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11-05-2017 06:46 AM
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I haven't finished watching yet, but I want to say that I think you've done a great job covering great ideas in just the first seven minutes. Thanks!
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General concept: the truth is always the whole. Alternate picking? Sometimes. Economy picking? sometimes. Ascending —-descending slurs ? ( I use this instead of legato and instead of the brain dead rock and roll garbage that are “hammer on and pull off”. People forget that legato can be played even without slurs if you pick precisely, the word actually means continuius sounds with no break)—always! Slurs are the vowels of musical language. Who can imagine talking without vowels?
A critique: what is often forgotten is finger style or hybrid pick and fingers . What happens when people forget this is that they only know how to play one way when playing chords —strum then. Pasquale often plucks his chords with pick and fingers. Strumming chords with the pick? It gets old really fast. ( obviously the great ones we all know never get old at all so I’m not talking about them. )
Segovia said, a pick can only be in one place at one time; fingers can be in five different places at once. And also playing wide intervals like 10ths or 13ths— finger style or pick and fingers make wide intervals sound very good and done fast and much easier.
Chuck Wayne is the man. Because he realized that the truth is in fact the whole . One contemporary player you should check out that is never mentioned here is Christopher Woitach. Early on, he discovered Chuck Wayne and found that pick and fingers technique was the Swiss Army knife of right hand technique for jazz guitar, because it enables him to do everything. Same with Pasquale —- noticed that Christopher and Pasquale are more open plucking chords like a classical player would than strumming them?
Christopher has a TrueFire course from many years ago that is really really good. I learned a lot from it. And his stuff really helped me transition from finger style to pick and fingers.
I don’t know why more players don’t use the Swiss Army knife of right hand guitar technique .
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Also a great way to play a triplet with a note and any neighbor tone
Pick -ASC slur - DESC slur or
Pick - DESC slur -ASC slur
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Hybrid picking is easier to achieve in trad grip incidentally... that’s one reason I like Gj picking.
As far as finger picking goes I lack the expertise to chip in intelligently.
I might add that technique is an aesthetic as well as a science.
Strumming chords with a pick is something everyone avoids and yet Bernstein has made it an essential part of his style.
In general I comp finger style or hybrid like most players but I admire the purity of the pure plectrum player... It’s an aesthetic. Also his actual notes sound really good, strong toned compared to some other players who seek balance between disparate elements of technique.
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I might add that I am completely happy with my technique at present. This may change when I can hear things better lol. Cf Bill Evans thread....
I do feel a lot of people here seem to constantly chasing something technically. For me it’s nice to have a technique I both use and can teach.
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Yeah Bernstein and Jim Hall as well are beyond category as plectrum only players. Like I said, I’m not talking about the greats.
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I don’t understand why that should be a distinction.
Originally Posted by NSJ
Yeah Bernstein and Jim Hall as well are beyond category as plectrum only players. Like I said, I’m not talking about the greats.
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In that we might not be great artists, but we are all artists. I think developing one’s own sound and aesthetic is important at any level. I don’t actually think it’s about mastering everything and then trying to be an artist.
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I don’t know, maybe it’s just a tautology : the greats are great because they’re great. Originally Posted by christianm77
The greats aside, I personally would not like to hear solo guitar play strictly with a Plectrum.
Solo guitar especially requires finger style or pick and fingers
playing in a group context, it is much easier to play plectrum only and hide the limitations inherent in that style.
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Not a fan of the Bernstein solo album then? I think that’s mostly pick iirc
I mean, it’s hard for any guitarist to play solo improvised jazz and come out with something that can hold ones attention for an hour regardless of their technique.
Most fall back on arrangements of course. But maybe the lack of plectrum recitalists proves you point. Dunno.
If you want an absurdist example (because it’s so amazing and obviously beyond mortal ken) we have Chris Thile playing Bach recitals on mandolin.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
If anything, it's about mastering *something*, as opposed to jumping back and forth between all the things we hear about in Internet forums, only to end up mastering nothing.
I went to a Rosenwinkel master class yesterday. It's interesting how the topics he talked about with great passion have so little overlap with the topics discussed typically discussed here. Even when questions headed that direction he took them back to aesthetic issues (Joy, commitment, play, exploration, passion).
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Ha! I’m sure anything Bernstein has done is going to be spectacular .
I think the reason why one never hears solo guitar that is plectrum only is because many people only know how to play plectrum only “chord melody”, which is usually a clunky series of grips that have the correct Melody note on top.
I tend to think that the proper way to play solo guitar is to think of it as a little piano, i.e. play pianistically, which means one can bring any combination of one, two, three, four notes to the fore and integrate single note lines seamlessly with wide intervals, Dyads, triads, clusters, partial chords, harmonized lines, counter point.
I was very lucky as an adult who only started playing guitar as an adult following the collapse of the great recession not even 10 years ago. I got to study with someone here who is really a master of classical guitar and jazz guitar. (All you need to know is Benson asked to study with him , Diorio wanted to study with them but was too afraid to ask, and I got to meet Oscar Ghiglia through him ). One thing I noticed when I saw him play jazz and classical guitar, is that he generally played plectrum only or plectrum mainly like Barney Kassel when he played jazz on a steel string guitar. But I also think that was due to the fact that anybody who plays classical guitar needs to really have their nails in tiptop shape at all time. And steel string guitar is terrible for gouging fingernails
ie, serious classical players have a mortal fear of nails breaking.
