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Hi guys just looking for a bit of advice in regards to playing in a duo guitar situation and making it sound interesting.
Me and my mate have been playing duo jazz guitar for quite some time now. We can play through standards and comp for each other with a 4/2 feel walk+chords or something similiar but we always struggle to make it sound interesting.
It's probably a combination of us being shithouse and not knowing how to approach this type of situation. We find it much easier to play duo gypsy jazz or to be apart of a full band and make that sound interesting/good but whenever we come to duo playing (not gypsy) it sounds a bit flat/dull and we aren't really sure how to make it sound the part.
Could be song choices that aren't working? Texture is always the same or similar? Lacking contrast in playing styles/tone?
I'm really not too sure, just seeking advice from people that have experience in this area and have encountered a similiar problem and have found what works. It seems like one of the harder playing situations apart from solo guitar.
Thanks guys.
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10-24-2015 11:02 AM
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How's your comping and soloing rhythm? I've found that if the comping partner includes phrasing with more space in it, maybe some voicings that are a little more sparse, or some bass line walking, it takes care of the harmony but it also leaves more opportunity for the soloist to do interesting things. It also makes it necessary to listen to the other player.
Try a chorus where it's not just comp/solo but a dialogue of ideas between you both. An exercise I find is helpful is alternating soloing and comping duties every 4 bars, every two, etc. It really makes the duties come closer to one another.
If you make an effort not to begin your phrases in the same way, but start on a beat you're not in the habit of, it can help to set up a fresher follow up and dialogue. And listen. Listen really carefully to and for things the other player is doing, and react to it. A chord player can certainly suggest ideas for the soloist, and visa versa. If it's fun for you, it's going to be apparent to the people listening.
Do you play with dynamics? There's a lot between pp and fff and using that range is important to interesting speakers, interesting writers, interesting actors. Guitarists seem to overlook this one.
Just a few ideas. Maybe they just work with me but they're helpful for me at least.
David
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My first advice is to listen to straight ahead jazz guitar duos and see what they do. That will give you some ideas. Howard Alden and Andy Brown have some new jazz guitar duo stuff out. Howard's got several great duo albums wth George Van Eps. One of the classic combos was Carl Kress and Dick McDonough and later Carl Kress and George Barnes. Wonderful stuff, you can probably find a lot of it on YouTube. Also on YouTube there are several videos featuring Peter Bernstein and Rotem Sivan; and I really like the ones with Pete and Jack Wilkins as they are all off-the-cuff.
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Hey man thanks!
These suggestions are really insightful. I really like the idea about playing a sparse comping role and giving the soloist a lot of freedom to provoke a more interesting conversation. I think that might just be the problem come to think of it. Comping too robotically. Will have to play around with some voicings that allow for harmonic freedom and interaction (I'm thinking 2-3 note voicings). Mabey an exercise as the comper to completely respond the soloist? Like instead of laying down the foundations of the harmony just completely responding to their ideas? (Would have to listen well I can imagine)
And yea I definately think dynamics is something greatly missed in our duo performances. Such a powerful tool that we totally underutilize! Will be working on it for sure!
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Thanks man, Will be doing more listening of duo guitar performances as of now! Sometimes I forget they exist! These guys make it look easy. They listen to each other so intently and have such great time and feel!
Originally Posted by Cunamara
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There is a long history of guitar duos in jazz that you can reference for ideas.
Eddie Lang/Lonnie Johnson
Eddie Lang/Carl Kress
Carl Kress/Dick McDonough
John Cali/Tony Guttuso
George Barnes/Carl Kress
George Barnes/Bucky Pizzarelli
Chuck Wayne/Joe Puma
Joe Pass/Herb Ellis
Bucky Pizzarelli/John Pizzarelli
Bucky Pizzarelli/Howard Alden
Bucky Pizzarelli/Frank Vignola
George Van Eps/Howard Alden
Whit Smith/Matt Munieri
That's what I can think of off the top of my head. There are more.
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Listen to the Jimmy and Doug Raney duets album. It's beautiful and swinging, not much walking bass.
