Printed in the United Kingdom by MPG Books, Bodmin 英国博德明 MPG Books 出版社印刷
Published by Sanctuary Publishing Limited, Sanctuary House, 45-53 Sinclaif Road, London W14 ONS, United Kingdom 由 Sanctuary Publishing Limited 出版,地址:Sanctuary House, 45-53 Sinclaif Road, London W14 ONS, United Kingdom
www.sanctuarypublishing com
Copyright: Guthrie Govan, 2002 版权所有:格思里-戈万,2002 年
Music typesetting: Cambridge Notation 音乐排版剑桥记谱法
Cover photograph Getty|Stone/Patrick Coughlin 封面照片:Getty|Stone/Patrick Coughlin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages. 保留所有权利。未经出版商书面许可,不得以任何形式或通过任何电子或机械手段(包括信息存储或检索系统)复制本书的任何部分,但评论者可以引用简要段落除外。
While the publishers have made every reasonable effort to trace the copyright owners for any or all of the photographs in this book, there may be some omissions of credits, for which we apologise. 尽管出版商已尽一切合理的努力查找本书中任何或所有照片的版权所有者,但仍可能存在一些遗漏,对此我们深表歉意。
Equipment: Guthrie Govan used PRS Guitars and amplification by Cornford. Effects used were by Lexicon, Morley and Yamaha. Guthrie Govan uses and endorses Cornford Amplification. 设备Guthrie Govan 使用 PRS 吉他和 Cornford 放大器。使用的效果器有 Lexicon、Morley 和 Yamaha。Guthrie Govan 使用并认可 Cornford 放大器。
Keyboards/strings played by Phil Hilborne. Phil Hilborne uses and endorses PRS Guitars, Picato Strings and Cornford Amplification. All guitars played by Guthrie Govan. Bass on tracks 40-3,46-740-3,46-7 and 50-350-3 played by Guthrie Govan. 键盘/弦乐由 Phil Hilborne 演奏。菲尔-希尔伯恩使用并认可 PRS 吉他、Picato 琴弦和 Cornford 放大器。所有吉他均由 Guthrie Govan 演奏。曲目 40-3,46-740-3,46-7 和 50-350-3 中的贝斯由加斯里-戈万演奏。
Samples used on tracks 40-3 and 46-7 taken from ‘Retro Funk’ by Spectrasonics and Illio Entertainments, Used under licence. 音轨 40-3 和 46-7 中使用的采样来自 Spectrasonics 和 Illio Entertainments 的 "Retro Funk",经授权使用。
FOREWORD 前言
The aim of this book and its companion volume, Creative Guitar 2: Advanced Techniques, is to help any rock guitarist who feels stuck in a rut. They field all of the most common questions and problems I’ve encountered over years of teaching guitar. They explain the nuts and bolts of theory in an accessible manner that you can actually use. They explain how to practise efficiently and diagnose what’s going wrong in your playing. They show you lots of new licks, They promote a self-sufficient approach to learning to make sure you’re well equipped to explore any aspect of playing that interests you. 本书及其附录《创意吉他 2:高级技巧》的目的是帮助任何感觉陷入困境的摇滚吉他手。这两本书解答了我多年来在吉他教学中遇到的所有最常见的问题。它们以通俗易懂的方式解释了理论的核心和关键,让你可以真正用上。他们解释了如何高效练习并诊断出你的演奏中出现的问题。他们向你展示大量新的弹奏技巧,提倡自给自足的学习方法,确保你有足够的能力探索自己感兴趣的任何弹奏方面。
whether it’s in the books or not 是否在册
In short, these two books are quite ambitious, so they can’t even pretend to constitute any kind of allencompassing guitar Bible, but my main goal was to get you thinking about your playing and point your playing in some new directions. 总之,这两本书的目标相当远大,因此它们甚至不能妄称是包罗万象的吉他圣经,但我的主要目标是让你思考自己的演奏,并为你的演奏指明一些新的方向。
I hope I at least achieved that much. Above all, I hope you enjoy working through this book and its companion. Remember, learning about your instrument should never feel like a chore: it’s supposed to be fun and rewarding! 我希望我至少做到了这一点。最重要的是,我希望你能享受阅读本书及其附录的乐趣。请记住,学习乐器永远不应该是一件苦差事:它应该是一件充满乐趣和收获的事情!
See you at the other end… 那头见...
INTRODUCTION 引言
As a guitar teacher, I meet a lot of guitarists who have reached the same roadblock in their playing: they’ve had some playing experience, they know a bit of the traditional rock/blues vocabulary, they have a grasp of the basic techniques…but they’re frustrated. 作为一名吉他教师,我遇到过很多吉他手,他们在演奏中遇到了同样的障碍:他们有一些演奏经验,知道一些传统的摇滚/布鲁斯词汇,掌握了一些基本技巧......但他们很沮丧。
Some might express this frustration as I’m sure there’s other stuff I could be practising; I wish I’d learned properly!’ or, indeed, ‘People say I play pretty well on a good night, but I feel like an impostor, because I don’t really know what l’m doing.’ 有些人可能会把这种挫败感表述为:'我相信我还可以练习其他的东西;我希望我能好好学!'或者,'人们说我在一个好的夜晚演奏得很好,但我觉得自己像个冒牌货,因为我并不真正知道自己在做什么'。
If you’ve ever felt that all you ever practise is the same old stuff, playing it faster and cleaner but ultimately not coming up with anything new or anything you can get really excited about, then you might just like this book. It attempts to show you some new avenues to explore, by explaining some important aspects of theory or technique and looking at how you can incorporate such knowledge into your own playing style. 如果你曾觉得自己练习的都是老一套,弹得越来越快,越来越干净,但最终却没有任何新意,也没有任何能让你真正兴奋的东西,那么你可能会喜欢这本书。本书试图通过解释理论或技巧的一些重要方面,向你展示一些新的探索途径,并探讨如何将这些知识融入自己的演奏风格中。
I’ve tried to arrange this information so that it can be of value to as many players as possible. Theorywise, I’ve explained things from first principles, so even if you have no grounding in theory, you’ll be able to grasp the necessary concepts without undue suffering (although some concentration might be required from time to time!). In general, whenever you think a chapter has taken you out of your depth, it’s probably best to put the book down for a while and spend some time assimilating what you’ve learned so far. This stuff is all meant to be used, so I would recommend incorporating each idea into your playing at your own pace. 我在安排这些信息时,尽量使其对尽可能多的玩家有价值。从理论上讲,我是从第一原理出发来解释问题的,因此即使你没有理论基础,也能掌握必要的概念,而不需要付出不必要的代价(尽管有时可能需要集中精力!)。一般来说,每当你认为某一章的内容超出了你的深度时,最好暂时放下书本,花点时间消化一下目前所学到的知识。这些东西都是用来使用的,所以我建议按照自己的节奏将每个想法融入演奏中。
Conversely, those of you who already have some grounding in music theory could quite happily dip into these pages at random. Bear in mind, however, that some chapters might well be worth reading even if they appear to be covering stuff you’ve already learned. It never hurts to have more than one way of looking at things, and you never know, certain concepts might turn out to be more useful and far-reaching than you thought they were, 反之,那些已经有一定音乐理论基础的人也可以随意翻阅。不过,请记住,有些章节即使看似涵盖了你已经学过的内容,也是值得一读的。多角度看待问题永远不会错,而且你永远不会知道,某些概念可能比你想象的更有用、更深远、
The book is divided into five chapters, each with a different angle: 全书分为五章,每一章都有不同的角度:
In Chapter 1, ‘General Stuff’, I’ve tried to answer all of the FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) that keep cropping up when I teach people. Some of it might seem a little too philosophical and weird to be of immediate use to you, but trust me, it’s worth wading through, if only because it will raise some interesting questions about how and why you play certain things. There are times when simply thinking about your playing can improve it just as much as any amount of hours spent with a metronome. 在第 1 章 "一般问题 "中,我试图回答在我教人时不断出现的所有 FAQ(常见问题)。其中有些内容可能看起来有点过于哲学和怪异,对你没有直接用处,但相信我,这些内容值得一读,哪怕只是因为它会提出一些关于你如何以及为什么演奏某些东西的有趣问题。有的时候,只要对演奏进行思考,就能提高演奏水平,其效果不亚于对着节拍器练习数小时。
Chapter 2, ‘Technique’, takes an in-depth look at technique, focusing on efficiency of movement and making your playing feel as natural and effortless as possible. 第 2 章 "技巧 "深入探讨了技巧,重点是动作的效率,以及尽可能让演奏感觉自然轻松。
Chapter 3, ‘Theory Without Tears’, tries to simplify music theory, explaining some of the essential jargon, showing you how scales and chords fit 第 3 章 "不流泪的理论 "试图简化音乐理论,解释一些基本术语,告诉你音阶和和弦是如何配合的。
Introduction 导言
together and touching on the much-feared topic of sight-reading. I can’t lie to you - this won’t be a fully comprehensive sight-reading course, but it will explain the basic principles and enable you to understand all of the written music in the book. (The rest, of course, is down to practice!) 在此,我将与大家分享我的新书《视唱练耳》,并触及备受关注的视唱主题。我不能对你撒谎--这不是一个全面的视谱课程,但它会解释基本原理,让你能够理解书中的所有书面乐谱。(当然,剩下的就要靠练习了!)。
Chapter 4, ‘Scales And Chords’, translates music theory onto your fretboard, explaining a lot of the essential jargon and showing you how scales and chords fit together. 第 4 章 "音阶与和弦 "将音乐理论转化到指板上,解释了许多基本术语,并向你展示音阶与和弦是如何结合在一起的。
Chapter 5, ‘On The CD’, lets you put all of the previous ideas into practice, with the help of various 第 5 章 "在 CD 上",让你把前面的想法付诸实践,并借助各种
backing tracks. For each track, I’ve explained the chord progression, suggested a few appropriate note choices and then basically left you to your own devices, so you can apply what you’ve learned from this book in whatever way you see fit. 伴奏音轨。对于每首曲目,我都解释了和弦的进行,建议了一些适当的音符选择,然后基本上就交给你自己处理了,这样你就可以用你认为合适的方式来应用你从本书中学到的知识。
Whenever you come across an idea, particularly towards the end of the book, you should use it as a starting point and try as many variations as possible. Try things in different keys, use different scales, experiment with different rhythms - in short, do whatever it takes to make the idea as useful as possible in your own playing. 每当你遇到一个想法时,尤其是在本书快结束时,你应该把它作为一个起点,并尝试尽可能多的变化。尝试不同的调式,使用不同的音阶,尝试不同的节奏--总之,尽一切可能让这个想法在你的演奏中发挥作用。
Right then, let’s get stuck in… 好了,让我们开始吧
1 GENERAL STUFF 1 一般事项
Goals 目标
From time to time, I get asked to take guitar workshops. I enjoy doing this immensely, as it means I get to stand up in front of a group of 20 or 30 people, trusty axe in hand, and talk about one of my favourite things: playing guitar. 我时不时会被邀请参加吉他培训班。我非常喜欢这样做,因为这意味着我可以站在二三十人面前,手持我最信任的斧头,讲述我最喜欢的事情之一:弹吉他。
At one such event a few years back, I found myself rambling about the proliferation of transcriptions and backing tracks on the market today. It’s probably fair to say that guitarists have never had it so good - whatever you want to learn, there’s probably a high-quality transcription of it floating around somewhere - but my point was that this might be creating a generation of lazy guitarists. I pointed out the importance of having a good ear - the ability to understand what you hear and replicate it on your instrument, to work out solos from records, to jam with other musicians in real time and so on - and wondered out loud if all of these great teaching products might not be impairing the listening skills of the modern guitarist. I’ve met players who know every note of Steve Vai’s monumental Passion And Warfare album but can’t jam over a 12-bar blues, and I personally find this somewhat disturbing. Are these guys (and yes, this does seem to be a predominantly male phenomenon) actually making music, or are they simply performing the guitar equivalent of typing a dictated letter? 在几年前的一次活动中,我发现自己对当今市场上大量出现的转录和伴奏音轨喋喋不休。或许可以说,吉他手从来没有这么好过--无论你想学什么,都可能有高质量的转录曲目在某处流传--但我的观点是,这可能会造就一代懒惰的吉他手。我指出了拥有一双好耳朵的重要性--能够理解你所听到的并将其复制到你的乐器上,能够根据唱片练习独奏,能够与其他乐手实时即兴演奏等等--并大声问道,所有这些优秀的教学产品是否会损害现代吉他手的聆听技巧。我见过一些吉他手,他们对史蒂夫-韦(Steve Vai)的《激情与战争》(Passion And Warfare)巨作专辑中的每个音符都了如指掌,但却无法即兴演奏 12 小节的蓝调,我个人对此感到有些不安。这些人(是的,这似乎是一种男性占主导地位的现象)是真的在做音乐,还是只是在表演相当于口述信件的吉他演奏?
Anyway, there I was at the guitar workshop, lamenting these symptoms of the modern age, when one of the students put his hand up and commented, ‘I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t think it applies to me.’ 总之,我在吉他培训班上感叹现代人的这些症状时,一个学生举起手说:'我听到你说的话了,但我不认为这适用于我。
I was intrigued. He went on to explain that he was a busy gynaecologist who had no intention of revolutionising rock guitar - indeed, he was so busy that he couldn’t even get to jam with other people on a regular basis. ‘All I want,’ he concluded, ‘is to come home after a long day at work and be able to play “Wonderful Tonight”. I don’t have the time to figure it out for myself, so without those transcriptions I wouldn’t be able to get half as much enjoyment from my hobby,’ 我很感兴趣。他接着解释说,他是一名繁忙的妇科医生,无意对摇滚吉他进行革命性的改革--事实上,他实在是太忙了,忙得甚至不能经常与其他人一起演奏。他总结说:"我想要的只是在一天的工作之后回到家里,能够弹奏《美妙今宵》。我没有时间自己琢磨,所以如果没有这些转录,我就无法从我的爱好中获得半点乐趣。
Fair play. I think I was forgetting that not every guitar player has the time or inclination to spend every waking hour studying their instrument, and the above exchange served to remind me that different people play guitar for different reasons. I think it’s all valid, as long as it’s making you happy. 公平竞争。我想我是忘了,并不是每个吉他手都有时间或意愿把每一个醒着的小时都花在学习乐器上,上述交流提醒了我,不同的人出于不同的原因弹吉他。我认为,只要能让你快乐,这都是有道理的。
In terms of how to use this book, I think the moral of the above story is that it’s important to know exactly what it is you’re aiming for so that you can use your time more productively. How are you going to work towards your goals if you don’t know what they are? 关于如何使用这本书,我认为上述故事的寓意是,重要的是要清楚自己的目标是什么,这样才能更有效地利用时间。如果你不知道自己的目标是什么,又如何努力实现自己的目标呢?
If you’re happy to work through the occasional transcription of a song you like and you play mainly for therapeutic reasons, or in order to have a couple of party pieces up your sleeve, you probably don’t need any ‘new directions’, although I dare say you’ll find some aspects of guitar playing covered here enlightening. 如果你乐于偶尔抄录一首你喜欢的歌曲,而且主要是为了治疗,或者是为了准备几首派对曲目,那么你可能不需要任何 "新方向",尽管我敢说你会发现这里涉及的吉他演奏的某些方面很有启发性。
If you’re a seasoned live player who has learned by ear, you might sound great but not know what you’re doing. Players in this category would probably get a lot from the theory section of this book. 如果你是一位经验丰富的现场演奏者,靠耳朵学习,那么你的声音可能很好听,但却不知道自己在做什么。这类演奏者可能会从本书的理论部分获得很多东西。
If you’re a compulsive shredder (Webster’s 如果你有碎纸强迫症(韦伯斯特的
dictionary defines this as a heavy metal player whose raison d’être is to cram as many notes as possible into each bar in the hope of striking fear into the hearts of his fellow men), you might have encountered a barrier in your quest for greater speeds. If you think you fall into this category, you’ll probably be interested in the section of this book that deals with technique. 根据字典的定义,重金属演奏者的存在理由是在每个小节中塞进尽可能多的音符,希望能让同伴们感到恐惧),你在追求更高的速度时可能会遇到障碍。如果你认为自己属于这一类,那么你可能会对本书中有关技巧的部分感兴趣。
Incidentally, I would never cast aspersions on this Olympian mentality regarding technique. After all, if an obsession with speed motivates someone to practise more, it can’t be all bad! However, you should consider the question ‘How do I know when I’m fast enough?’. I guess that honing your technique for its own sake is as valid a hobby as the next, but I put it to you that there’s no point in being able to play any faster than you can think. If you find you’ve reached that point, you probably need some new ideas! 顺便说一句,我从来不会对奥运选手在技巧方面的这种心态进行诽谤。毕竟,如果对速度的痴迷能促使一个人多加练习,那也不全是坏事!不过,您应该考虑一下 "我如何知道自己的速度够快 "这个问题。我想,磨练技巧本身也是一种业余爱好,但我要告诉您的是,弹得再快也没有意义。如果你发现自己已经到了这一步,你可能需要一些新的想法!
I suspect that music was invented with communal purposes in mind - ie a musician is meant to play with people and to people, communicating with fellow bandmembers and audience alike. I value that aspect of music immensely and think that a valid musical goal is to be a functional part of a gigging band. Think about it - you’re part of a team, you’re entertaining people, there’s beer to be had… If these are your priorities you might well be happy to focus on improving your interaction with the band and the audience, your timekeeping, your ability to groove and so on. Certain areas of this book will really encourage you to focus on these issues, but you’ll have to find them for yourself! 我认为,音乐的发明是为了实现公共目的--即音乐家要与人一起演奏,向人演奏,与乐队成员和观众交流。我非常看重音乐的这一方面,并认为成为演出乐队中的一个功能性组成部分是一个有效的音乐目标。想想看--你是团队的一员,你在为人们提供娱乐,还有啤酒可以喝......如果这些是你的优先考虑事项,你可能会很乐意专注于改善你与乐队和观众的互动、你的计时、你的节奏能力等等。本书的某些部分会鼓励你关注这些问题,但你必须自己去发现!
Another common goal among many guitarists is to idolise a certain player, buy the same equipment, dress the same and generally attempt to ape every nuance of their hero’s playing style. This might raise certain psychological issues - I know one player who sounds more like Eric Clapton than Eric does, and frankly it’s a little bit creepy - but in general there’s no harm in this. If it motivates you to play, why not? 许多吉他手的另一个共同目标是将某位吉他手奉为偶像,购买相同的设备,穿着相同的服饰,并试图模仿偶像演奏风格的每一个细微之处。这可能会引发一些心理问题--我认识一位吉他手,他的声音比埃里克-克莱普顿更像埃里克,老实说,这有点让人毛骨悚然--但总的来说,这并没有什么坏处。如果它能激励你演奏,为什么不呢?
