Guitar Chords With Roots on Every String

I decided the video was insufficient to demonstrate what I'm talking about. I only went through this trouble because I had not yet encountered this particular method so maybe it's novel. In the Levelland jazz class I took I learned the horizontal chord voicings, taking a GM7 on the 3rd fret and then moving to the GM7 on the 5th fret, then a GM7 on the 8th fret and then a GM7 on the 12th fret, and finally the 15th fret is the same as the 3rd. There is also one on the 10th fret but for some reason we didn't do much with that voicing, which I didn't care about because it was the one voicing of the Maj7 that I already knew. I feel this vertical method is as important as the horizontal method.

This was painful to make so donate to the SPCA if you find it useful

The main breakthrough that this method helped me reach was learning all the notes on the 3rd and 4th strings, which were a little hazy above the 7th fret because I simply did not play chord voicings that had roots on those strings/frets...and that's how I memorized all the other strings. I've heard one simple method for learning notes is to find all the BC_D notes and directly beneath then are the EF_G notes. It's at least something to start with but I've found knowing the chord shapes with root notes on all the strings really helped me memorize the notes....and furthermore, this particular skill, playing these 3 chord qualities with roots on any string...is actually a portion of the jury exam that one must pass to graduate. I tried to write a computer program that would simulate this exam but I couldn't do it. I think there are random string generators online that you can program with music note names and qualities and string number but the easiest thing would be to make three stacks of flash cards. One set has all the note names on it Ab, A, Bb, B, C, Db, D...etc. The other set has three qualities, Major 7, Minor 7, Dominant 7. And the last set has the numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6. Shuffle and Pick one card from each set and play that chord. D...... dominant 7.......root on the 3rd string. It would look like the Bb7 in my picture, except played on the 7th fret. See, everything is movable but if you don't know the actual names of the strings then you are either relying totally on your ear, which makes you more awesome than Oggy, or you only play the chords in the voicings and positions that you've always known and you never venture beyond that comfort zone. I played the 5th string root Maj7 formation exclusively for about 13 years. I got so sick of shifting 7 frets when I needed to play a maj7 chord that I broke down and drove to God-forsaken* North Texas to learn how to play better. This diagram is a way to push yourself into some different positions and it's definitely how professionals think, and you won't have to live in Levelland if you study hard enough.

This is by no means exhaustive, as there are voicings up the ass, high, low, drop 2, drop 3, 11th extensions...diminished, augmented, etc. But these three qualities and these limited voicings should give you something to work on.  One hint that I've learned is the professionals don't play these complete voicings. They simplify them to maybe two or three notes and concentrate on rhythm. They know what the whole formation looks like but speed and instrumentation make them simplify the chord shape.

One of the exercises I did was to play iimi7 / V7 / Imaj7 in any key and any position, and it's really not complicated because all the voicings you see in the picture are within a fret of each other when played in a particular key. It's a different lesson so I'll save that for later. I probably saw this lesson half a dozen times before I finally understood what it was demonstrating. It's merely a way to revoice the same chord so your comping can have some kind of momentum and variety. Western Swinger guitarist Eldon Shamblin made a career out of revoicing the same chords to make it sound like he was playing some complicated arrangement, when really it was just Shamblin who was complicated.

There's also a formation at the 10th fret but for some reason these 4 grips are the main ones for each chord quality.