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Excellent list! Originally Posted by monk
A few more worth checking:
Frank Victor/Harry Volpe
Carl Kress/Tony Mottola
Carmen Mastren/Albert Harris
Albert Harris/Ivor Mairants
George Barnes/Art Ryerson
Joe Pass/John Pisano
Herb Ellis/Joe Pass
Marty Grosz/Wayne Wright
Marty Grosz/Mike Peters
Jimmy and Doug Raney
Larry Coryell/Emily Remler
Lonnie Johnson/Elmer Snowden
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If your ear has a liking for another generation of players,
John Scofield did things with John Abercrombie in duo and group. They manage to swing without always marking time in a 4 to the bar way. John comps with accents reminiscent of Jim Hall's playing.
Abercrombie and Ralph Towner. Almost classical in his approach, Towner's comping has a lot of space and he really compliments John's ideas in a very sophisticated rhythmic and harmonic way.
Pat Metheny and Mick Goodrick. Mick's comping in like chord soloing, using melodic as well as chordal ideas.
Mick with Wolfgang Muthspiel. Both of these guys comp in a compositional way, that is, with shifting accents and rhythms that inform the song form and give the soloist plenty of room.
Wolfgang with Ralph Towner They've done recent work that combines an almost classical European sensibility to the duo.
Jim Hall with Bill Frisell New meets old. A study in contrasts. Jim plays straight swing in his own way, really spacious but solid. Bill has a really loose feel but the time is solid.
Jim with Pat Metheny similar feels with a cross generational twist
Joe Diorio with Mick Goodrick These guys are like one person playing, intertwining lines blurring the roles of solo and comping. Great stuff
New York Guitar Trio (Bruce Saunders, Steve Cardinas, Ben Monder) duos within them great interplay
Ed Bikert and Lorne Lofsky These guys are like Bill Evans playing guitar. The chord voicings are unworldly.
these duos have interesting harmonic, rhythmic and melodic ideas they explore.
DavidLast edited by TH; 10-25-2015 at 05:44 PM.
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Eddie Lang/Lonnie Johnson
Eddie Lang/Carl Kress
Carl Kress/Dick McDonough
John Cali/Tony Guttuso
George Barnes/Carl Kress
George Barnes/Bucky Pizzarelli saw them years ago on the Tonight Show/Carson-super pros!!!
it was a clinic in duo playing..talk about tasty lines talking to each other..and they had fun doing it..it influenced me to this day..
I played in a duo for years .. we did acoustic/nylon stuff..very early earl kluge/benson flavors-only we wrote all our material..some of the things we would experiment with were placing turnarounds at odd places within the progression..one of us would use inversions of a I vi ii V I ascending and the other would use inversions descending..the counter point that was created worked more times than not..and it brought smiles on the listeners faces..(important point!)..again experiment with the melody line.one play it ascending the other descending then back to the progression..play it in minor and major thirds and fifths apart - same with some of the chords see what sounds good but not forced-yeah that's the real trick..
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Wow thanks everyone!
A tonne of stuff to check out and that I never knew existed.
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If you're just playing standards, head / solo / solo / head, you're bored because it's boring.
All of these arranging elements can be called-upon to build variety in a piece:
Introduction
Head -- you aren't REQUIRED to play it as you start the tune
Interludes
Solos with open-style comping
Solos with dense-style comping
Solos with no comping
Trading 4s
Trading 8s
Simultaneous, contrapuntal-style soloing
Modulations
Tempo variations
Outros
Medley into next tune
Mix, match, build . . . vary solo order . . . vary keys and tempos . . .
Craft a set which brings you and your listeners on a journey. They will go with you when you show them that you are trustworthy navigators.
Happy travels!
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I would like to add that playing in a duo offers you and your partner the opportunity to craft arrangements of tunes as springboards for further exploration.
If both of you know the songs in your repertoire dead cold, inside out, no Real Books or sheet music on stands, then you can certainly play a portion of your song list off the tops of your head and go from there but remember that big bands and small groups have been using arrangements throughout the history of jazz as a framework whether it started as written arrangement such as Ellington, Goodman and Basie used or head arrangements that evolved into set pieces like those used by Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis.
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Guys, you forgot three...
My time to show off
Attila Zoller and Jimmy Raney
Attila Zoller and Jim Hall
Chuck Wayne and Joe Puma (wah wah wah pedal tastic... no kidden
)
I cite these dudes because they break away from the "traditional" one comp one play modality. Instead they improvise off of each other, contrapuntally. It is WAAAAY more fun to solo in this style than to solo on your own, and it really works your ear.
