Chop Chords

I expect you purists to descend on me about this, but I've been watching Brad Laird and Mandolessons videos on chop chords. Those 4 finger chords are really hard for me. I have small hands and playing chords hurts my fingers anyway. (I am having the action checked on my mandolin next week, by the way.) Anyway, I guess I'm wondering how important it is to play chop chords. I'd like to be able to do it, but am also wondering if it can be done with 2 finger chords. That would mean, I suppose, playing no open strings.

My expectation from playing mandolin isn't perfection (although I am a perfectionist in other areas). I want to enjoy playing by myself and playing with others. My practice time is limited, so I must make good use of it. I love bluegrass and my understanding is chop chords are important to that particular genre.

Brad has a video on chop chords for small hands and I may invest in it, but I wanted to see what you guys think first.

I am no expert on chop chords by any means but you can play them with 2 or 3 finger chords. You just need to use your 4th finger (pinky) to quickly mute the open strings. 4 finger chords are killer for me right now. I can do some of them but I have a hard time making the notes clean sounding.

I'm not a purist, and haven't learned to use those big chop chords in practice for playing. About a year ago, I was trying to figure out a way to play Mr. Bojangles by ear, in the key of C which is where I play it on guitar. I just lucked out I suppose, or "happened" to find an F chord at 2-3-3-x ... and soon after, I moved it up two frets to play G chord at 4-5-5-x, two more frets up, you get an A chord at 6-7-7-x

You can chop those chords, and who cares if bluegrassers in jams look at you funny?

I just happened to have a copy of Brad's video on chop chords for small hands and just watched it. Those chords I mention above are the ones Brad teaches there; it's a good lesson with PDF and video, and I would recommend it.

FredK wrote about muting with the pinkie to make a sort of chop. Brad mentions this technique briefly in passing in that video. Sam Bush uses this technique a great deal using the two-finger chords, and so does Sierra Hull, I see them using the pinkie muting, and also the alternative chord shapes Brad is teaching, while playing. Chris Thile does it a lot as well.

I play guitar and mandolin with a friend who also plays guitar and mandolin. She has learned only the most basic chords used often in bluegrass jams, including the four-finger G chop chord. There are plenty of folk who know only one or two ways to play a particular chord. I prefer the other chords rather than four finger chop chords most often.

Brad's video shows a lot of stuff I'd already learned, but there were also several things on it that I learned from watching. It's a really good resource.

Thanks Fred and Mark. Mark, are all your comments referring to the small hands video?

I would love to just slip into those four finger chop chords smoothly and cleanly. But I don't. I figure that I don't have the incentive. Maybe if I start going to jams it will give me the drive to devote the required effort to develop the skill. But right now I am enjoying learning tunes.

But given the menagerie of various mandolins I have housed and cared for, I can say that those chords are easier on some mandolins than others. Wider necks and deeper profile necks make it a lot harder for me to reach them. It is rather amazing to me how much difference in 'chordability' a small measurement difference can make. A radiused fretboard also seems to help me a bit.

But overall, like others have noted, there are lots of 'playable' three finger chords that can be chopped.

Yes, the video lesson is "Chop Chords for Small Hands"

Keep practicing. Can't stress that enough. I too was in the same boat as all of you, "there's no way I"m ever going to get this". But it happens. One of the best things that helped me to get those four finger chop chords easy and get my fingers where they are suppose to be was using and practicing a LOT with FFcP. Do those like 30 minutes a night for a month, and I'm telling you the chop chords will come. I do G chop now and I scratch my head on how easy it is to get my fingers into position. Now, switching from one chord to another is a whole different story, but I practice moving from one chord to another every night, and it's getting better.

DON'T UNDER ESTIMATE FFcP, and keep up the good work. It'll come together.

Where's a good place to get some intel on doing such suggested FFcP exercises?

Asking this in the light of the adage "there's no such thing as a stupid question"

Thanks

Right here -----> http://jazzmando.com/ffcp_studies.shtml

I admit I haven't gotten much beyond scales. But even that is quite useful as it really teaches you the fretboard layout and the use of the pinkie.

I should probably PM you, Hank, just because I often feel so inept with my questions. But, on the chance someone might be wondering the same thing, I'll put myself out there.

I'm interested in trying these exercises, but can't figure out what to do. The A Major diagram shows all 4 fingers on the D and G strings. Obviously, that doesn't work well if you do this all at one time. So, how does this exercise work exactly?