Ultimately, though, I think that the most valid thing a player can do is treat this hero worship as a phase - once you’ve figured out what it is you like about a certain guitarist’s playing style, maybe you should move on and try to find your own sound. Learning from great players is invaluable - Eddie Van Halen’s playing style would have turned out very differently if 不过,我认为一个演奏者能做的最有效的事情就是把这种英雄崇拜当作一个阶段--一旦你发现自己喜欢某个吉他手的演奏风格,也许你就应该继续前进,努力找到属于自己的声音。向伟大的演奏家学习是非常宝贵的--如果不是这样,埃迪-范-海伦(Eddie Van Halen)的演奏风格就会截然不同。
he hadn’t spent his youth working out Clapton licks but if you make it your ultimate goal to sound exactly like someone else, I think that in the long run you’ll stunt your own musical growth. 他年轻时并没有练习过克莱普顿的乐段,但如果你的终极目标是听起来和别人一模一样,我认为从长远来看,你会阻碍自己在音乐上的成长。
Food for thought: wouldn’t it be great to hear someone who could emulate George Benson, Jeff Beck, Shawn Lane and Jerry Donahue all at the same time? What I’m suggesting is of course preposterous, but my point is that you should try to learn from everything you hear rather than develop tunnel vision by focusing too much on one player. In this way, you’ll end up absorbing a range of different influences and combining them in a unique way, and the results are far more likely to sound like you. 思考一下:如果有人能同时模仿乔治-本森(George Benson)、杰夫-贝克(Jeff Beck)、肖恩-莱恩(Shawn Lane)和杰瑞-多纳休(Jerry Donahue),那岂不美哉?我的建议当然是荒谬的,但我的观点是,你应该努力从你听到的每一个人身上学习,而不是过多地关注一个演奏者,从而形成隧道视野。这样,你最终会吸收一系列不同的影响,并以独特的方式将它们结合起来,而结果也更有可能听起来像你自己。
Keeping An Open Mind 保持开放的心态
The sole point of this section is to preach the tenet ‘Don’t shun forms of music through prejudice’. An aversion to heavy metal, for instance, might well prevent someone from discovering two-handed tapping, therefore missing out on a tool that can create not only Van Halen-esque histrionics but also some very distinctive keyboard-like chord voicings. In contrast, a seasoned rock player might be familiar with tapping techniques but have no knowledge of the Eastern pentatonic scales that make Marty Friedman’s style so distinctive. And if you listen to Michael Lee Firkins’ eponymous debut album, you’ll hear a predominantly rock-based player using his whammy bar to create country-tinged slide-guitar effects rather than the ubiquitous divebombs you’d expect to hear from a player in his genre. 本节的唯一目的是宣扬 "不要因偏见而回避音乐形式 "的信条。例如,对重金属音乐的反感很可能会阻碍某人发现双手拍击法,从而错过了一种不仅能创造出范-海伦式的华丽音色,还能创造出一些非常独特的键盘式和弦声部的工具。相反,一个经验丰富的摇滚乐手可能熟悉敲击技巧,但却不了解东方五声音阶,而这正是马蒂-弗里德曼风格的独特之处。如果你聆听迈克尔-李-菲尔金斯(Michael Lee Firkins)的首张同名专辑,你会听到一位以摇滚乐为主的演奏家用他的重击棒创造出乡村风格的滑音吉他效果,而不是你期望从他这种类型的演奏家那里听到的无处不在的跳弹。
I love seeing the expression on a blinkered metal player’s face the first time they hear a good recording of Paganini’s 24 Caprices for violin, or indeed Friday Night In San Francisco, an acoustic tour de force featuring Al DiMeola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia. Whatever your chosen style, you’ll be pleasantly terrified by Mark O’Connor’s album The New Nashville Cats. (If Mark’s incredible fiddle playing doesn’t do it for you, you’ll at least have to admit that his pedalsteel player knows some licks that would sound great on guitar…if you could only figure out how to do them!) Meanwhile, if you’re more of an acoustic player, you should similarly be aware of the percussive 我喜欢看到一个眼花缭乱的金属乐手第一次听到帕格尼尼的 24 首小提琴随想曲时的表情,或者是《旧金山的星期五之夜》(Friday Night In San Francisco)这首由艾尔-迪米奥拉(Al DiMeola)、约翰-麦克劳克林(John McLaughlin)和帕科-德-露西亚(Paco de Lucia)共同演奏的原声巡演。无论您选择何种风格,马克-奥康纳(Mark O'Connor)的专辑《新纳什维尔猫》(The New Nashville Cats)都会让您惊喜万分。(如果马克令人难以置信的小提琴演奏不能让你满意,你至少得承认,他的踏板钢琴演奏者知道一些在吉他上听起来很棒的乐段......只要你能想出如何演奏它们!)。与此同时,如果您更喜欢原声乐器演奏,您同样应该了解打击乐器的
two-handed styles developed by the late, great Michael Hedges. 已故伟大的迈克尔-赫奇斯(Michael Hedges)开发的双手风格。
In short, listen voraciously to as much varied stuff as possible. The Dalai Lama’s ‘Instructions For Life In The New Millennium’ included the advice ‘Once a year, go somewhere you’ve never been before’, and in the same spirit, it’s good to remain open to music that has nothing to do with guitar playing, and indeed to look into forms of music about which you know absolutely nothing. (Have you ever attended a live performance by a really good orchestra?) 总之,要尽可能多地聆听各种音乐。达赖喇嘛的《新千年生活指南》中有这样一条建议:"每年去一次你从未去过的地方",本着同样的精神,对与吉他演奏无关的音乐保持开放的态度,甚至对你完全不了解的音乐形式进行研究,也是一件好事。(你参加过真正优秀的交响乐团的现场表演吗?)
One final example: you should definitely get hold of the album Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop and cue up track 5. ‘Where Were You?’. On this track, Jeff manipulates harmonics with his whammy bar to create some of the most haunting phrases you’ll ever hear, and he swears that his inspiration was an obscure album of Bulgarian choral music. 最后一个例子:你一定要买到杰夫-贝克的吉他店这张专辑,然后打开第 5 轨。你在哪里?在这首曲子中,杰夫用他的和声棒创造出了一些你听过的最缠绵的乐句,他发誓说他的灵感来自一张保加利亚合唱音乐的不知名专辑。
Transcribing 誊写
I think it’s very helpful to keep a notebook of what you’re working on so that you can capture chord progressions and licks as they occur to you. Even if you don’t feel comfortable with music notation, you can still document your ideas in the form of tablature (the guitar-specific system of notation using six horizontal lines to represent the strings of your guitar as you look down on them from a playing position, with a succession of numbers indicating the appropriate frets). Accomplished sight-readers tend to sneer at tablature as ‘notation for idiots’, but it’s worth remembering that all of the early composers for guitar and lute used a form of tab as their standard method of notation, so I think it has a certain validity. It also has one advantage over conventional notation in that it shows you exactly where to play everything. 我认为,将你正在练习的内容记录在笔记本上是非常有帮助的,这样你就能在和弦行进和乐段出现时捕捉到它们。即使你对记谱法感到不习惯,也可以用制表法(吉他专用的记谱法,用六条水平线表示吉他的琴弦,就像你从演奏位置俯视琴弦一样,并用一连串的数字表示相应的五线谱)来记录你的想法。熟练的视奏者往往会讥笑制表法是 "白痴的记谱法",但值得记住的是,所有早期的吉他和琵琶作曲家都使用制表法作为他们的标准记谱法,因此我认为它有一定的合理性。与传统的记谱法相比,它还有一个优点,那就是它能准确地告诉你所有的演奏位置。
This idea becomes increasingly important when you start pilfering licks from recordings by other players. It’s worth honing your transcribing skills so that you can keep a permanent record of everything you learn - after all, there’s only so much information your memory can retain. I would suggest documenting individual licks rather than trawling through a whole solo just for the sake of two bars you particularly like, and the most practical approach to this is to note down 当你开始从其他演奏者的录音中剽窃乐段时,这种想法就变得越来越重要。值得磨练的是你的转录技巧,这样你就能永久记录你所学到的一切--毕竟,你的记忆只能保留这么多信息。我建议记录单个乐段,而不是为了两小节你特别喜欢的乐段而翻遍整首独奏。
the context of each idea (ie which chord it works over) and to come up with variations of your own. Jazz players are particularly fond of the idea of building up a "lick library’ - they’ll categorise each idea in terms of the scale it uses and the chords over which it would fit. 每个想法的背景(即在哪个和弦上演奏),并想出自己的变奏。爵士乐手尤其喜欢建立一个 "乐句库"--他们会根据每个乐句所使用的音阶和和弦对其进行分类。
At the beginning of this chapter, I mentioned the concept of having a good ear and of being able to reproduce what you hear, and this is obviously of paramount importance when you’re transcribing. Developing a good ear hinges on your ability to recognise intervals (the distances between notes, in terms of tones and semitones) and rhythmic patterns. You’ll find plenty of advice on this later on in the book, so I don’t propose to go into too much detail here, but I think that a few general pointers might be helpful. 在本章开头,我提到了 "好耳朵 "和 "重现所听到的声音 "的概念。培养一双好耳朵取决于你识别音程(音符之间的距离,以音和半音表示)和节奏型的能力。在本书的后面部分,你会找到很多这方面的建议,所以我不打算在这里说得太详细,但我认为一些一般性的提示可能会有所帮助。
It’s best to start with the overall structure of a piece, mapping out the chord progressions and figuring out how long each chord lasts, in terms of beats and bars. If there’s a particularly difficult section, you would start by notating the general rhythmic outline and then marking the most prominent notes (ie those that strike you as being particularly loud or those that seem particularly high or low in pitch) and finally filling in the gaps. If you think that all of the notes in a lick come from the same scale, you should make a note of it. 最好从乐曲的整体结构入手,绘制和弦行进图,以节拍和小节为单位计算出每个和弦持续的时间。如果有一段特别难,你可以先记下总的节奏轮廓,然后标出最突出的音符(即那些让你觉得特别响亮或音调特别高或特别低的音符),最后填补空白。如果你认为某个乐段中的所有音符都来自同一个音阶,你就应该记下来。
The other skill to hone is your ability to hit the Pause button on your CD player. Every time you listen to a passage, you should be focusing on a particular note or group of notes; once you’ve heard the bit you’re interested in, you should immediately pause the music - anything you hear after that will only distract you, blurring your mental snapshot of the notes you need to know. In theory, you should be able to work out any lick using a one-note-at-a-time approach - as your ear develops, you’ll be able to assimilate the information in larger chunks. 另一项需要磨练的技能是按下 CD 播放器上的 "暂停 "键的能力。每次听一个段落时,你都应该把注意力集中在一个或一组特定的音符上;一旦听到你感兴趣的部分,你就应该立即暂停音乐--之后听到的任何东西都只会分散你的注意力,模糊你脑海中需要掌握的音符。从理论上讲,你应该能够用一次一个音符的方法弹奏出任何乐曲--随着你耳朵的发育,你将能够吸收更多的信息。
Slowing things down can be a great help, and there are now ‘phrase samplers’ on the market designed with this in mind (Akai make a popular one) which slow down the music by time-stretching it so that the pitch remains constant, regardless of the speed. If you have a computer, you might enjoy using an inexpensive and aptly named program called Amazing Slow-Downer, which does the same thing as a phrase sampler and also features a Karaoke function that uses phase 现在市场上有一些 "乐句采样器"(阿卡伊公司生产的一种很受欢迎的采样器)就是专门针对这一点而设计的,它可以通过时间拉伸来减慢音乐的速度,从而使音调保持不变,与速度无关。如果您有一台电脑,您可能会喜欢使用一款名为 "Amazing Slow-Downer "的廉价程序。
cancellation to remove the signal from a selected part of the stereo image. In English, this means that you can often make the guitar more audible by reducing the volume of certain non-guitar elements in the mix. The easier things are to hear, the better, and even if you’re using your humble hi-fi, you can still try to optimise the signals you want to hear by experimenting with the pan and EQ controls. 取消,以消除立体声图像中选定部分的信号。在英语中,这意味着你通常可以通过降低混音中某些非吉他元素的音量,让吉他的声音更清晰可闻。声音越容易听到越好,即使您使用的是简陋的高保真音响,您也可以尝试通过平移和均衡控制来优化您想听到的信号。
Having said that slowing stuff down is helpful, I should add that it’s not the solution to all of your transcribing problems. When you’re trying to figure out where a lick is played on the fretboard, it’s important to try the notes in various positions on the neck in order to hear which strings best reproduce the tone of the original, and this is far easier to do when you’re listening at the right speed. 虽然说放慢速度很有帮助,但我要补充的是,这并不能解决所有的转写问题。当你试图找出一个小技巧在指板上的弹奏位置时,重要的是要在琴颈的不同位置上尝试音符,以听出哪根弦最能再现原作的音色,而这在以正确的速度聆听时要容易得多。
By way of a simple example, try playing the open top E string, then the fifth fret on the BB string, the ninth on the G, the 14th on the DD, the 19th on the AA and finally the 24 th - if you have it! - on the low E. You’ll hear the same note every time, but the tone gets progressively woollier as you move up the neck. With a little practice, you’ll be able to tell roughly which string is being used for any given nute. Failing that, you could try the lick in several positions and determine which feels easiest - surprisingly often, this turns out to be the correct one. 举个简单的例子,试着弹奏开顶的 E 弦,然后是 BB 弦上的五音格,G 弦上的九音格, DD 弦上的十四音格, AA 弦上的十九音格,最后是低 E 弦上的二十四音格(如果有的话)!- 你每次都能听到相同的音调,但随着琴颈的上移,音调会逐渐变低。只要稍加练习,您就能大致分辨出哪个音是用哪根弦发出的。如果做不到这一点,您可以在多个位置上尝试弹奏,然后确定哪个位置最容易弹奏--令人惊讶的是,这往往就是正确的位置。
As a final note, l’d like to try to sell you the idea of using a MiniDisc player when you’re transcribing. When you’re rewinding a tape or cueing up a CD over and over again, you actually spend most of your time listening to stuff that you don’t need to hear. While MiniDisc recordings undoubtedly sound a little more plastic than CDs, they allow you to put in lots of track markers. This means that you can cue back to the right part of a piece of music with one push of a button, saving you lots of time and allowing you to get more done before you reach the limits of your attention span. 最后,我想向你推销在转录时使用迷你光碟播放器的想法。当你一遍遍地倒带或提示 CD 时,实际上你的大部分时间都在听那些你不需要听的东西。虽然迷你光盘录音听起来无疑比 CD 更有塑料感,但它们允许你放入大量的音轨标记。这意味着你只需按下一个按钮,就能返回到音乐的正确部分,从而节省大量时间,让你在达到注意力极限之前完成更多工作。
Recording Yourself Playing 录制自己的演奏
I always try to emphasise the benefits of incorporating some kind of recording device into your practice routine. If you record your playing, you can listen back and make an honest, objective appraisal of your strong and weak points. When you’re actually playing, you 我总是试图强调在日常练习中加入某种录音设备的好处。如果把你的演奏录下来,你就可以回听,并对自己的强项和弱项做出诚实、客观的评价。在实际演奏时,你
don’t always interpret what’s coming out of your amp in the same way that your audience might, because you have to concentrate on the mechanics of your playing as well as listen to it. 因为你在聆听的同时,还必须专注于演奏的技巧。
Recording yourself also provides a good means of monitoring your long-term progress. If you’re frustrated by, say, your picking hand’s apparent lack of improvement, it can be quite enlightening to listen back to what it sounded like six months ago, or even a week ago. In addition, committing your playing to tape (or whatever your chosen medium might be) can help you to become less self-conscious, which is surely a good thing - as we all know, people make more mistakes when they’re nervous! 给自己录音也是监测自己长期进步的好方法。比方说,如果你对自己的弹琴手明显没有进步感到沮丧,那么回听一下六个月前,甚至一周前的弹琴声音,会对你很有启发。此外,将你的演奏录制成磁带(或任何你选择的媒介)可以帮助你减少自我意识,这肯定是件好事--我们都知道,人在紧张时会犯更多的错误!
The other great thing about having a Record button within your reach is that you can make your own backing tracks at a moment’s notice. If you’re trying to familiarise yourself with the sound of a new scale, you could record a couple of minutes of a rhythm track using an appropriate chord progression (more on this later) and try out the notes over that backing track. You’ll learn a lot more about the inherent sound of a scale if you hear it in context. 录音键触手可及的另一个好处是,你可以随时制作自己的伴奏音轨。如果你想熟悉一个新音阶的音色,你可以用合适的和弦进行录制几分钟的节奏音轨(稍后详述),然后在伴奏音轨上尝试音符。在语境中聆听音阶,你会对音阶的内在音色有更多的了解。
Your DIY backing track needn’t be anything fancy - a mono tape recorder will do the job more than adequately - as you’ll cease to care about the production values once you start playing over it. A hissy recording of yourself strumming an E chord while your washing machine conducts a vigorous spin cycle in the background might not be the most inspirational of accompaniments, but at least it’s something to play along to, and it will make your practice routine feel a lot more like ‘real’ playing. Most importantly, it also helps to develop your understanding of how the various notes of a scale sound against appropriate chords. 你的 DIY 伴奏不需要多么华丽,一台单声道磁带录音机就足以胜任,因为一旦你开始弹奏,你就不会再在乎它的制作价值了。在你的洗衣机大力脱水的背景下,录下自己弹奏 E 和弦的嘶嘶声,这可能不是最鼓舞人心的伴奏,但至少它能让你跟着弹奏,而且会让你的日常练习感觉更像 "真正 "的演奏。最重要的是,它还能帮助你理解音阶中的各个音符在适当的和弦中是如何发音的。
If you find this kind of idea intriguing, you might want to try working with a phrase sampler like the Lexicon JamMan, the Boss Loop Station or the Boomerang. Gadgets like these allow you to loop a chord progression and then record additional layers on the top, which is very handy if you’re trying to write a song or come up with a harmony part for a solo. (Incidentally, I ended up buying a Boomerang for exactly this kind of thing. Initially, I found it hard to justify the expense, until I realised that you can make the thing 如果你觉得这种想法很有趣,不妨试试使用 Lexicon JamMan、Boss Loop Station 或 Boomerang 等乐句采样器。这些小工具可以让你循环播放和弦进行,然后在上面录制额外的层次,如果你想写一首歌或为独奏想出和声部分,这就非常方便了。(顺便说一句,我最后买 Boomerang 正是为了做这种事。起初,我觉得很难证明这笔开销的合理性,直到我意识到你可以让它
loop the chord progressions of various jazz standards while you solo over the top. A few Pizza Express-type gigs later, the thing had paid for itself, and so far it’s proved to be beer-proof and generally indestructible!) If you’re happy with half a minute’s worth of memory, you could check out something like the Line6 Delay Modeler, which weighs in at half the price of a Boomerang and also features lots of delay and echo effects. And even the Hold function found on many older delay pedals will give you a second and a half or so of sampling time - enough to capture the sound of a chord so that you can jam over the top of it. 当你在上面独奏时,可以循环播放各种爵士乐标准的和弦行进。几次披萨快餐式的演出之后,这东西就已经物有所值了,而且到目前为止,它还被证明是防啤酒和坚不可摧的!)如果你对半分钟的内存感到满意,可以考虑 Line6 Delay Modeler 这样的产品,它的价格只有 Boomerang 的一半,还具有大量延迟和回声效果。即使是许多老式延迟踏板上的保持功能,也能为你提供一秒半左右的采样时间--足以捕捉一个和弦的声音,让你可以在上面进行即兴演奏。
The logical extension of this is to get some sort of multitrack recorder and focus on your ability to write tunes. This forces you to view your guitar playing as part of the music as a whole, which is a healthy 这样做的合理延伸是获得某种多轨录音机,并专注于你创作曲调的能力。这将迫使你把吉他演奏视为音乐整体的一部分,这是一种健康的做法。
mindset to have. Also, the areas of your technique that you feel the need to work on will be dictated by the demands of each piece of music you write, so your playing will evolve in ways which complement your musical ideas rather than float off into bizarre realms of technique and theory that you might never need. 的心态。此外,你觉得有必要练习的技巧领域将由你创作的每首乐曲的要求决定,因此你的演奏将以补充你的音乐理念的方式发展,而不是飘向你可能永远用不上的奇异的技巧和理论领域。
Top tip: FINISH THINGS! Successfully writing one whole tune will be more beneficial for your musicianship than writing 20 small chord progressions and never bothering to link them together. One of the key factors in a really effective bit of music is its structure - the way in which different sections fit together and the calculated use of devices like repetition, repetition, repetition and the surprise factor! Once you start thinking about these issues, you’ll find yourself listening to other people’s music with a slightly different agenda. 小贴士:完成曲子!成功谱写一首完整的曲子,比谱写 20 首小和弦进行曲却从不费心将它们连接在一起,更有利于提高你的音乐素养。一首真正有效的音乐作品的关键因素之一在于其结构--不同部分的组合方式,以及对重复、重复、重复和惊喜因素等手段的精心运用!一旦你开始思考这些问题,你就会发现自己在聆听别人的音乐时会有些许不同。
2 TECHNIQUE 2 技术
Physical Considerations 物理方面的考虑
Some amazing things have been accomplished by guitarists suffering from physical setbacks. For instance, consider Tony lommi, the man who wrote all of those demonic-sounding Black Sabbath riffs. The man lost his fretting-hand fingertips in an industrial accident, which would have made many guitarists seriously question the future of their playing careers. Tony, however, decided to make himself some prosthetic leather fingertips, switched to a lighter string gauge and carried on making great music. 身体遭受挫折的吉他手完成了一些令人惊叹的成就。举例来说,托尼-洛米(Tony lommi)就是那个创作了所有听起来像恶魔一样的黑色安息日(Black Sabbath)旋律的人。他在一次工业事故中失去了指针手的指尖,这让许多吉他手对自己的演奏生涯前景产生了严重的怀疑。然而,托尼决定给自己做一些人造皮革指尖,改用较轻的琴弦规格,继续创作伟大的音乐。
Or take Les Paul, that Leonardo da Vinci of the guitar community who pretty much invented multitrack recording and the solid-body electric guitar, not to mention conquering the pop charts of his day and designing the classic Gibson guitar that bears his name. Les’s guitar playing has often been overshadowed by his other contributions in the field of music, but if you check out his instrumental recordings from the 1950s, you’ll hear a guitarist with great technique, an impish sense of humour and some ideas that were decades ahead of their time. The story goes that, when Les once broke his right arm in a car accident, medical experts told him that his playing days were over. Undeterred, he insisted on having his arm set at a right angle so that the plaster cast would permanently hold his picking hand in a playing position, and he carried on quite happily! 莱斯-保罗(Les Paul)是吉他界的达芬奇,他几乎是多轨录音和实心电吉他的发明者,更不用说他还征服了当时的流行音乐排行榜,并设计了以他名字命名的经典吉布森吉他。莱斯的吉他演奏常常被他在音乐领域的其他贡献所掩盖,但如果你看看他在 20 世纪 50 年代录制的器乐唱片,你就会发现他是一位技术精湛、幽默风趣的吉他手,而且他的一些想法领先于那个时代数十年。据说,有一次莱斯因车祸摔断了右臂,医学专家告诉他,他的演奏生涯到此结束。但他并不气馁,坚持将手臂打成直角,这样石膏就能将他弹琴的手永远固定在弹琴的位置上,他就这样快乐地继续弹琴!