Also, I took a couple of Skype lessons with Christopher Woitach. Far as I’m concerned, this is how you play solo guitar, with the pic and fingers.
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Originally Posted by NSJ
There are so many great counterexamples to this last sentence. What about all the limitations of playing without a plectrum? I get if your tastes draw you towards finger style or hybrid, but PB sounds just fine to me with a pick
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Two-way pick-slanting. Originally Posted by NSJ
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Although I have a decent fingerstyle technique from years of playing classical guitar before I got into jazz, and I am starting to build up a reasonable hybrid picking technique, I still like playing solo with a pick. Partly because I can get such a clear and full tone with it, both on single notes and chords.
I don’t think there’s any rule about this stuff, everyone is different.
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I disagree with that. It's a matter of taste apparently. I for one do not like fingerstyle jazz solo guitar. I get tired of listening to it pretty quickly. I like the rhythm drive of strumming. Originally Posted by NSJ
And like Christian said, its pretty hard listening the whole album of just solo guitar, but if it has to be, gimme a pick player.
The best example of jazz solo guitar for me is Sco playing My Ideal on acoustic. Besides that, maybe what Jonathan Stout is doing copying all those old timey cats. Either way, I wanna hear strumming, not piano players impersonations.
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Fair point. I would say, as I have been saying, that nothing precludes someone from playing pick only if they decide to develop a pick and fingers hybrid method. Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
With that, one has the best of all worlds. Like I said, the Swiss Army knife of right hand guitar technique. The Chuck Wayne school.
Also, I found that focusing on pick and fingers as a hybrid technique, I don’t really delve into the weeds and worry too much about the minutae of angles and wrist and sweeping vs alt and all that sort of stuff that generates thousands of posts and derision. I also found that I don’t worry about the minutae of issues that plague classical guitar players in terms of strict alternation of fingers, repeated fingers and which finger combinations ( PI, PM, IM???))
Just take a holistic approach and get the job done and do what you need that gets the job done and feels OK , doesn’t cause pain, and seems efficient.
My take on solo guitar has been spoiled because I got to see and study with the best in this city, who played every context from big band to big orchestra to Symphony orchestra . But mainly made his living for the last half of his career as a solo guitarist. His repertoire was always 4-5 hours minimum at any given point and bigger than anybody else’s by a country mile.
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This is possibly because Chuck Wayne's picking style (although he personally used economy picking) is very well suited to strict alternate picking and one-note per string arpeggios, like crosspicking rolls. Because the motion comes from the joint of the index finger, the pick follows a curved path that can easily exit out the plane of the strings on both the up and down stroke, which allows for efficient alternate picking in a way that DWPS and UWPS techniques don't. Originally Posted by NSJ
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I’m not sure if I understand the difference between what Chuck Wayne/pasquale etc does and a trad pick grip, standard pick no mechanics, but I also understand that this might not be the place to explain the difference
I would however say (and this is a very personal taste thing, and not trying to put them down or anything) that I’m not a huge fan of the tone produced by the guitarists of this school (Ben Monder is another as he studied with Wayne) but I also understand if some people do like the sound.
For me, tone is an important part of the equation. Mere flexibility is less important, but actually DWPS can be as flexible as you like if you incorporate techniques and are willing to change your pick angle from time to time to do upsweeps etc. It’s big bonus, for me, is the dynamic control you have, and you can also play acoustic if you need to.
If you ask me I think Julian Lages pick technique might be my favourite actually, because of his ability to do all of this, and appears very non-dogmatic.
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Traditional grip picking usually moves the pick from the wrist or elbow, in various ways. Chuck Wayne's approach to picking, which Pasquale also uses, tries to generate as much of the motion as possible from the index finger and thumb holding the pick. This is partly why Wayne's technique is so good for hybrid picking - the hand remains mostly stationary even while the pick is moving, which lets you have the fingers always in reserve to pick extra notes. Originally Posted by christianm77
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Btw when I say ‘not a huge fan’ I mean that it’s not the sound I want to emulate personally. I don’t mean to say I think they have ‘bad tone’ whatever that might mean.
Tone is a very personal thing. It should be your absolute calling card IMO and what I want to sound like could and perhaps should be different from someone else.
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Gotcha. Thanks for taking the time. Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
I think that’s why it makes the sound it does.
You can totally use finger movement like this when doing dwps picking btw. As Grady points it’s not where the movement comes from it’s the position of the pick that defines the technique.
I’d totally encourage a student to explore different types of movement in their picking.
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Yes this is how I think of it as Efficient and minimal movement of the hand as possible that allows the P and I to hold the pick without tension and fundamentally allows the fingers to easily play any note they can (including classical style one note for string arpeggio playing ). Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
I have tried not to overthink this, but everyone has to do what is right for them in terms of comfort and efficiency that is also in line with their goals for music. If you view the guitar as a little piano, as v Epps does, you have to play finger style or hybrid.
That is to say, your right hand technique does not exist in a vacuum but is subservient to and serves your musical conceptions, goals and aspirations.
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Could you please document this .. because to be honest I don't believe you. Sure you can mimick pure fingerstyle playing, where the thumb downstrokes and index and middle finger upstrokes, but if pick does any kind of alternate picking, then I don't believe there is no wrist movement. Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
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