{"id":112739,"date":"2023-06-12T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-12T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/?p=112739"},"modified":"2023-06-22T13:12:44","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T20:12:44","slug":"learn-mary-flowers-waltz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/learn-mary-flowers-waltz\/","title":{"rendered":"Learn to Play Mary Flower\u2019s \u2018Waltz,\u2019 a Jazzy Roots Piece in Dropped D Tuning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Not long ago, Mary Flower sat down in her home, in Portland, Oregon, with her Fraulini<\/a> Angelina and tuned the old-school-inspired guitar to dropped D. Though she wasn\u2019t intending to compose something new, she soon found herself following a melodic thread that took unexpected twists and turns. \u201cI wasn\u2019t quite sure where it was all headed, but I kept after it until it made sense and I had two parts,\u201d Flower says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t until months later when it was time to record it that I realized a third part was needed to complete the song.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The completed piece for solo guitar\u2014\u201cWaltz\u201d\u2014is heard on Flower\u2019s most recent album, Livin\u2019 With the Blues Again<\/a><\/em>. To play the composition, begin by getting into dropped D. If you\u2019re unfamiliar with this tuning, it\u2019s easy: from standard, just lower your sixth string down a whole step, to D, such that it sounds an octave below the fourth string.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dropped D is most commonly used for pieces in the key of D major, where the tuning allows for a big-sounding open-D chord with a low D, but \u201cWaltz\u201d is in G major. As is evident in the notation, the composition requires quite a bit of the fretting hand. But the good news is that a bunch of the shapes are moveable, and so things should fall into place once they\u2019re in your muscle memory. For instance, a diminished-seventh shape (fingers 1, 3, 2, and 4 on strings 4, 3, 2, and 1, respectively) is shifted to various locations, like first position in bar 2 and fourth position in bar 6, to form D7b sounds. And only one grip\u2014an A minor shape (fingers 2, 3, and 1 on strings 4, 3, and 2)\u2014is required for the D6\u2013Db6\u2013C6\/D move in bar 12 and higher up the neck in measures 23 and 24.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harmonic moves like these lend jazzy effects to this rootsy piece, and if you compare the album version of \u201cWaltz\u201d (the basis for this transcription) to the video Flower prepared for AG<\/em>\u2019s website, you\u2019ll notice a bit of improvisation in the details. But Flower admits any connection to jazz here is purely coincidental. \u201cI really have very little jazz vocabulary,\u201d she says. \u201cMost of the time I have no idea how the music comes from my fingertips while writing. It\u2019s not like I\u2019m going for some genre or sound. It just happens!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This article originally appeared in the November\/December<\/a> 2019 issue of Acoustic Guitar<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMost of the time I have no idea how the music comes from my fingertips while writing. It\u2019s not like I\u2019m going for some genre or sound. It just happens!\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":112743,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"\u201cMost of the time I have no idea how the music comes from my fingertips while writing. It\u2019s not like I\u2019m going for some genre or sound. It just happens!\u201d ","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1656,1151],"tags":[923],"ppma_author":[1413,1541],"blocksy_meta":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/mary_flower.jpg?fit=750%2C500&ssl=1","authors":[{"term_id":1413,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"mary-flower-contributor","display_name":"Mary Flower","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/working_NP_0106-2-crop-darker-copy.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/working_NP_0106-2-crop-darker-copy.jpg"},"user_url":"http:\/\/maryflower.com\/","last_name":"","first_name":"","description":"Award-winning guitarist Mary Flower hosts the Blues in the Gorge guitar camp and has recorded numerous CDs and instructional DVDs."},{"term_id":1541,"user_id":24,"is_guest":0,"slug":"adam-perlmutterstringletter-com","display_name":"Adam Perlmutter","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Adam-Perlmutter.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Adam-Perlmutter.jpg"},"user_url":"","last_name":"Perlmutter","first_name":"Adam","description":"Adam Perlmutter holds a bachelor of music degree from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and a master's degree in Contemporary Improvisation from the New England Conservatory. He is the editor of Acoustic Guitar<\/i>."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112739"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112739"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":140742,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112739\/revisions\/140742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112739"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acousticguitar.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=112739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}