Justice and Honor

This page is a guide to learning Justice and Honor on a tapping instrument such as the Chapman Stick or the acoustic Dragonfly DFA.

There is a score/tablature, fretboard diagrams, and youtube video instructions, that will help you along the way. This song lives in a range that should be adaptable to other tapping instrument tunings.

You don't need to know how to read music. In fact, you can get 90% of the way there just by watching the videos and referring to the Fretboard diagrams, and playing the song on the Musecore web page. The videos to go along with this piece are at the youtube playlist Justice and Honor tappetizer playlist

Background

This song is by the iconic guitarist Bill Frisell who has written a lot of great songs in a wide range of jazz tinged styles.
Take a listen to a few versions of this piece:
- Elan Mehler has a solo piano version that is quite nice.
- A solo version by Bill himself on the album Ghost Town
  - There is also an untitled/unlisted epilogue to the song on this album which I did a basic transcription for here
  - Bill is doing some fingerpicking overdubs on the actual recording of the epilogue that I have simplified for instructional purposes. The way to go here is to just take the transcription and build in your own flourishes to your own taste as you get familiar with the riff that runs throughout.

Musescore score + tabs

The Score (and tabs) to go along with the diagrams below is available Here Look for the ones with names that start with the JusticeAndHonor. This is the authoritative one which is for twelve string Matched reciprocal tuning

Elemental Structure

The song is (mostly) in C major, but there are enough outside coloring notes in the spare melody to give it an amorphous, floating feel, which gives it much of it's appeal.

The piece has some advisory leadsheet chords for bass side accompanyment for which i've made some spare chords in the arrangement that you can work from if you choose. In the the videos you'll see that I typically arpeggiate in within the melody line in various ways to give it a bit of a fingerstyle guitar feel.

Fretboard Diagrams and Instruction Videos

Note:

Each of these diagrams is in 12 string matched reciprocal tuning. It will have link to a .fbjson file that you can download and then use in conjunction with the Fretboard diagammer web app
You can read the file into it and change the tuning in the tuning configuration drop down and it will make a (simple minded) try at converting it.
You can click on any diagram to get an enlarged version.