The hampshire guitar orchestra - damping unwanted notes

Damping - an important part of ensemble technique

Small piece of music Here's the ending to Brouwer's Un Dia de Noviembre, simplified just a little. Try it - it's all first position - no tricks!

Dealing with the obvious

Do the final pair of As really sound clean? Not if you listen carefully!
Try just the last pair of As on their own - do they sound much cleaner? I hope they do!

When the As are played in context, the open E & B of the previous bar both ring on. (The G is killed by the A, of course). Since they were played earlier, they're not as loud as the As, but they are most definitely discordant.

An expedient solution is to touch the E & B strings immediately after sounding the As. Your ear won't notice the discord for the brief time it exists.

The not quite so obvious

A string that continues to ring on is easily tracked down, but there are more subtle places where the guitar sings on to your annoyance, or worse, to hago's Musical Director's annoyance!

Sympathetic vibration means a string stopped at the fifth fret can make the open string of the same pitch burst into life, so be careful using 5th fret notes to replace open strings - they may bite back.

The less obvious still

All guitarists are familiar with natural harmonics, but these exist in the normal vibration of a string too. A nasal sul ponti embues the string with a large preponderance of harmonics - a mellow sul tasto has minimal harmonic content.

Just as an open string can vibrate in sympathy with another string of the same pitch, so a harmonic in an open string can be excited by another string of a much higher pitch.

Try the following experiment - be sure your guitar is accurately tuned first.

Play just the open B - the first note of that incipit. Then place a right hand finger on it and leave it there. The B will apparently ring on - actually, it has excited the third harmonic in the bottom E string, which is now vibrating.

The becoming rapidly obscure

Those of faint heart look away now... If you have a nice guitar, it will bite back even harder. Try this scenario....

Just play the open B and then stop it.
Take the right hand away and now stop the bottom E string whose harmonic is vibrating in sympathy.
Now listen. The B is still ringing on!
The open B has started back up, excited (yes, that's the proper word) by the bottom E string's harmonic.

So to stop these spurious vibrations, we have to get'em all at the same time.

What's this to do with ensembles?

Most ensemble music is single line so it's not too hard to tidy up these ghost notes as you go along. Except...

Your guitar will also vibrate in sympathy with your neighbour's, so you may find a totally unexpected note spilling from your soundhole. The wonderful clarity that a guitar ensemble has when sounding a big chord means that unwanted notes shine out like a beacon right where they shouldn't!