*Considering Lubbock is the "city of 200 churches" this depiction is wrong. God has totally occupied North Texas. I mean it is flat and windy and everyone is white and wears cowboy hats and their "frontier days" parade is almost identical to a normal day. North Texas is like a huge boring theme park for Baptists where you don't ride on a hay wagon unless you pitched all the hay onto the wagon first. And you study animal husbandry or petroleum engineering. People in North Texas think Los Angeles is a fictional place invented to demonstrate the horrors that happen when you stray from God. It's noteworthy to point out that Los Angeles requires North Texas for survival, but North Texas would not blink if all of Los Angeles vanished. The most radical thing that happened in the history of North Texas was a Bluegrass music program was started at a community college. My arrival there is still discussed in coffee shops. In all my travels I've never met someone from North Texas outside of North Texas. North Texas is the only place in the last 20 years that I've been able to go to a street called Main Street and have a cup of coffee and slice of pie made by Ma at a cafe called "Ma's Cafe" next door to a western wear store whose owner is the cashier, across the street from the city hall/jail/courthouse where every week business owners play old country songs in a gazebo on a lawn. If you are under 30 years old then you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. 
I was driving to New Mexico way up in North Texas and honestly my road map got sucked out the van window. It took me a minute to get the van under control and turn around and go back to get the map, laying in the middle of the road. As an experiment I decided to wait to see how long before another car came and forced me out of the road. Another car never came. Finally a rancher drove slowly along his fence line and asked if I was ok. Probably thought I was stoned. I said I was fine and he nodded and went to check on his cattle. I finally got bored and started driving west again. I could see New Mexico about 40 minutes before I got there.

Soap Box

I've barely started my research into the history of Guatemala but what I've read so far confirms my suspicion that U.S. foreign policy led directly to the conditions that required Guatemalans to flee north, where the same country that undermined their democracy in the '50s because it had hints of social welfare programs, would later condemn them for fleeing the civil war caused by the aforementioned foreign policy. It's blatant, but I'm also close to a breakthrough on the mentality of jingoism. By pointing out injustice I can be accused of "rooting for the opposition" and dismissed. This suits the agenda of the political elite because it negates debate and allows them to avoid justifying their actions. Noam Chomsky is often accused of anti-American sentiments. If criticizing government policy makes you Communist then Bill O'Reilly is one of the biggest Communists in media. One response of Chomsky's was, "We should abide by the rules we agreed to." another comment was "I listen to the population." He's not pro-statist but I don't think he's anti-statist; he's more like a political agnostic. As politicians can not yet be trusted, democracy is not possible, so statism always becomes elitist and rife with special interests the voting public had no control over...thus it's not a democracy. If you go to get your car painted red and it's returned to you as a green van, then that's a problem. It's not a question of anarco-libertarianism being better than democracy, because democracy is only how textbooks define America and isn't really true. So, do we want a transparent film of "democracy" covering a bleeding scab of special interests or do we merely want anarchy. The population has chosen the former because it basically helps avoid civil wars and I think the collective fear of war is stronger than the collective desire for some ideal form of government. We'd rather slowly creep toward idealism than make any sudden moves.

Well, in 1954 and then in 1982 Guatemala tried to make two extreme lateral moves on the political spectrum and those two events, both involving the CIA, are still causing problems.

Chomsky listens to the population. Whatever country is in question has a population, not the elite, not the media, not the politicians, not the military but the population and those are who he listens to. And that's the difference because the population can not write a press release the "words" he hears are open to debate. He interprets them one way and someone else refuses to even hear them because the media or politicians have a neat package that explains everything. The population is dismissed in favor of a guy in an expensive suit who is on television. It's ludicrous, but maybe it's a desire of trust in the media that some people rely on because to distrust the media would leave them in the hellish world Oggy lives in, and that's distasteful so they cling to the known, even if the known may be lies.

Remember Harry Wu who was imprisoned not because he was anti-state, but because he was not blatantly pro state? That's the kind of rhetoric I hear directed at Chomsky. He is never anti-America, but he is routinely not pro-America. He waves no flag, and that's traitorous in the same way Chairman Mao demanded aggressively loyal subjects. It seems this loyalty trait is not confined to China.

