Hello everybody.

It's been a really long time since I posted on here and I thought I should update everyone as I think of all of you often as my Stick music family.

I started playing Stick twelve years ago, which at the time was what I though was a way to bridge my ability and life as a bass player and expand my knowledge of music.

As I found out as the years marched on, was really not the case.

I spent some time with some of you at the first Interlochen Stick event in 2009 and learend a lot. I also had the good fortune of spending time and having a lesson with Emmett and it was in that lesson that he told me the piece of information that I needed to hear and was as I came to find out years later, not only the reason I came but the reason I play Stick now.

I played my version of "Penny Lane" for Emmett and he in turn played his. It sounded nothing like the tune to me and as a trained jazz bassist I found this perplexing as to me the need to play the song as "written" was a huge part in interpretation. Emmett pointed out that I really knew that tune but also pointed out that it wasn't about playing the music as it was recorded but how I wanted it to sound.

"How I wanted it to sound?"

This threw me for a loop as my whole musical world was based on the skill of stylistic aesthetics. Nobody has ever asked me to play music the way I wanted it to sound but rather how good and supportive it sounded to others.

The other part of this was that I was a bass player, seeing the world as a bass player does. I was polarized. My left hand played bass, my right hand played melody and that was it. Looking back, this was ok in the sense that it did make some musical sense but was missing so much information.

Fast forward two years and I moved to Portland, did a prog rock album and continued to try to plug into this polarized way of making music into a band setting and to be honest, while it was fun, it was unfulfilling and I didn't know why?

Here is that album:



Other things happened, I fell in love and got hurt, badly! This in itself is nothing unusual for anybody but for me, having really never felt that way about anybody else it was devastating. Alone in Portland I spiraled into a deep depression and after a few months I got help in the form of counselling, hoping to understand why this happened and how to never experience it again. In those hard years and dark times, I never stopped playing Stick.


After a lot of work and self examination, I realized that I crave validation and derive self worth from how I serve and give to others. This was counterbalanced by low self esteem and a warped sense of self worth because of this need to be "praised" by others and not myself.

More things happened to me, I met someone else, got married, finished my masters degree in jazz and got a job driving city bus and light rail and left that job and it's horrors. All of these experiences taught me a lot about who I was and what I want and didn't want from life, still I never stopped playing the Stick.

Throughout these years I would come on and check in with everybody here, see pictures from seminars and want to be part of things but that same need to be told "I'm good" or "You're Amazing" would creep back in and I would withdraw. I didn't want to head down the path of getting a momentary thrill of being validated and the low self esteem crash of feeling empty. I would ask myself "what is the intention of this?" and every time it would pop up as "validation" and I would stop.

Last October I moved to Bergen Norway as my wife got a great working opportunity here and I was excited to join her. I'm there now working on trying to get original tunes down with an eye on recording an album and starting a catalogue of work. I'm tired of playing covers as they seem to take more energy to arrange and tighten up plus they are little capsules of "validation" and yet I find myself drawn to certain songs, those being ones that resonate with me on a emotional level. I still struggle to make music not from a place of "people will think this is amazing" to "I think this will be amazing and sound good. Something my wife (who is a visual artist) shared with me is that the only person's opinion that matters is your own. I still struggle with this. I've dedicated a life of music for all the wrong reasons.

i've spent these last two years trying to grasp how I play the Stick and what I have to say, trying to keep in focus what I like and what rings true with me. Having said this I wanted to provide you with how I've learned how to think about the left hand side of the Stick (5ths tuning). I do this in hopes that it helps those struggling with what I found was enigmatic as that musician used to living in a world of 4ths and thinking like a bass player. This works for me and if it works for you cool, if not that's great too, I hope you find your own way of using this instrument to make your music and realize your truth.



How I approach the Left Hand:

First and most importantly I had to stop thinking like a bass player. Now don't get me wrong, I still play bass lines but my understanding of music and how I think about it is no longer confined to a functional melodic fragment that repeats in rhythmic sequence.

I took piano lessons.

Greg told me when I spent time with him both at Interlochen and over lessons that he was a keyboard player and that it helped him a lot when switching to Stick. Keeping this in mind I spent about two years studying with a world class jazz pianist who will remain nameless. I choose to not mention his name because it was a difficult but educational experience that ultimately left me disillusioned and frustrated because of the serious lack of his teaching ability. He basically told me what I needed to know but never how to do it. Those of you who know me, know that I am dyslexic and anybody who is can tell you that having to teach one's self is the only way to really adapt to a world that does not think like you do. This was an important lesson from him and grad school:

You Are Your Own Teacher.

I threw myself into the world of solo jazz piano, I listened to every soloist I could get my hands on and while I struggled, I learned how they see the world, hear music and build arrangements to make a musical picture. This was extremely helpful in not only how I would approach the Stick but I basically de-programmed myself from thinking of left equals bass line and right equals melody.

I learned how to hear and think of the bass as one small part of the picture, which resulted in thinking about music like this:

Music = Melody and Harmony Glued Together by Groove.

