The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #51

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    Quote Originally Posted by mokapot
    I guess its something like the 'I want to play my own music with a band' except I also like covers and solo/duo gigs. I don't want it to be just a hobby, whatever that means, time will tell.
    You end up learning stuff for gigs, I think. If you get work playing standards, you'll learn lots of standards, but if you play pop sessions or shows for a couple of years you might forget all of them. You can't anticipate what the gig will require of you much of the time. When it's standards I breathe a sigh of relief because I know lots of those, but even then someone might call something I don't know.

    Other guys are more comfortable sight reading, or playing top 40 tunes in a cover band.

    Jazz Guitarists spend a lot of their time fighting to remember rep! Also, there's a difference between knowing enough to play a tune on a jam with a horn player or five (and perhaps a piano so you don't even have to comp!) and playing a tune in a trio with bass and drums, say, where you have know everything about it COLD. (I recommend spending some time in a trio like this.)

    As for the jazz tradition question its probably the latter I do listen to a lot of swing, jazz and modern stuff though.
    Although it may be that you are not listening it for the songs so much. I know I wasn't when I started, I was interested in improvisation.

    It's just that I dig how players like Julian Lage can play any style and make it into his own thing. I don't know what he is, is he hardcore jazz to you?
    Good question!

    I think Lage has wide cross over appeal to both non-jazz heads and non-guitarists, a bit like Bill Frisell... I certainly think of him as a jazz musician. Mind you I heard the first criticism I have ever heard about his jazz playing the other day (by a musician I rate very highly and is a great player in the rock, country and jazz spheres with some impressive session credits, not a guitar player tho) so hey ho. I really really like Lage's playing and I particularly enjoy his take on swing music which is highly creative.

    His recent trio stuff is mega too, and sounds like modern jazz to me, but contemporary jazz is very eclectic.

    In terms of emulating Lage, well, he's played a lot of different kinds of music in different bands, as well as studying jazz, remember he's been playing professionally for almost 20 years already (!). I'm a big fan of getting involved in BANDS rather than jams... Jams are good for meeting musicians at first, but I rarely go to them now.
    Last edited by christianm77; 03-02-2017 at 07:07 PM.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #52

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    Honestly, if your plan is to learn songs to perfection, you might as well stay away from jam sessions. What matters in a jam session is knowing a lot of tunes, being versatile, flexible, and adaptable. For jam sessions, being able to sit in with almost any tune, comp well, solo decently, matters a thousand times more than knowing a tune better than its composer did.

    Jam sessions are not brain surgery. They are more like a musical M*A*S*H unit.

    Perfectionism is the enemy of... perfecting anything.

  4. #53

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    I usually run into a situation where the more seasoned players don't expect that much from others, because it's been so long since there's been gigging opportunities for people to hone their craft. My goal has never been to kick ass on a bunch of 75 year old songs, but I totally respect the tradition.

  5. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by drbhrb
    Ha, I always felt like treating chord melody as it's own style of playing was admitting that guitarists are in the special ed class of jazz or something. Wow you played the melody and hamony? Gold star!
    In fairness, the difficulty of the endeavor is somewhere BETWEEN piano and horn, in terms of playing multiple notes at once. It's absolutely simpler to pull off harmony or polyphony on piano. The fact that it is SLIGHTLY easier than it is for horns, doesn't really change that fact. :-)

  6. #55

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    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    Reminds me of why I hate the term "chord melody." Or as piano players call it, "playing the fucking piano."
    I hear ya. "Rhythm Lead" isn't good either.

  7. #56

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    Quote Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
    I usually run into a situation where the more seasoned players don't expect that much from others, because it's been so long since there's been gigging opportunities for people to hone their craft. My goal has never been to kick ass on a bunch of 75 year old songs, but I totally respect the tradition.
    75 years old...? FILTHY MODERNIST!!!!! ;-)

  8. #57

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    I actually think "chord melody" is a pretty good term. "Just playing the piano" on a piano won't produce what "chord melody" tends to mean on the guitar. Because the pianist has 10 fingers and 88 keys, he or she can have all kinds of contrary motion, moving lines, etc. Rarely to pianists play a song simply by putting the melody note on top and playing a block chord underneath it. Not only would that not be much a feat technically for a pianist, it also wouldn't sound good. Block-chord playing happens on piano, but it happens with larger chords and more range.

