Modern players-tone-proximity to the sound hole

Buco

richter4208 wrote: »

I've also seen Gonzalo pick exactly opposite what you are describing. When I saw him play several years ago he was playing for near the bridge with a great quacky tone, or banjo like. Maybe he stopped doing that as much? I'm sure he is the sort that can use either to his advantage.

That's cool, I always heard him with that sitar signature sound of his. That must've been early on.


Yeah Wim, that shot is probably the most common position. And I noticed the diagonal arm moving with all the players I mentioned above, on the bass strings the picking hand is over the sound hole an on treble string slightly behind.

To pinpoint what I'm after, there's a speedy run in this song that I decided to transcribe.
For one I wanted to see how are these fast runs structured but even more I love how great players like that can have this super awesome tone on runs like this.
The tone has almost slack quality to the sound so it's relaxed and super fast at once.
All these guys to a certain degree have that tone.
I think the place to start practicing this is over the sound hole

I picked one by Remi Harris, from his I'll see you in my dreams solo on his Ninick album, goes from 1m50s to 1m54s or so.
I found there's a lot of chromaticism which my ear didn't pick up at this speed. The first part is actually one of the licks I use the most over dominant chords, D7 in this case, starting on the 3rd of the chord (basically notes 3, 5, b7, 2 and root, I'm going of the top of my head though), without chromatic notes tossed in.
The second is mostly a diminished run transitioning to Dmin7, starting on a G note, over the A7 chord.

It'll be a while before I get it up to his speed though, but I think even harder than pure speed is the awesome feel at which he executes it. Hard to describe, but it's the reason I started this thread.

Anyway here's the video, listen to between 1m50s and 1m54s::

Buco

So I asked Koran on this.
His reply was that he never paid attention to where his arm was but did pay attention to the quality of the notes. he would take a line, play it real slow, let each note ring and listen adjust until he liked what he heard and where his right hand ended up was the result of that.

I do myself really like the tone that single notes have when I play over the sound hole but shied away from it because one, I was afraid I'd sound like I'm playing a flattop and second, just behind the sound hole is "how it's done" in this genre.

I'll see, I'm already comfortable with where it's at, which is just behind but might revaluate at least for ballads and slower tunes.