Bending?

[markerhodes]

I'll admit to missing a few posts here but I didn't notice much about bending by country players, who tend to play clean and precise, even when bending two strings at once (and one a half-step, the other a whole), or bending one string down a whole step, grabbing the next highest string with the same finger and bending it up a half step, thereby releasing the first bend. Hard to get right but a most musical achievement. I don't do much "faux steel" bending but I respect the artistry.
To avoid bends, slurs, hammers and pulls is no more than to say you prefer monotony, which you're free to do, but it is silly to suggest that everyone else should be as monotonous (or else judged "inauthentic").
Also, just because this or that rock player bends poorly is no more a fair critique of bending per se than saying some rock vocalists can't really sing and therefore singing is bogus. Or that there's no point in playing a top-of-the-line guitar because you heard someone play one badly. The one (-bad execution by someone) has nothing to do with the other (-a technique, ability, or instrument).

[mr. beaumont]

It's a dilemma though...in order for my guitar to play and sound like I want it to for jazz, I'm using a string gauge that does not really allow me to pull off such precise bends.

Therefore, it's not something I see as "invalid jazz technique," it's something I give up in favor of other good things my setup gives me.

[raylinds]

As a newbie to both this forum and jazz guitar, I found this thread very interesting. I just started back playing guitar after an absence of a few years. Previously, my playing was very much electric Chicago style blues guitar, but I decided to focus mostly on jazz, though I still play some blues. This thread got me thinking that, though I obviously bent like crazy playing blues, thus far I have not worked it into my jazz playing, choosing to slide into or out of notes sometimes ehn I would normally throw in a bend (though I keep it to a minimum). I guess bending didn't feel very, for lack of a better word, 'jazzy' to me. This is probably from my strong association with bending to the blues.

Now this was never really a concious thing, and I always intended to develop some sort of hybrid style for certain bluesy jazz material as T-Bone Walker is one of my favorite blues guitarists. I can see mixing some more 'sophisticated' blues with straight ahead jazz would make for an interesting repertaire, IMHO.

I think I have not done any bending in jazz simply because I don't need to practice it, and am focusing on developing more traditional jazz skills at this point. It's the same with vibrato- I developed a pretty mean 'butterfly' vibrato a-la BB King, but it seems too much for jazz, and I have kept it to more subtle vibrato, at this point.

But I am not philosphically against either. I am very much a believer in 'learn the rules thoroughly before you break them.' At one time in orchestral music you would never have orchestral voices move in parallel fifths. That is until Mozart started doing it, but he certainly knew the rules before he found a way to make breaking it work.

As far as cheating, I can kind of see where Goofsus is coming from, but I'm not sure I agree.

Speaking of cheating, please don't tell my strat about all the time I've been spending with my Epiphone Joe Pass.

[Pat Clare]

I prefer to slide up or slur to reach for a note rather than bend, although there are times where i will bend slightly up or down to make a point. I don't think it matters that much.

[JonnyPac]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

It's a dilemma though...in order for my guitar to play and sound like I want it to for jazz, I'm using a string gauge that does not really allow me to pull off such precise bends.

Therefore, it's not something I see as "invalid jazz technique," it's something I give up in favor of other good things my setup gives me.

+1

I have a strat in the corner collecting dust too. I like my fat axe and acoustics with 12's too much!

[mike walker]

Originally Posted by pauln

Maybe part of what makes a style of music sound the way it does is how far back into its history of development the current consensus of players look back into its history to form what they produce as "authentic" playing of the historical techniques of that style.

Might look something like this:

For classical, the reference to authenticity of sound spans back centuries
For jazz, the reference to authenticity of sound spans back generations
For blues, decades
For rock, years
For pop, months

Not that these specific periods are accurate, but if the idea is correct it might make sense that the use of techniques (like bending) would be influenced by both the mechanical limits of the sound from old instruments the way they used to be played (jazz guitars with hard to bend strings) and the preservation of that traditional sound even when using modern instruments that make the technique possible or easy.

So you hear a lot of modern jazz players using bendy capable guitars, but not bending, or just using the occasional microtonal bend on a bluesy flat third or fourth.

Dya think ya might have got the blues and jazz thing in the wrong place there, fella?
Wondering if we asked the question 'did Jazz take from blues?', what the answer would be.
Vocals, sax, etc, bend.
Since guitar has copped most of the inflections of Vocals and Sax, maybe bending was always in the evolutionary line.

It's just a thing. A thing ya do with a note. Push it up and maybe let it drop slow. Or a ton of other stuff.
It sounds insane to me to say it shouldn't be done, or it should be frowned upon.
I use 11s and a reasonably high action. I use 12s on my Borys and I bend on both guitars.