    Guitarists face a technical challenge, and the nature of fingerstyle or pick-style playing makes the block-chord with melody notes on top a very lovely and pleasing way to play. If you took Wes Montgomery's block chord passages and transferred them to the piano, they would lose a lot because technically that is not going to bring out what the piano can do. But it does bring out what the guitar can do, and it's a technique that many guitarists do not know. I would never say a player who can comp, and play single-note lines, but not do "chord melody" is incompetent or can't play. They just don't know that specific skill.

    Life is full of terminology that technically cannot pass the school-marm test of parsing every word exactly, but these imprecise terms still name something that is meaningful and distinctive, something a guitarist either knows how to do (well or average) or doesn't know how to do.

  9. #58

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    I enjoyed the line about chord melody being playing piano.

    There's a lot of truth there. But, I think it would be fair to say that playing chords and melody at the same time is perhaps a little easier on piano, at least for the developing player. Getting it up to the state of the art is something else.

    And, I know at least one great musician who started on guitar, became frustrated with the guitar's limitations, and switched completely to piano.

    I went to a high school production of a musical play earlier this evening. They had a pro pianist come in to lead the pit band (otherwise high schoolers). He accompanied the vocalists, creating a lot of sound and texture just with the piano. It would be tough to do on guitar without sacrificing something.

    Sorry, this thread is about jam sessions.

  10. #59

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    I started with piano(4 years music school). It was enough to be able to learn jazz tunes with comp much much later. But! it also showed how ridiculously easy is to play solo on piano with focusing on chord tones. It's almost automatic. When the left hand plays the comp, the right hand can instantly play them when feel like doing it. It's even easier to play like this instead left-chords & right-scales. Comparing this with guitar is.. well. You know what's it like going after chord tones with guitar

  11. #60

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    Comparing guitar to piano is plain stupid.

    I've heard pianists come in and play Bach vocal music from open score and transposing down a semitone to approximate Baroque pitch on the fly.

    The same guy was also a consummate jazz pianist.

    Don't torture yourself with comparisons. Learn what you can, and remember the piano is a musical typewriter - it affords those musicians more time to develop their musicianship, while we struggle with the basics of fretboard mapping and technique.

    Lots of things are easier to see on piano. Bebop lines. CST. Written music. Chord construction. Etc etc.

    Those that can rival piano - Pasquale and George VanEps, for example, are somewhere between extremely rare and unique.

  12. #61

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    I think people tend to expect everyone to be very similar to themselves. Some people have a hard time learning tunes, and think that's everyone's experience. Some people learn tunes very easily, and think everyone should be able to do the same. But everyone is different in every way, including the ability to learn and remember tunes. There are guitarists who seem to know every song ever written - the changes, the tune, everything, and can play almost anything on demand. Then there are those of us who have a hard time learning just a few tunes. Most are probably spread out somewhere in between. The distribution of most human abilities is a bell curve.

  13. #62

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    I guess it went pretty well. I played attya, all blues and another blues tune I don't remember. I only took one to two choruses to keep it fresh. Next time I won't be comping with a piano and another guitar player because it clearly can be a bit of a mess. I don't mean to say that simple two string voicings don't sound good, its just that less can be more, more organic that is. just my point of view!

    I guess that its just a jam, nothing more serious. I messed up the melody on attya even though its a very familiar tune to me. it didnt matter which is good. and someone said they liked my solo. well it wasnt as bad as i thought it would be. i didnt make a fool of myself like on karaoke sometimes

    I would say that this jam session was the jazz equivalent of all the rock and blues jams I've done with my friends. No one really cares if you mess up, just keep it going and have fun. Also no one really minds if someone plays a really long solo and the dynamics and the melody disappear. The audience is gonna be chatting and drinking beer anyway.

    I've been playing mostly jazz lately and almost feel like quitting guitar altogether. I guess I'm doomed to being a fusion guitarist of some sort

  14. #63

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    Quote Originally Posted by mokapot
    I guess it went pretty well.

    I've been playing mostly jazz lately and almost feel like quitting guitar altogether. I guess I'm doomed to being a fusion guitarist of some sort
    It used to be easier. Back in the day, it was Great American Songbook, fewer tunes to know, and a lot less information out there. What you needed to know was on records. Now, it sounds like you have to have a harddrive installed in your brain, filled to the brim with theories and techniques - or you shouldn't even touch an instrument.

    Now, I think figuring out what to ignore while you progress on your path, is as hard as figuring out what to learn and learning it. Of course, what you need to know is still on records, but there are more choices.