Solo chord/melody performing: lose the rubato, IMO

[TF]

I've done a little chord/melody solo guitar in low-level professional situations now and again. And I've watched a few practitioners.

Myself, I find that I have to keep a steady beat, to keep an audience even slightly interested (I'll settle for slightly). And I find that when I watch solo jazz guitarists, even the greats, playing rubato, I often feel a yawn coming on. An out-of-time succession of beautiful chords sometimes does not exactly rivet an audience.

To succeed as entertainment, solo guitar music should consist of melody, harmony, and rhythm in equal proportions, I believe.

Your thoughts?

[fep]

I think you're on to something to definitely consider.

I remember Victor Wooten say that the reason so many bass solos lose the audience attention is that the music losses it's groove during the bass solo. Victor talks about the same thing in that he said the bass player should maintain the groove during their solo.

[sundogg52]

Clearly the tune (and the venue) would determine what will keep an audiences attention. If you are playing in a noisey conversation rich environment it is difficult to keep and audience rivited so the more rhythmic things tend to get more attention, but if you are in a quiet environment, particularly where the music is the focus (and not just background) then you can get away with more rubato arrangements. I think the key is really more to keep it interesting and a pleasant rubato arrangement certainly can be interesting.

[jamieh]

Good point, especially with ballads! I'll never forgot a guitar lesson when I played a solo guitar ballad arrangement and my old teacher said "That was great but now can you play it with a metronome in time?"

[mr. beaumont]

There's a time and place for rubato, but I usually try to imagine a drummer inside my head when I'm playing solo, even for ballads.

Of course, the opposite is just as hard to listen to in my opinion...those who are so concerned with keeping time their walking bass walks all over the melody...space is cool too.

[JakeAcci]

I think a simple but applicable logic is: if you hear it rubato, play it rubato, but if you hear it in rhythm but play rubato just because you can't technically execute it in rhythm, then...well....

Also, I barely ever play out of time, but I got a great tip about playing rubato once. People assume that rubato means "really slow and out of time" but although there won't be a clear pulse, there should be a balance of slow and fast...not all just indefinitely long whole notes.

[JakeAcci]

Of course, the opposite is just as hard to listen to in my opinion...those who are so concerned with keeping time their walking bass walks all over the melody...space is cool too.

But keeping time doesn't mean walking bass. You can have a very clear pulse with single notes, chord stabs, whole notes, anything at all.

[JohnW400]

And I find that when I watch solo jazz guitarists, even the greats, playing rubato, I often feel a yawn coming on. An out-of-time succession of beautiful chords sometimes does not exactly rivet an audience.



Your thoughts?

I don't know who you've listened to but most of the CD's I have of solo guitar are in time. Do you have specific examples?

Joe Pass, Howard Alden, George Van Epps, Ted Greene etc, etc all kept (keep) time.

Maybe it's your tune choice. I can see 'Blue and Green', 'Central Park West', 'But Beautiful' and other ballads being a bit rubato, but what about tunes Like 'Ceora', 'Green Dolphin Street', 'Song For My Father', 'Wave', 'One Note Samba' and the like? They certainly shouldn't be rubato.

Bill Evans tunes like 'Very Early' and 'Waltz for Debbie' move by at a clip. There shouldn't be any rubato unless you're doing an intro

Maybe 'The Two Lonely People' starts a bit Rubato but that changes by the second verse.

If someone can't play the CM at tempo then they should consider grabbing less notes and playing in time.

Of course as jazz guitar players we feel obligated to stuff every possible extension onto each voicing but getting the piece up to tempo will start eliminating voicings with too many notes

[mr. beaumont]

But keeping time doesn't mean walking bass. You can have a very clear pulse with single notes, chord stabs, whole notes, anything at all.

Of course, I was using it as an extreme example.

[Scot63]

This is a good jumping-off point for talking about what elements do "ruin" a chord melody. I tend to think that rubato is good if you build up to it—an appropriate way to end certain kinds of simple ballads. Poor harmonic choices—things that stray too far from the original melody or the tune's chord changes—seem more likely culprits. Even though I don't always like his tune choices (just me, I guess) Tuck Andress is a great example of someone who mixes simple songs and can also go way out, but nearly always in an accessible way. As much as love George Van Eps, there are times when his sophisticated chord palette make it hard, for me at least, to recall the original melody/chord sequence. Thoughts?

