chuck3 said:
I totally agree. I assumed that this was a BG discussion. UR is a totally different beast.
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what's the most difficult key
- Thread starter bluesdogblues
- Start date
I totally agree. I assumed that this was a BG discussion. UR is a totally different beast.
Absolutely right on. My basic approach to the two instruments is different and relates directly to the use of open strings. (well, that and, the right hand and left hand techniques are different, and more...)
There are sharp and flat keys. Four flats is Ab not G#.
I see what u mean. Cool.
I don't play a wide range of music and most of it is guitar or keyboard-based, so I don't often stray much into the 'difficult' keys being mentioned. I think B Flat is probably as 'awkward' as it gets and that's no big deal at all.
I started off playing clarinet and then alto sax in church, where most of the music seemed to have been written on guitar. When I started playing guitar I understood why E or A are nice keys, but when you're an alto saxophonist you're cursing the songwriter who's making you constantly play in F# or D Flat!
I started off playing clarinet and then alto sax in church, where most of the music seemed to have been written on guitar. When I started playing guitar I understood why E or A are nice keys, but when you're an alto saxophonist you're cursing the songwriter who's making you constantly play in F# or D Flat!
Yes but when you want to compare aspects of the two instruments such as fingerings where you gonna do it?
I recently performed a clinic alongside Dr. Donovan Stokes a professor of upright bass. They were a number of high school and college aged kids in the audience. Dr. Stokes really emphasized learning scales. Being fluent with scales are so much harder on UR then on BG. Even though both instruments are symmetrical in nature, the physical limitations of the UR demand different techniques. The relative ease of the BG allow one to fully take advantage of that symmetry. As I stated earlier, I can teach someone fluent in a single key, to be fluent in every key in every and all positions on the neck in a relatively short time. It is all about taking advantage of that symmetry
The payoff to getting comfortable in all keys comes when you are playing on more complex tunes even when they aren't "in" one of those hard keys in terms of the tonal center.
Bear in mind that music is written not just to tell us about pitches, but also about how they are used (this is an important concept). If you're playing a Db7 arpeggio, the 7th is a Cb. It's wrong in that context to call it or write it as a B, despite their enharmonic equivalency, for the simple reason that the 7th of a chord with a D (or Db, D#) root must be some form of C. This works to our advantage in a big way because it lays out the exact functional purpose for each note in a chord, rather than forcing us to do an on the fly, possibly complex analysis to determine what a written chord is really doing.
If you play jazz or sophisticated pop or other styles, there are songs that are not based on diatonic harmony and/or involve lots of key changes where you're going to need to be comfortable with the less common enharmonic names of notes.
Not just comfortable enough to figure them out, but IMO, so comfortable that you don't even have the "oh, Cb is the same as B" mental iteration, you just deal with it directly as a Cb, so that you're not slowed down or limited at all by it's usage. The best way I know of to acquire that familiarity is to play in those keys all the time until it's no longer an issue.
This really does open up the fingerboard in ways you couldn't imagine until you go through the process. What you're doing is part of transcending your instrument and dealing with music itself.
Bear in mind that music is written not just to tell us about pitches, but also about how they are used (this is an important concept). If you're playing a Db7 arpeggio, the 7th is a Cb. It's wrong in that context to call it or write it as a B, despite their enharmonic equivalency, for the simple reason that the 7th of a chord with a D (or Db, D#) root must be some form of C. This works to our advantage in a big way because it lays out the exact functional purpose for each note in a chord, rather than forcing us to do an on the fly, possibly complex analysis to determine what a written chord is really doing.
If you play jazz or sophisticated pop or other styles, there are songs that are not based on diatonic harmony and/or involve lots of key changes where you're going to need to be comfortable with the less common enharmonic names of notes.
Not just comfortable enough to figure them out, but IMO, so comfortable that you don't even have the "oh, Cb is the same as B" mental iteration, you just deal with it directly as a Cb, so that you're not slowed down or limited at all by it's usage. The best way I know of to acquire that familiarity is to play in those keys all the time until it's no longer an issue.
This really does open up the fingerboard in ways you couldn't imagine until you go through the process. What you're doing is part of transcending your instrument and dealing with music itself.
If you're in some other key with sharps, and you temporarily change keys, it's considered better form to stick with sharps for the new, temporary key rather than go to an enharmonic equivalent with flats. Both because of the relationship between the first key and the new key, and because you're still dealing with the same accidental.
Doesn't seem like Db would have all that much of an ease advantage over C# anyway; 5 flats, seven sharps, either way it's well out of the basic rock bag and you're going to have to know some stuff.
You could argue that "everything sharp" is a simpler concept than "5 of 7 notes flat" because in the latter you do have to remember which particular 2 notes are natural.
It's funny, I was thinking about Cb last weekend, while thinking of scales as I drove, and wondered whether I'd sound stupid calling it Cb, and Fb or E# in the same vein. Nice to know that it's not just me. Also, odd to read in this thread the idea of no G#, especially since I wrote something in G#m a couple weeks ago.
Ab is still different. even though G# is a theoretical key, you cant neccesarily think of them as the same thing. i once read a piece that had a part of a movement in G#, by some modern composer whos name im missing right now.. i think i still have the music somewhere in my DB books..
as long as you understand that enharmonics are not the same pitches you can think of G# as Ab, if you understand why theyre different. (of course, this is a case where it does make more sence to think of it in Ab, because G# is a theoretical key..)
The one case where it's common to see an abnormal key sig.
Hey, I didn't ever say Db has any advantages over C#. I was just asking why C# was "easier". As it turned out the guy I was replying to made a typo and had intended to say Cb so the question isn't even relative to anything.
Bottom line is if any of this stuff really matters to your playing you have work left to do. In a master class with Ray Brown I attended someone asked him about key signatures and he replied, "Key signature doesn't matter to me." Take a moment to think about what that simple statement actually means...then get to work.
There really is a key of G#, it's seldom encountered and an irrelevant piece of trivia to most of us but it does exist. But G#m is a different key, it's the relative minor to B major. That one is not so obscure.
If you wanna know just how obscure G#Maj is drop charts written in that key in front of a band of hired gun pros. If you're paying reeeeally well maybe no one says anything but you will get looks like you got a third foot growing outta yer forehead. For all intents and purposes it doesn't exist in most realities except as you pointed out earlier to facilitate notating a situation like a key change from E up a whole tone to F# then up another whole tone.
Not really sure why you felt that needed further qualification.
Existence is not a relative parameter, something either does or does not exist. There's not much point in saying something doesn't exist except in those cases where it does.
No one is arguing that the key is common or useful in most situations. It's the sort of thing you get to while working on a graduate degree in music or maybe in the pit band in a Sondheim musical and then never need again.
No. Being comfortable in all keys comes with the realization that one key is exactly like another. The BG is a symmetrical instrument. Anything played in one key can just as easily be played in any other. It is a a bit of a paradigm shift from the way we were taught, but once you "see it" it becomes pretty easy.
Mike