Then, of course, there’s the case of Django Reinhardt, who, along with Stephane Grappelli, was one of the leading exponents of the gypsy jazz style and whose fiery acoustic work continues to inspire 当然,还有姜戈-莱恩哈特,他与斯蒂芬-格拉佩利(Stephane Grappelli)是吉普赛爵士乐风格的主要代表人物之一,其火热的原声音乐作品一直激励着人们
legions of imitators to this day. Django was caught in a caravan fire that left two of his fretting-hand fingers withered and virtually unusable, except to form a few chord shapes, and yet if you listen to any of his recordings he sounds more dexterous than most guitarists with their full quota of digits intact. 至今仍有大批模仿者。姜戈曾遭遇一场大火,导致他两根指法手的手指枯萎,除了能弹出几个和弦外,几乎无法使用,但如果你听他的任何录音,都会觉得他比大多数手指完好的吉他手还要灵巧。
The point is that all sorts of things are possible if you’re committed enough to your music. However, I should add that the above-mentioned players were exceptional. They all had the imagination and vision to come up with something unique in their musical output, and they all felt compelled to carry on sharing these new sounds with the rest of the world, regardless of the obstacles that they encountered. People like that are a rare breed, and indeed most of us find that our playing can be severely hampered by injuries far more trivial than the unpleasant ones described above. In other words, playing is a more enjoyable experience if you can just take care of yourself. What follows is a selection of basic selfmaintenance advice. 关键在于,只要你对音乐足够执着,一切皆有可能。不过,我要补充的是,上述演奏家都是出类拔萃的。他们都拥有丰富的想象力和远见卓识,在自己的音乐作品中创造出了独一无二的东西,而且他们都觉得无论遇到什么困难,都必须继续与世人分享这些新的声音。这样的人很少见,事实上,我们中的大多数人都会发现,我们的演奏可能会受到比上述令人不快的伤害更微不足道的严重阻碍。换句话说,如果你能照顾好自己,演奏会是一种更愉快的体验。以下是一些基本的自我保养建议。
Fingertip Injuries 指尖受伤
The most familiar form of pain to most guitarists is surely Sore Fingertip Syndrome. This rather spurioussounding medical condition (and yes, I did invent it myself) is the result of too much practice, causing your fingertips to feel so tender that it hurts just to touch a string, let alone perform a four-fret bend. 大多数吉他手最熟悉的疼痛形式肯定是指尖酸痛综合症。这种听起来颇为夸张的病症(是的,这是我自己发明的)是过度练习的结果,会让你的指尖感到非常柔软,以至于触碰琴弦都会感到疼痛,更不用说演奏四音弯了。
Bear in mind that an experienced guitarist has spent years building up the calluses (areas of abnormally hard skin) on his fingertips. If you subject your own 要知道,经验丰富的吉他手多年来一直在积累指尖上的老茧(异常坚硬的皮肤区域)。如果您自己的
fingers to the regimen of slight but constant abuse that is guitar playing, they will normally respond by toughening up, becoming a little bit more leathery, more impervious to pan and texturally more like the stuff you’d normally expect to find on the soles of your feet. However, if you make excessive demands of them, they can’t always keep up, and the result is sore, shiny red fingertips with the outer layers of skin missing and maybe even a blister or two thrown in for good measure. This can put you out of commission for quite a while and is obviously worth avoiding. Yes, there are rock martyrs out there like Ted Nugent, who claims to have spent every night of his teenage years practising until his fingers bled, and it’s a moving story. but really, bleeding fingers are not good things. Blisters are not good things - they cause you unnecessary pain, they make you sound worse and nobody’s going to feel sorry for you. If you feel any injuries of this nature coming on, you should stop playing for a day or so to give your digits the recovery time they need. If you push things too far, it could take weeks to get yourself back in working order, by which time you’ll have missed enough playing time to cancel out the benefits of that initial, fateful practice session. 在吉他演奏过程中,手指会受到轻微但持续的虐待,通常情况下,手指会变得更加坚韧,变得更像皮革,更耐磨,质地也更像脚底板上的材料。然而,如果你对它们的要求过高,它们就会跟不上,结果就是指尖酸痛、发红,外层皮肤脱落,甚至还会起一两个水泡。这可能会让你在相当长的一段时间内无法工作,显然值得避免。是的,有一些摇滚殉道者,比如泰德-纽金特(Ted Nugent),他声称自己在青少年时期的每个夜晚都在练习,直到手指流血为止,这是一个感人的故事。水泡也不是什么好东西--它会给你带来不必要的痛苦,让你的声音变得更难听,而且没有人会为你感到难过。如果你感觉到有任何类似的伤害,你应该停止演奏一天左右,给你的手指恢复所需的时间。如果你操之过急,可能需要几周的时间才能恢复正常,到那时,你已经错过了足够多的演奏时间,抵消了最初那次致命练习的好处。
The conventional way of protecting your fingertips, by the way, is by dipping them in surgical spirit, which should toughen them up quicker than the old-fashioned just-keep-playing approach. 顺便说一下,保护指尖的传统方法是将指尖浸泡在手术酒精中,这应该比老式的 "继续玩 "方法更快地使指尖变硬。
Following on from this theme of ‘prevention is better than cure’, l’d like to mention a couple of other things pertinent to the issue of callus maintenance. Firstly, it’s a bad idea to pick up a guitar immediately after your hands have been in water. After a shower or a hearty bout of washing up, your calluses are at their softest, and five minutes of normal playing can tear them to ribbons. When they dry out, you’ll find that flakes of skin are dangling from your fingers. Sadly, those flakes of skin used to be your calluses. Not good. 紧接着 "预防胜于治疗 "的主题,我还想提几件与老茧保养问题相关的事情。首先,双手沾水后立即拿起吉他是个坏主意。淋浴或洗漱后,老茧处于最柔软的状态,五分钟的正常弹奏就能将它们撕成碎片。当它们变干时,你会发现皮屑从手指上垂落下来。不幸的是,这些皮屑曾经是你的老茧。这样可不好。
Secondly, be careful if you’re thinking of raising your action or increasing your string gauge. There are some very good reasons why you’d want to do this, as you’ll see in the next section, but it does increase the amount of wear and tear suffered by your fingertips and means that they have to toughen up to a new level 其次,如果您想提高弹奏力度或增加弦距,一定要慎重。正如您在下一节中看到的那样,您这样做有一些很好的理由,但这确实会增加指尖的磨损,意味着指尖必须变得更加坚韧,达到一个新的水平。
of resilience. Remember, slowly does it - even if you’ve been playing for years, jumping up from .009gauge strings to a set of .013 s can play havoc with your hands. 的弹性。记住,要慢慢来--即使您已经弹奏多年,从 0.009 号琴弦跳到 0.013 号琴弦也会对您的双手造成伤害。
Thirdly, it helps to change your strings from time to time and also to wipe them clean after playing. Old strings get rusty and abrasive, making sliding up and down them a more painful experience than performing the same movements on a new set. 第三,时常更换琴弦并在弹奏后将其擦拭干净是有帮助的。旧琴弦会生锈和磨损,与在新琴弦上做同样的动作相比,在旧琴弦上上下滑动会更加痛苦。
Fourthly, once your fingers have developed the calluses they need to cope with your playing style, your job is to keep them there, Playing regularly is a obviously a good plan, but l admit that there are always going to be times when this isn’t possible - anything from the pleasant prospect of a holiday to the decidedly less pleasant prospect of an increased workload can interfere with your best-laid plans. If you find months cropping up in your calendar in which you know you won’t get as much time to practise as you usually do, you might want to invest in a cheap acoustic. The cheaper and more unplayable it is, the better, as playing a real dog of an instrument for two minutes can keep your fingertips in shape as efficiently as playing your favourite shred machine for an hour. (Like 98 per cent of my statistics, that one was clearly made up, but you get my drift.) 第四,一旦你的手指长出了适应演奏风格所需的茧子,你的任务就是让它们一直保持下去。定期演奏显然是一个好计划,但我承认,总有一些时候是不可能的--从令人愉快的假期前景到明显不那么令人愉快的工作量增加的前景,任何事情都可能干扰你的最佳计划。如果您发现在您的日程表中出现了几个月的时间,而您知道在这几个月中您不会像平时那样有那么多时间练习,那么您可能需要投资购买一台廉价的音响。越便宜、越难弹越好,因为弹两分钟真正的狗乐器能让你的指尖保持形状,就像弹一个小时你最喜欢的碎纸机一样有效。(和我 98% 的统计数据一样,这显然是编造的,但你懂我的意思)。
Finally, if you’re in an Indian restaurant and the waiter brings over your order on one of those sizzling metal skillets that come on wooden bases, you’d better believe him when he warns you not to touch it. I’ve known a player to have such good calluses that he unconsciously picked up one of those things with his fingers, quite happily poured some food onto his plate and felt no pain until the moment he put the container back onto the table and attempted to remove his hand from it. As you’ve probably guessed, his calluses had stuck to the hot metal (you can wince now, if you like) and it took him a long time to grow them back. 最后,如果你在一家印度餐厅就餐,服务员把你点的菜放在那种放在木制底座上烤得嗞嗞作响的金属平底锅上,你最好相信他警告你不要碰它的话。我认识一个球员,他的老茧非常厚,手指无意识地拿起一个这样的东西,非常高兴地把一些食物倒进盘子里,直到他把容器放回桌子上并试图把手从上面拿开的那一刻,他都没有感觉到疼痛。你可能已经猜到了,他的老茧已经粘在了滚烫的金属上(如果你愿意,现在可以畏缩一下了),他花了很长时间才把老茧长回来。
If you’re playing guitar for a living, slightly different rules might apply. Your duty as a professional musician is to get the show done, no matter what. After all, people have paid hard-earned shekels to come and see you, and whatever problems you might be experiencing, your audience doesn’t need to know about them. This philosophy explains such horrific- 如果你以弹吉他为生,规则可能略有不同。作为一名专业音乐家,你的职责是无论如何都要完成演出。毕竟,观众是花了血汗钱来看你演出的,无论你遇到什么问题,观众都不需要知道。这种理念解释了为什么会出现如此可怕的
sounding tales as Buddy Guy sticking pins in his fingertips to accelerate the regeneration of hard callus material (I’m not sure how good an idea this is, to be honest, but it works for Buddy) or Stevie Ray Vaughan’s infamous DIY skin graft. 巴迪-盖伊(Buddy Guy)在指尖上插针,以加速硬茧材料的再生(说实话,我不知道这是个多好的主意,但对巴迪很有效),或者史蒂夫-雷-沃恩(Stevie Ray Vaughan)臭名昭著的 DIY 植皮。
In case you haven’t heard this one before, here’s a quick bit of background. Stevie’s top E string was normally a 013, and it’s been suggested that he sometimes went as heavy as an . 018 (although admittedly this would have been tuned a little lower than concert pitch). Being a Texan blues kind of guy. Stevie used a lot of wide bends in his playing style, and you can imagine how his fingertips reacted to this insensitive treatment: occasionally, they simply couldn’t cope. Stevie’s solution was to stick his lefthand fingertips onto his right forearm with Superglue, wait for it to dry and then rip! I guess the idea was to borrow some epidermis from a part of his body that didn’t need it so much and transfer it to his fingertips. which needed all the skin they could get. (Incidentally, I believe that Superglue was invented during one of the World Wars as a quick way of sticking damaged soldiers back together in situations where there was no access to proper surgical knowhow or materials. Stevie’s use of the stuff doesn’t sound half as grotesque when you look at it from that perspective. Still, it’s a little extreme for most people.) 如果您以前没有听过这首歌,这里有一个简单的背景介绍。Stevie 的最高 E 弦通常是 013 号,有人说他有时会把弦调到 018 号(虽然这应该比音乐会上的音高要低一些)。作为一个德克萨斯蓝调音乐人。你可以想象他的指尖对这种不敏感处理的反应:偶尔,它们根本无法承受。史蒂夫的解决办法是用强力胶将左手指尖粘在右手前臂上,等干了再撕!我猜他的想法是从他身体上不太需要表皮的部位借来一些表皮,然后转移到他的指尖上。(顺便提一下,我相信超级胶水是在某次世界大战期间发明的,在没有适当的外科手术知识或材料的情况下,它是一种将受损士兵快速粘合在一起的方法。从这个角度来看,斯蒂文使用这种东西听起来就没有那么怪异了。不过,对大多数人来说,这还是有点极端了)。
Moving onto a different example, anyone who remembers the music shops of the 1980s will recall that most bass-playing patrons would make an instant beeline for any bass with no headstock, pick the thing up, adjust the strap so that it resided just below chinlevel and then commence furiously slapping it with their thumb. This was almost entirely due to the inspirational work of the bass-playing frontman of Level 42, Mark King, who took slap-bass playing to new heights of popularity and technical excellence. (Check out the live album A Physical Presence if you don’t believe me.) Constantly pummelling the low E string on a bass with the side of your thumb is about as good for your skin as playing violent blues on a guitar strung with .013 s , and Mr King found that the callus on his thumb was prone to cracking open from time to time. His solution was to wrap electrical tape around the area in question. After this, not only did his thumb stop 换个例子,任何还记得 20 世纪 80 年代音乐商店的人都会记得,大多数低音提琴演奏者都会立即冲向任何没有琴头的低音提琴,拿起琴弦,调整琴带,使其刚好位于下巴水平线以下,然后开始用拇指疯狂地拍打它。这几乎完全归功于 42 级乐队贝斯手主唱马克-金(Mark King)的启蒙工作,他将巴掌贝斯演奏的受欢迎程度和技术水平提升到了新的高度。(如果你不相信,可以看看他的现场专辑《A Physical Presence》)用拇指的一侧不断敲击贝司的低音 E 弦,对皮肤的好处不亚于用 0.013 s 弦的吉他演奏暴力蓝调,而且金先生发现自己拇指上的老茧时不时就会裂开。他的解决方法是用电工胶带缠绕有关部位。此后,他的拇指不仅不再
hurting but he actually found that he preferred the sound - the tape added a little click to the start of each note, giving his tone a percussive quality that nicely complemented his slap-intensive playing style. Now, there’s a happy ending! 但实际上,他发现自己更喜欢这种音色--磁带在每个音符的开头增加了一点咔嗒声,使他的音色具有打击感,很好地补充了他的拍击密集型演奏风格。现在,有了一个圆满的结局!
All of the above applies to minor fingertip injuries which will generally heal themselves if you just pamper them a little bit. However, there’s another kind of problem that you might encounter that’s far more serious and harder to remedy. I’m referring to tendon troubles. 以上所述都适用于轻微的指尖损伤,只要稍加呵护,一般都会自愈。然而,你可能会遇到另一种问题,它要严重得多,也更难补救。我指的是肌腱问题。
Warming Up 热身
From time to time, a student will approach me with an anxious expression and inform me. ‘I’ve decided to double the length of my practice routine. I’ve been getting some great results, but for the last week or so, I’ve felt some strange shooting pains in my forearm and wrist. Is this normal? Should I worry?’ 不时会有学生带着焦虑的表情找到我,告诉我:'我决定把日常练习的时间加长一倍。我决定把我的练习时间加倍。我已经取得了一些很好的效果,但最近一周左右,我感到前臂和手腕有些奇怪的射痛。这正常吗?我应该担心吗?
