two-finger bars
- Amanda Riddell
- Jul 3, 2024
- 1 min read
Jane was keen on this too: support fingers that sustain the main fingers. But the hammer-on multiphonics and the thumb strums were total instinct. The main areas where I differ from Jane are that I bend my knuckles, and that I'm willing to finger in places other than directly behind the fret because I discovered that they produce microtones. But it's essentially JI. Like, for specific microtones, then it's not really suited. I have this way that the scales sound in my head because of my childhood, and that's what I essentially recreate in most of my music. - There's also a very detailed representation of what I saw in my mind's eye when I was mastering all that freaky stuff. It's a secret folder on my Pinterest. - As for 'how do you intend to notate Romeo?' - well, with approximate notes. That's how we write blue notes and jazz phrasing into show scores. It's expected that somebody knows how to produce those sounds. Accidentals are usually the key to this: if it's an accidental in the vocal line for a Rodgers tune, then it's essentially a blue note. His melodies are famous for their diatonic qualities, but those surprise notes are what make them special. Like, occasionally it's useful to add a quarter-tone, but that's really going to confuse 90% of the singers that do musicals. There are notated quater-tone flats in parts of the synth track to Latin-Punk New Wave. That aligned them to JI for that particular chord. It's like a double-flat 7, except sharper.
As for my plucking hand: well, that's where you'd have to see me live to understand it. Whatever's happening there, it's just something like 12 years of rhythm guitar that's flowering. For me, it's like I have three plectrums. Each finger is roughly as strong as the others, except for the c finger (pinky... flamenco uses it, but not trad classical). My pinky is freakishly strong, though ... I doodle at pianos often, even though I never bothered to get any good at being a pianist. I don't use it for strumming, but I think it figures into how I do rhythm when I'm strumming or using my a finger a lot.