About the Solene...

[rjgoos]

Boy has it been quiet around here.

Hey, I was watching the little video clip at the Solene site (www.flash.net/~solene), and watched the player (Rich's?) hands carefully. It seems like his hands were pretty much in a "Webster-Bunker" type of position (left fingers more-or-less parallel to frets, right hand more-or-less parallel to strings).

Is that the normal playing position for a Solene? It would seem to me that the angle on the frets would make a chapman-style hand position (both sets of fingers more-or-less parallel to the frets) difficult.

I know there are a few Solene players here, and even more who have observed Solene players. What is the typical hand position, and is the left hand normally committed to bass and right hand to melody?


R. Jay Goos

[murphy]

Hi R.J.

I've been struggling a bit to come up with a response to this post. I think partly I just have trouble comparing a Solene with a S***k, Warr, etc. and how they tend to be played. Nearly all these other intruments are designed to function sort of as two instruments in one. Obviously they're flexible in this regard but I'm sure you know what I mean because your question speaks directly to that aspect. Remember that the Solene is basically a 7-string guitar that is optimized for tapping. As such, you don't really assign a group of strings to a hand per se because it would be too limiting.

I think your description of the basic positioning of the hands is correct. If you strapped one on, I think you'd see that it's really just how your hands naturally fall on it. The ergonomics of it are really good. Of course, anytime you optimize in one direction, there are trade-offs. The playing surface having a relatively radical radius I think works really well but of course it limits how many strings it can have on it, and string bending is limited. And slanting the frets makes alot of things easier but obviously certain stretches are more difficult. But you find of course that an interval you maybe used to grab across two strings you now grab across three.

I don't know how well I'm answering your question but another way of looking at it I think is that the Solene's design significantly smoothes out the physical act of tapping but comparing it to S***k-type instruments with essentially two sets of strings, your challenge shifts to arranging your music in a way to effectively share those seven strings with both hands. You mentioned videos on the Solene site. On the older one (not the Bach but the funk-feel thing), If you watch closely you'll notice that he plays like a 4-bar thing that repeats where the bass is played with the left hand, but then the next part he switches to playing the bass with the right hand. This is fairly typical with this instrument.

Partly because of this, I personally think the Solene might be better suited to a player who is interested in idiomatic tapping music rather than the person trying to be a one-man rhythm section if you know what I mean. But I have a real bias about that musically so I could just be dragging that in to this needlessly. Anyway, for what it's worth, when you talk about having trouble with playing position causing pain, I can't help but think you should try a Solene.

Hope this helps/makes sense.

murph