Carl Kress and Marty Grosz

Lango-Django

Me too, Cuimean.

For those unfamiliar with George Grosz, he is best known for the anti-Nazi political cartoons that caused him to need to flee Germany with his family when Hitler came to power... just Google "George Grosz artworks" to see his works.

Also interesting to me that Marty has (or perhaps had) a twin brother, although I never asked him about that.

*******

Marty told me an interesting story once about announcing to the family that he wanted to become a professional musician.

His horrified grandmother said, "You mean you want to be the guy sitting on a stool in an opium den, going 'ching, ching, ching'...?"

To which Marty replied, "Yes, exactly! That's who I want to be--- the guy sitting on a stool in an opium den going 'ching, ching, ching'!"

Cuimean

When he fled Nazi Germany, George Grosz settled for a while in the town where I grew up: Huntington, NY. Our local art museum has one of his most famous paintings, "Eclipse of the Sun," in their collection.

Bones

Wow, so much interesting info in this thread!

Lango-Django

Nico, you may already know this, but Carl Kress tuned his guitar slightly differently than Marty Grosz... I believe Kress's tuning was Bb-F-C-G-A-D.

Somewhere in my piles of musical junk I have a photocopy of a letter from Kress to a fan talking about his tuning and providing little chord diagrams of the chords he most often used.

I can't promise if or when I'll ever find this letter again, but if I do, I will post a copy of it here for you.

Will

[Deleted User]

Will, that would be wonderful! The tiniest hint as to what Kress was thinking could be the solution to the issues I've had with Kress's stuff. I've tried Kress's tuning and its tough to do. You can view it as two tenors or one extended tenor but I couldn't get it to sound quite right. I spoke to Marty about it too and he had the same problem.

With Marty's tuning the guitar is thought of as 3 different instruments. Plectrum and tenor as mentioned before and an in-between that doesn't exist. This ends up mirroring George Van Eps method in a way. The whole 3 groups of 4 strings, 4 groups of 3 strings etc.... When I asked Marty what the key was to playing his tuning he said "Triads! My boy". From that point on there was a solid enough base to begin work on it. But if anyone is interested in playing this style i recommend picking up Van Eps guitar method. Not the crazy 3 volume Harmonic Mechanisms but his first method which is all exercises in triads. Also as a side note, that Bb string is thought of as a statement. Its rarely played. Anyways, good to hear from all you guys.

Bones

Yeah Will love to see that letter. I wrote Marty Grosz years ago asking about his tuning and chord shapes and he was nice enough to write me a long letter back but he suggested I stick to standard tuning :-). I'm still curious about it though so love to see those chord shapes. I really like the ultra low tones on the bass strings. Many times I hear those low notes below the low E but can't get to them.

Russell Letson

Not that it's anything I would or could do myself, but if access to the low end and its bass-note options is the issue, the Van Eps/Pizzarelli seven-string solution might be easier to wrangle--though it requires a whole new instrument. And of course Bucky's musical approach is a bit different from Marty's, but that's a different set of issues.