Problem is... you get two types of players that shy away from this style:
1. The self conscious player that thinks he or she isn't good enough to partake in this musical dialogue. If you are the "better player" than work around him or her. If you are the weaker player, he or she should work around you. Music is friendship, even with complete strangers. Sharing is caring
2. The egotist. Yeah... see, there are things I'd want to do to those players... but I have an image as a teacher to keep up. If I didn't, and I had bigger cajones, and they gave me shit about ruining their solo, I'd go over there... and break their guitar. The best music has no place for ego. The best music is made by musicians who push each other to play at their best. Sick of that egotistical bullshite, ya know?
In the words of Shakespeare
Much Ado About Nothing
Put the thing back in yer pants, no one cares about metrics when a true story is told through the sonic airwaves of music
Last edited by Irez87; 10-25-2015 at 05:08 PM.
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While you were gearing up to show off you missed my mention of Wayne and Puma upstream. Originally Posted by Irez87
Guys, you forgot three...
My time to show off
Attila Zoller and Jimmy Raney
Attila Zoller and Jim Hall
Chuck Wayne and Joe Puma (wah wah wah pedal tastic... no kidden )
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Hey the lists of duos are really nice. Would it be too much trouble to, in addition to listing our favourite duos, include some note saying what it is we like about them, how that particular duo might address the concerns of the OP and give some insights maybe on how those we've chosen have influenced our own duo playing? Y'know, just because I know we've all got people who've influenced us, but how? It sounds like Mike335 is at a point in his playing where some concrete advice might go a long way along with our knowledge of recordings.
Just a thought and suggestion...
David
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I agree, Truth!
Monk, damn you. You caught me
Neatomic hipped me to that album. It is sooo different than what I expected. Very interesting, still have to digest it all, know what I mean.
Sorry for missing your mention of Puma and Wayne.
Right now I am digging them alone. Puma sounds so similar to Jim Hall, it's so cool to look at that trajectory.
Advice...
Okay, how about this.
Sounds really corny but stick with me here...
I don't mean to sound belittling at all.
Find another guitar player and learn the melody and chords to a children's song...
Happy Birthday, do we have that in public domain by now?
Since it is a relatively well known melody, practice ad-libing, adding to, and subtracting from that said melody. Practice listening.
See... playing duets is much much much more than the boring old you play the melody and I comp in Drop 2s and 3s.
You can certainly use Drop 2s and Drop 3s to create beautiful walking chord lines behind another guitar player, but you gotta refine your ear to play tastefully behind that soloist. Jim Hall played a ton of traditional Drop 2s and Drop 3s behind Bill Evans (not a guitar duet, but you get the point), but he made each harmonic movement compliment Bill both rhythmically and harmonically.
Don't don't don't go into auto pilot when you comp during these duet situations. If you find yourself getting bored and itching to play the next solo in a duet, that should raise a huge red flag. As I've said before... USE YOUR EARS, LUUUKE!
The challenge with the simple kiddie tunes is making them sound like legit stories that are set to the backdrop of the "jazz tradition". This isn't an exercise in futility, Gary Burton and Chick Corea went to great lengths with these kiddie melodies. So did Wayne Shorter, to some extent.
Make everything you play worth a listen. You should always play in such a way that is so captivating that people listening in (strangers) will forget to breath, no matter what you play (in a good way, I hope).
Play on, play on...
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Arrangements are key, as is choice of material. Going to the old standards will leave you in the shadow of the masters. Find your own way, tune-wise, and then work up intros, endings, interludes. Fugue improv is fun for a chorus, classical feel. Don't be lazy, make every tune a "special". Try shadow of Your Smile in 3/4, or 5/4. Check out Sting's tunes, or Ruben Blades for intensely beautiful Latin feel and great melodies. Check out younger Brazilian masters, from Gilberto Gil to Caetano Veloso. Have one duo partner play 7-string, or put a heavy string on the 5th and tune the A an octave lower. Barnes used a Guild guitar in "F", tuned up a 4th, in his duos. Try one archtop, one nylon, great early recording of Charlie Byrd and Herb Ellis, long out of print, but a spectacular texture. Modulate; I have a very effective arrangement of Blue Bossa that goes around the cycle of 4ths, modulating every other chorus. An up version of Norwegian Wood can be a killer finisher to a set; While My Guitar Gently Weeps has great changes to play on. Try tunes in guitar keys, taking advantage of open strings: Send In The Clowns in E, Samba De Orfeo in A, for instance.
