Villa-Lobos Prelude No.1!

Barney I've been thinking about tonal changes myself recently. Your point about changing tonal colours or timbre applies to me as well. I too have been trying to find ways to use angles of wrists and fingers rather than hand shifts to get better variations of tone.

Perhaps it's common and obvious knowledge among the more experienced and knowledgeable guitarists, but I've noticed (after very careful listening) many professional guitarists changing tone colour/ timbre effortlessly and very subtly on melody lines to create different emotions or to signal anticipation/arrival/ending of phrases.

Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary Yes, there are many timbral changes possible other than at what position you strike the string.  Experiment with varying flesh and nail contact from all flesh to all nail.  Speed of the stroke plays a role as well as angle of the stroke.  Oblique or perpendicular strokes, sliding the finger along the string a bit a you strike are good things to experiment with as well.  Thumb stroke chords are a great thing to play with in the prelude; use nail, use flesh, go fast or slow, go soft or hard, try using the boney protrusion of the thumb on the side of the tip joint in a firm fast stroke. The nuances are numerous and fun to discover. Experience and experiment will build your toolbox.

Mark a very detailed description of possibilities. Experimentation in this direction is often lately discarded pedagogically in favor of hand stability. Your comment is very welcomed! 

Mark Thank you, Mark for the detailed explanation and possibilities of timbral changes.Ariel Elijovich yeah, when I began with the guitar, one of the first things I really focussed on was hand stability, which is important of course. Generally, I manage to get a good tone, but I'm also trying to experiment with various timbres.

Blaise Laflamme Thank you for the suggestions, Blaise. Perhaps, the 5th prelude of HVL is a good example? The first section has block chords but with melodies on the high notes that need to be brought out, usually by the ring finger, while the b section like in the prelude no.1 has melodies on the bass.

Nijwm Bwiswmuthiary BarneyMark

the post with introductory simple exercises on tonal change is available already in the post section. 

https://guitar-community.tonebase.co/t/p8y1fzh/the-right-hand-dance

let me know what you think!

Ariel Elijovich Thanks Ariel for sharing your thoughts about this in your video, which  is much appreciated!  This nicely covers some the basic ideas to start.

 When choosing nail shape, I suppose your reference would be to the standard  45 degree angle hand/arm position to achieve best tone.  However, this may not be optimal when switching fingers to "apoyando".  Do you shape your nails differently so that both angles will sound their best?

Also, when doing rapid descending scales with the 45 degree angle, the tone will been inconsistent as the hand travels toward the bridge while descending.  That is why I prefer the perpendicular angle for scales.  How do you handle it?  

Have you found a way to achieve the same round tone with free strokes as with Rest strokes?

Ariel Elijovich Thanks for doing this.  It is a worthwhile extension of our discussion here on the VL study group and gives another dimension to playing the prelude well.

Barney regarding nail shape, I try to accomodate both but as I said, it is not an ON/OFF switch and you can also play "apoyando" tending scales in diagonal attack. But basically, yeah. I have them shaped in "fin" the right corner (palm looking at me) and little squared the left corner. So, I have become very used to playing scales in diagonal and only switch when going up to the bass strings, mostly.     

But I think the consistency issue you bring up is a great subject for a very interesting debate and I suspect that the comments on this would be very personal and much in tone with eachother's experimentation and musical search, so... no wrong approaches.

From my very own personal view of the subject, perfect consistency is both practically unobtainable and undesirable, both for physical and musical reasons.  Let me explain myself further: it doesn't matter how much we work it around, I M and A are different fingers and obtain differents results but even if we obtained perfect identity with the three fingers, tone varies according to the length proportion of string where you play so to achieve perfect tone consistency thru a scale you'd have to move the attack point corresponding to each note of the scale in accordance to what fret you are playing each note. This is something we have to do to play octave harmonics at it is quite a complex task for the right hand. Same happens when we want the "bell overtones" of the half string attack. So, complete perfect consistency would physically mean that you have to slightly change right hand position at least three times per string in case of diatonic scales unless you finger the scale so that i m a fingerings reflect exactly the proportion of string required (which could be completely fine but would be a lot of mess regarding cross strings and such). 

