Stick Blog #2
Well, after a little more practice, I have stumbled into the thinking that levin does use ascending 5ths through the bass strings; and that by spacing his left and right hands a minor 3rd apart over two strings, with the third finger of each hand on the tonic, the leading note minor pentatonic form of many modern bass riffs becomes easily accessible and percussive.
Secondary leading and chromatic passing notes fall to the second finger, and you have the added advantage of being able to double stop 5,10 in the left hand for the other part of that classic stick bass style.
The one handed bass +chords accompaniment style is more rhythmic and accurate than it is on the piano, and the harmonic richness allows you to voice 7, 10 and leave out the 5th in a voicing that is part guitar, part piano and reminiscent of Bill Evans. Beautiful, wide framing.
So, with that in mind i have detuned the melody strings from classic to matched reciprocal (so the 10 strings are C,G,D,A,E,C,G,D,A,E, and will keep working on the left hand before confusing my brain with the chord framings for the right, which emmetts book suggests are geometrically the same, for different inversions of the same chord; but then i don’t think very visually so……
