any advice on incorporating jazzy stuff into rock?

[morroben]

I've been concentrating on jazz for a couple of years now. At first it was mostly chord melody, but I've been trying to move on to working on improv over backing tracks and such.
Well lately I've had the itch to play some rock again. I've jammed with friends a few times in recent weeks and I've had a hard time fitting much of the jazzier things I've learned into the rock setting. A lot of the licks don't seem to cross over and most of the extended chords don't take well to any distortion at all. I'm not talking metal here...more roots rock, alt-country type stuff.
I hear others do it all the time. Guys like Nels Cline, Jim Campilongo etc seem to make it work. It even makes me wonder how some of the fusion folks, which isn't a style I listen to much, make their chord stuff work with gain.
Any suggestions?

[JakeAcci]

Nels can get pretty crazy.

The question is broad - just find the players you like and transcribe them. Similarly, if you don't like the sound of your jazz licks and voicings in this setting, don't play them! Find something else. I think the cool thing about learning jazz is that it gives you knowledge and a lot of options, but if you want to incorporate all of that knowledge into something more personal than just playing standards, you have to do the work of finding your own preferences.

But to repeat, if there are players that you feel are doing what you want to be doing, just listen to those players a lot and transcribe them and figure out what they're doing - and what they're not doing. You might be pretty surprised at what you find.

[ronjazz]

Mike Stern.

[fumblefingers]

Johnny A, too.

[fep]

It seems to me that a lot of it has to do with the 'attitude' of your phrasing more than the notes you choose. But yes a lot of the chord voicings won't work especially with distortion.

Check out the Don Mock video, the blues from Rock to Jazz. That will give you jazzy ideas for rock.

I just found this excerpt, it only goes thru his chord instruction as the solo bit is later on the DVD, but you can get an idea of what the style he's teaching from the couple minutes of intro:

YouTube Video

[Synchro]

All I can add is that sparse is usually good if you want an extended or altered voicing to work with lots of gain, or even über clean with lots of volume, you'll probably need to find very open voicings with as much space as possible between notes.

[JakeAcci]

I suppose there is an art to playing chords with gain. The more gain, the more overtones (right?) and the harder it is to have definition in a multi-voice chord that's not just a simple solid triad.

I don't play with distortion much anymore, but when I did I definitely observed that certain intervals reacted to the gain in certain ways. I think you can voice chords for 'jazz' with distortion but you have to get creative because every interval is going to cause a certain effect with the gain.

For example, fifths of course wind up having this very solid, powerful sound, in part probably because you're just doubling one of the first overtones of the lower note. Half steps and sevenths (or b9s) are almost 'extra' dissonant, but that can be a good thing

The more dissonant or less-stable intervals in chord, I think the rougher the sound will be with distortion. If you're playing with a bass player, and the bass player is playing a D note and you want to play a D7#5#9, the stock clean guitar voicing is probably F# C E# A#...with a lot of distortion I think that chord can be problematic, but some interesting alternatives to imply the same harmony could be, for example, just playing the F# and E# together, or just the C and A# together, or maybe a voicing that is just (Starting on the G string): D Eb A#...etc. Smaller voicings, more attention to intervals. Really just thinking out loud here, hope this is useful.


I do agree that a chord like this on the top four strings - F# C E B can be problematic to play with gain, simplifying the chord to allow the gain to 'do its thing' is an option. For example, just playing F#, or just playing C and B together.

[morroben]

Very good advice guys. I appreciate it. I've already been transcribing some of my favorite stuff...particularly the Nels with Wilco stuff.
I think the advice about simplifying voicings is particularly good. All the chord melody stuff I've been playing has got me into the habit of filling up a lot of space. In a band setting I don't need to fill up so much, but it's a hard habit to break. I think this goes hand in hand with the advice on simpler voicings.

[Synchro]

Originally Posted by morroben

I think the advice about simplifying voicings is particularly good. All the chord melody stuff I've been playing has got me into the habit of filling up a lot of space. In a band setting I don't need to fill up so much, but it's a hard habit to break. I think this goes hand in hand with the advice on simpler voicings.

Yep! I had the same situation. I literally spent decades in a Joe Pass thing, playing solo guitar and trying to sound like a one man band. Then I got into a Classic Rock band and had to play more sparsely. Then we went from a quartet to a tri and I had more space to fill but still not the same as the Joe Pass approach which included bass lines.

One touch of Jazz guitar I bring to Pop/Rock playing is Wes' approach to octave . . . with the bare thumb. I do a lot of things in octaves, especially the solos in Jazzy tunes like Spooky, Stormy and Sunny. In Stormy I do the sax solos as chord melody and it works.

[Synchro]

One other thought comes to mind here. My first Jazz instructor, Denver's Dale Bruning, taught me to think of chord in terms of triads voiced over a root note. Even complex, extended voicings can be interpreted this way. For example, a D7 #9 could be thought of as an F Maj triad over an F# which in turn is over a D in the bass. A G13 b9 could be looked at as an E triad over F which is in turn over a G. Now, in a higher gain situation you could just play the Major triads, forget about the tri-tones and lose a lot of dissonance in the process. I realize that this solution does lose some of the flavor of the chord changes but we are talking about a specific situation.