Greg Howard's Tap-Twister #1
Navigating 4ths in the Melody
Practicing scales is a fine way to learn how keys sound and feel, but scales only give you some of the interval and fingering combinations you're going to encounter in real-life music situations.
This is the first of a series of exercises designed to help you negotiate an interval whose fingering isn't prescribed by scale fingerings, the 4th.
These exercises are called Tap-TwistersTM, like toungue-twisters for your fingers. Practicing them will make you more limber and help you more easily figure out how to finger melodies as you read them or work out arrangements.
Pay close attention to the fingerings, they are the whole point of this exercise.
for the bass part, start off by playing the low C as a whole note at the beginning of each measure, them play half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, etc. After you're comfortable with those, play the part as written. It's written with tied 8ths rather than dotted quarter notes to make it easier to read.
For those of you unfamiliar with StaffTab, the round note-head shape tells you to play with the first finger, the diamond is for the second and the triangle is for the third.
This chart is written for the Baritone Melody 10-string tuning. The numbers above the top staff tell you which fret to play the note at, and the markers on the staff tell you which string to play the note on. If you have a 10-String Classic instrument, just move the melody down one string, and if you have a Matched Reciprocal instrument, move everything down three frets, but play in on the same string as written.
Happy Tapping,
Greg
Tap-Twisters is a trademark of Greg Howard
StaffTab is a trademark of Greg howard and Stick Enterprises, Inc.