In short, yes, you should worry. If you work your playing muscles and tendons too hard, you could be inviting tendonitis or carpal tunnel syndrome, a horrible condition in which your median nerve (the one responsible for the way in which your hand feels sensation and moves) gets compressed and can’t function properly. Problems like this won’t just go away, so if you suspect any tendon crises in the making, however slight or irregular the symptoms, you should seek medical advice immediately and go easy on the playing until you’ve heard an expert’s opinion on what the trouble might be. If you’re a natural hypochondriac, bear in mind that there’s a difference between ‘good pain’ and ‘bad pain’; what you should be looking out for are irregular shooting pains or muscles locking up and not doing what you tell them rather than the slight exhaustion in your hands and forearms after a sensible practice routine. 简而言之,是的,您应该担心。如果您在弹奏时肌肉和肌腱用力过猛,就有可能引发肌腱炎或腕管综合征,这是一种可怕的疾病,您的正中神经(负责手部感觉和活动的神经)会受到压迫而无法正常工作。这样的问题不会轻易消失,所以如果你怀疑自己的肌腱出现了危机,无论症状多么轻微或不规则,都应立即就医,在听取专家的意见之前,不要轻易玩耍。如果您天生有臆想症,请记住 "好的疼痛 "和 "坏的疼痛 "是有区别的;您应该注意的是不规则的射痛或肌肉锁死、不听使唤,而不是在合理的日常练习后手部和前臂的轻微疲惫。
There are ways of keeping this sort of malady at bay. As with any physical activity, you should warm up before attempting anything too demanding so that your muscles and tendons can stretch nicely. You’ll see the same idea at work in any gym - power-lifters and the like will spend a lot of time stretching before they even start to lift anything, and when they do finally move on to weights they’ll start with moderate ones 有一些方法可以避免这种弊病。与任何体育活动一样,在尝试任何高难度动作之前,您都应该先热身,这样肌肉和肌腱才能得到很好的伸展。在任何健身房,你都能看到同样的理念--力量举重运动员等在开始举重之前都会花大量时间进行拉伸,而当他们最终开始举重时,他们会从中等重量开始。
and build up to the heavy stuff, thus protecting their muscles from any sudden, unexpected strains. In the same spirit, you’d be ill advised to pick up your guitar for the first time in several days and immediately launch into an up-tempo rendition of ‘Flight Of The Bumblebee’. Technically demanding playing feels easier and is less likely to cause you permanent damage if you prepare for it first by running through a few simple exercises, starting slowly and gradually building up speed. 这样可以保护他们的肌肉,避免任何突如其来的意外拉伤。本着同样的精神,如果你几天来第一次拿起吉他,马上就开始演奏快节奏的《Flight Of The Bumblebee》,那可就大错特错了。如果先做一些简单的练习,从慢速开始,逐渐加快速度,那么对技术要求较高的弹奏就会感觉更轻松,也更不容易造成永久性损伤。
All of this becomes even more important if your hands have recently been in the cold. Wintry temperatures make your blood retreat as far inside your body as it can possibly go, leaving extremities like your hands with a bare minimum of circulation. If your fingers are looking blue, they’re clearly not going to enjoy negotiating a marathon of chromatic scales, so you might want to consider buying a pair of gloves. OK, wearing a pair of mittens might not look particularly rock ’ nn ’ roll, but it’ll protect your hands from the shock of sudden temperature changes - and they are, after all, the only hands you’ve got. 如果您的双手最近一直处于寒冷的环境中,所有这些就变得更加重要。寒风凛冽的气温会让您的血液尽可能地向身体内部退缩,从而让手部等四肢的血液循环降到最低。如果你的手指发青,它们显然不会喜欢半音阶马拉松式的演奏,所以你可能需要考虑买一副手套。好吧,戴上一双手套可能看起来不是那么摇滚,但它能保护你的双手免受温度骤变的冲击--毕竟,它们是你唯一的双手。
Here’s a quick anecdote regarding Glenn Gould, an American concert pianist specialising in playing the challenging contrapuntal works of JS Bach. This stuff is musical maths at its most intimidating, often with four intertwined melodies going on simultaneously, and it’s enough of a challenge simply to play all of the notes correctly, let alone getting each part sounding distinct from the others, but Glenn’s ability to create independence in each part is still a benchmark for any modern pianist tackling the same repertoire decades later. Before a concert, this hugely accomplished musician would plunge his hands into a bucket of near-boiling water, claiming that it improved blood circulation, enabling him to play 30-40 per cent faster and also making his fingertips more sensitive to different dynamic levels (which, I suppose, must be one of the most important factors if your chosen field of music involves a lot of counterpoint). I admit that this method doesn’t apply directly to guitar playing - a pianist’s fingers spend their time pushing down on nice, smooth keys, whereas a guitarist’s have to push down on thin steel wires under high tension, so we need our calluses 这里有一则关于美国音乐会钢琴家格伦-古尔德(Glenn Gould)的轶事,他擅长演奏巴赫(JS Bach)极具挑战性的协奏曲。这些作品是最令人生畏的音乐数学,往往有四段相互交织的旋律同时进行,光是正确弹奏所有音符就已经是一项挑战,更不用说让每个声部听起来与其他声部截然不同了,但格伦在每个声部中创造独立性的能力仍然是几十年后任何现代钢琴家处理相同曲目的基准。在音乐会之前,这位成就非凡的音乐家会将双手放入一桶近乎沸腾的水中,声称这样可以促进血液循环,使他的演奏速度提高 30%-40%,并使他的指尖对不同的动态水平更加敏感(我想,如果你选择的音乐领域涉及大量对位,这一定是最重要的因素之一)。我承认,这种方法并不能直接应用于吉他演奏--钢琴家的手指会一直按在光滑的琴键上,而吉他手的手指则必须在高张力下按在细钢丝上,所以我们需要我们的老茧
more than they do! However, it does illustrate the benefits of warming up and generally getting the blood pumping through your hands. Indeed, Joe Satriani apparently likes to put his elbows in hot water before he plays. This might sound a little odd, but playing guitar actually uses a lot of forearm muscles. so it kind of makes sense 比他们做得更多!不过,这也说明了热身和让双手血液循环的好处。事实上,乔-萨特里亚尼(Joe Satriani)显然喜欢在演奏前将手肘浸泡在热水中。这听起来可能有点奇怪,但弹吉他实际上会用到很多前臂肌肉。
At the other end of the temperature scale, I remember reading an old interview with Jack Bruce, the bassist from Cream, who described using a Kramer bass with a VV-shaped headstock and an aluminium neck. On one occasion, he had to perform in a particularly cold part of the world and the bass had been stored at an unwholesomely low temperature. As a result, the palm of his left hand stuck to the metal on the back of the neck, much as it would stick to the inside wall of a freezer, and I really can’t imagine how he got through the gig. Fortunately, the aluminium neck has since been consigned to the scrapheap by all leading manufacturers, and there’s really no danger of you encountering this problem. (In my defence, it’s an interesting story and it’s vaguely connected with temperature, so I wanted to throw it in somewhere!) 在温度的另一端,我记得曾读过一篇对奶油乐队贝司手杰克-布鲁斯(Jack Bruce)的旧采访,他描述自己使用的是一把带有 VV 形琴头和铝制琴颈的克莱默贝司。有一次,他不得不在世界上一个特别寒冷的地方演出,而贝司的存放温度又非常低。结果,他的左手手掌粘在了琴颈背面的金属上,就像粘在冰柜内壁上一样,我真不敢想象他是怎么熬过那场演出的。幸运的是,铝制琴颈已经被所有主要生产商扔进了废铁堆,你也就不会再遇到这种问题了。(我想说的是,这是个有趣的故事,而且隐约与温度有关,所以我想把它放在某个地方!)。
In general, it’s safe to assume that your gear deserves as much TLC as your hands - sudden changes in temperature can play havoc with your tuning, with the tone of your equipment and, in some cases, its actual structure. Valve amps, for instance, don’t like being left on all night and then abruptly taken outdoors and thrown into a cold van - the sockets that house the actual valves are prone to crack if subjected to sudden changes of climate. My favourite Strat took months to recover from an outdoor festival in Houston, Texas, on a sweltering day in July with temperatures of around 110^(@)F110^{\circ} \mathrm{F} and exceptionally high humidity. After a few hours of being stored in these conditions, the guitar’s neck wouldn’t respond to any amount of truss-rod therapy - it simply didn’t work any more. Still, I felt more fortunate than the touring double-bass player who woke up in a hotel room in Brazil one morning to find the floor strewn with all the bits and pieces you might need to make a double bass after all the glue in his instrument had melted during the night. 一般来说,您可以放心地认为,您的设备和您的双手一样需要精心呵护--温度的突然变化会对您的调音、设备的音色,有时甚至是设备的实际结构造成严重破坏。例如,阀式放大器不喜欢整晚开着,然后突然被带到室外,扔进一辆冰冷的货车里--如果气候骤变,容纳实际阀片的插座很容易破裂。我最喜欢的 Strat 在德克萨斯州休斯顿的一次户外音乐节上使用了几个月才恢复正常,那是七月的一天,气温约为 110^(@)F110^{\circ} \mathrm{F} ,湿度特别高。在这样的条件下存放了几个小时后,吉他的琴颈就对任何三连杆疗法都没有反应了--它根本就不再工作了。尽管如此,我还是觉得自己比一位巡回演出的低音提琴演奏家幸运得多。一天早上,他在巴西的一家酒店房间里醒来,发现地板上散落着制作低音提琴所需的各种零碎部件,因为他的乐器上的胶水在一夜之间全部融化了。
There’s another issue that should be taken into account here: your posture when playing. Many playing-related aches and pains come from bad posture, and I think that the most important thing to bear in mind is that playing should feel natural and comfortable. If it doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong! You’ll be familiar with the general principles at work if you’ve ever sat through one of those courses that they run in offices, telling you that your computer monitor should be at eye level, your wrists should be straight when you’re typing, your chair should be at such-and-such a height, the curve of your spine should look like Figure 1, not Figure 2 and so on. 还有一个问题需要考虑:演奏时的姿势。许多与演奏有关的疼痛都是由不良姿势引起的,我认为最重要的一点是演奏时要感觉自然和舒适。如果感觉不自然,那就说明你做错了!如果你曾在办公室里听过那些课程,你就会熟悉工作中的一般原则,它们告诉你电脑显示器应与眼睛平齐,打字时手腕应伸直,椅子应保持这样那样的高度,脊柱的曲线应像图 1 而不是图 2 等等。
In guitar-playing terms, bad postural habits might be the result of lots of playing while slumped in front of the TV, staring too intently at your fretting hand or studying a piece of written music when its pages are strewn across the floor, forcing your neck into an awkward angle. In general, you should aim to keep your spine and wrists as straight as possible. 就吉他弹奏而言,不良姿势习惯可能是由于经常斜靠在电视机前弹奏、过于专注地盯着你的指法手,或者在研究书面乐谱时乐谱页散落在地板上,迫使你的脖子形成一个尴尬的角度。一般来说,你应该尽量保持脊柱和手腕挺直。
At one time, I had a teaching job that required me to sit in a tiny practice room for nine hours on the trot, and after a few weeks I started to feel an unpleasant, dull pain at the back of my shoulder blade which made playing a lot more of a chore than it used to be. I finally figured out that the cause of the problem wasn’t the guitar playing itself; it was leaning over a stumpy table in a particularly inaccessible part of the room, writing out licks and solos for students with my guitar still strapped on. As soon as I realised this, I moved the table nearer my picking/writing hand, added a little pile of books underneath my manuscript paper to elevate it to a more convenient level and the pain went away. Remember that playing should feel as effortless as possible. Try to design your practice environment with this in mind. 有一次,我做了一份教学工作,需要在一间狭小的练习室里连续坐上九个小时。几周后,我开始感到肩胛骨后部有一种令人不快的钝痛,这让我的弹奏变得比以前更加费力。最后我终于明白,问题的根源并不在于吉他弹奏本身,而在于我斜靠在房间里一个特别难以接近的地方的矮桌上,在吉他还绑在身上的情况下为学生们谱写乐句和独奏。意识到这一点后,我立即把桌子移到离我弹琴/写稿的手更近的地方,在稿纸下面放了一小堆书,把它抬高到更方便的位置,疼痛就消失了。请记住,演奏时应尽可能感觉轻松自如。在设计练习环境时要考虑到这一点。
Tone 音调
Thought for the day: However technically accomplished you might be as a player, no one will want to listen to you if you don’t at least sound half-decent. 今天的思考:无论你在演奏技术上有多高的造诣,如果你的声音连半点水准都没有,就不会有人愿意听你演奏。
It’s possible to become so engrossed in that addictive quest for better technique or more knowledge that you end up overlooking the vital issue 你可能会沉迷于追求更好的技术或更多的知识,最终忽略了一个重要的问题
of finding a good tone, but of course this can be hugely detrimental to the way in which people perceive your playing. However amazing your new tapping lick might be from a technical perspective, it won’t impress anyone if it sounds like the proverbial bee in a jam jar. 当然,这也会大大影响人们对你演奏的印象。无论从技术角度看,你的新弹奏技巧多么令人惊叹,但如果听起来像果酱瓶里的蜜蜂,就不会给人留下深刻印象。
With that spirit in mind, I thought we should take a quick look at some of the more common hurdles confronting any player in search of a good sound. My angle here is to preach the value of using your ears rather than suggest that you need to spend absurd amounts of cash on a new rig. Many people blame their equipment for the shortcomings in their tone when in fact the problem is often something that could easily be remedied by adopting a different playing technique or judiciously twiddling a couple of knobs. 本着这种精神,我认为我们应该快速审视一下任何演奏者在追求好声音时所面临的一些常见障碍。在这里,我想宣扬的是使用耳朵的价值,而不是建议您花费巨资购买新的设备。许多人将音色的缺陷归咎于他们的设备,而事实上,问题往往可以通过采用不同的演奏技巧或明智地拧动几个旋钮来轻松解决。
Feedback 反馈意见
One of the biggest problems is that amp settings that sound good on their own often don’t work as well in a band context. Bucketloads of overdrive, for instance, might well make your fastest shredding licks easier to play when you’re in your bedroom, running through your practice routine, but if you use the same settings at a gig, there’s a very real danger that no one will be able to hear what you’re playing. Distortion adds a buzzy quality to your tone, and when you’ve got a whole band playing behind you, this buzziness can sometimes make it harder to distinguish the actual pitch of each note. Backing down the gain a bit might force you to play more accurately, but surely it’s worth making this sacrifice if it helps the music to sound better as a whole. 其中一个最大的问题是,音箱设置本身听起来不错,但在乐队演出时往往效果不佳。例如,当你在卧室里进行例行练习时,大量的过载可能会让你弹奏速度最快的乐段变得更容易,但如果你在演出时使用同样的设置,就很有可能没有人能听到你在弹奏什么。失真会给你的音色带来嗡嗡声,而当你身后有整个乐队在演奏时,这种嗡嗡声有时会让你更难分辨每个音符的实际音高。稍微降低增益可能会迫使你演奏得更准确,但如果能让音乐整体听起来更好听,这种牺牲肯定是值得的。
Quite aside from the above, there’s another nasty surprise in store for anyone who uses a lot of gain in that high volume levels increase the risk of feedback. Of course, feedback isn’t always a bad thing - Pete Townshend and Jimi Hendrix pioneered the use of controlled feedback as a musical effect and more modern players like Joe Satriani have done some great things with the stuff - but l’m referring here to the kind of feedback that makes your guitar howl when you didn’t ask it to. When you’re cranked up to 11, the slightest provocation will induce your guitar to let loose with a caterwauling screech, so players who habitually play loud with lots of overdrive need to remember little 除了上述问题,对于使用大量增益的人来说,还有一个令人讨厌的问题,那就是高音量会增加反馈的风险。当然,反馈并不总是一件坏事--皮特-汤森德(Pete Townshend)和吉米-亨德里克斯(Jimi Hendrix)率先将可控反馈作为一种音乐效果,而像乔-萨特里亚尼(Joe Satriani)这样的现代演奏家也利用这种东西做出了一些伟大的成就--但我这里指的是那种在你没有要求的情况下让你的吉他发出嚎叫的反馈。当你把音量开到 11,最轻微的刺激都会让你的吉他发出 "嘎吱嘎吱 "的尖叫声,所以习惯用大量超频来大声演奏的演奏者需要记住一点
tricks like always turning down the guitar’s volume knob when they’re not playing, keeping a respectful distance from the amp and of course being extra careful when muting strings not currently being played. If you can honestly say that you’re doing all of this and you’re still having feedback problems, it’s probably time to admit that you’re using unrealistic amounts of overdrive. 比如在不演奏时总是调低吉他的音量旋钮,与音箱保持一定距离,当然在静音不演奏的琴弦时也要格外小心。如果你能诚实地说,这些你都做到了,但还是有反馈问题,那你可能就该承认你使用了不切实际的过载。
It’s worth bearing in mind that there are two distinct kinds of overdrive. The first is generated by the preamp (the tone-shaping part of the amp where the gain and tone controls live) and is characterised by a fuzzy sound quality that will familiar to anyone who’s tried to make their amp sound nasty at low volume levels. The second is the result of overdriving the power amp (the part of the amp responsible for overall volume level, courtesy of the Master Volume knob). This type of overdrive tends to sound more musical - the guitar still feels responsive and you still get all the sustain you could ask for, but the overall timbre is a lot smoother, with none of the buzzy abrasiveness of preamp distortion. 值得注意的是,超速有两种不同的类型。第一种是由前置放大器(放大器的音色塑造部分,增益和音色控制器就设在这里)产生的,其特点是音质模糊,任何试图在低音量下让放大器发出讨厌声音的人都不会感到陌生。第二种是功率放大器(放大器中负责总体音量的部分,由主音量旋钮控制)过载的结果。这种类型的过载往往听起来更有音乐感--吉他仍然感觉反应灵敏,你仍然可以得到所有你想要的延音效果,但整体音色要平滑得多,没有前置放大器失真的嗡嗡声。
Valve amps are particularly prized for their poweramp distortion - the harder you work a valve amp, the more it ‘sings’ - and most of the classic rock guitar tones we know and love were created with them. Of course, Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell gets a fantastic sound out of his solid-state (non-valve) Randall stacks, but this is really the exception rather than the norm; most rock guitarists prefer the ways in which valve amps respond to their playing, and the more successful solid-state designs normally claim to feature some sort of tube-emulation circuitry anyway. (To be fair, you might actually prefer the sound of solid-state amplification if your main priority is getting a crisp, clean sound at high volume levels. Let your ears decide.) 阀式放大器因其功率放大器失真效果而备受推崇--阀式放大器的工作强度越大,"唱 "得越好--我们所熟知和喜爱的大多数经典摇滚吉他音色都是用它们创造出来的。当然,Pantera 的 Dimebag Darrell 从他的固态(非阀式)Randall 堆栈中获得了绝妙的音色,但这确实是例外而非常态;大多数摇滚吉他手更喜欢阀式放大器对他们演奏的反应方式,而且更成功的固态设计通常都声称具有某种电子管模拟电路。(平心而论,如果你的首要任务是在高音量下获得清脆、干净的声音,那么你可能更喜欢固态放大器的声音。让你的耳朵来决定吧)。
Given that a decent amp sounds best when it’s working hard, it makes sense to use an amp that kicks out a usable volume level when cranked up in this way. If you bought The Amp Of Doom and never found the opportunity to turn it up properly, it would be about as much use to you as a Ferrari in a traffic jam. There are many situations where it’s worth considering a relatively low-powered valve amp - in a gig setting, for instance, you’ll normally find that the soundman is violently opposed to the idea of the guitar being too loud 考虑到一个好的音箱在工作时音质最好,因此使用一个在这种情况下能开到可用音量的音箱是很有意义的。如果您购买了 "末日音箱",却从未有机会将其音量适当调高,那么它对您的作用就如同堵车时的法拉利跑车一样。在许多情况下,值得考虑使用功率相对较低的阀门放大器,例如在演出环境中,你通常会发现音响师强烈反对吉他声音过大。
onstage. (This is because his job is to achieve a separate signal for each instrument, and the sound of a wall of Marshalls at full tilt will affect every microphone on the stage.) In studio terms, I need only remind you that Jimmy Page used a tiny Fender Supro amp to record the far-from-tiny guitar sounds you hear on the early Led Zeppelin stuff…, 在舞台上。(这是因为他的工作是为每种乐器实现独立的信号,而一堵马歇尔音箱墙全开的声音会影响到舞台上的每个麦克风)。就录音室而言,我只需提醒你,吉米-佩奇曾用一个小巧的芬达 Supro 音箱录制了你在齐柏林飞艇乐队早期作品中听到的远非小巧的吉他音色......、
EQ
Another vital element in the attainment of tonal nirvana is EQ. Imagine a spectrum of sound, with the low, rumbling stuff (ie kick drum and bass) at one end and the treblier components (ie cymbals) at the other. This is the way in which producers and engineers approach sound when they’re mixing a track - rather than simply mess around with the volume levels, they try to emphasise different frequencies for each instrument so that every sound is assigned its own place in the ‘spectrum’. 实现音色涅槃的另一个重要因素是均衡器。想象一下声音的光谱,一端是低沉、隆隆作响的声音(即踢鼓和低音),另一端是高音部分(即铙钹)。这就是制作人和工程师在混音时处理音效的方式--他们不会简单地乱调音量,而是尝试强调每种乐器的不同频率,这样每种声音都能在 "频谱 "中找到自己的位置。
As a guitarist, you should be looking for that part of the sonic spectrum that the other musicians need the least, and you’ll find this niche somewhere in the middle, so your best bet is to crank up your amp’s mid range. I know that a mid-heavy guitar sound can have an unpleasant honky, nasal quality when you hear it on its own, and many bedroom-bound players gravitate towards a tone with relatively little mid range, but trust me - in a band context, tones like that will come across as thin and weedy. If you pump up the mids, your sound will cut through better without drowning out your fellow bandmembers. Everyone gets heard, so everyone is happy - including the audience! 作为一名吉他手,你应该寻找其他乐手最不需要的那部分音色,而你会在中间的某个地方找到这个利基,所以你最好的选择就是调高音箱的中音域。我知道,中音偏重的吉他音色单独听起来会有一种令人不悦的沙哑、鼻音的感觉,许多在卧室中演奏的乐手都倾向于使用中音域相对较小的音色,但请相信我--在乐队中,这样的音色会显得单薄、杂乱。如果你加大中音域,你的声音就能更好地穿透,而不会淹没你的乐队成员。每个人都能听到,所以每个人都很高兴,包括观众!
