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Max Roller: Major, Minor, Seventh Chords (1881)

Posted: Thu Mar 30, 2017 9:39 am
by HeidiK
I always wondered why in all Zither Books for Beginners (at least in the ones I have) there is no visualisation of the accompaniment strings logic.
Couldn’t believe that no author of a Zither book had done this.

So I did some some internet recherche and I would like to show you what I found: a very interesting publication by Max Roller from 1881.
For me Roller is really avantgarde!
Imagine more than 100 years ago he published this illustration called „Major, Minor and Seventh Chords on the Zither“
which is exactly what I was looking for - a systematic overview of all chord formulas on the Zither.

Ever since I found that visualisation I use it a lot.
Here’s an overview of Max Roller's sheet from 1881.
I just added a little color for a better orientation.
MaxRoller_ChordVisualization1881.jpg
MaxRoller_ChordVisualization1881.jpg (304.58 KiB) Viewed 1949 times
Inspired by that, I also designed some new color schematics as a worksheet for the most common Zither chords which I am posting here, too.
MajorMinorSeventh_hk.jpg
MajorMinorSeventh_hk.jpg (295.47 KiB) Viewed 1949 times
Good zithering.
Have fun! Greetings, Heidi

@Rudi: hope you like that, too!

PDFs for download:
MaxRoller-MajorMinorSeventh1881.pdf
(516.96 KiB) Downloaded 98 times
MajorMinorSeventh.pdf
(472.34 KiB) Downloaded 87 times

Re: Max Roller: Major, Minor, Seventh Chords (1881)

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 10:07 am
by DanSymonds
Thank you so much Heidi!
I have been looking for this for years! This is so helpful.
Someday I hope to find a similiar schematic for the fingerboard chords as well.

Dan

Re: Max Roller: Major, Minor, Seventh Chords (1881)

Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2017 7:53 am
by HeidiK
Thanks, Dan. I`m really happy to read that you like it and find it helpful - great!

And speaking of a similar fingering chordlist for the fretboard:
I totally agree - that should be the next aspect in understanding the whole instrument.
So I started to work on that, too.
There are two fretboard chord approaches I found so far:
a chart for 3 top strings only, as Ilse Harris has in her book "Let's start concert zither".
http://www.zither.com.au/

And secondly somebody in this forum had the idea to look for the tenor banjo's 4 strings chord charts (Jazz tuned in C G D' A').
http://chordlist.brian-amberg.de/de/tenor-banjo/jazz/

If you mirror that (like for a left-handed banjo player) you'll get the zither fingerboard chord charts for 4 strings.
Right now I am experimenting with a design for both approaches which I hope to finish soon...

Re: Max Roller: Major, Minor, Seventh Chords (1881)

Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2017 8:16 am
by NutmegCT
These chord charts are excellent, but get me thinking. Shouldn't the zither player be able to find all the notes just by looking at the music itself?

The chord charts (finger pattern charts) are a great help for playing chords, but the method books and published collections are music written in actual notes.

So I'm wondering if most of today's zither players play "melody and chords" instead of reading the notes on the printed page?

Thanks.
Tom M.

Re: Max Roller: Major, Minor, Seventh Chords (1881)

Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2017 8:51 am
by HeidiK
Shouldn't the zither player be able to find all the notes just by looking at the music itself?
Hm, maybe...
At least it would be nice if it were that easy... :roll:

But as a zither beginner coming from guitar and ukulele I am not only slow in reading the bass notes, but also slow in counting bass strings on the zither, which I found too frustrating.
Thats why I like to have this kind of overviews (also tabs) as a starter and first step. And to understand the instrument's logic!
In the next step this visual method really helps me to read also the academic style (the actual notes you're speaking of) better.
As the visual person (and the melody and chords player) I am, this works very well for me.

Re: Max Roller: Major, Minor, Seventh Chords (1881)

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 10:53 pm
by DonO
Heidi-

The chord chart you crafted is really nice, and also quite colorful! Thank you for sharing it. Also, thank you for denoting "H" as Bb.

Don Offinger