Thanks for posting this, by the way.

I am no expert on chop chords by any means but you can play them with 2 or 3 finger chords. You just need to use your 4th finger (pinky) to quickly mute the open strings.

I just tried this. Maybe my pinky is just too short, but it didn't work very well for me. I found that I can mute with my right hand fairly easily. Is this just wrong?

Sherry, right hand muting is certainly not illegal. Probably the reason it's not used with mandolin for bluegrass chop is because it's generally more awkward for most people than the other two methods ... and would be terribly difficult to execute well up to speed. By the way, the lesson by Bradley Laird you mentioned, small hands, chop chords, touches on right hand muting, and pinkie/ring finger muting as well, in passing. He then goes on to discuss smaller chord shapes for chopping.

I'll let Hank explain the difference between the scale charts and the sheet music for exercises for FFcP (I tend to jump too quickly to answer questions, apologies for butting in). Be sure to download the PDF, since it contains both. FFcP PDF File

The A major diagram is a fretboard diagram, not a chord diagram. It is just showing where the notes are for an A major scale, starting at the second fret of the G string. It also is showing which finger to use to make each note (one at a time). It's not like a chord diagram, which shows where to put all your fingers (simultaneously) to make a chord. So, I would use the diagram to practice hitting each note of the A scale in succession using 1st finger on the 2nd fret of the G string, 2nd finger on the 4th fret, 3rd on the sixth, pinkie on the 7th, 1st on the 2nd fret of the D string, 2nd on the 4th fret of the D, etc, up to pinkie on the 7th fret of the D string. Hey, then come back down the scale. Up and down, ad infinitum.

The point is that you have just played an A scale using no open strings. And the same pattern of finger placements can be used to play a scale anywhere on the fretboard. Move that pattern up one fret (toward the bridge) and you get a Bb (A#) scale. Move it down one fret (toward the nut) and you have a Ab scale. Move it over one string and you have an E scale. Etc. Etc. Once you recognize that pattern, you can play any scale as long as you can put your index finger down on the fretboard on the root note on one of the lower strings.

That lesson continues with three more patterns for scales that repeat over and over again, thus providing a great deal of flexibility in how to play any given scale. And all those scales are being played with no open strings, making you work that pinkie finger like a marine recruit doing pushups.

Open strings are not bad. But we don't want open strings in chop chords and open strings don't make much sense when playing up the neck. The FFcP exercises, or even just playing FFcP scales, strenghten our ability to use that pinkie.

If I only muddied the water, let me know and I'll rephrase everything. Quite honestly, it is one of those 'lightbulb' things. You study it and look at it and play it and mess around with it and then all of a sudden the light switches on and you say 'oh man, that is NEAT'.

Oh, and you're right - your questions are, and will be, of interest to more than just you, so posting them is great.

"I am no expert on chop chords by any means but you can play them with 2 or 3 finger chords. You just need to use your 4th finger (pinky) to quickly mute the open strings"

I am too lazy to mute the open strings. I just try not to hit them (this kinda rules out chopping those chords with an open string in the middle, but hey, I don't do chords much anyway).

You guys get the award for tolerance and patience. I didn't actually think that diagram was a chord, but I didn't recognize it as a scale either. I warm up with scales, playing the A major scale starting with open A, but coming back down with 4th finger. I use standard notation and am making progress with tab, but those neck diagrams are really a challenge. Maybe I have trouble making the mental transition because I don't look down when I play. I can feel those correct notes but can't see them. Make sense?

Anyway, thanks for the input. I'll give those exercises a try now that they make sense.

Hank is right about finger placement. It's using each finger for each note. IF that makes since. HH said it way better than I would have been able to. I practiced so much that I remembered the whole page and abled myself to play it without looking. I would often play it while watching a baseball game, it was a great way to get your fingers to be able to stretch to reach such notes, say A 2fret to D 7 fret. I began to turn it into a game to see if I could go through it without a mistake. Once I got better at it, I began to notice that I was able to get the 4 finger chop chord position down without much of a struggle, then this led to sliding into a A chop chord position. So I started practicing more and more with the FFcP practice modes and my finger improved even more.

So, overall I can not over rate the FFcP system (whatever you call it) to improve your fingering and knowledge of the fret board. Again, this is just from my experience and what it's done for me.