Furthermore, if you want to make your solos cut through a little more in the overall sound of a gig or recording session, dialling in a little extra mid can be every bit as effective as turning up your volume, and some guitars have switchable mid-boost circuitry for this very purpose. 此外,如果你想让独奏在演出或录音时的整体音效中更有穿透力,调高一点中音的效果不亚于调高音量,有些吉他还为此配备了可切换的中音增强电路。
Having extolled the virtues of the mid range, I should point out that there are exceptions to all of the above, notably the clean, glassy funk sound you often get on pop records (where the guitar’s role is more about providing a percussive effect than playing an up-front melody) or the chunky metal riffs associated with players like Metallica’s James Hetfield. That 在赞美了中音域的优点之后,我应该指出,上述情况也有例外,特别是在流行唱片中经常出现的干净、玻璃质感的放克音色(在这种音色中,吉他的作用更多的是提供打击效果,而不是演奏前奏旋律),或者与 Metallica 的 James Hetfield 等演奏家有关的厚重的金属旋律。这些
crunching, evil-sounding rhythm tone is often described as scooped, which means that the bass and treble are boosted while the mid range is cut. (Think of a graphic equaliser set in a VV shape.) Add liberal doses of overdrive and voila - the sound of Satan! This scooped tone is great if used in appropriate places, but you should bear in mind that it swallows up a lot of the frequencies normally reserved for the bass player. Done properly, the bass/scooped guitar combination can sound like one monstrously fatsounding instrument (which is a good thing!), but it’s something that works best in heavy, riff-based music; in most other contexts, it’s more important to hear the bass distinctly. 这种令人毛骨悚然、听起来邪恶的节奏音色通常被描述为 "勺型 "音色,这意味着低音和高音被增强,而中音则被削减(想想图形均衡器设置成 VV 的形状)。(想想设置成 VV 形状的图形均衡器)再加上适量的过载,这就是撒旦的声音!如果用在适当的地方,这种勺型音色是非常棒的,但你应该记住,它会吞噬掉很多通常为贝斯手保留的频率。如果使用得当,贝司与吉他的组合听起来就像一个声音巨大的乐器(这是件好事!),但它最适用于重型、以 riff 为基础的音乐;在大多数其他情况下,更重要的是要听出贝司的声音。
Effects 效果
While I’m still on the topic of being heard clearly, now seems like a good time for a quick word on effects. Most of the factory presets on multi-effects units feature huge washes of reverb and chorus, offensively loud delay and far too much overdrive. Why? Because the manufacturers know that their prospective buyers will be trying out their units on their own, in a music shop. The more lavish the presets sound, the more impressed the customer will be. However, when you take your new multi-effects unit to its first band rehearsal, you’ll normally find that you have to modify all of the presets by reducing the amount of each effect. Signal processing is a wonderful thing when used in moderation (much like absinthe), but use too much of it and you’ll suffer a loss of clarity (again, much like absinthe!). If you drown your guitar in effects, it’ll sound somehow more distant, as if the sound is coming through the wall from the room next door. 当我还在谈论 "听清楚 "这个话题时,现在似乎是一个简单谈谈效果器的好时机。大多数多重效果器的出厂预设都具有巨大的混响和合唱、令人反感的高音量延时以及过多的过载。为什么会这样呢?因为制造商知道,他们的潜在买家会在音乐商店里自己试用他们的设备。预设音效越华丽,顾客就会对其印象越深刻。然而,当你带着新的多重效果器去参加第一次乐队排练时,通常会发现你必须修改所有的预设,减少每种效果的用量。适度使用信号处理是一件好事(就像苦艾酒一样),但使用过多就会失去清晰度(同样,就像苦艾酒一样!)。如果你的吉他被效果器淹没,它听起来就会莫名其妙地变得遥远,就好像声音是从隔壁房间穿墙而过一样。
Another effects-related issue involves the volume at which you’re playing and the nature of the venue. No two buildings produce exactly the same sound, but every venue has some kind of inherent reverb, as illustrated by the names used for different reverb programs - ‘Cathedral’, ‘Small Hall’, ‘Live Room’ and so on. Since the venue is providing natural reverb at no additional charge, it seems logical to back off the amount of artificial ambience generated by your rig. 另一个与效果相关的问题涉及到演奏时的音量和场地的性质。没有两座建筑物会产生完全相同的声音,但每个场地都有某种固有的混响,不同混响程序的名称就说明了这一点--"大教堂"、"小礼堂"、"现场室 "等等。既然场地免费提供自然混响,那么减少设备产生的人工环境音量也就顺理成章了。
Of course, the importance of this will depend on the size and shape of the building, not to mention the 当然,这一点的重要性取决于建筑物的大小和形状,更不用说
absorbency of the wall surfaces. I once did a tour of Germany where about half of the venues were converted breweries, and I discovered what happens when you put a noisy rock band in a giant concrete box with a high ceiling and an abundance of metal pipes. The echo is abnormally pronounced in these places, and the only way to make things work is to keep the effects to an absolute minimum and to curb the volume levels. 墙面的吸音性。我曾在德国进行过一次巡演,那里大约有一半的演出场所都是由啤酒厂改建而成的,我发现当你把一个嘈杂的摇滚乐队放在一个天花板很高、有大量金属管道的巨大混凝土盒子里时会发生什么。在这些地方,回声异常明显,唯一的办法就是将效果降到最低,并控制音量。
Tone Controls 音调控制器
Forgive me if the following sounds obvious, but | think that many players overlook the many tonal variations they could be coaxing from their guitars by playing around with the volume and tone controls. If your amp is on a fairly clean setting, the Volume knob pretty much does what it says on the tin, but in a more overdriven context the same knob affects not only the volume but also the fatness of what’s being played - the guitar produces a thick tone when it’s turned all the way up, thinning out as the volume is backed down. Turn the thing down nearly all the way and you’ll find a perfectly usable clean tone with more bite and top end than you could get from your amp’s clean channel. (For a good illustration of this, consult the clean tone you hear on Van Halen albums. When Eddie designed his signature MusicMan guitar, he actually stipulated that its single Volume knob should be labelled ‘Tone’ on the grounds that he would be using it mainly to control the saturation of his overdriven sound rather than to alter its actual loudness.) Many players in the blues/rock field can happily get through a whole gig using a one-channel amp, controlling their volume and overdrive levels from the guitar itself. 如果下面的话听起来很明显,请原谅我,但我认为很多演奏者都忽略了通过玩弄音量和音色控制钮可以从吉他中获得的多种音色变化。如果您的音箱设置得相当干净,音量旋钮几乎就能起到它的作用,但在过度驱动的情况下,同一个旋钮不仅会影响音量,还会影响演奏音色的厚重感--当音量开到最大时,吉他会发出厚重的音色,而当音量减小时,音色就会变薄。如果将音量调小到接近全开,你会发现纯净的音色完全可以使用,而且比音箱的纯净通道更有咬劲和顶端。(关于这一点,请参考 Van Halen 专辑中的清音效果)。当 Eddie 设计他的标志性 MusicMan 吉他时,他实际上规定吉他的单音量旋钮应标注为 "音色",因为他主要用它来控制过度驱动音色的饱和度,而不是改变音色的实际响度)。蓝调/摇滚乐领域的许多演奏者都可以使用单通道放大器,通过吉他本身来控制音量和超驱动音量,从而愉快地完成整场演出。
Incidentally, this stuff also applies when you’re using your amp’s clean channel. I’ve encountered a lot of students who try to get a decent clean tone simply by following the formula of selecting their front humbucker and turning off the overdrive. This can result in an overly boomy sound that people are always keen to blame on their gear. If you find this predicament familiar, bear in mind that backing down the volume a couple of notches can often thin things out effectively and eliminate that boominess, so experiment. 顺便提一下,这些东西也适用于使用音箱的干净通道。我遇到过很多学生,他们想获得像样的纯净音色,只需按照公式选择前置双线圈架并关闭超频。这可能会导致音色过于浮夸,而人们总是热衷于将责任归咎于他们的设备。如果您觉得这种困境似曾相识,请记住,将音量调小几个音阶往往可以有效地减弱音色,消除闷响,因此请多做尝试。
The tone control is equally neglected by some guitarists - metal players in particular are prone to select the bridge humbucker and turn every knob up to 10 as their default setting - but it’s worth investigating the range of sounds you can get by rolling down the tone in gradual increments. If you’re at all partial to Eric Clapton’s ‘woman tone’ (ie the sound you hear on the Cream albums) or Robben Ford’s distinctively honky lead sound, you’ll know what can be achieved in this way. Of course, if you turn down the tone too much, you run the risk of sounding mushy and indistinct, but you’ll normally find sweet spots somewhere in the middle of the control’s range. 音色控制同样被一些吉他手所忽视--金属乐手尤其容易选择琴桥双线圈,并将每个旋钮都调到 10 作为默认设置--但值得研究的是,通过逐步调低音色可以获得各种音色。如果你偏爱埃里克-克莱普顿(Eric Clapton)的 "女人音"(即你在奶油专辑中听到的音色)或罗本-福特(Robben Ford)独特的 "乡巴佬 "主音,你就会知道用这种方法可以获得怎样的音色。当然,如果音调调得太低,就有可能听起来模糊不清,但通常你会在控制范围的中间找到最佳位置。
(As a quick aside to Strat owners, you’ll find a nice approximation of the classic humbucking sound if you set your pick-up selector switch to position 2 or 4 and roll down the middle pick-up’s tone control. This will mix together the sound of two pick-ups, with one providing the ‘honk’ and the other providing the more trebly stuff, resulting in a pleasingly thick yet defined tone.) (顺便提醒一下 Strat 的用户,如果将拾音器选择开关调到 2 或 4 位置,并调低中间拾音器的音调控制,就能找到经典双线圈音色的近似效果。这将混合两个拾音器的声音,一个提供 "叭 "的声音,另一个提供更高音的声音,从而产生令人愉悦的浑厚而清晰的音色)。
Of course, you won’t necessarily find one tonecontrol setting that serves all your needs. If you’re using a lot of harmonics, you’ll want as much treble as possible in your sound, but if you’re playing fast single-note runs with a relatively clean tone, you’ll find that too much treble can expose the weaknesses in your technique and that rolling off the tone somehow helps to make your playing sound a little more ‘perfect’. (Have you ever wondered why those jazz guys are so fond of turning their tone controls down? Or why your Vai-esque scalar picked runs sound smoother when you switch to your neck pick-up?) 当然,你不一定能找到一种音调控制设置满足你的所有需求。如果你使用了大量的和声,你会希望音色中的高音越多越好,但如果你演奏的是快速的单音跑音,音色相对干净,你会发现过多的高音会暴露你技巧中的弱点,而关闭音色多少会让你的演奏听起来更 "完美 "一些。(你有没有想过,为什么那些爵士乐手那么喜欢把音调控制调低?或者,为什么当你换上颈部拾音器时,你的维式标量弹奏会听起来更流畅?)
Picks And Fingers 拨片和手指
Have you ever approached a guitarist after a gig and asked how he got that amazing tone only to receive the less than helpful reply ‘It’s all in the fingers, man’? I admit that he might have told you this because he didn’t want anyone else to know what pick-ups he uses or how he wires his pedals together (some people are very protective of their trade secrets), but in general creating a good tone really is all in the fingers. 你是否曾在演出结束后找到一位吉他手,询问他是如何获得令人惊叹的音色的,但得到的回答却是 "全靠手指,伙计"?我承认,他告诉你这些可能是因为他不想让别人知道他用的是什么拾音器,或者他是如何将踏板接在一起的(有些人非常保护自己的商业机密),但总的来说,创造好音色真的全靠手指。
One specific factor here is the way in which the pick strikes the string. For instance, if you use the flat 这里有一个特殊的因素,那就是拨片敲击琴弦的方式。例如,如果您使用平
of the pick (ie with the plane of the pick parallel to the string), you’ll get a round, full tone that really brings out the best in your George Benson licks. If, on the other hand, you slowly curl your right-hand index finger inwards as you grip the pick, you’ll find a position where the pick is twisted around at a 45^(@)45^{\circ} angle. In this way, you’re striking the string with the edge of the pick, which gives you a sharper tone and a grinding attack more appropriate for those Gary Moore-esque angry moments. The former approach is generally held to be the ‘correct’ way to pick, but I think that both are valid - if you can comfortably use your pick at various angles, you’ll increase the range of your tonal palette without having to spend any money, 如果您的右手食指在握住拨片的同时慢慢向内弯曲(即拨片的平面与琴弦平行),您就会获得圆润饱满的音色,从而真正发挥出乔治-本森(George Benson)的演奏技巧。另一方面,如果您在握住拨片时将右手食指慢慢向内弯曲,您就会发现拨片以 45^(@)45^{\circ} 的角度扭转。这样,你就能用拨片的边缘敲击琴弦,从而获得更尖锐的音色和更适合加里-摩尔(Gary Moore)式愤怒时刻的碾压式攻击。前一种方法通常被认为是 "正确 "的挑弦方法,但我认为两种方法都是有效的--如果您能自如地使用各种角度的挑弦方法,那么您就能在不花钱的情况下增加音色范围、
Here’s another variable to consider: what part of the string are you picking? Picking near the bridge gives a tinny, metallic sound, while if you move the pick closer to the neck, the tone becomes fuller and warmer. (lf you’re ever bored, you might like to investigate what happens when you actually pick over the fretboard you’ll find some bizarre Zappa-esque sounds there.) Bear in mind that playing fast becomes very difficult when you stray too far neckward, particularly if you favour light-gauge strings, as the tension is looser there, so the strings move further, which makes them feel frustratingly like rubber bands. 这里还有一个需要考虑的变量:你在挑拨琴弦的哪个部分?在琴桥附近拨弦会发出尖锐的金属音色,而如果将拨弦靠近琴颈,音色则会变得更加饱满和温暖。(如果你觉得无聊,不妨研究一下在指板上实际拨弦时会发生什么,你会发现一些奇异的 Zappa 式音色)。需要注意的是,当你的琴颈过于靠后时,快速弹奏会变得非常困难,尤其是如果你喜欢轻号数的琴弦,因为那里的张力较松,所以琴弦会移动得更远,这让你感觉像橡皮筋一样令人沮丧。
Of course, you could always try life without a pick. Jeff Beck once uttered the immortal line ‘Picks are for fairies’, and while that might be a little hurtful for pick users and fairies alike, you can’t argue with the vast range of tones that Jeff creates with a purely fingerstyle approach. There’s something more immediate about playing with your fingers - it feels like you have more control, and many would argue that it also produces a purer-sounding note. 当然,你也可以试试不使用拨片的生活。杰夫-贝克(Jeff Beck)曾说过一句不朽的名言:"拨片是给仙女用的",虽然这句话对拨片使用者和仙女来说都有点伤人,但杰夫用纯粹的指弹方式创造出的音色范围之广是无可争议的。用手指弹奏有一种更直接的感觉--那就是你有更多的控制权,而且许多人认为,用手指弹奏还能产生更纯净的音色。
If you’re quite attached to your pick (and some things are undeniably impossible without one), you might like to try a combination of pick and fingers to get the best of both worlds. This is a style of playing you would normally associate with country players - Albert Lee, Jerry Donahue, Danny Gatton, Brent Mason, Scotty Anderson, the list goes on - but listen to Brett Garsed, Bumblefoot (the artist formerly known as Ron Thal) or indeed Stevie Ray Vaughan and you’ll hear some very different applications for the pick-and-fingers approach. 如果你对拨片情有独钟(不可否认,有些事情没有拨片是不可能做到的),那么你不妨尝试将拨片和手指结合起来,以达到两全其美的效果。这种演奏方式通常会让你联想到乡村音乐演奏家--阿尔伯特-李(Albert Lee)、杰里-多纳休(Jerry Donahue)、丹尼-加顿(Danny Gatton)、布伦特-梅森(Brent Mason)、斯科特-安德森(Scotty Anderson)等等--但听听布雷特-加塞德(Brett Garsed)、大黄蜂(Bumblefoot,原名罗恩-塔尔(Ron Thal))或史蒂夫-雷-沃恩(Stevie Ray Vaughan)的演奏,你就会发现 "拨片+手指 "演奏法的一些不同应用。
Guitar Set-up 吉他安装
The other considerations you need to worry about involve the way in which your guitar is set up. 您需要考虑的其他因素还包括吉他的安装方式。
Low action might make playing easier, but it doesn’t give the string much room to vibrate, so your attempts to play loud notes will sound constipated, while the more you raise your action, the bigger the notes get. The only problem is that playing a guitar with a high action hurts after a while, so you’ll need to find a compromise where the notes ring out properly but you aren’t suffering unduly. 低力度可能会让弹奏变得更容易,但它并没有给琴弦提供太多的振动空间,所以你试图弹奏出响亮的音符时,听起来会觉得很憋屈,而你越是提高力度,音符就越大。唯一的问题是,弹奏高力度的吉他一段时间后就会感到疼痛,所以你需要找到一个折中的方法,既能让音符正常响起,又不会让你过度痛苦。
Similarly, light string gauges give you that effortless feeling when played, but they also produce a weakersounding note, partially because there’s less metal moving through the pick-up’s magnetic field and partially because they lack the power to get the body of the guitar vibrating properly. Fat strings not only sound better, they break less and they’re easier to keep in tune, but the pain factor rears its ugly head once again - bending a .014" top E string up a tone can be a traumatic experience! As before, you should seek a compromise between tone and comfort. I’m not suggesting you should double the size of your strings overnight, but it’s probably fair to say that, if you try going up a gauge, your fingers will get used to it within a month or two, playing will feel as easy as it did before and your tone will be that little bit more authoritative. Which brings me to my next topic… 同样,轻弦径的琴弦在弹奏时会给人毫不费力的感觉,但同时也会产生较弱的音色,部分原因是通过拾音器磁场的金属较少,部分原因是它们缺乏让吉他本体适当振动的力量。肥厚的琴弦不仅音色更好,断裂的情况也更少,而且更容易保持音准,但疼痛的因素再次出现--将 0.014 英寸的顶级 E 弦弯上一个音可能是一次痛苦的经历!和以前一样,您应该在音色和舒适度之间寻求折中。我并不是建议您在一夜之间将琴弦的尺寸增大一倍,但可以这么说,如果您尝试增加一个弦号,您的手指在一两个月内就会适应,弹奏起来会像以前一样轻松,音色也会更有权威。这就引出了我的下一个话题...
String Bending 琴弦弯曲
One of the guitar’s biggest selling points is that it enables you to bend strings. This not only allows you to make a note glide smoothly from one pitch to another; it also facilitates vibrato, a rhythmic fluctuation in pitch that effectively makes the note sound more wobbly. These are the kinds of subtleties that give the guitar its vocal qualities - you can be more expressive on a guitar than you ever could on an instrument like the piano, where bending a note is a physical impossibility. 吉他最大的卖点之一就是可以弯曲琴弦。这不仅能让一个音符从一个音高平滑地滑向另一个音高,还能促进揉弦,一种有节奏的音高波动,能有效地让音符听起来更加摇摆不定。这些微妙之处赋予了吉他声乐的特质--在吉他上,你可以比在钢琴等乐器上更具表现力,因为在钢琴上,音符的弯曲是不可能的。
Your ability to bend a string is governed by a number of factors. A heavy-gauge E string, for instance, is obviously under a lot more tension than a lighter one, so bending it is harder work. This increases the risk of a note slipping out from under your fingertip midbend, unleashing a loud and decidedly unwelcome 琴弦的弯曲能力受多种因素的影响。例如,一根重号 E 琴弦所承受的张力显然要比轻型琴弦大得多,因此弯曲它就更加困难。这就增加了一个音符在中途从你的指尖下滑落的风险,从而发出响亮而明显不受欢迎的声音
open string. This happens most commonly when your hands are sweating a lot, but it’s a problem that can strike at any time, and when it does, any casual listener will immediately know that you’ve done something wrong: it’s one of the hardest clangers to disguise! 开弦。这种情况最常发生在手出汗较多的时候,但这种问题随时都可能发生,而且一旦发生,任何不经意的听众都会立即意识到你做错了什么:这是最难掩饰的错误之一!
There are two ways of combating this. The first is to enlist the help of some other fingers. If a note needs bending and you’re using your ring finger to fret it, you might as well stick your middle finger just behind, on the same string, sharing the burden between the two digits. This gives you more control over the bend, although I admit that it doesn’t help much when you’re fretting with your index finger! 有两种方法可以解决这个问题。第一种是借助其他手指的帮助。如果一个音符需要弯音,而你正在用无名指进行拨弦,你不妨把中指放在后面,放在同一根弦上,由两个手指分担。这样你就能更好地控制弯音,不过我承认,当你用食指指法时,这样做并没有太大帮助!
