We seem to have very different perspectives on this, and that’s fine. My observation about the symmetrical chromatic nature of the keys allowed me to advance very quickly (on piano) where I hadn’t before. As I shared in my first post in this thread, I’ve enjoyed immediate success in teaching relatively advanced (piano) concepts to young folk with the same. If that’s “strange and limiting,” then so be it.
Different people, different ways )
Though I can’t get rid of a thought that you are actually talking about abstract theory, which obviously can be applied to anything.
May I ask you - what piano-specific stuff was useful for you on a guitar? For me it was sound: running arpeggios and chords voicings in a piano-like way. Though it has more to do with listening than playing.
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I certainly speak of abstraction away from the particular instruments (guitar/voice/keys), but it’s definitely applied theory.
The second “FordScales” approach treats scales uniformly, linearly, 6nps chromatically, across the fretboard. It introduces limitation and granularity in ways inspired by piano playing. My first instrument was classical guitar, and Segovia scale patterns and Holdsworthian moves factor in big as well. The system basically answers the Berklee positions I came up on. My jazz mentor is a world class pianist, so there’s inspiration in there from him too.
Judging by lack of interest, not sure how well
it translates into textual presentation, but for what it’s worth, I shared a lot about the approach in this forum, here… FordScales - What the heck is "FordScales?"
But, the original post was about piano chord voicings. Did FordScales cause me to make a simple observation about piano playing? It seems likely. It’s all chicken and egg at this point though.
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Ah, your first was a guitar…
Anyway, finding inspiration in different instruments is a great thing. I noticed that I tend to build triads on an overdriven guitar based on old orchestration lessons ) As for melodic parts - seems like I have something from violin and trumpet (Chet Baker made me fall in love with this instrument… wish I could play it)
I’ll definetely check FordScales, thanks for the link.
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Thanks @ASTN, perhaps something in it will be of use to you.
I get a lot of joy out of playing individual parts in orchestral mockups these days. That, and with the morning singing/ear-training practice, thus orchestration’s been on my mind a lot.
(Where I mention Segovia above, I should say that Bobby Ferrazza at Oberlin College was the other big diagonal scale influence. But anyhow, not so important to the points made.)
When I learned about Drop 2 voicings from Bret Willmott’s “Complete Book of…” a light went on for me. The realization that the ultra common root position maj7, R-5-7-3, bore a close relationship to the very Holdsworthian sounding inversion of the same, 3-7-R-5, was mind blowing for me. I’ve probably tried to reconcile the sounds I hear on piano with the way voicings lay on the guitar for many years since.
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