Hi fellow twangers.

No big news from the Sunburnt Country. I spent one day last week in Tamworth, which is where Australia holds its annual Country Music Festival -- kind of like Nashville Downunder. It's a ten day affair -- country music fans come in their droves, mostly camping out . The main streets are blocked off to traffic and all the shops allow various amateur acts to plug an extension cord into their power supply, so that, God help us all, they can play their cowboy tunes through PA systems of their own, right there on the sidewalks. They space themselves out about two shops, and there are certain spots in the middle of it all where you can listen to six or seven different acts AT THE SAME TIME!! That, combined with the sweltering temperatures and obligatory thunderstorms, makes for quite the outing. The whole thing climaxes on the last night, when the industry hands out awards to the year's winners.

I drove the 7 hour drive, did a workshop and a gig, an evening dedicated to slide guitar, and I had a good time, but getting home was even better.

One of the questions at the workshop sparked off quite a lengthy discussion about "string sets" which I'd like to make this week's topic. I think I wrote about it years ago, but it's well worth another look at.

When we guitarists first learn about chords, and first get our hands around barre chords, we're left with the impression chords are six-notes-big, and that using all six strings is the better way to go. This, of course, is wrong. Chords, at their simplest, are three-notes-big: a One, a Three and a Five. These three-note chords are called triads, and they only require three strings to be played, and can be either major, minor, augmented or diminished. When you look at a plain old barre chord -- like an E shaped G chord at the third fret for example -- you're looking at three Ones, one Three and two Fives. The repeats live in different octaves, but they are the same note and fill the same role. They needn't really be there other than to fill out the sound.

I can't quite remember when I started thinking in "string sets", but I've never stopped. It's a much more economical way to think about music on the guitar. A string set, to my mind, is made of three adjacent strings. So, starting from the treble string, there's:

123 234 345 456

Four sets of three span the width of the neck. Standard tuning allows your fingers to comfortably make a chord on each of those four sets. Unfortunately, standard tuning has a little kink in its symmetry, so that the sets are not duplicates of each other, they are different. (In fact, this kink is what makes the guitar so musically rich).

There are three triads for each chord, and they differ only in the order of the notes from bass to treble. The most stable sounding has the One as the bass note and goes One Three Five, but the other two, Three Five One and Five One Three, are still the same chord, and have their role to play. Naturally, you should eventually be able to see all your triads for all chords at all times, and believe it or not, it becomes automatic. In the context of this article, the important thing to remember is that triads occupy one string set. (An E shaped chord's string sets consist of, from bass to treble, consists of:

A One - Five - One (powerchord)
A Five - One - Three triad. (major chord)
A One - Three - Five triad. (major chord)
A Three - Five - One triad. (major chord)

The triads overlap and interlock, and the overall sound is a major chord with a One, the root note, on the bottom.

Thinking in string sets will simplify the process of keeping track of these triads and therefore being able to use them. You probably know by now that I'm not keen on thinking in scales -- scales are to linear for my liking -- and that I always recommend thinking chords. Well, triads are chords at their simplest, and once you understand how they lay themselves out on the fretboard, you'll be able to see instantly where all the centers of the music are for that chord and access all the relevant notes for any riffs, phrases, solos or arranged parts. Don't forget, if you know where all the Ones Threes and Fives are for the "chord of the moment", you'll also know where all the other scale notes are. How? Because a Two is the next after a One, and one before a Three; a Six follows a Five, and a Seven precedes a One... it's all just logical. You'll have to remember the mother scale's sequence, that's all. "Tone Tone Semitone, Tone Tone Tone Semitone".

I did discover, many years ago, a neat way of keeping track of these triads and I wrote a book about it called PlaneTalk. It reveals the "trick" to linking all the bits and pieces together so that your whole fretboard becomes "Bb", or "A minor", or "G7" or whatever. I later produced a video which clearly demonstrates the technique, so if you're at that stage in your playing -- you know your chords, you can play some scales (but you're wondering why that should help), you can fake your way through some improvisation but you need that one last key -- then drop by http://www.lorange.kirk.net and check it out. I guarantee that, when properly understood, the PlaneTalk method will never let you down and that you'll never see the fretboard as anything but logical again.

All the best from Tamborine Mountain,

Kirk