Shona Style Guitar Pt. 2

On this lesson, we continue with the remaining four positions of the "Nhemamusasa" type chord progression played on the top two strings.

We play the positions we learned before, and drop the highest chord ain each phrase to come up with the next position. So then there are six positions to play the root-fifth diads.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• shona
• mbira
• guitar lesson
• joel laviolette
• nhemamusasa
• Zimbabwean music

[ljlewis49]

Hi,

This is an ear opener. One thing missing is the melody and rhythm of the chords. I have found in playing songs based on n...sasa that all of these chords are not absolutely necessary, various harmonies are possible. Is this in fact the case?

I play in a Zim group in Toronto called Masaisai.

Luck

Larry

[rattletree]

Hi Larry,

Thanks for your comments. Not a lot of space here to answer all your questions, so feel free to email me directly at joel (at) rattletree (dot) com. Re: the melodies-they would be dependent on which specific song you are playing. IE Nhemamusasa, Mahororo, etc, would all be different melodies. Check out the Lesson One video for an example of one melody you can use for practice. These chords are indeed the actual progression used on the mbira and one should avoid reduction...

[dezesticks]

Joel, Great stuff, what tuning mbira would you play with the song in this key.

[rattletree]

This is in 'C', so you can use the "marimba tuned" mbiras, or the G Mixolydian...

You can then extend that and use any mbira in any mode as long as it's in c.

[APsychedelicOctopus]

Nice one, learned a lot and plenty to keep me going. Look forward to further posts.

[brendanamo]

thanks alot for this. Im also in a marimba band and ive learned the first two positions, and am now learning these other positions..very nice arrangement!

[davidschmidt1959]

Thanks. I have always wanted to play mbira style guitar but did not really know where to start. This is great. More posts please. I play in a shona-style marbima band and this progession will work with a number of our songs.