Hi Jess, sorry this took so long. I am currently in the demob process as I have only been back in the united states for about 1 and half days. Thanks for the friend request.

Jess, thanks for the friend invite.  It is an honor.  I'll help you where I can, but keep in mind, I haven't built anything in over a year, I can't play at all.  I built my ukes just like smaller guitars and added uke strings.  I believe I found a fret calculator at Stewmac.com.

Hey Jess. Handmade said your birthday was a month ago. Happy Birthday buddy and many more.

Your artwork is getting rave reviews my friend!!

Nice pinstripe work, I've tried it but have not quite mastered it yet. Nice cbg's too.

Hey Jess, day late and dollar short but , Happy Birthday  my friend and many more to you,

Very cool Jess. Thank you, I appreciate it! Keep in touch, I look forward to your artwork. God Bless and Goodnight :)

Thanks Jess. Gathering around the CBG does sound fun, however between the distance of Chicago and Mansfield and work and family and time that may be difficult. However if you're ever in town and I likewise I would love to hang out! And I would be honored if you taught me a bit on Pinstriping. I bought a few books and a few craft store 00 brushes, tried it out but never stuck to it. I think i have a box that I could send you that I would like to have a surf style tiki mask in the middle and the corners tricked out. What do you think? As far as panel work, I wonder if you would check out my pics and paint what you feel from it, that would be cool for me,does that work for you?

Jess, Do you have any Pinstripe art for sale? I would love to buy some to hang in my workshop.

Hey Man!

Nuttin much here. Just building and keeping it straight. Yea, I didn't mean to start up such a crap-fest with all that. It just erkes me that there are folks out there that can't build, can't learn, can't seem to understand what they are doing, and on top of that think they know the 'right way' to build CBGs. I guess I really shouldn't be such a mouth (I have a bad habit of that, so if you think I'm a putz, I might just be). We all build at one point or another and no matter how you build, its all good.

Eh, anyhow... I digress. So me likey the Playboy box above! Me likey the inside a LOT. Hrmmmm. Gives me an idea....

Cheers and let us know what new comes about.

-WY

Hey Jess, Gimme a yell whenever you're ready. in the meantime check this out: www.buildyourguitar.com/resources/lapsteel/index.htm">http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/51ZTdE/www.buildyourguitar.com/resources/lapsteel/index.htm. This CBG stuff is very addicting! See Ya!

Thanks for the invitation, Jess. You're showing some real skill and ingenuity! I'm gonna be watching you to see what I can learn. See Ya!

East coast, Aug 28th & 29th. No, I doubt I can swing a trip to PA this year, and I have other commitments starting around Aug 22nd. Maybe some other year. I'd really like to spend a summer on the East coast to attend some of the old time music conventions in Appalachia and the like, but that will likely have to wait until my daughter is older and can travel easier. Hopefully, by then she'll be into playing an instrument. She's 5 now and is just starting to take interest. But she does like to sing and dance, at least in the privacy of our home.

I still think your question on L-chords is a good one and should be asked again in one of the public group areas of CBN. That way more people will get in on the discussion and share ideas, etc. I can get the ball rolling if it's okay with you.

-Rand.

Where's York? In the UK? I am currently situated in the San Francisco Bay Area (think west coast, U.S.A.) and am on vacation. Two months from now, I'll be back home in Shenzhen, China just across the border from Hong Kong. My interests include ukuleles, stick dulcimers (strum sticks) and now can-jos (seems I'm going minimalist). I study similar stringed instruments like mountain dulcimers, banjos, guitars, and the like for ideas. Most of my readings are from articles on the Internet, discussions on various forums, and then trying out their ideas to see if they work for me on whatever instrument I interested at the time. I'm not an expert or anything, but feel free to pick my mind via this forum.

This additional fret trips me and other people up a lot, especially when it's not counted as "6 1/2", but as "7" and the remaining frets are named one up from where they are on the instrument where it's marked "6 1/2". For instance, if your instrument has a movable bridge, it's placement position on the body should be 2 times the distance from the nut to the 12th fret for a chromatic instrument (banjo, guitar), but should be the 7th fret for a diatonic instrument. But, if your instrument has a "6 1/2" fret called "fret 7", this will likely mess you up, as it has done for me when I was using my McNally Strumstick (which has a 6 1/2 fret called "fret 7", etc.) as a model for another instrument I was building. I was wondering why all my fret positions were so far off the mark!

As for your other chord on the strum stick or similar instrument, you'll just have to remember the odd finger placements.

Hope this helps rather than confuses. It's an interesting topic, which might be a good topic to discuss in a public group. I think there is a 3-string players group on CBN somewhere. Then you can get verification on what I have said. Otherwise, just try i what I have been saying and see if it proves out.

I had to break up my message because the Comment Wall editor only allows messages under 2000 characters in length.

-Rand.

Well, that didn't work either.

Anyways, with diatonic fret boards, you often get another "optional" fret called "6 1/2" which can trip up our fret numbering system. I've made a note of this in parentheses in the above table. This 6 1/2 fret comes to us from the mountain dulcimer world and gives us the ability to play all the notes of a major scale. I personally believe it was a mistake, and that the real optional string is "6" which gives you the natural of the note that should be played there in a major scale.

As you probably know, the diatonic fretboard should contain a fret position for each major scale interval and that those intervals are: "W-W-H-W-W-W-H" (where "W" is a whole tone interval" and "H" is a half tone interval). With D-Major scale, these notes are "D-E-F#-G-A-B-C#-D" where the two half steps are between notes "F# & G" and "B & C#". That would make the note at fret 6 1/2 a C#, making fret 6 (the C note) the odd one out.

Sorry, that table, built with tabs didn't work out the way I had intended. Here's another go at it...


Barre at Fret #: Finger Melody String at Fret #:
D-major 0 (open strings) 2
E-Major 1 3
F#-Major 2 4
G-Major 3 5
A-Major 4 6
B-Major 5 7 (aka 6 1/2)
C-Major 6 8 (or 9)
C#-Major 7 (aka 6 1/2) 9 (or 10)
D-Major 8 10 (or 11)

This pattern begins to repeat over again further up the neck.

The L-shaped chord pattern I made reference to is something unique to diatonically fretted 3-stringed instruments like a stick dulcimer (McNally Strumstick) tuned to D-A-D or some other 1-5-8 tuning.

As with guitars, when you finger a movable chord pattern, one finger barres (is laid over and stops) all the strings and another finger is used to stop the melody string a couple of frets up the neck. The long side of the "L" pattern is formed by barring the three strings and the "foot" is made by stopping the melody string two fret positions down from where you are baring the strings.

For major chords, you need three notes: the 1st, 3rd, and 5th intervals. So if your instrument is tuned to DAD, the open bass string (D) would be your "1st", the open middle string (A) would be your "5th", and the second fret (F#) would be your "3rd". Here is a table that summarizes the chords available with a DAD tuned instrument using the L-Shaped chords. For the remaining chords, you will just have to remember the apparently random fingerings.

Barre at Fret #: Finger Melody String at Fret #:
D-major 0 (open strings) 2
E-Major 1 3
F#-Major 2 4
G-Major 3 5
A-Major 4 6
B-Major 5 7 (aka 6 1/2)
C-Major 6 8 (or 9)
C#-Major 7 (aka 6 1/2) 9 (or 10)
D-Major 8 10 (or 11)