The duo is tough, but very satisfying when it works. Barney Kessell and Herb Ellis had a great show when they appeared live, and a great show is the key to success. I also use a looper for rhythm patterns, such as tapping on the guitar to set up a small drum set. All of these suggestions work just as well with a horn or singer as your duo partner, by the way. I do a ton of duo work, it really tests your creativity, technique and musicality, and it puts you in charge of your own harmonic and rhythmic destination. Of course, the 7-string really makes the job easier. It's really fun to play behind a singer and be able to get those great Ed Bickert voicings and a solid bass line at the same time.
Try some singing as well, those of you doing the duo thing but having trouble finding work. Use the senior centers to try stuff out; the budgets are small, but the work is great, usually only an hour, and an attentive audience. I played guitar for 40 years before singing, now I have more work than I can handle since I started singing in Portuguese and Spanish, with non-singers like Gilberto, Waits, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed and Dylan as models.
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A great way to practice duo playing is to practice... solo playing?
Sounds really odd, but I love giving advice that is a little off kilter because it forces people to think differently, outside of the box, and broaden their horizons and the such.
I heard a famous musician say that if you can't make riviting and soul shattering music by yourself, than you can't expect to be soul shattering as part of a band.
Work with pedal points, vamps, and upper structures. Practice creating what Steve Herberman calls harmony "targets" by moving in and out of different progressions such as iii VI ii V, ii V I, and iv bVII I.
Think in movements by introducing diminished harmony, altered harmony, and tritone sub's.
Practice comping for yourself while you solo.
All of these elements will make your duets even more interesting.
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I love guitar duos, so much fun! Originally Posted by mike335
I think the most important thing is to listen, then play.
Ideally both players have a very strong sense of the time and the form - the most important things - and can project it in their single note playing. If you can both do this, it becomes much more enjoyable.
It's great to be able to comp in different ways - Joe Pass style, Freddie Green style, etc, but don't become too set in what you do and be open to the moment.
- Don't feel you always have to comp continuously
- Don't feel you can't leave gaps
- Play voicings that avoid the register of the other player
- Don't feel the bass line needs to be pinned down
- You can play pure basslines without chords
- You can play counterpoint against the other player
- Pedals are great - for example on the V of the key
- Sometimes it's good to try two different guitar sounds - acoustic and electric say, although two blending electrics can sound great!
ronjazz mentions arrangements - playing written arrangements is great, but when you improvise, why not think of yourself as an arranger? Come up with interesting ways of presenting the material. Of course, you can come up with set arrangements while you play, a common process in jazz.Last edited by christianm77; 10-27-2015 at 06:27 AM.
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Just wanted to say one thing that jumped out is how supportive those guys are to each other when they solo - Jack plays really soft behind Peter which means when Peter wants to play some slightly more complex voicings there is no clash because Jack just melts away. Originally Posted by Cunamara
Dynamics are really important.
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I would think that leaving space is a key element. One guitar has to be responsible for the bass line of the song and the basic harmony / rhythm with three and four note chords, while the other guitar lays down the melody and improvisation.
Just to add a cool duo - Mundell Lowe and Louis Stewart. Their version of Waltz For Debby (which is in the key of F that I usually play it as well) is a fine example on YouTube. I do I vocal version plus the rhythm side of this tune. But you might prefer Mundell and Louis' version. Mundell recounts the origin of the song written by the young pianist in his trio at the time - Bill Evans.
Last edited by targuit; 10-27-2015 at 08:52 AM.
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This is one of the finest duo combos one could find. As I re-listen and play along with this clip, I realize what a clinic in duo playing it represents. Even the camera work permits you to see the beautiful voice leading techniques of these guys when they each take the rhythm part.
By the way, if anyone wants to start a duo in the RI/MA area, I am now "available" and hungry for work. Literally...
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A lesson in arranging:
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I've said it elsewhere on this forum, but I'll say it again: while all the playing by both Wilkins and Bernstein on this video is great, Bernstein's solo on "I'll Take Romance" is one of my favorite guitar solos of all time (starting at 24:40).
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