Tim Donahue Harp Guitar Technique

After watching Tim Donahue perform at his workshop for the 4th Annual International Harp Guitar Gathering in Naples, Florida, I asked him if he would pen an article about his remarkable approach to music and his fascinating self-invented harp guitar techniques. He has generously obliged with an entire series! I had originally imagined this presentation more as an article - thinking that Tim is the only one that has this instrument and the only one who can perform the techniques. But Tim has written a true player's article, and explains below which instruments these techniques can be applied to. I also believe that the article will be equally interesting to those who may never play a similar instrument. And who knows - it may even inspire someone to adapt a Dyer-style or other acoustic harp guitar to this configuration (I, for one, am very curious to hear how these techniques would translate to an acoustic instrument!). Regardless, Tim's creative efforts have once again reminded me that there are indeed no limits. The "world is your oyster" and the harp guitar its future!

- Gregg Miner

I'd like to thank Gregg Miner for this opportunity to pass along some of my ideas relating to electric harp guitar performance and composition. Some of the concepts I utilize are common to harp guitarists, some others are quite unusual. Because my overall approach to the harp guitar is slightly left-of-center, let's start with an overview of my instruments and approach to playing them.

Even though my instruments are one-of-a-kind, this workshop is for players who have treble harp courses on their instrument like John Doan's or other varieties that exist. So the exercises and playing approach I outline in the article are geared toward those instruments, rather than the bass-oriented harp guitars. At the same time, I'm in the middle
of having my guitars produced on a custom-order basis, with the hope they will eventually become available to more players. In that case, this workshop will be even more directly applicable.

The desire to perform solo was the impetus behind making these instruments, but with their wide tonal range and built in MIDI/synth capability, they've been workhorses for me in a wide variety of musical situations over the years.

My fretless harp guitar compositions utilize different tunings for each piece. This is fine in the studio, but live performances have always been tricky because song order is dependent on choosing songs back-to-back whose tunings vary in a gradual, step-wise way. Drastic tuning departures take more time to nail between songs. Over the years I've gotten quick at navigating multitudes of tunings in concert, but I must admit it can be a nightmare.

After fretting the maple harp guitar a couple of years ago, I ran across a tuning that has given me more compositional freedom than others I've used before. Since then, I estimate to have written over a hundred pieces in this new tuning alone. Amazingly simple, here it is:

Notice the guitar is basically in standard tuning, with the exception of the high E tuned down
to D. This immediately gives G major triad inversions DGB & GBD on open strings and chromatically across any barre. These triads sound great when played with the harmonics technique I employ, which I'll discuss later.

One advantage of this tuning is that being so close to standard guitar, improvising solos is easy (but of course, the player must be aware of the lowered D). It's amazing how altering even one string from standard tuning gives the fingerboard a different harmonic gflavorh.

At first glance, the harp section is tuned straight up an A major scale. But interestingly enough tI have yet to write anything in A major! Since these 6 notes are also diatonic to D major, B minor, F# minor, and modes of E Dorian, E Mixolydian , G Lydian, C# Phrygian, etc., I don't really think of the harp as being gtunedh to any one key, not even the obvious A major.

Besides A, B, C#, D, E, F# being diatonic to the keys above, it is possible to play in many other keys in this tuning. All notes of the key may not be available on the harp strings, but that's where
today's technique exercise comes in.

Some keys include G major (avoiding the C#) and D minor (avoiding C# and F#). In a key like F major, only three harp notes are diatonically available (A, D & E), and Bb major has even less (A & D). Even though fewer harp notes are available in these keys, my composition approach integrates the harp and guitar sections, and I rarely feel the need for more notes on the harp (or changing tuning). I'll be explaining this approach more in detail in future articles, but for now let's remember that one's approach to composing is the key to being able to utilize the harp notes available at any given moment, in the key of the moment. This is certainly true for all harp guitarists, as no single tuning gives equal freedom to play in all keys (outside of using sharpening levers on the harp). That's cheating...

The next discussion is not specifically related to harp guitar, but relates very much to how I approach music and in turn, harp guitar. From a very early age, I can remember seeing red and white colors in my mind as I listened to my mother play Debussyfs Claire De Lune on our living room piano. I was just a few years old, but the memory is vivid today. Since then, Ifve always visualized musical pitches & notes in color and have never given this much thought- seeing music in color was as natural to me as breathing.

But a few years ago I happened to watch a TV documentary about this phenomenon. It turns out I experience gsynesthesiah, a condition where the senses are cross-wired, so to speak. People with synesthesia gseeh music, ghearh shapes, gsmellh colors, etc. More on this topic can be found here.