The lesson here is that I've landed in a country that politically is like the United States in 1880, still recovering from a long (30 years) civil war that basically started when Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown by Eisenhower's thugs and progressed through several awful regimes involving leftists, rightists, anarchists, Mayans, guerrilla groups, communists, and several coup d'etats. It's way more colorful and complex than the North vs South 1862 U.S. civil war. For instance, the B actor turned politician Ronald Reagan authorized full support of Efrain Rios Montt and Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity as recently as last year. Montt had his own brand of ethnic cleansing fully funded by Reagan's CIA and ignored by everyone who wanted cheap bananas. President Clinton had to formally apologize for the previous President's support but for some reason probably involving utter irresponsibility on the part of America, Reagan was not charged with any crime. If it were up to me Ronald and Eisenhower would be charged posthumously with crimes against humanity. Why? Because I'm Anti-American? Because I'm a Liberal? Because I smoked pot? No. Because it's true.

I'm still learning about the details but the evidence strongly supports the conclusion that America twice aligned itself with a brutal, genocidal military regime, twice enabled widespread massacres and destruction of sovereignty and then immediately detained the refugees who crossed the border seeking refuge from the death squads who were trained by the CIA. It reads like a bleak novel where the villain is this fictional country called "The U.S." and by the end of the book it will be exposed and overthrown to great celebration.

But it's not a book and it's not fiction. They are still digging up bodies with Israeli and American bullets in them. It seems that all of Central America's conflicts arose from a U.S. effort to eradicate any hint of socialism, again, because socialism would raise the price of fruit cocktails. So the question is if pointing this out makes me anti-America? Another complaint about Chomsky is that he doesn't offer solutions and it's true that his lectures usually involve history and facts, not the future. But I feel the solution is unstated because it's obvious: justice. Listen to the population and facilitate justice for the population. That's all. The details are complicated but if we start with that simple premise then we'll make progress. Chomsky likes to say that one either defends state violence or denounces it and if I'm going to polarize the debate then that's a pretty good line to draw...either you approve of state violence like the overthrow of Arbenz, who was born in the city I live in now, or you denounce it. If we differ on that opinion then everything else is impossible. No discourse can begin. One of the great regrets of the future will be that we squandered the intellect of someone like Chomsky by requiring him to explain to us what just happened. It's pretty sad when we need smart people to analyze current events for us. He can write essays about the future but I think he knows that the details will require someone to be alive to see the plan through so his recommendations today will all sound a little off when we finally get around to implementing them after he dies. And it's obvious we have not all agreed to denounce state violence so the future is still imperiled.

And I would point out that one of the main conservative attacks on Chomsky is that "He profits from his lectures, so he's a special interest hypocrite." Ok, BUT WHAT DOES THAT MAKE ME? I guess I'm a tree hugger bleeding heart idiot who laps up all the drivel that Chomsky pukes out in his quest to misinform and manipulate everyone into hating America. Sure. But I don't hate America; I hate injustice; I hate the injustice America is responsible for. I denounce it. Chomsky did not fund and openly support a genocidal military dictatorship in Guatemala...and if he did I would denounce him. In this case Chomsky denounced it and was ignored while the highest elected official in America, who would get re-elected and honored and revered...but was actually a poorly cloaked global villain....enabled Mayan genocide. Those are the unpleasant facts, and if you approve of disguised* state violence then your response is a shoulder shrug or maybe pointing out that Reagan's whole strategy was to bankrupt Russia so everything he did was justified. But if you denounce state violence then you demand justice. Sadly, all this involves education and when the state controls the media then that's impossible without being proactive and also skeptical. I know people who voted for genocide when they voted for Reagan, but they would not feel responsible because they didn't know the facts, and now it's too late so it's pointless to argue about it.

*For the record, Reagan claimed Montt was "improving the conditions for Guatemalans" and if by Guatemalans he meant the elite ruling class then he was telling the truth and Montt was justified in slaughtering 3000 Mayan farmers a month. I, however, include the Mayans in the category of Guatemalans so Reagan  therefore enabled Genocide with his propaganda. In a just world Obama would not need to proclaim a moratorium on undocumented immigrants who fled Guatemala in 1983 because any decent person would understand the situation and immediately offer refuge to them instead of detaining them to ship back to the death squad. Any decent person would defend said refugee from a detention squad because state violence can only be healed by state mercy.