I may have to give this another try, Ellsdemon. I still play the G-shape chop with three fingers (leaving off my middle finger). AND, being a former guitar player, still trying to break myself of muting with my right hand!

A good piece of advice I got was to keep your right arm loose & bouncing - the motion comes from the elbow, not the wrist, and the mute from letting off with your left fingers. Still a work in progress, especially at anything approaching speed.

I think once I was able to get the fingers into position, the next hurdle was figuring out the muting of the strings, it took me a bit to understand it.

As has been stated numerous times in this and other threads everyone learns differently. I have tried to learn the FFcP from the jazzmando site but my problem is that I have to hear more than see in order to learn. In other words I can't read music and working with tab is hard because I find myself stopping to count frets more than paying attention to the sounds I'm making in order to get where I'm trying to go.

So I recently bought a book from Mel Bay called Getting Into Jazz Mandolin that comes with downloadable sound files of the author playing the scales and exorcises. I haven't made it through the whole book yet but the exorcises are fun and I'm actually sticking with it. It has both forms of notation but I find it easier to mimic the sounds I hear than to try learn by reading.

I remember way back like a million years ago playing chords on my banjo at 'hootnannies'. I had a good vocabulary of chords and I could 'hear' the chord changes as they approached. And the required chords to almost all the songs were pretty easy on the banjo, so I could make the changes without missing a lick.

Those are fond memories. It is now close to 50 years later, most of which were spent not playing any instrument (and most certainly not singing). I now have trouble hearing those chord changes approach and I have trouble recognizing what chord I need to change to and I don't move from one to another in less than three metronome clicks and a thunk or two. But I think it is coming back. I also think that if I participated in jams, it would come back faster. Probably much faster. Jams (or 'hootnannies') are pretty good ear training.

Swimbob, I think you have a good thing going. I can read music and tabs, but I seem to have lost the ear. I may check out that 'Getting into Jazz Mandolin' book, even though jazz is not really my thing. It sounds like good ear training. Thanks.

"I have tried to learn the FFcP from the jazzmando site but my problem is that I have to hear more than see in order to learn."

Hey Swimbob, I just want to point out in case you don't realize this, or for the benefit of others who may not know this, the FFcP Exercises come with MP3 audio of the exercises.

I have visited the jazzmando site a few times, but the FFcP exercises are archived right here at mandolin cafe, which is where I found them a couple years ago, and in addition to the scale charts there are two PDF's of the exercise notation, and two MP3 tracks of the exercises being played. So, I've never sent anyone to Ted's website for these, I usually point them to the mandolincafe pages - there are two pages for FFcP here at the cafe. I assume all the same info is at jazzmando site, but don't know for sure. Anyway, here's everything that the cafe has to offer on FFcP

Cafe Page One

Cafe Page Two

PDF #1

PDF #2

MP3 #1

MP3 #2


You can use a slow-downer program of your choice to slow down the exercise MP3's since Ted plays them way too fast for me to follow. Here's what they sound like:

This is great stuff, Mark! One of my (many) problems is impatience. I warm up with scales, which I absolutely detest, but know is important. Due to Brad Laird's influence, I'm trying to slow down so they sound better. I think, too, I can work with the standard notation PDFs you provided. I'm currently out of town, returning home next Suday, so can't give it a try until then. Is a separate program required to slow down the MP3s?

Sherry, there are a lot of programs you can try, or buy, to slow down audio or video without changing the pitch. I use a program called Transcribe! (the exclamation point is part of the name). I think the most popular program people use is one called The Amazing Slowdowner.

But, if you use windows, you can open an MP3 with Windows Media Player, then right-click the screen and a menu appears, choose Enhancements, then "Play Speed Settings" and you can slow things down as low as 50% of original speed.

Sometimes 50% might not be enough for me, and besides, the slow-downer-type programs have other great features, so the Media Player options are rather limited but may be enough for you.

If you use Apple or Mac stuff rather than Windows, you'll probably have Quicktime, which also has speed settings about like Media Player.

Following is a video I made recently about this subject:

Thanks Mark. You are correct, I was unaware. And I didn't know anything about the Windows Media Player option either.

One day I'll pull my head out of the sand and take a look around!

There's also a great website I recently discovered: www.tunetranscriber.com

You can upload any audio file you have on your computer. Plus, it's free and easy to use!

Great resource, Baron, thanks!