[Scot63]

I hasten to add that I didn't mean to imply Van Eps made bad harmonic choices—just sometimes ones that are out enough that they're hard for me to relate to the chord sequence of the original tune.

[artcore]

personal taste...thats all it amounts too....what you like, I may not, what you hear I may not.....The way you play it is the way you hear it, or interpret it.
I like the guys that can mix it up...thats just my taste in solo guitar...

[AlsoRan]

Since this is subjective, my vote is to stay close to being on beat and not rubato. I personally hate it when a singer sings too far behind the beat or ahead, especially through the whole song.

The same is true for soloists and chord melody players using any instrument. It is just my personal pet peeve that beyond a certain point, I get annoyed and turn the song off.

It's just that I listen to music in part for the groove. I love to lilt along with it and if it is not their, I am left a little lost.

[artcore]

Ok, but where is the groove in "Moon River"...Go too Utube and check out some of the million versions of this song...Its to be played with feeling, and I like the lush cords some guys use...I like to use the word flow with cord melodys..I don't think groove applies with many of the tunes we like in the cord melody universe...other tunes, like Nardis, thats different...so it depends on the tunes you like and play...

[AlsoRan]

Ok, but where is the groove in "Moon River"...Go too Utube and check out some of the million versions of this song...Its to be played with feeling, and I like the lush cords some guys use...I like to use the word flow with cord melodys..I don't think groove applies with many of the tunes we like in the cord melody universe...other tunes, like Nardis, thats different...so it depends on the tunes you like and play...

Good point.

I guess that's the reason I don't listen to many ballads - probably 1 percent of the time. What originally drew me to music was uptempo beats and I guess this is still true many years later.

I am already mellow and I need/use music for a "safe pick-me-up." I hate to say it but I am rarely in the mood for the "sappy" stuff. Probably because I have always been surrounded my emotional scenery, and slow songs tend to have that melancholy feeling I don't like to dwell on.

I must admit, as life goes on and death, illness, and losses mount, I am becoming more open to those quiet moments when I listen to slower music.

Just my thoughts...

[Mike A]

you shouldn't care what the audience think. if the tune requires it, and YOU think its necessary for some rubato- play it that way. if the audience want to dance they can go and see a dance band, if they want to see jazz they get what you decide to play

[henryrobinett]

I think it's a great point. Although I can go back and forth. I love good rubato playing, but I love and admire good playing in time the most. It all depends on the context, the tune and the playing.

But for me it illustrates just what I think music is to an audience, in part at least. The greatest thing music has is time. And it communicates this time beautifully. Because the time and rhythm has been set up so the audience can groove with it, or predict or agree, hopefully, or disagree, with the musician. But in the best of circumstances the audience nods along and can guess the next steps, and timing has most everything to do with that. When you go too rubato all the time, you've broken this tacit agreement and upset and audience, although no one really knows why.

That's my theory anyway. Happy fathers day to all you mothers!

[Norman931]

Well, I'm a drummer, so I generally like to stay in time, even on slow ballads. While I suppose it could work either way, I suspect that many people who prefer to ignore time signatures could use a little practice with a metronome, or a good drummer.

[ecj]

I've done a little chord/melody solo guitar in low-level professional situations now and again. And I've watched a few practitioners.

Myself, I find that I have to keep a steady beat, to keep an audience even slightly interested (I'll settle for slightly). And I find that when I watch solo jazz guitarists, even the greats, playing rubato, I often feel a yawn coming on. An out-of-time succession of beautiful chords sometimes does not exactly rivet an audience.

To succeed as entertainment, solo guitar music should consist of melody, harmony, and rhythm in equal proportions, I believe.

Your thoughts?

I'm a big fan of using "fake" rubato in intros. I'll keep the groove of the song in my head but try to play in sparse relaxed way so that the listener isn't listening to a steady beat. Then the head hits and I punch in the groove hard.

That being said, you can't really be a jazz player dealing with the Tin Pan Alley songs and never play rubato. Almost all of those tunes have verses that were originally played following the singer in a time-free zone until the heads that we all know come in.