(Actually, the trickiest bends are probably those that involve the little finger. If you try to back up your pinkie with your third finger, you’ll find that the difference in length between the two digits prevents them from working together effectively. Instead, try supporting the bend with your middle finger, tucking it under the near side of your ring finger. Many players find this method easier.) (实际上,最棘手的弯曲可能是涉及小拇指的弯曲。如果你试图用三指支撑小指,你会发现两指之间的长度差异会阻碍它们有效配合。相反,您可以尝试用中指支撑小指弯曲,并将其夹在无名指的近侧下方。很多演奏者都觉得这种方法更简单)。
The other way of maximising your bending prowess is to look at the position of your fretting hand. I think that some players are a little unclear on exactly how to bend a string, so here’s a pointer: your fingers aren’t supposed to do all of the bending by themselves! Once they can feel the tension of the string, they should lock in that position and let your wrist take over. A twisting motion of the wrist, pivoting off the thumb-and-forefinger side of your hand, will effectively force your fingers to glide over the fretboard, taking the string with them. All your digits have to do from this point is try not to buckle when they feel the resistance of the string. As long as they retain their grip on the note, the wrist will do the rest. 另一种最大限度提高弯弦能力的方法是看你的指法手的位置。我认为有些演奏者不清楚究竟该如何弯曲琴弦,因此这里有一个提示:你的手指不应该独自完成所有的弯曲动作!一旦手指感觉到琴弦的张力,就应该锁定在那个位置,让手腕来接手。手腕的扭转动作,从拇指和食指的一侧转过来,可以有效地迫使手指在指板上滑行,同时带走琴弦。此时,手指所要做的就是在感受到琴弦的阻力时尽量不要弯曲。只要手指能紧紧抓住音符,剩下的就交给手腕了。
In the world of classical guitar, you would be encouraged to arch your fingers and keep your thumb low down at the back of the neck, creating as much clearance as possible between your palm and the edge of the neck. This is the ideal hand position for playing technically demanding stuff like painful chord shapes or licks featuring wide stretches, but it does make bending harder - it feels like only the very tips of your fingers are actually putting their weight into pushing on the string. If instead you adopt the ‘baseball bat’ 在古典吉他的世界里,人们鼓励你弓起手指,拇指低垂在琴颈后部,在手掌和琴颈边缘之间创造尽可能多的间隙。对于演奏技术要求较高的曲目,如痛苦的和弦形状或具有宽广伸展性的乐段,这是理想的手部姿势,但它确实增加了弯弦的难度--感觉就像只有手指的最尖端才真正将重量放在推动琴弦上。如果采用 "棒球棒 "姿势
grip, where your thumb creeps over the top. you’ll feel more contact with the wood of the neck and hence you’ll get more leverage. In this way, the ends of your fingers will straighten out a little, moving nearer the fretboard, and when you bend a string, you’ll be able to put more of each digit behind the bend. This position certainly compromises the range of your left-hand stretch and overall mobility, so don’t use it all the time, but it’s the best way of executing a big bend without injuring yourself; As it happens, it’s also the best way of replicating Hendrix rhythm parts - plenty of otherwise-impossible chord voicings become playable when you use your left-hand thumb to fret notes on the low E string. 这样,你的手指末端就会伸直一些,靠近指板。这样,你的手指末端会伸直一些,离指板更近一些,当你弯弦时,每根手指都能更多地弯曲。这种姿势肯定会影响左手的伸展范围和整体活动能力,因此不要经常使用,但这是在不受伤的情况下执行大弯音的最佳方法;碰巧的是,这也是复制亨德里克斯(Hendrix)节奏部分的最佳方法--当你用左手拇指在低音 E 弦上拨弦时,很多原本不可能演奏的和弦配器都变得可以演奏了。
This last point is particularly appropriate when you’re bending a string upwards. If you’re playing on the lower strings, it’s more likely that you’d want to bend downwards, towards the floor, and there’s one subtle difference when you bend a string in this way: you need to curl your fingertip a little more so that part of it is effectively on top of the string. If the string keeps slipping, you probably need to fret the note with a different part of your fingertip. Try one of the fleshier areas, slightly further away from the nail. 最后一点在向上弯曲琴弦时尤为适用。如果您弹奏的是低音弦,那么您更有可能想向下弯弦,也就是向地面弯弦,这样弯弦时有一个微妙的区别:您需要将指尖卷曲得更大一些,这样指尖的一部分就能有效地放在弦的上面。如果琴弦总是滑动,你可能需要用指尖的另一部分来拨弦。试试离指甲稍远一点的肉多的地方。
Your equipment also plays a big part in this whole string-bending business. For a start, there’s the issue of neck radius. If you’re unsure what that means, hold up your guitar at eye level with the headstock pointing away from you and the pick-ups facing the ceiling. As you look down the line of the neck, you’ll notice that the fretboard is cambered (ie it looks slightly convex) and the frets are curved accordingly. The more curved the fretboard looks, the narrower its radius. The term radius makes sense if you think of the fretboard as a small section of a cylinder, rather than as a mere plank. 在整个琴弦弯曲过程中,设备也起着重要作用。首先是琴颈半径的问题。如果您不清楚这意味着什么,请将吉他举到与视线平齐的位置,琴头朝向远方,拾音器朝向天花板。顺着琴颈的线条往下看,你会发现指板是凸出的(即看上去略微凸起),而音格也相应地弯曲。指板看起来越弯曲,其半径就越窄。如果将指板看作是圆柱体的一小部分,而不是单纯的木板,那么 "半径 "一词就有意义了。
The camber of the neck, I should explain, is there to make life easier when you’re playing things like barre chords. Unfortunately, this luxury comes at a cost - as you bend the top E string towards the centre of a heavily cambered fretboard, the action effectively gets lower. If your action is low in the first place, your bends will be impaired by being choked, which is what happens when the string actually comes into contact with the higher frets and can no longer vibrate. This is why most pointy heavy-metal guitars have relatively 我得解释一下,琴颈的凸度是为了让您在弹奏巴雷和弦时更轻松。不幸的是,这种奢侈是要付出代价的--当你将最上面的 E 弦弯向凸度较大的指板中心时,演奏力度实际上就变低了。如果您的力度本来就很低,那么您的弯音就会因窒息而受到影响,这就是当琴弦实际接触到较高的音格而无法再振动时发生的情况。这就是为什么大多数尖头重金属吉他的弦高相对较低的原因。
flat fretboards whereas '62 Strats have a lot more camber - they were designed with very different playing styles in mind. If you’re partial to a bit of wide bending but can’t live without your low action, you need a fingerboard with a wide radius or perhaps a compound radius, where the curvature gets less pronounced as you move higher up the neck. 62 Strats 的指板是平的,而 62 Strats 的指板则有更大的弧度--它们在设计时考虑到了截然不同的演奏风格。如果您偏爱宽弯曲度,但又离不开低力度,那么您就需要一块半径较宽的指板,或者复合半径指板,这种指板的弧度随着琴颈的升高而减小。
The size of your frets can also make a huge difference to the whole bending experience. Taller frets make it easier for you to get a decent grip on the notes, and this is particularly true when you’re using heavy strings. Stevie Ray Vaughan’s frets, for instance, were enormous! The logical extension of this idea is to use a scalloped fingerboard, where the wood between each pair of frets has actually been scooped out so that you don’t feel anything under your fingertips when you play. This idea has been popularised by players like Yngwie Malmsteen, and players ranging from Ritchie Blackmore to John McLaughlin have also dabbled in it. It’s great for those violent bends, but many people find it hard to get a simple chord sounding in tune on a scalloped guitar - there’s no wood there to tell you if you’re squeezing the strings too hard and things can also get problematic when the time comes for a refret. 音格的大小也会对整个弯奏体验产生巨大影响。较高的音格可以让您更轻松地掌握音符,在使用较重的琴弦时尤其如此。比如 Stevie Ray Vaughan 的琴格就非常高!这种想法的逻辑延伸是使用扇形指板,即在每对音格之间的木头实际上都被挖掉了,这样演奏时指尖就不会有任何感觉。这一理念已被 Yngwie Malmsteen 等演奏家所推广,从 Ritchie Blackmore 到 John McLaughlin 等演奏家也曾涉足这一领域。这种方法非常适合弹奏激烈的弯音,但许多人发现在扇形吉他上很难弹奏出音调一致的简单和弦--没有木头来告诉你琴弦是否压得太紧,而且当需要重新调整琴弦时也会出现问题。
Here’s a comical-sounding exercise I sometimes try out on students who need to work on their bending. Try taking a scale or melody you already know and moving the entire fingering down a fret. In order to make the lick sound like it’s still in the original key, you now have to bend every note up by one semitone, and the results have an entertainingly drunken quality about them. Playing like this always reminds me of Marty Friedman’s phrasing when he’s going for that Oriental vibe, and you might have heard Richie Kotzen using similar ideas. 这里有一个听起来很滑稽的练习,我有时会在需要练习弯音的学生身上试一试。试着把你已经熟悉的音阶或旋律,将整个指法下移一个品格。为了让这首曲子听起来还在原来的调上,你现在必须把每个音都上弯一个半音,这样弹出来的效果就像喝醉了酒一样有趣。这样弹奏总是让我想起马蒂-弗里德曼(Marty Friedman)在追求东方韵味时的乐句,你可能也听过里奇-科岑(Richie Kotzen)使用类似的想法。
Another interesting exercise is to try “stepped” bends. For instance, take a note on the BB string and bend it up a semitone, hold it there for a moment and then bend it up a further semitone. Hold this new pitch for a moment and then let the string halfway down so that its pitch is once again a semitone above that of the original, unbent note. Hold it there for a moment and then release it. If you use 010-gauge strings or lighter, you can apply this to bends as wide as four or 另一个有趣的练习是尝试 "阶梯式 "弯音。例如,将 BB 琴弦上的一个音向上弯曲一个半音,保持片刻,然后再向上弯曲一个半音。保持这个新音高片刻,然后让琴弦下降一半,使其音高再次比原来未弯曲的音高高一个半音。保持片刻后松开。如果您使用的是 010 号或更轻的琴弦,您就可以将此方法应用于宽达四或五度的弯音。
five frets. The general principle is to visit every semitone en route so that the result sounds like a chromatic scale rather than one big bend. This exercise is of great benefit to the accuracy of your pitching. 五个五音格。总的原则是在途中访问每个半音,使演奏结果听起来像半音阶,而不是一个大弯音。这种练习对提高音准大有裨益。
Vibrato 颤音
So far, there’s been much talk about how to bend a note from one pitch to another. Now it’s time to turn our attention to the important matter of vibrato. 到目前为止,我们已经讨论了很多如何将音符从一个音高弯曲到另一个音高。现在,我们要把注意力转向重要的揉弦问题。
Everyone plays vibrato differently, and the ability to wobble a note nicely is one of the most important factors in your overall sound. The best way of honing your own vibrato technique is by trying to emulate the way your favourite players do it. I would cite players like BB King, Peter Green and Paul Kossoff as worthy all-round reference points, and if you like things to sound a little more violent, you might be inspired by Angus Young, Yngwie Malmsteen or the remarkably angry-sounding Zakk Wylde. The greater the variety of vibrato effects you can coax out of your instrument, the more versatile you’ll be as a player, so adventurous readers might even want to look beyond the realms of other guitarists and try to get a vibrato that sounds like Pavarotti’s voice, or indeed Marc Bolan’s - if you think you’re odd enough! 每个人的揉弦方式都不尽相同,而能否很好地晃动音符是影响整体音色的最重要因素之一。磨练自己揉弦技巧的最佳方法就是尝试模仿自己喜欢的演奏者的揉弦方式。我会把 BB King、Peter Green 和 Paul Kossoff 等演奏家作为值得全面借鉴的对象,如果你喜欢听起来更暴力一点的声音,你可能会从 Angus Young、Yngwie Malmsteen 或听起来非常愤怒的 Zakk Wylde 身上得到启发。你能从乐器中获得的揉弦效果种类越多,你就越能成为一名多才多艺的演奏者,因此喜欢冒险的读者甚至可以超越其他吉他手的范畴,尝试获得听起来像帕瓦罗蒂或马克-博兰的声音一样的揉弦效果--如果你觉得自己足够古怪的话!
As with any other kind of bending, the key to making vibrato work lies in using your wrist to control the actual pitch of the note, while your fingers’ job is to make sure all of that wrist movement is transferred effectively to the string. A good exercise is to pick a note and then alternate constantly between bending it up a fret and releasing it again. Start slowly and rhythmically; as you gradually build up speed, the effect will start to sound more like a single note being played with vibrato rather than two distinct notes. For some reason, your ears tend to perceive the unbent version of the note as the ‘correct’ pitch, even if you increase the width of your vibrato to three or four frets. 与其他弯音一样,揉弦的关键在于用手腕控制音符的实际音高,而手指的任务则是确保手腕的所有动作都能有效地传递到琴弦上。一个很好的练习方法是选取一个音,然后不断交替将其上弯一个品位,然后再松开。开始时速度要慢,要有节奏感;当你逐渐加快速度时,效果听起来会更像用揉弦演奏的一个音符,而不是两个不同的音符。由于某种原因,即使你将揉弦的宽度增加到三或四个音格,你的耳朵也会倾向于将未弯曲的音符视为 "正确 "的音高。
Having said that, it’s a slightly different state of affairs when you’ve bent note AA up to note BB and you want to add vibrato to the latter pitch. (Think of those big, languid bends at the start of Hendrix’s ‘Red House’.) When you add vibrato to a bent note, your fingers have to memorise the amount of tension needed to bend the note all the way up to pitch and then apply that 话虽如此,当您将音符 AA 弯曲至音符 BB 并想在后一个音高上添加揉弦时,情况就略有不同了。(想想亨德里克斯(Hendrix)的 "红房子"(Red House)开头那些慵懒的大弯音)。当你为一个弯曲的音符添加揉弦时,你的手指必须记住将音符一直弯曲到音高所需的张力大小,然后将其应用到揉弦中。
amount of force constantly as your wrist shakes, If you relax for a moment, the pitch will start to drop and the whole effect will be spoiled. Trickier though this approach might be, it does put some new sounds at your disposal. If you pre-bend a note before you pick it, you can achieve a slightly Brian May-like effect where your vibrato rhythmically lowers the pitch slightly rather than raising it. This sounds just as in tune as the normal kind of vibrato, but I think it has a distinctly sweeter flavour to it. Of course, it’s surely worth being comfortable with both kinds of vibrato so that you can play any given note in a variety of ways. 如果你放松片刻,音调就会开始下降,整个效果就会被破坏。虽然这种方法比较麻烦,但它确实能为你带来一些新的音色。如果在拾音之前预先弯曲一个音符,就能达到略类似布莱恩-梅的效果,即揉弦会有节奏地略微降低音高,而不是提高音高。这听起来和普通的揉弦一样合拍,但我认为它有一种明显的甜美味道。当然,两种揉弦方式都能运用自如也是值得肯定的,这样你就能以多种方式演奏任何给定的音符。
The other great thing about vibrato, apart from the undeniably ‘human’ quality it imparts to a note, is the way in which it can increase your sustain. The basic vibrato motion constantly rubs the string against the fret, which means that the fret is in effect bowing the string from underneath, keeping the vibration going for longer. (This is the opposite of the side-to-side vibrato favoured by classical players, the difference being a product of the fact that classical players use nylon strings rather than steel ones and that the two materials have very different elastic properties. ‘Cavatina’-style vibrato doesn’t really work on an electric guitar, but then again you couldn’t play the solo in Steve Lukather’s ‘Rosanna’ on a classical, so the old swings-and-roundabouts adage suggests itself!) If you fire up some gain on your amp, you should be able to sustain a note indefinitely purely by applying a constant vibrato to it - think of the intro to Hendrix’s ‘Foxy Lady’, Keen multitrackers take note: you can layer up an interesting approximation of a string section using this technique. 揉弦的另一个好处,除了它赋予音符无可否认的 "人性化 "特质外,还在于它可以延长你的延音时间。基本的揉弦动作会使琴弦不断地摩擦指板,这意味着指板实际上是从下方弓弦,使振动持续更长时间。(这与古典演奏者喜欢的侧向揉弦恰恰相反,两者的区别在于古典演奏者使用的是尼龙弦而不是钢弦,而这两种材料的弹性特性又截然不同。卡瓦蒂娜 "式揉弦在电吉他上并不奏效,但你也无法用古典吉他演奏史蒂夫-卢卡瑟(Steve Lukather)的 "罗珊娜"(Rosanna)中的独奏。如果你在扩音器上增加一些增益,你就可以通过持续的颤音来无限延展一个音符--想想亨德里克斯(Hendrix)的《狐狸精》(Foxy Lady)的前奏吧。
Hopefully, thinking about this sort of stuff will help you to develop an effective and versatile vibrato technique. Approaching the whole vibrato issue a little more obliquely, you might also like to consider the following… 希望对这些问题的思考能帮助您掌握有效而多变的揉弦技巧。如果您想更深入地探讨揉弦问题,不妨考虑以下几点......
Eric Clapton’s playing is a textbook example of how you can really make a note sing, and yet when you watch footage of the man playing you’ll notice something a little unusual: when he’s adding vibrato to a long, sustained note, he tends to remove his thumb from the back of the neck so 埃里克-克莱普顿(Eric Clapton)的演奏堪称教科书式的范例,他能让一个音符真正唱出来,然而,当你观看他的演奏片段时,你会发现一些不寻常之处:当他为一个持续的长音加上颤音时,他往往会将拇指从琴颈后部移开,这样,他的拇指就会在一个长音上加上颤音。
that only his fingertip is actually in contact with the guitar. As always, the idea is for your finger to remain rigid while your wrist does the shaking, but you might well find it more difficult to maintain contact with the string without having your thumb there to guide you. 实际上只有指尖与吉他接触。与往常一样,这样做的目的是让手指保持僵硬,而手腕则进行抖动,但您可能会发现,如果没有拇指的引导,要保持与琴弦的接触会更加困难。
To prevent the whole neck from moving around as you shake your wrist, it helps to grip the body of the guitar with your right forearm, pushing it slightly against the right side of your own body. In this way, you can use your forearm to resist the pressure applied to the neck by your fretting hand, and the thing should stay still. Most players find this approach harder and less reliable than the timehonoured baseball-bat-style grip, but it’s worth checking out. With a little practice, you’ll be able to obtain a really fast, sweet-sounding note. 为了防止手腕抖动时整个琴颈左右晃动,可以用右前臂紧紧抓住吉他的琴身,稍稍将其推向自己身体的右侧。这样,你就可以用前臂来抵挡拨弦手施加在琴颈上的压力,而琴颈就会保持不动。大多数演奏者认为这种方法比传统的棒球棍式握法更难、更不可靠,但还是值得一试。只要稍加练习,你就能获得一个非常快速、动听的音符。
If you prefer your notes to sound more vicious, you might like to experiment with the Zakk Wylde tactic of bringing your picking hand over to the area between the nut and your fretting hand. If you grab the string there, you can add abnormally wide, fast vibrato to a note. For the best results, hold on tight with your fretting hand. 如果你喜欢让音符听起来更凶狠,不妨尝试一下扎克-怀尔德(Zakk Wylde)的方法,将你的拨弦手伸向螺母和指弦手之间的区域。如果在这里抓住琴弦,就能为音符添加异常宽广、快速的颤音。为了达到最佳效果,请用指弦手紧紧抓住琴弦。
If you’re partial to a bit of slide playing, you’ll know that effective bottleneck vibrato is all about moving along the length of the neck rather than physically bending the strings, thus your wrist has to shake in a more horizontal fashion. Apart from that, however, I think that the basic principles of finger vibrato still hold true when you’re using a slide. 如果你偏爱滑音,你就会知道有效的瓶颈揉弦是沿着琴颈的长度移动,而不是物理性地弯曲琴弦,因此你的手腕必须以更水平的方式抖动。除此之外,我认为在使用滑音时,手指揉弦的基本原则仍然适用。
The biggest challenge for the novice slide player is in keeping the thing in line with the plane of the strings so that you don’t hear it rattling along the edges of the frets as you slide. Anchoring your thumb somewhere will make it easier to maintain the correct angle once you’ve found it, as will resting your index finger on the strings, behind the slide. If you’re trying to play single-note lines, you’ll soon discover how keen the unwanted strings are to ring out in sympathy, so you need to focus a lot on right-hand muting, and a fingerstyle approach is probably your best bet here. 对于滑音新手来说,最大的挑战在于如何使滑音器与琴弦平面保持一致,这样在滑动时就不会听到滑音器在琴弦边缘嘎嘎作响。将拇指固定在某处,一旦找到了正确的角度,就能更容易地保持,食指放在滑片后面的弦上也是如此。如果你想演奏单音线条,你很快就会发现不需要的琴弦是多么热衷于发出共鸣,因此你需要把大量精力放在右手的静音上,而指法可能是你最好的选择。
Slide playing is probably the only style of guitar playing that actually gets easier when you raise your action and switch to fatter strings. This kind of set-up allows you to dig in more, enabling you to achieve a bigger tone without running the risk of pushing a string down so far that it actually touches the frets. If you don’t normally use a slide but you fancy giving it a try, it might well be worth starting out on a cheap acoustic with cheesewire action. Then, once you’re comfortable with the basic techniques, you can work on refining them so that they work on a more playable guitar. The end result is that you’ll be able to incorporate some slide licks into your normal playing. 滑音可能是吉他演奏中唯一一种在提高音准和换用较粗琴弦后会变得更加容易的演奏方式。这种设置可以让您更深入地演奏,从而获得更大的音色,而不会有将琴弦压得太低以至于触碰到五线谱的风险。如果您通常不使用滑弦板,但又想尝试一下,不妨先从廉价的干酪丝弦木吉他开始。然后,当你熟练掌握了基本技巧后,就可以对其进行改进,使其能在更适合演奏的吉他上使用。最终的结果是,你可以将一些滑音技巧融入到你的正常演奏中。
You’ll probably find this easier when you wear the slide on your little finger (it’s the one you use the least, admit it!), but in certain situations you might just want to try it on your middle finger. This will allow you to vary the angle of the slide in order to obtain different intervals. Imagine playing the GG and BB strings at the fifth fret and trying to slide the G-string note up a whole tone while sliding the BB string up by a mere semitone. You’ll need to bring your finger into a more diagonal orientation as you slide up the neck, and your middle finger can happily do this without falling off the edge of the fretboard whereas your little finger simply can’t. Take this basic idea, add a volume pedal and you’ve got yourself all sorts of lovely pedal-steel effects! 当你把滑片戴在小拇指上时,你可能会发现这样做更容易(这是你用得最少的手指,承认吧!),但在某些情况下,你可能只想把它戴在中指上试试。这样可以改变滑音的角度,以获得不同的音程。试想一下,在五音处演奏 GG 和 BB 琴弦,在尝试将 G 弦的音向上滑动一个全音的同时,将 BB 琴弦向上滑动一个半音。在琴颈上滑动时,您需要将手指向更对角的方向移动,您的中指可以轻松地做到这一点,而不会从指板边缘滑落,但您的小指却做不到。利用这一基本思路,再加上音量踏板,你就能获得各种可爱的踏板钢效果!