Without getting too much into the issue of synesthesia, I must say that my approach to the harp guitar is heavily based on seeing colors of each note on the instrument. In my mind, each harp note has a specific color, as does every note of the fingerboard, including harmonics up and down each string. Every G is red, every B is yellow, every C is orange, A & D are both blue (but A is lighter than D). F#, G# and C# are all shades of brown, but each is distinct in my mind. Ifve never sat down and memorized these relationships - they are a part of me naturally.

Ifve come to realize how this music/color visualization enabled me to play in a multitude of tunings during my fretless harp guitar days. Music color/visualization also enables me to gzone outh and play without the need to look at the fingerboard. Most of all, I remember how to play songs by the way colors come to me in my mind, during a performance. If the colors arenft coming to me on a given night, then Ifm playing the music less naturally, with more thought involved.

As a practical matter, music theory to me not only concerns note names like A, B, C, E, F#, Bb, and other harmonic terms like major, minor, subdominant, etc. but concerns the relationships between reds, blues, browns, whites, yellows, etc.

When I play a Bmin9 (voiced B-F#-C#-D low to high) on the fingerboard, I not only think groot, 5th, 9th, minor 3rdh, but I also see gyellow, medium brown, dark brown, dark blueh in my mind. At the same time, since the harp is tuned A-B-C#-D-E-F#, I not only think of their theoretical relationship to B minor (namely b7th, root, 9th, minor 3rd, 4th, 5th), I also see their corresponding colors (light blue, yellow, dark brown, dark blue, white, medium brown) in my mind. The colors tell me these notes are diatonic to the key of B minor, and thus confirm that any harp string can be played against the Bmin9 chord Ifm fingering on the fingerboard.

Given this approach, it's easy to see how synesthesia has helped to integrate notes on the fingerboard and harp in my mind. Synesthesia also reinforces the relationship between melody and harmony. This is especially useful on the harp guitar, as harp guitarists often play a melody and chordal accompaniment at the same time.

I've never thought my music color perception was anything out of the ordinary. It's like breathing to me (and no one goes around discussing how one breathes, right?). But on further examination, it's clear that this way of perceiving music has directly shaped my approach to the harp guitar. And for the player who wishes to know how I create music on the harp guitar, I hope this discussion sheds some light on part of the process.

This basic technique above is used in conjunction with ornamental techniques such as harp harmonics, fingerboard harmonics, gbrushingh the harp strings, muting, banging the harp head, plucking behind the bridge, etc. I can't wait to describe each one of these in detail! But let's get my basic technique under our fingers first.

This simple exercise will foster coordination between the right & left hands. The idea is to inject tapped fingerboard notes between harp notes. Taken further, this technique can create beautifully cascading melodies, which I use extensively in my compositions. Try to get this cascading effect by letting the fingerboard notes ring slightly over the attack of the harp notes. No muting on the harp is necessary, let all notes ring!

This exercise starts with the open G string on the fingerboard and ends at the 12th fret harmonic on the same string. Pluck the open G with the left hand middle finger, and play the 12th string harmonic by laying the left hand pinky across the 12th fret and plucking the note with the left hand first finger. These techniques themselves will require some practice. Practice until they feel natural and sound smooth in the following exercises:

NOTE: This exercise can be done in G major by fingering the C natural on the fingerboard, in place of the C# harp note.

Alternating notes between the fingerboard and harp can be done with all kinds of melodies, in many keys.

Someone might ask: "why bother to play this way?"
One listen to this technique used on a harp guitar will immediately answer this question. But in words, the resulting sound and textures can create otherworldly cascading melodies that sound different from having all
the notes available on open harp strings.

While a player might view the harp guitar as being limited to the number of harp strings and how they are tuned at any given time, the above exercise opens up all kinds of melodic textures and makes multiple keys possible. The combinations of harp / fingerboard / harmonics are truly endless, as I'm still finding out 25 years after discovering this technique. Enjoy!

Alternating note exercises in different keys
Message from TD:

My thanks to good friend, virtuoso harp guitarist / virtuoso harpist / historian and mentor Gregg Miner for his help in putting together this workshop. Visit www.harpguitars.net for
a wealth of harp guitar music, information and history compiled by the world's foremost harp guitar expert, Gregg Miner.

Tim Donahue is a pioneer in the development of the rare fretless electric guitar and the rarer fretless electric harp guitar. He designed and built his own instruments in the 1980s and used some of those when studying jazz at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Since then, projects have included jazz, rock, progressive metal, and music for various film and television productions. Inspired by the 4th annual Harp Guitar Gathering, Tim has recently focused attention again on solo work with his fretted harp guitar. He has developed an unusual method of playing his electric harp guitars using his right hand to pluck the harp strings while his left hand taps notes on the neck. Tim is a well known recording and performing artist in his adopted homeland, Japan. - FD