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Let us not forget the "key of love".

Later,

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Favorite keys to play in?
Florida Keys

/somebody had to say it. It was just laying there like a body size lump in the carpet.


I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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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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When I'm tuned down to Eb and someone calls a tune say, in E, I just play the F patterns.

That works amazingly well in groups where there is at least one other guitar player who stays tuned normally.

The sum creates a sound all its own. I think that is due to the change in note timbres involved.


--Mac

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Originally Posted By: Mac
When I'm tuned down to Eb and someone calls a tune say, in E, I just play the F patterns.

That works amazingly well in groups where there is at least one other guitar player who stays tuned normally.

The sum creates a sound all its own. I think that is due to the change in note timbres involved.


--Mac


I was going to post something similar in the "Capo" discussion. When doubling guitars in the studio I would sometimes capo one a whole step up. Yes, the timbres change, but so do the fingerings, injecting some subtle but (to me) exciting variations into the overall sound. I tend to use a lot of hammer-ons and pulloffs when changing chords; these in particular enhanced the contrast between the two parts. Transposing on the fly helped keep my mind sharp, too.

R.


"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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