Many people associate slide playing with Delta blues, but that’s not all you can do with the technique. For a completely different perspective, check out Jeff Beck’s album You Had It Coming, on which you’ll find a cover of Nitin Sawhney’s ‘Nadia’. Jeff’s phrasing on this track mimics the vocal line of the original with uncanny precision. It’s chock-full of those little microtonal inflections that you normally hear only in Indian music. 很多人将滑音演奏与三角洲蓝调联系在一起,但这并不是滑音演奏技巧的全部。杰夫-贝克(Jeff Beck)的专辑《你自找的》(You Had It Coming)中翻唱了尼廷-索尼(Nitin Sawhney)的《纳迪亚》(Nadia)。杰夫在这首歌中的措辞模仿了原唱的声线,精准得令人难以置信。这首歌充满了你通常只能在印度音乐中听到的微调。
While we’re on that Indian theme, you should really get hold of an album called A Meeting By The River, which features the very contrasting slide styles of Ry Cooder and V(ishnu) M Bhatt. Technically, the latter is 说到印度的主题,你真应该去买一张名为《河边的会面》的专辑,这张专辑收录了 Ry Cooder 和 V(ishnu) M Bhatt 截然不同的滑音风格。严格来说,后者是
not a guitarist - he plays an instrument of his own design called a mohan vina - but you’ll hear how his phrasing could be adapted to guitar. 他不是吉他手--他演奏的是一种自己设计的乐器,名为 "莫汉维纳"--但你会听到他的乐句是如何改编成吉他的。
If you want to hear someone being downright weird with a slide, check out the work of David Tronzo, a Steinberger-wielding experimental jazz player. And of course there’s always the option of trying a guitar with no frets, which will allow you to slide up an octave with impunity - and you don’t need a bottleneck at all, so you retain full use of your fretting fingers. Guitars with no frets tend to suffer from a loss of sustain, but the good people at Vigier make a guitar called the Surfretter which combats this problem with a fingerboard made from some top-secret alloy or another, allowing the notes to ring for longer than they would on a traditional wooden board. If you’re wondering what such an instrument might sound like, you could try Bumblefoot’s 9.11 album or perhaps something by the acoustic player Antonio Forcione, who’s been known to use a guitarlike fretless instrument that he calls the oudan. Fretless playing really forces you to concentrate on the intonation of every note you’re playing. It might sound a bit too much like hard work, but it’s definitely worth a try. If nothing else, it certainly makes you play differently! 如果你想听听某人用滑音吉他演奏出的怪异效果,不妨看看挥舞着 Steinberger 的实验爵士乐手大卫-特龙佐(David Tronzo)的作品。当然,你还可以尝试一把无品吉他,它可以让你肆无忌惮地滑上一个八度--而且你根本不需要瓶颈,这样你就可以充分使用你的指弹手指。没有五线谱的吉他往往会失去延音效果,但 Vigier 公司生产的一款名为 Surfretter 的吉他可以解决这个问题,它的指板由某种绝密合金制成,可以让音符比在传统木板上弹得更久。如果你想知道这种乐器的音色如何,可以试试大黄蜂乐队(Bumblefoot)的 9.11 专辑,或者是声乐演奏家安东尼奥-福尔乔内(Antonio Forcione)的作品。无品乐器演奏确实会迫使你集中精力演奏每个音符的音准。这听起来可能有点太辛苦了,但绝对值得一试。如果不出意外,它肯定会让你的演奏与众不同!
Muting Unwanted Notes 将不需要的音符静音
This might sound a little bit Zen, but whenever you play a note on the guitar, you also have to not play notes on the other strings. Many players neglect muting because it’s a harder area to define than the notes themselves - if you’re trying to learn a new song or lick, a transcription can show you where the right notes are, but it won’t tell you which notes not to play. After all. why would it? It’s very important to listen critically to the way you’re playing, and if you hear any noise coming from your guitar other than the note you told it to produce, your technique needs a little reappraisal. Yes, I know it sounds kind of tedious, but sometimes it’s good to take something you already know and focus on trying to make it sound as clean as possible. It might not be as exciting as learning something totally new, but it makes your playing sound more musical in the long run. 这听起来可能有点禅意,但每当你在吉他上弹出一个音符时,你也必须不在其他弦上弹出音符。很多演奏者都会忽略静音,因为它比音符本身更难定义--如果你想学习一首新歌或一个新的弹奏技巧,抄本可以告诉你正确的音符在哪里,但它不会告诉你哪些音符不能弹。毕竟,为什么要这样做呢?批判性地聆听自己的演奏方式非常重要,如果你听到吉他发出的声音与你让它弹奏的音符不同,那么你的演奏技巧就需要重新评估了。是的,我知道这听起来有点乏味,但有时把你已经掌握的东西集中起来,尽量让它听起来干净利落,也是一件好事。这可能不像学习全新的东西那么令人兴奋,但从长远来看,它能让你的演奏听起来更有音乐性。
Palm Muting 手掌静音
So, how do you keep unwanted notes and handling noise down to a minimum? I put it to you that both of your hands have a part to play here. For instance, let’s say you’re playing the note of EE at the ninth fret on the GG string: As soon as you strike the string, other strings will be tempted to chime in sympathy, which detracts from the tonal quality of the note you actually meant to play. To avoid this, you should be using the underside of the fingers on your fretting hand to mute any string higher in pitch than the one you’re playing (ie the BB and top E strings if you’re playing the G string). In particular, the index finger seems very handy (no pun intended) when it comes to keeping these strings out of trouble, regardless of the finger you’re using to fret the note. 那么,如何将不必要的音符和操作噪音降到最低呢?我告诉您,您的两只手都要发挥作用。例如,假设您在 GG 弦的九音格上演奏 EE 音:当您敲击琴弦时,其他琴弦也会随之发出共鸣,从而影响您实际要演奏的音的音质。为了避免这种情况,您应该用指法手的手指下端使比您所弹的弦音高更高的弦静音(即 BB 和E上弦,如果您弹的是G弦的话)。尤其是食指,无论您用哪根手指拨弦,它都能很好地避免这些弦出现问题。
Meanwhile, any strings lower in pitch than the one you’re playing (ie the D,AD, A and bottom E strings) can be kept in check by your picking hand. Exactly which part of your hand you should use will depend on your picking technique - everyone picks slightly differently - but it will involve your palm in some way. 与此同时,任何比您正在弹奏的弦音高更低的弦(即 D,AD, A 和底部 E 弦)都可以通过您的弹奏手来控制。具体使用手的哪个部位取决于您的拾音技巧,每个人的拾音技巧都略有不同,但手掌都会以某种方式参与其中。
Try looking at your palm and visualising all the parts of it that you think might be useful for muting. You should conclude that there’s a horseshoe-shaped area of flesh running down the little-finger side of the palm, through the part where your hand joins your wrist and then up the thumb side. You should then be able to decide which part of this zone comes closest to the wound strings when your picking hand is in its habitual playing position. Your goal should then be to train this part to rest on the unwanted strings whenever you play. By making small adjustments in the angle of your wrist, you should be able to find a hand position that enables you to silence the strings you don’t need to hear without accidentally damping the note you’re trying to play. 试着看着自己的手掌,想象手掌上所有你认为可能对静音有用的部位。您应该会得出这样的结论:手掌的小指一侧有一个马蹄形的肉区,从手掌与手腕的连接处一直延伸到大拇指一侧。然后,您应该能够判断出,当您的弹奏手处于习惯的弹奏姿势时,该区域的哪一部分最靠近缠绕的琴弦。然后,您的目标就应该是训练这部分区域,使其在任何时候演奏时都能停留在不需要的琴弦上。通过对手腕角度的微小调整,你应该能够找到一个手的位置,使你能够让你不需要听到的琴弦安静下来,而不会意外地影响到你想要弹奏的音符。
This might feel like hard work at first, but if you force yourself to remain aware of your damping technique, it will soon become second nature and you’ll be doing it subconsciously whenever you play. 一开始可能会觉得这很辛苦,但如果你强迫自己时刻注意阻尼技术,它很快就会成为你的第二天性,每次演奏时你都会下意识地这样做。
I can think of a few variations on this basic muting idea. For instance, fans of players like AI DiMeola will be familiar with the sound you can obtain by muting the string you’re actually playing. To experiment with 我能想到这种基本静音想法的一些变体。例如,AI DiMeola 等演奏家的乐迷一定很熟悉将实际演奏的琴弦静音后所获得的音色。尝试
this technique, try picking notes while leaning your palm on the strings at the point where they pass over the saddles. It’s important here to rest your palm at the correct point along the ‘speaking length’ of the string (ie the portion of the string that actually vibrates when a note is played). The desired sound is percussive, with less treble and less sustain than a regular note, so if the noise you’re making fits this description, you’re probably doing it right! As guidelines, remember the following: 要掌握这种技巧,可以试着将手掌靠在琴弦经过弦枕的位置上弹奏音符。重要的是,要将手掌放在琴弦 "说话长度 "上的正确位置(即弹奏音符时琴弦实际振动的部分)。如果您发出的声音符合上述描述,那么您可能做对了!作为指导原则,请记住以下几点:
If your hand is too far in front of the bridge (ie too far in the direction of the bridge pick-up), you’ll lose the pitch of the notes altogether. 如果你的手在琴桥前太远(即在琴桥拾音器方向太远),就会完全失去音符的音高。
If your hand is only slightly too far along the string, your palm will let out a note, but it’ll sound sharp. This is particularly noticeable on the low E string, which you can easily turn into an F string simply by leaning on it too hard or too far from the saddle. 如果您的手只是稍微偏离琴弦太远,您的手掌就会发出音符,但听起来会很尖锐。这种情况在低音 E 琴弦上尤为明显,只需用力过猛或离琴码太远,就很容易将其变成 F 琴弦。
On the other hand, if you’re resting your palm too far back, you won’t really be muting the notes at all and they’ll sound exactly the same. 另一方面,如果你的手掌靠得太靠后,你就根本不会使音符变弱,它们听起来会完全一样。
Your guitar responds differently when you’re muting at the bridge - your fluid legato licks won’t sound as clear but picked passages will take on a new rhythmic quality, with the sound of the initial pick attack playing a more prominent role, 当你在琴桥处使用静音时,吉他的反应会有所不同--流畅的连奏会听起来不那么清晰,但弹奏的段落会呈现出一种新的节奏感,最初的弹拨声会发挥更重要的作用、
I mentioned AI DiMeola earlier as an example of a player whose style makes extensive use of muted notes, partially because his recorded output demonstrates how effective palm muting can be on acoustic and electric guitars alike but mainly because he’s invented an appealing word for it: the mutola effect. However, even if you don’t have any interest in Al’s fiery brand of Latin-tinged jazz or his phenomenal picking technique, I’d still like to try to sell you the idea that palm muting is a worthy pursuit. The riff from The Police’s ‘Every Breath You Take’, as played by that master of minimalist pop guitar, Andy Summers, wouldn’t sound half as effective if you’d heard it played without palm muting. The Shadows’ rendition of ‘Foot Tapper’ wouldn’t have 我在前面提到艾尔-迪米奥拉(AI DiMeola)是一位在演奏风格中大量使用哑音的演奏家,部分原因是他的录音作品展示了手掌哑音在木吉他和电吉他上的效果,但主要原因是他为此发明了一个吸引人的词--哑音效果(mutola effect)。不过,即使你对艾尔火热的拉丁爵士乐或他惊人的弹拨技巧不感兴趣,我还是想向你推销一个想法,即手掌消音是一种值得追求的方法。警察乐队《Every Breath You Take》中的旋律,由简约流行吉他大师安迪-萨默斯(Andy Summers)弹奏,如果不使用手掌静音,听起来就没有半点效果。阴影乐队演绎的《Foot Tapper》也不会有
the same charm about it without the percussive touch. And of course the whole evolution of The Heavy Metal Riff would have gone very differently without the invention of palm muting - 1 could refer you to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’, Van Halen’s ‘Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love’ or pretty much anything by Metallica. (The frustrated radio DJ in me wanted to complete that list of examples with a Metallica song also featuring the word ‘Love’ in the title, but I couldn’t think of one.) 如果没有打击乐的点缀,重金属乐段的魅力也不会如此。当然,如果没有手掌静音的发明,重金属 Riff 的整个演变过程也会大相径庭--你可以参考齐柏林飞艇(Led Zeppelin)的《Whole Lotta Love》、范海伦(Van Halen)的《Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love'》或 Metallica 的几乎所有歌曲。(我这个沮丧的电台 DJ 还想用一首 Metallica 歌曲(歌名中也有 "Love "一词)来补充这一系列例子,但我实在想不出来)。
Let’s stay with the Metallica idea for a moment, The whole sound of that band - and the host of other metal bands that have taken their inspiration from them - is defined by the guitar sound, a heavily overdriven tone with the bass and treble boosted and the mid range taken out. As you’ll remember from the section on ‘EQ’, this isn’t the traditional way to set up your rig if you want to be heard clearly in a band context, but for the heavier fields of guitar-based music, I think we have to make an exception. That scooped tone can sound very powerful and menacing if used properly! 让我们暂时停留在 Metallica 乐队的概念上:该乐队的整体音色,以及从他们那里获得灵感的众多其他金属乐队的音色,都是由吉他音色决定的,这是一种重度过载音色,低音和高音被增强,中音被去除。正如你在 "均衡器 "一节中所记得的,如果你想在乐队中听得清楚,这并不是设置装备的传统方式,但对于吉他音乐中的重型领域,我认为我们必须破例。如果使用得当,这种勺形音色听起来会非常有力,而且气势汹汹!