Choosing Words Carefully

I've been having weird dreams lately. One dream involved my riding on top of a freight train, the train stopped way in the middle of a broad desert and I got off and walked around...and then I saw that another train was coming down the track...and I waved the train down and it was being followed by a path of fire...and the second train was actually being pushed by a 2nd generation Ford Econoline, a different color and style than El Conquistador but it wasn't on fire; it was setting everything on fire around it. And another dream involved internet comments and in the future everyone is only allowed a single quote that they can use for comments. I mean that you only get one quote and that's the only comment you can make on internet content. Some people have signatures to their internet identity, and this is an extension of that except all you get is your signature. You can not expand on your signature. Your signature quote is the only comment you can make. And it's strange but also not much different than people repeating themselves with different words. In the future you won't be given different words, you only get a certain quote to use and that's all. So maybe in 2015 I will only use a single quote...to stay ahead of the curve. And I have 6 days to decide on the only comment I will be able to make for 1 year. 
I doubt I'll be able to limit myself but it will be a game. Is there a quote that summarizes every comment I could make?

The quotes I'm leaning toward are these: 

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” F. Nietzsche

"It is men who take ventures who make the world. It is courage the world needs...launch out into deep waters. Half measures, trimming the shore in shallow waters, never pays anything."  Sir William Grenfell


"The fight is never about grapes or lettuce. It is always about people. "
Cesar Chavez 

Those would look a little strange on an article about baseball but there's a lesson in that. I probably wrote something worth repeating but to find it I'll have to reread everything I wrote and that's not going to happen. 

A Christmas Card From A Gypsy in Guatemala

Actually this Tom Waits song is called A Christmas Card From A Hooker in Minneapolis. It's the kind of song that requires personality as it's being sung from the perspective of another person, down and out and in jail, lying about themselves like everyone seems to do nowadays on their status pages. No one wants to be in rehab or depressed so we dress our egos up in elf suits with a silk tie wrapped around our false smiles. A video is out there that has Waits start off and end with Silent Night and I ripped that approach off because I can't improve on it.

I can't really sing loud because the apartment building I've landed in actually has occupants and it's this open central courtyard and I know my piano echos through the halls and makes the Guatemalans wonder who is playing Barry Manilow or Nat King Cole. (I like to the everyone I wrote Some Enchanted Evening.)

I seem to remember being stuck in the mud in Northern Louisiana last year at this time, somewhere near Shreveport, where a new salt water disposal facility was being built. I tolerated it in hopes that one day I would be in Guatemala with a piano and a year later that has come true. The path is clear that I should only play jazz standards at fancy restaurants or cruise ships. I could play Ain't Misbehaving for hours consecutively and the pain in my neck is always worth it.

I have almost exhausted my bucket list. If I can spend a little more time writing about Santa Cruz then maybe I will silence my demons and finally have a silent night.

Merry Christmas to all.

Xela, named by Mayans after 10 peaks...and that's one of them. It's located over 7000ft above sea level which is why I must wear a coat.

Only Google Sent Me A Christmas Card This Year

Because I'm not already media saturated Google decided to quit edit my uploaded photos into a slide show and even added music. This kind of creeps me out because I know a person did not actually compile this slide show, so it was all a computer browsing my photos of Alligator swamp lizards in the high Chisos Mountains and Santa Elena canyon and my endless maintenance of my van. This is interesting because I've seen all and shared most of these photos but what's depressing are the photos and memories that Google is not aware of and thus virtually don't exist. You would think that watching this slideshow that you are witnessing my year in review but there were many pivotal events that I could not write about nor photograph as they were emotionally personal. I remember crossing the border into Mexico from Texas and giving spare change to a man with a club foot. Many people are bilingual near the border and we discussed my van. That incident is not in this slideshow. Nor is the 60 amp fuse that I blew because I didn't wrap a wire splice with enough electrical tape.

So this is the generic Oggy's 2014 Review as compiled by a loveless computer. It's incomplete, and yet, it's something.