the Mickey Baker chord confusion thread

actually, thats what my hand looks like when I play that chord. Vertical thumb placement isn't really a big issue. Put it where it needs to be for your fingers to work. Horizontal placement is more of the problem for most people.

Your wrist and elbow could be a bit better but overall it's not the end of the world.
 
Mark Wein said:
actually, thats what my hand looks like when I play that chord. Vertical thumb placement isn't really a big issue. Put it where it needs to be for your fingers to work. Horizontal placement is more of the problem for most people.

Your wrist and elbow could be a bit better but overall it's not the end of the world.
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it is for me, because of my tendonitis. i can still feel that chord in my elbow an hour later. if i don't keep a straight wrist, things get ugly.
 
Mark Wein said:
whats the tendonitis from and where does it affect?
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i fractured the growth plate in my left wrist when i was 13. the next summer i started playing guitar, and played for about 9 years with poor posture and even worse technique. basically, everything from the elbow down hurts. i feel it most during the summer when the humidity is high and the air conditioners are kicking. but it can be brought on rather quickly by chording like in that pic.
 
huh, you can actually put your hand up to the wrist in the bigger baths and you can also do the elbow by itself.
 
ooh, here's a good one.

Lesson 6 (yes, i skipped ahead before writing down all the keys in Lesson 5 :embarrassed: ) shows a chord named Ami7:

x
8
9
7
x
8

which makes the notes in this chord A, C, E, G.

but the shape should be very familiar. it's chord #3 from Lesson 1, which was shown on the 3rd fret as a Gma6 chord. in this position, it would simply be Cma6. so now you've got not only a new way to play Ami7, but you can also call the chord we were calling Ami7 (barre all strings at the 5th fret, mute the 5th string) Cma6.

it's only going to get worse from here too. :embarrassed:
 
If you come at the guitar from a "pattern/rote memorization" direction this can turn into a house of mirrors really fast. It's great that you are looking at each chord and seeing what they can be relative to what you've already learned. Thats when you can start making your own chord substitutions.
 
Mark Wein said:
If you come at the guitar from a "pattern/rote memorization" direction this can turn into a house of mirrors really fast. It's great that you are looking at each chord and seeing what they can be relative to what you've already learned. Thats when you can start making your own chord substitutions.
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i think it's just a matter of recognizing the chord shape. he makes it blatantly obvious in the first line of lesson 6. it starts with an Ami7 and near the end of that line is a Gma6 with the same shape, which is different from the one i showed above. then he does it again later in the lesson with the one i showed. if you don't notice it, you're simply not paying attention.

the frustrated student will throw his hands up and say the book is too confusing. but the real lesson is in breaking down each chord to see how you can use them. you could easily spend 2-4 weeks just on these two pages.
 
Thats why books like Chord Chemistry are actually a study program that should take years even though it's not that thick. Internalizing the content takes time.
 
i finally got around to writing Lesson 4 in the four alternate keys of F, G, Ab, and Bb. the interesting part of it is playing through the transposing mistakes. for instance, i wrote a minor 6th as a minor 3rd. and my hand went "wait a second, that doesn't feel like the right transition."

yeah, you have to actually play this stuff and get it under your fingers. but this is where the real learning happens.
 
actually it's more for the bigger single note sound that anything else. You'll get used to playing these chords on any guage string but the 10's wikl sound too small for your melodies.
 
Mark Wein said:
actually it's more for the bigger single note sound that anything else. You'll get used to playing these chords on any guage string but the 10's wikl sound too small for your melodies.
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interesting. i'll cross that bridge when i come to it. for now it's just about playing. i can obsess about tone when i finish the book. or maybe tomorrow. :grin:
 
it's actually not about "tone" as much as the physical size of the note to me. Big strings work for something because they sound like they fill more space and don't for others for the same reason. Thats why I play 3 different string gauges and hate playing jazz on my cover band rig.
 
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