If you’re playing through this kind of set-up, you’ll find the main problem is keeping it under control; a heavily overdriven amp is a frisky beast, and the slightest of accidental hand movements at your end can turn into an enormous and unpleasant racket by the time it reaches the speakers. In a context like this, you have to be more conscious than ever of damping all unwanted strings, just to make sure that there’s a difference in volume level between when you’re playing and when you’re not. You have to be very assertive with your muting technique to get the bestsounding results. 如果您通过这种设置进行演奏,您会发现主要的问题是如何控制音量;严重过载的音箱是一头狂躁的野兽,您手部最轻微的意外动作在传到扬声器时都会变成巨大而令人不快的喧闹声。在这种情况下,你必须比以往任何时候都更加有意识地抑制所有不想要的弦乐,以确保演奏时和不演奏时的音量有区别。要想获得最佳音效,你必须非常自信地使用静音技术。
One important feature of many riffs in this style would be the stops and starts. A wall of E5-based mayhem tends to have more impact and a tighter sound if you pepper it with a few gaps, and making the gaps come out cleanly is an ongoing battle for metal guitarists everywhere. If your amp is capable of an appropriately obscene level of overdrive, I would suggest that you try setting it up that way, selecting your back pick-up and devoting a few therapeutic minutes to chugging away on an E5 chord - you know, the one where you hit the three low strings while 这种风格的许多旋律都有一个重要特点,那就是起承转合。如果你在以 E5 为基础的混乱音墙中加入一些间隙,往往会产生更大的冲击力和更紧凑的声音。如果你的音箱能达到适当的过载程度,我建议你试试这样设置音箱,选择后置拾音器,花几分钟治疗时间弹奏 E5 和弦--你知道的,在弹奏 E5 和弦时,你要击打三根低弦。
fingering the AA and DD strings at the second fret. Try to cut each one off after the initial crunch, using various bits of your palm in search of the cleanest effect. 在二品上指法 AA 和 DD 弦。在最初的嘎吱嘎吱声后,尝试用手掌的不同部位将每根弦切断,以寻找最干净的效果。
You’ll probably find that simply sticking your palm on the strings at the end of the chord creates an unwanted thudding noise. If you perform the same palm movement a little more subtly, you can eliminate the thud, but this makes the end of the chord sound more woolly, as it takes a quarter of a second or so for the sound to stop rather than achieving the instantaneous muting you’d like. (A common symptom of this might be a sub-bass rumble, like the noise you’d expect an elephant to make after a bad kebab!) 您可能会发现,在和弦结束时简单地将手掌贴在琴弦上会产生不必要的咚咚声。如果将同样的手掌动作做得更巧妙一些,就能消除咚咚声,但这会使和弦结束时的声音听起来更毛糙,因为声音需要四分之一秒左右的时间才能停止,而不是你想要的瞬间静音。(一个常见的症状是低音隆隆作响,就像大象吃完烤肉串后发出的声音!)。
So what’s the solution? Well, I think you need to get both hands involved in the damping process. If you gently bring the palm of your picking hand onto the strings as usual while simultaneously touching them at the other end of their speaking length with the undersides of the third and fourth fingers on your fretting hand, you stand twice as much chance of silencing the chord properly. The lowest strings in particular seem to respond well to this approach, as they’re the ones most prone to fits of unwelcome rumbling 那么,解决办法是什么呢?我认为您需要让双手都参与到阻尼过程中。如果你能像往常一样轻轻地将拾音手掌放在琴弦上,同时用拨弦手的三指和四指下端触碰琴弦的另一端,那么你就有两倍的机会使和弦正确消音。最低音的琴弦似乎特别适合这种方法,因为它们最容易发出不受欢迎的隆隆声。
If you’ve tried this technique and found it disappointingly ineffective, it might be that the muting fingers on your fretting hand are landing too heavily on the strings, which could cause a whole new source of clunking noises or indeed some new notes! Remember to keep your fingers fairly straight and to gauge the amount of pressure you use by making sure that you never actually push the strings all the way down onto the frets. 如果您尝试过这种技巧,却发现效果不佳,那可能是您拨弦手的静音手指过于用力地按在琴弦上,这可能会产生全新的 "咚咚 "声,甚至是一些新的音符!切记手指要伸直,并通过确保从未将琴弦完全按在五线谱上来衡量压力的大小。
Other Solutions 其他解决方案
Most specialised players use some form of noise gate, which basically won’t let any sound from your guitar reach the amp unless it’s loud enough to be considered a deliberate bit of playing. This means that those little bits of handling noise never get magnified by the amp. because the pedal realises how quiet they were and very helpfully filters them out. Of course, you can adjust the threshold control to determine how fussy the gate is about what it lets through. Noise gates can make life a lot easier and are indispensable gadgets for those who do a lot of home recording. 大多数专业演奏者都会使用某种形式的噪音门,它基本上不会让吉他发出的任何声音传到音箱,除非声音大到足以被认为是故意演奏。这意味着那些小的处理噪音永远不会被音箱放大,因为踏板会意识到它们有多小,并非常有帮助地将它们过滤掉。当然,你也可以调整阈值控制,以确定噪声门对所允许通过的噪声有多挑剔。噪声门可以让生活变得更轻松,对于经常在家录音的人来说是不可或缺的小工具。
Here I should really point out one thing that you probably expected me to say but almost certainly didn’t want to hear: a noise gate can supplement a good string-damping technique, but it can’t replace it. However much money you spend on your gating requirements, you’re still in charge of the basic notes, and the cleaner you can play them, the less noise the pedal has to work with and the more polished the results will sound. (Incidentally, I know of at least one prominent metal band who employ a backstage tech with the basic job description ‘Learn our set inside out so you can be trusted to turn this noise gate on and off, manually, every time there’s a gap in the guitar part’! This might strike you as a rather extreme remedy for that whole handling-noise problem, but if your job is playing tight rhythm parts through generously overdriven amps all night, you probably appreciate the peace of mind that comes from having someone else worry about your muting concerns.) 在这里,我真的应该指出一件你可能希望我说,但几乎肯定不想听的事情:噪音门可以补充良好的弦阻尼技术,但不能取代它。无论你花了多少钱来满足你的门控要求,你还是要对基本音符负责,你弹得越干净,踏板需要处理的噪音就越少,效果听起来就越完美。(顺便提一句,据我所知,至少有一支著名的金属乐队雇用了一名后台技术人员,其基本工作内容是 "全面学习我们的演奏,这样你就可以在吉他部分出现空隙时手动打开或关闭噪声门"!这可能会让你觉得这是解决噪音问题的极端方法,但如果你的工作是整晚通过大功率过载的音箱演奏紧凑的节奏部分,你可能会很感激让别人为你的静音问题操心,从而让你感到安心)。
On a related note, using a guitar with a floating bridge to play this kind of stuff presents yet another problem the tremolo springs ring out in sympathy. and you can’t mute them with your hand because they’re tucked away in a cavity inside the guitar’s body. If you’re suffering from this complaint, you’ll hear something akin to a large church bell chiming in the distance whenever you cut off a loud chord. One solution is to remove the backplate from your guitar and insert some foam between the springs. Of course, this might have a very slight effect on your tone, but I think it’s an invaluable aid to getting a good distorted chug sound out of a tremolo-equipped guitar. 与此相关的是,使用带浮桥的吉他弹奏此类乐曲时还会遇到另一个问题,即颤音弹簧会发出共鸣,而你无法用手将其静音,因为它们被藏在吉他琴身内部的一个空腔中。如果你有这种困扰,每当你切断一个响亮的和弦时,你就会听到远处传来类似教堂大钟的钟声。解决方法之一是从吉他上拆下背板,在弹簧之间插入一些泡沫。当然,这对音色的影响可能微乎其微,但我认为这对从配备震颤器的吉他中获得良好的失真 "突突 "声是一种宝贵的帮助。
There are a few other applications of the muting concept which I probably wouldn’t get to mention anywhere else in this book, so l’ll do it here! As a quick exercise, try playing the same note over and over again, aiming to get each note sounding a little more aggressive than its predecessor. You’ll probably do this by hitting the string harder and harder until you reach a point where increasing the force of your pick attack no longer increases the volume of the note this feels like the point where you’ve pushed the note as far as it can go, and you might well assume that you’ve found the angriest-sounding version of that note you could possibly wring out of your instrument. 静音概念还有其他一些应用,我可能不会在本书的其他地方提到,所以就在这里说了!作为一个快速练习,试着反复弹奏同一个音,争取让每个音都比前一个音更有力度。你可能会通过越来越用力地敲击琴弦来达到这个目的,直到增加拨弦的力度不再能增加音符的音量时为止。
In fact, you can go several notches higher on the aggression scale if you hit a couple of damped strings along with the note you actually want to hear. This adds a percussive attack to the start of the note, but it doesn’t have any ill effects on the pitch of what’s coming out of your amp. You’re using only the initial attack of the other strings, so as long as you’ve damped them correctly, each additional string should provide a little extra crunch without resulting in any new unwanted notes. This is a common technique in the field of blues playing, and you can find examples of it ranging from the gentle brraapp sound BB King sometimes adds at the start of a long note to the highenergy sound of Stevie Ray Vaughan playing a single-note riff but picking all six strings as he does so for that raw, chaotic effect. (Use this last one with caution, by the way - it’s best to get the hang of the less extreme applications first!) 事实上,如果在演奏你真正想听到的音符时,同时敲击几根阻尼弦,你就能将力度提升好几个档次。这样可以在音符的起音处增加打击感,但不会对音箱输出的音高产生任何不良影响。您使用的只是其他琴弦的初始攻击,因此只要阻尼正确,每一根额外的琴弦都会带来一点额外的嘎吱声,而不会产生任何新的不想要的音符。这是蓝调演奏中一种常见的技巧,从 BB King 有时在一个长音的开头加上轻柔的 brraapp 音,到 Stevie Ray Vaughan 演奏单音旋律时拾取所有六根弦以获得原始、混乱效果的高能量音效,你都能找到这样的例子。(顺便说一句,最后一种方法要慎用--最好先掌握不那么极端的应用方法!)。
Here’s a simple example of this in practice. If you’re using your third finger to fret an Fi at the 14th fret on the top E-string, you could rake your pick across the D,GD, G and BB strings en route. To mute them effectively, you’ll definitely need to use the palm of your picking hand, and I would recommend the added security of using the underside of your fretting hand’s index finger so that you can simultaneously dampen things at the fretting end of the string. Either one of these damping methods might go wrong if used individually - for instance, if you only use your fretting hand to damp. there’s a danger of getting some inappropriate 12thfret harmonics cropping up - but combined, they’re very reliable, and after a little practice you’ll start instinctively adding muted rakes to any notes you want to make a little more prominent. 下面是一个简单的实际例子。如果您用三指在 E 弦上部的第 14 音格上拨动一个 Fi 音,那么您可能会在拨动过程中用剔弦器划过 D,GD, G 和 BB 琴弦。为了有效地使其静音,您肯定需要使用挑弦手的手掌,而且我建议您使用指弦手食指的下侧,这样您就可以同时在指弦端阻尼,从而增加安全性。单独使用这两种阻尼方法都有可能出错,例如,如果你只用拨弦手来阻尼,就有可能出现一些不恰当的 12 音格谐波,但将它们结合在一起就非常可靠了,而且在稍加练习后,你就会开始本能地在任何你想让其更加突出的音符上添加哑音耙。
Muting And Bending 静音和弯曲
When you’re bending a note, you’ll have to be extra aware of how you’re damping adjacent strings, because there’s a whole new problem to negotiate - you’re pushing the string you want to hear into closer proximity with the ones you’re trying to keep silent. For instance, if you’re playing the B string at the 12 th fret and you want to bend it up a tone, wobble it for a bit and then silence the note, you’ll encounter two main problems: 当您弯曲一个音时,您必须格外注意如何抑制邻近的琴弦,因为这又是一个全新的问题--您正在将您想要听到的琴弦与您想要保持安静的琴弦推得更近。例如,如果您正在弹奏 12 品的 B 弦,而您想将其弯曲一个音,然后晃动一下,再将音符静音,那么您会遇到两个主要问题:
1 On the way up, your bending finger will come into contact with the GG and DD strings, and there’s some chance that it will accidentally fret a note on one of these, mid-bend. This can be remedied with some judicious damping from your picking hand. You just have to bear in mind that the strings are closer together when you’ve bent one of them, so you have less margin for error. If in doubt, keep your damping hand close to the bridge, where the string spacing is less severely affected by bending. 1 在上弦的过程中,您的弯指会接触到 GG 弦和 DD 弦,有可能会在中途不小心在其中一根弦上拨音。这可以用你的拨弦手进行一些明智的阻尼处理来解决。你只需记住,当你弯曲其中一根弦时,弦与弦之间的距离会更近,因此你出错的余地会更小。如果有疑问,请将阻尼手靠近琴桥,因为琴弦间距受弯曲的影响较小。
2 Here’s the classic howler: after a successful bend and a pleasant bit of vibrato, the player then lets the string back down to its unbent pitch and the unmistakeable sound of the open DD string pops out from nowhere. This can be avoided not only by focusing on how your picking hand damps the strings but also experimenting with using different areas of your fingertip to fret the note, thus ensuring that you’re not unwittingly pulling off to an open string you don’t want to hear! Mainly, you should remember that your obligations to the bent note are not fulfilled until you’ve safely returned the string to its unbent position. Until that point, you have to be constantly aware of muting considerations. Even if you’ve already cut the note off, it can still come back to haunt you! 2 以下是最典型的 "嚎叫":在成功的弯弦和悦耳的揉弦之后,演奏者将琴弦放回未弯的音高,这时开弦 DD 的声音就会突然出现。要避免这种情况,不仅要注意挑弦手对琴弦的阻尼,还要尝试使用指尖的不同区域来拨弦,从而确保不会在不知不觉中拉到你不想听到的开弦!最主要的是,你要记住,只有当你安全地将琴弦恢复到未弯曲的位置时,你才算履行了对弯曲音的义务。在此之前,你必须时刻注意静音的注意事项。即使你已经切断了这个音,它还是会找上你!
Fast Muting 快速静音
Alternatively, you might be playing a stereotypical funk groove where your picking hand is strumming constant 16 th notes and your fretting hand is holding an E9 shape (the one where you finger the D string at the sixth fret and barre the higher strings at the seventh, maybe adding a root note on the A string - everyone’s favourite funk chord). For the full ‘Theme From Shaft’ effect, you need to cut off the chord at selected parts of each bar so that some 16th notes are marked only by the percussive sound of muted strings. Whenever you see this sort of rhythm part transcribed, the tablature is swarming with Xs to indicate these muted moments, and they’re achieved by releasing the grip of your fretting hand. 或者,您也可以演奏一种千篇一律的放克旋律,在这种旋律中,您的弹弦手弹奏的是恒定的 16 个音符,而您的指弦手弹奏的是 E9 形(即您在六品处用手指弹奏 D 弦,在七品处弹奏高音,并在 A 弦上添加一个根音--这是每个人都喜欢的放克和弦)。为了达到完整的 "Theme From Shaft "效果,你需要在每小节的某些部分切断和弦,这样一些 16 分音符就只能通过消音弦的打击声来标记。每当你看到这种节奏部分的转写时,制表符上就会出现大量的 X 来表示这些静音的时刻,而这些都是通过松开你的指法手来实现的。
The important factor here is the extent to which you release your grip. Your hand can continue to form 这里的重要因素是你松开抓握的程度。你的手可以继续形成
the basic chord shape, but it should relax just enough to separate the strings from the frets and cut off the ringing sound. If your fingertips actually leave the strings, that’s a good indication that you’ve relaxed your grip a bit too much, and the resulting messy sound will leave you in no doubt that you’re doing it wrong 在弹奏基本和弦时,指尖的放松程度要恰到好处,这样才能使琴弦与五线谱分离,并切断响声。如果你的指尖真的离开了琴弦,那就说明你的握弦放松得有点过了,由此产生的杂乱声音会让你毫不怀疑自己做错了。
To get a feel for this kind of playing (and you should -it’s fun!) it’s best to get the chord shape ready in the muted position, start that constant strumming pattern and then give the chord some gentle squeezes whenever the fancy takes you. Try to keep track of your picking hand’s rhythmic feel and not to allow yourself to become too preoccupied with the fretting hand’s behaviour; the squeeze/release motion will pretty much take care of itself, so focusing on the groove and timing should be your first priority. 要感受这种演奏方式(你应该这样做--它很有趣!),最好先在哑音位置上准备好和弦的形状,开始持续的击弦模式,然后随时随地轻轻挤压和弦。尽量注意弹奏手的节奏感,不要让自己过于专注于指法手的动作;挤压/释放动作会自行完成,因此将注意力集中在节奏和时机上应该是你的首要任务。
In the studio, a guitarist will sometimes tie a cloth around the neck, up by the nut end, and tighten it just enough to dampen the open strings. This is almost like cheating and obviously won’t help you to play ‘Walk This Way’ or the James Bond theme, but it can really help for certain difficult guitar parts that don’t rely on the use of open strings. Imagine you’re going for the perfect eight-bar solo on an otherwise complete pop track. If your last ten takes were all nearly perfect but marred by a rogue Estring ringing out in bar seven after your clever lick, would you really be averse to a bit of cheating? 在录音室里,吉他手有时会在琴颈上的螺母端系上一块布,并将其拉紧到足以阻尼开弦的程度。这几乎等同于作弊,显然对演奏 "Walk This Way "或詹姆斯-邦德主题曲没有任何帮助,但对某些不依赖于开弦的高难度吉他部分确实有帮助。试想一下,你要在一首完整的流行乐曲中进行完美的八小节独奏。如果你的最后十次演奏都近乎完美,但在你巧妙的舔弦之后,第七小节却突然响起了杂乱无章的 Estring,你真的会排斥作弊吗?
In a situation like this, you can’t exactly make your excuses and retreat for a solid day’s practice (studio time is a very costly commodity, and unless you’re Def Leppard, there never seems to be enough of it). I think it would be fair to say that it’s worth trying anything that might help to get the job done efficiently. 在这种情况下,你不可能找借口退缩,好好练习一天(录音室的时间是非常昂贵的,除非你是 Def Leppard,否则似乎永远都不够用)。可以说,任何有助于高效完成工作的方法都值得一试。
Muting And Tapping 静音和点击
If you’re partial to a little eight-finger tapping from time to time, you’ll need to pay particular attention to what your open strings are doing when you’re too busy to keep an eye on them! Most specialised players in this field use some sort of damping device - Jennifer Batten, for instance, uses a bizarre spring-loaded contraption built from the same materials as you’d find on the damper pads inside a piano. Anyone who’s ever tried to tap on two necks at once will definitely relate 如果您喜欢时不时地用八指敲击琴弦,那么当您无暇顾及开弦时,就需要特别注意开弦的情况!在这一领域,大多数专业演奏者都会使用某种阻尼装置,例如詹妮弗-巴顿(Jennifer Batten)就使用了一种奇怪的弹簧装置,其材料与钢琴内的阻尼垫相同。尝试过同时敲击两个琴颈的人一定会有同感
to the need for such a gizmo (I’m thinking of Steve Vai’s heart-shaped, triple-neck monster or Michael Angelo’s left-and-right-handed double neck, or Stanley Jordan’s show-stopping trick of having a second guitar on a stand so that he can play two guitars simultaneously). The problem is that each of your hands is too busy to get any muting done - there’s just not enough spare flesh to go around. Whether or not you need to spend any money to dabble in this idea is debatable; tying an old sock - or, indeed, a sock of any age - around the neck works as well as anything else I’ve tried. If you need this kind of tapping safety gear but want to mix in some ‘normal’ playing featuring open strings, I would recommend buying a few hairbands, and the fluffier the better. You can easily shift a hairband from one side of the nut to the other with your fretting hand, enabling you to swap between ‘on’ and ‘off’ modes quite effortlessly. Remember, though, that hairbands lose their elasticity after a while and can’t be tightened up on the fly, so don’t give up on the sock idea just yet! 我想到了史蒂夫-韦(Steve Vai)的心形三颈吉他,迈克尔-安杰洛(Michael Angelo)的左右手双颈吉他,或者斯坦利-乔丹(Stanley Jordan)在支架上放置第二把吉他以便同时演奏两把吉他的惊世绝技)。问题是,你的每只手都忙得不可开交,根本无法完成任何静音工作--因为根本没有足够的闲暇时间。至于你是否需要花钱来尝试这个想法,还有待商榷;在琴颈上绑一只旧袜子--或者任何年代的袜子--和我尝试过的其他方法一样有效。如果你需要这种敲击安全装备,但又想混合一些 "正常 "的开弦演奏,我建议你买几条发带,越蓬松越好。你可以用拨弦的手轻松地将发带从螺母的一侧移到另一侧,这样就可以毫不费力地在 "开弦 "和 "关弦 "模式之间切换。不过要记住,发带用久了就会失去弹性,而且不能随手拉紧,所以不要轻易放弃袜子的想法!
A variation on this problem crops up in licks like Joe Satriani’s bubbly arpeggio in ‘The Mystical PotatoHead Groove Thing’, from the Flying In A Blue Dream album. Licks of this kind need to be hammered rather than picked in order to produce the full bubbly effect, and every note is on a different string to the one before it, so the muting logistics are horrendous. Joe’s cheeky solution, when he plays the track live, is to bring his picking hand right around to mute the strings between the nut and his fretting hand. It might be cheating, but it works, and you have to admit that it has a certain visual appeal. 乔-萨特里亚尼(Joe Satriani)在《蓝梦飞翔》(Flying In A Blue Dream)专辑中演奏的琶音 "The Mystical PotatoHead Groove Thing"(神秘的土豆头琶音)就是这个问题的变种。这种琶音需要击打而不是挑拨,才能产生完整的气泡效果,而且每个音符都在不同的弦上,因此静音效果非常糟糕。乔在现场演奏这首曲目时,采用了一种 "厚颜无耻 "的方法,即用挑弦手绕过螺母和指弦手之间的琴弦,使其静音。这可能是一种作弊行为,但却行之有效,而且你不得不承认它具有一定的视觉吸引力。
Tuning 调音
This is a very confusing topic, but bear with me. 这是一个非常令人困惑的话题,但请听我一一道来。
Let’s start by looking at a bit of physics. The pitch of any note can be given in hertz, a measure of the number of times in which a string vibrates in a second, and this measurement doubles every time you go up an octave, so if you see ’ A=440A=440 ’ on a tuner, it means that a correctly tuned AA note might vibrate 880,440 or 220 times a second, depending on the octave it’s in. 让我们先来了解一下物理学。任何音符的音高都可以赫兹为单位来表示,赫兹是琴弦在一秒钟内振动次数的量度单位,每上升一个八度,这个量度单位就会加倍,因此,如果你在调音器上看到" A=440A=440 ",这意味着一个正确调谐的 AA 音符每秒钟可能振动 880、440 或 220 次,具体取决于它所在的八度。
The ancient Greeks figured out a system of ratios 古希腊人发明了一种比率系统
for generating a group of notes that sounded good together. This group of notes became what we now know as the major scale, and in the key of C it would look like this: 以产生一组合在一起听起来不错的音符。这组音符就是我们现在所知的大调音阶,在 C 调中是这样的:
{:[C=264Hz" - multiply by "9//8" to get: "],[D=297Hz"-multiply by "10//9" to get: "],[E=330Hz" - multiply by "16//15" to get: "],[F=352Hz" - multiply by "9//8" to get: "],[G=396Hz" - multiply by "10//9" to get: "],[A=440Hz" - multiply by "9//8" to get: "],[B=495Hz" - multiply by "16//15" to get: "],[C=528Hz]:}\begin{aligned}
& \mathrm{C}=264 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 9 / 8 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{D}=297 \mathrm{~Hz} \text {-multiply by } 10 / 9 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{E}=330 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 16 / 15 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{F}=352 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 9 / 8 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{G}=396 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 10 / 9 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{A}=440 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 9 / 8 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{B}=495 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 16 / 15 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{C}=528 \mathrm{~Hz}
\end{aligned}
Note that this last note comprises double the frequency of the initial C , and the whole pattern then starts again to generate the notes in the next octave. 请注意,最后一个音符的频率是初始 C 的两倍,然后整个模式重新开始,生成下一个八度的音符。
Relatively simple ratios like these tend to sound pleasing to the human ear. (Harmonics, incidentally, work in a similar way. As we’ll see later on, the easiest harmonics to obtain occur at points where a string is divided into equal halves, thirds, quarters and so on.) Listed above are some notes that sound good together in the key of C . To be more specific, they constitute the CC major scale. 像这样相对简单的比率往往听起来很顺耳。(顺便提一下,谐波也有类似的作用。正如我们稍后会看到的,最容易获得的谐音出现在琴弦被分成相等的二分之一、三分之二、四分之三等处。)上面列出了一些在 C 调中听起来不错的音符。更具体地说,它们构成了 CC 大调音阶。
Here’s where the problems begin. If you decided to figure out the pitches for a similar scale in the key of D major, you would start with D=297HzD=297 \mathrm{~Hz}, as established above, and apply the same series of ratios from that starting point. Here’s what happens: 问题就出在这里。如果您决定计算 D 大调中类似音阶的音高,您可以从上面确定的 D=297HzD=297 \mathrm{~Hz} 开始,并从这个起点开始应用相同的一系列比率。结果如下:
{:[D=297Hz" - multiply by "9//8" to get: "],[E=334.1Hz" - multiply by "10//9" to get: "],[F:=371.3Hz" - multiply by "16//15" to get: "],[G=396Hz" - multiply by "9//8" to get: "],[A=445.5Hz" - multiply by "10//9" to get: "],[B=495Hz"-multiply by "9//8" to get: "],[C:=556.9Hz" - multiply by "16//15" to get: "],[D=594Hz]:}\begin{aligned}
& \mathrm{D}=297 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 9 / 8 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{E}=334.1 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 10 / 9 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{F}:=371.3 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 16 / 15 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{G}=396 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 9 / 8 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{A}=445.5 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 10 / 9 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{B}=495 \mathrm{~Hz} \text {-multiply by } 9 / 8 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{C}:=556.9 \mathrm{~Hz} \text { - multiply by } 16 / 15 \text { to get: } \\
& \mathrm{D}=594 \mathrm{~Hz}
\end{aligned}