Originally Posted By: Mac
Originally Posted By: bobcflatpicker
Guitar only, ... any key besides the flat ones.

I can do it in a pinch, ... but it just ain't natural! wink


When working with Horn Bands, Soul Bands, Black Gospel, the groups that may use the Flat Keys more often than not, I take advantage of what I learned from transcribing Jimi and go ahead and tune the whole guitar down one half step.

That makes my "open E" fingerings into Eb, A into Ab, D into Db, etc. -- and makes the guitar playing as simple as playing in the "guitar" keys.

It also imparts a rather different sound, as well, often purty nice.

As Jimi, and later on, Stevie Ray, showed us.

--Mac


I wish I had read this post 15 years ago! The 'horn band' that I played in was our worship team where all the charts were written out for horns and that's what we always played from. I went back and forth between guitar and keys. Keys, no problem, as in one of Mac's posts about favoring certain fingerings on keys, for me the flat keys actually are really easy to play for doing gospel B3 licks.

On guitar, when the song set featured brass, I capo'ed often on fret 3, and much of the flat chords translate to open chord fingerings. I got very used to Eb being C, Bb is G, etc.

Tuning down a 1/2 step for the flat keys and then capoing on one for guitar oriented songs would have been easier.

Now, I play guitar quite a bit differently; electric that is. Mostly highest 4 strings, and play higher on the neck.

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