As to the musically undesirable part of it, I regard scales (or notes in a melody or in an arpeggio) as a very uneven thing. There's always a musical direction towards some note or the other that requires different energy, different attacks (some times it's a palette of degrees of free stroke towards rest stroke or the opposite), different articulations, a varied array of accentuations for each note depending on the place of the scale and and its character and sometimes even different tone colouring. Going from somewhere to somewhere musically implicitly involves development and change, even if subtle.... sometimes not at all subtle. So, trying to achieve "consistency" through a musical passage is kind of the contrary of what I'd look for. It's something that I can try in an exercise, most likely, but not in a piece. That's mostly the reason I don't do scales as technique. There's no way to cover the vast variety that you then need in music to play a scale, doing scale exercises. 

What i do is take each passage at a time, understand what I want it to sound like and then try to understand exactly which coreography my right hand needs to do for me to hear exactly what I picture in my head. So each scale would be quite unique and I would strive in the dark to achieve "the perfect consistent tone and colour in scales" as in a general rule.   

I hope this is a suitable answer to your questions?

Ariel Elijovich All very interesting.  You raised one point about half string contact and that reminds me of something that we should talk about in regard to the prelude.  For many early intermediate players this piece is one of the first times playing above the 12th fret and playing a few very important notes there (e4 and f4# 4TH STRING). It is a good time to learn about the fundamental antinode being in normal right hand positions.  Maybe I'll bring it up on Friday.

Mark great point!! Your PM reminded me to comment about how bow instruments HAVE to get closer with the bow to the bridge the higher the pitches are and also how, even if they do extensive practice to even out up-bow and down-bow movements then they choose one or the other specifically for phrasing different...  

Ariel Elijovich Yes, excellent analysis and response. Thanks!!

What about my question:

"Have you found a way to achieve the same round tone with free strokes as with Rest strokes?"

Also, I'm not sure when you mean by "pin". nail shape in the right corner... do you mean you have a "ramp"  and then it is more square in the other corner?   and different for each finfer?

Sorry,  I like what you're saying but want to make sure I fully understand.

Barney i ment "fin" like a shark fin. The auto correct plays its part. Haha... ramp would make it too.

I'm glad my view interested you! As I said, other guitar players may very well put their interests in other aspects of performance thus having a complete different view of the matter. I know here in Tonebase there is a heavy accent on warmups, for example... 

Regarding rest vs free stroke, yes... the roundness is kind of subtly proper to each type but its always a palette and never things opposed. I like to think of tone production as combining two consonants with a vowel. You have the attack consonant, the sustain vowel and the decay consonant. What changes between free and rest stroke is the attack consonant. Rest stroke is a pressured consonant like a "p" or a "t" or a "b" whereas free stroke might be heard as an "l" or an "r". But the roundness of the sound is given by the vowel so it is sort of loosely independent of wether free or rest strokes. 

Ariel Elijovich Thanks Ariel!  I've learned that the  "spell check" is unreliable, and if I'm not patient to review it, results can be misunderstood.  

Wow! it sounds like you've really studied the physics of sound production--facinating stuff!

Most players Free  and Rest strokes will sound different as you explained;  however there always seems to be some exceptions like Marco Tamayo, who can make both sound equal if he wishes.  I think he is from another planet, haha

Barney I try to understand as much as possible about what, why and how i do stuff because I find it very helpful. Other people just do... Lucky them!! 

Tamayo knows a lot and plays undisputably great but many times I don't understand/share/enjoy his interpretations at all. That's music and interpretation 101. There's always someone playing perfectly in a way absolutly contrary to what you'd like. 🤣🤣