Here is how I see how the left hand does this:




Bass side 5ths Tuning



String 1 & 2 (Blue)

Bass notes octaves 1 and 2 on piano
Play single line bass notes/basslines on these strings.

Strings 3, 4 and 5 (Yellow)

Mid range chord notes like octaves 3 and 4 on piano. Top two strings will always hold the 3rd & 7th Of Major 7th chords.

Strings 2 and 3 can both function as chordal and bass since they inhabit lower mid range/upper low frequencies.


My Left hand Approach.

Think of strings as Lowest/Biggest String is 1 and up towards player thinnest highest string is 5.

Play (groove) bass lines/roots on lower 2 strings and chord on upper three. I make chords with mostly four strings.

Four String Group 1



Four String Group 2



Shift between four strings starting either on the first or second string.

Keep Simple triads with roots on either strings 2 or 3, which serve as chords played on octaves 3 and 4 on piano. These chords are either simple triads by themselves or stacked with chords in the right hand for chording colorful piano like jazz chords. Move hand back and forth (headstock to pickup and back) to change range of chord.

Strings 2 & 3 are both bass and chordal strings. Simple triads can be played starting on the first string but sound muddy below the 5th fret.



Top strings overlap with bottom strings of the right hand and are just like the sweet spot of a piano. (Octaves 3 & 4)

I used to really hate how weird and different the left side of the Stick was, but now I see just how ingenious it is, like having a piano attached to a guitar.

I hope this helps someone as much as it helped me.

I've missed and love you all.

Steve Giedosh

Steve, I know you only through this forum and I did wonder what happened to you. I posted on a few of your earlier posts, and for many of the "beginning" crop of stickist that you are in part addressing I think one of your
'beginning' videos posts should be noted here but perhaps the starting points are hard to revisit considering
how far you have come.

In the here and now this new album is stellar. A true inspiration. The technical stuff
is important but you have gone way beyond "theory" imo. In fact you have blown the rail off the track and taken
flight in a way that only you could in the vastness of space. It is an inspiration to me and a re-affirmation to
me personally that the Stick is the vehicle and as someone who struggles with the multi instrumentalist
conundrum you have inspired me to seek that with a deeper conviction. I did find though, a post that I made on one of your posts way
back in 2008 that seems to fit so I will re-post it here as you have accomplished exactly what I was aiming
at and in fact still am for my self...

If your going to do that; be a magic story teller with tones.
You make dreams unfurl. Your a conjurer. It's something that no theory can articulate
but when it happens you sure can feel it. I am not saying this to make it harder in fact
I think the weird stuff makes it a little easier. It makes room for providence and grace.

Looking forward to having time to listen to this in depth. But off to work.
All the best.

jRj
*j*
.~

Thank you JRJ,

Yes your words of wisdom do ring true as well and I am glad that music inspires you. I wish I could say I wrote it all but with the exception of two tracks (Rura Puente, and Beneath a Steel Sky) all other tunes where written by the guitar player. It was a little band and a learning experience and I am still close with everyone involved.

As you required I will post some videos to show you what I'm talking about.

Here is Penny Lane from 10 years ago, just a few months before I had my lesson with Emmett.



and here it is ten years later. (sorry it's quiet, I'm still wrestling with the GoPro. I really miss my old iMac.)



I've realized that I'm pretty much done with covers as they only serve to teach me skills on how to arrange and play, kind of like how a jazz musician learns solos to understand how the masters built solos. If I play any other cover tunes they will be ones that challenge my abilities on Stick and force me to grow and not because they make me "marketable". I'm just going to write my tunes and see where it goes. I never want to play "Penny Lane" every again, I'm sick of looking at it.

Getting back to the left hand, I tried to break the tune up to add variety by playing the original walking bass in the left hand on the verse and chords both arpeggiated and played in quarters in the chorus. I utilize simple triads but break up the harmony on the outtro using a major 7th chord 2-5 build off of the 3rd and 6th (iim-V7) and bring it home with a major 7th chord 2-5-1 (iim-V7-IMaj7) to wrap it up, a kind of ending I learned from jazz standards and arranging which always sounded good to me. I also made the 3rd of the chorus diminished as it acted like a 7-1 cadence which I also like the sound of. It's amazing how easy it is to add these substituted chord movements are easy with the 5ths tuning.

Hey - you're really good! Keep going, man! You got this...

Thanks!

Great "Soul-Searching Thru the Stick" post! I gave up on covers awhile ago. A long while ago. Playing what I hear, and learning to play what I hear is/was the Reason I got a Stick in the first place. The last band I was in played original music with the occasional "cover" being a compete new realization of the song anyway. So...how do I find My Voice on the Stick? I play the voices I hear in my head on the Stick! The Stick is my channel to Everthing. "Only through utter defeat was I able to take my first steps toward liberation and strength."
Emmett has been quoted as abandoning all techniques previously learned to forge a new language of fingers on strings, while building an instrument with which he might accomplish this. The 5ths Tuning is the core. Watch any of his videos he certainly isn't locked into a left hand/right hand hegemony.