[AmundLauritzen]

Depends on subgenre. I've heard contemporary players bend notes and make it sound like the only right thing to do in the moment. In a 50's kind of bebop setting however, it can sound out of place with bends but it depends on the player. A good player will have the ear and sensibility to use his vocabulary with taste, no matter what he does.
Besides bebop, I dabble with Gypsy Jazz. In that genre, bends are accepted but they are very subtle. No over the top blues bending.

In the end it comes down to this: if you hear it, play it!

[ten left thumbs]

It's funny, I come from a piano background where blues and jazz are just two sides of a coin - but from a guitar pov blues and jazz behave like two different animals. Why? One you buy one type of guitar and put one kind of strings and you bend 'em like Beckham. The other, you buy a different type of guitar and put a different kind of string on and - you don't bend.

It took me a l - o - n - g time to realise this.

So in the guitaring world you tend to get more hard-core jazz types, whereas with piano it's more mixed. I know, someone's going to tell me all the folk (folk here, famous players, etc) who mix genres, but, I can tell you, compared to piano, the jazz/blues line divides guitarists more. And it's all because of those strings.

[fumblefingers]

late to the thread.

• Charlie Christian bent.
• Barney Kessel bent (on 1950's Charlie Parker records too )
• Wes bent
• Benson bent
• McLaughlin bent, but now uses a whammy bar.

most jazzers tend to do half step bends. bending really communicates a blues feeling like nothing else. mix with barbecue and use sparingly.

[fumblefingers]

can we disable this MFer please?

[mike walker]

Originally Posted by fumblefingers

can we disable this MFer please?

I'm not sure how hard it is to keep this in check but it is deffo a major factor in my staying at home. It's like trying to ignore someone constantly flicking the side of your face in the cinema while you're watching a lovely film.

I've reported it several times and it prevails.

A drag.

[AmundLauritzen]

Spambots. They're probably using an automated registration script unless the site uses captcha for registration. In that case, some poor bastard is taking the time to register spambots to derail the site.
Many forums suffer from this. It seems like this site doesn't have many moderators, or they've just given up. A good way to get rid of them is to ban e-mail addresses or IP's.
It gets kind of tiring to have these bots posting about ugg boots or whatever in every thread.

[Flyin' Brian]

Originally Posted by AmundLauritzen

Spambots. They're probably using an automated registration script unless the site uses captcha for registration. In that case, some poor bastard is taking the time to register spambots to derail the site.
Many forums suffer from this. It seems like this site doesn't have many moderators, or they've just given up. A good way to get rid of them is to ban e-mail addresses or IP's.
It gets kind of tiring to have these bots posting about ugg boots or whatever in every thread.

This site uses the same basic platform as a couple of other sites I frequent and they never have these spam problems.

Most certainly an annoyance.

As far as bending is concerned, I have several Johnny Smith records on which he bends notes. Howard Roberts too and that's a man's work! Howard used a 16-60 set of strings.

[Dark Star]

Two things I know will help out regarding spambots: The first is to upgrade the software to require a series of characters to be entered upon registration. I believe that costs money.
The second is to "manually" apporove every membership application. That can be quite time comsuming.

[Soco]

Originally Posted by KingCrimson250

I've been wondering about string bending in jazz guitar. I know it's something that's frowned on and that you're not really "supposed" to do (unless you're playing fusion, that is) and I'm wondering why. It seems to me that bending and vibrato, if done tastefully, is one of the best ways to give the guitar the expressiveness of a horn.

I can understand if it's a physical limitation thing, but I usually use .11 and .12 flatwounds and have no problem bending a step and a half.

Anyway, I feel like the proper application of the technique can add a lot of depth to the performance, and if I'm going to offend purists by doing it then so be it, but I'm just wondering where the "anti-bending" rationale comes from

You'll offend me more by not bending!¨
As guitarist we should take advantage of the fact that we can bend strings, my girlfriend is a professional pianist and she always takes about how many things that string-players can do in terms of bending and vibrato.
It would be a waste to not take advantage of it. The same goes for UGG boots.

[ronjazz]

Well, youngsters, jazz guitarists have been bending at will since the 40s. Oscar Moore, Tiny Grimes, George Barnes, Les Paul, etc. By the 60s, Howard Roberts was bending a set of 14s on a Gibson archtop at will. If you're playing what you hear, rather than a collection of hot licks, as we old times used to say, it would be hard not to bend a little from time to time. Even Pat Martino, the master of the telephone-pole string and blistering machine-gun lines bends quite often in the course of an evening.

It's really not worth discussing.

[raylinds]

I found this quote to be interesting from a recent George Benson Interview:

"On “Paper Moon,” your solo starts off with some bending— which isn’t often heard in a straight-ahead jazz context. Why do traditional jazz players typically avoid bending notes?
If you remember, Charlie Christian used to bend notes— and he was the swingin’-est cat there was, man! So I’m not afraid. I think people are used to hearing that in modern music. You know, B.B. King and all the other cats do it. Rock players do it. I’m not afraid to let jazz have a shot at it again, too, since we started it."