. The right hand attack...how the fingers actually treat the string, how firmly the string is played and finding the sweet spot to pick that bring out the best in a guitar. The individual factors can be taught or at least discussed but getting it all to work is quite another thing.

Muriel said it took her at least a week, maybe more.

Norm wrote:Always interesting to watch the bluegrass guys like Doc Watson and Tony Rice make those flattops work. Playing acoustic to where it can be heard in a group deifnitely means finding a sweet spot.

A good example of what Norm is talking about... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyQOCJ4SUSk

nu·ance [n ns]
(plural nu·anc·es)
n
1. subtle difference: a very slight difference in meaning, feeling, tone, or color
2. use of nuances: the use or awareness of subtle shades of meaning or feeling, especially in artistic expression or performance
Encarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

David

Chet said in the beginning he didn't know but a few tunes because he spent all his time on practicing technique, I wonder some times what he practiced, one thing for sure is pull-offs, he was the best!