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Originally Posted by lawson-stone
Interesting to watch yours, we make a lot of similar choices for having never heard/seen each other play it.
As they say "fools seldom differ"
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07-28-2019 04:12 PM
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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That's a lot in one week-- time for round two, boys
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So here's another take, and I continue to try to play this largely unpremeditated. Those of you who know me on this forum know normally I like to work through a set piece of memorized material until I can play it, and then post that. What I really need to work on is my ability to play "in the moment" drawing on all the crap I've learned from all these memorized things, what I've listened to, etc. The result is ... not always pretty. This clip is a play-through with fills and such largely improvised in the moment, i.e. lame cliche's remembered on the fly! One thing that happens to me all the time when not playing memorized material is just simple brain freeze. The synapse just doesn't fire for a second or two... a couple of those happen here.
Another thing going on in this clip is my ongoing exploration of the "Joe Pass Virtuoso Recording Mystery." Urban legend has it that Joe recorded Virtuoso with two tracks from his 1963 ES1756. One was a direct to board feed, the other was a microphone picking up the acoustic sound of the ES175. According to the canonical story, the direct electric feed was lost, corrupted, or unusable, whatever, and lost except for "Here's That Rainy Day." The rest was just the microphone on Joe's ES175.
So this was recorded that way. The Left track is the direct feed to the board. The Right track is an SM57 running to a Headway EDB-2 EQ and active DI and thence both into my USB interface, from there into my iPhone.
This at least should encourage others who listen and thing, "Shoot, I can do way better than that!" Seriously, though, jazz is about improvisation, playing in the moment. I'd love to hear more of that in the solo guitar domain.
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Here’s my round 1.
My priorities as I played this:
1-Don’t let anything get in the way of the time feel;
2-Make the melody sing;
3-Try to suggest a bass player (at least part of the time);
4-Try to suggest another instrument playing some fills and harmonies in between;
In other words, I’m trying to suggest a trio performance, subordinating each line item to the one above it.
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Originally Posted by KirkP
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Originally Posted by KirkP
John
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Really nice Kirk
is that an L7 ?
you and it sound great ....
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Originally Posted by KirkP
And it swings, and it moves forward. So important.
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Originally Posted by pingu
I also want to try this tune as a duo with guitar or bass.Last edited by KirkP; 07-29-2019 at 07:18 PM.
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That was really good Kirk, gave me some ideas!
Your approach reminds me of how Andy Brown tackles solo playing.
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Originally Posted by grahambop
This morning I tried skipping all the minor7th chords, going straight to the 7th chords. After all, in a ii7/V7 sequence you can think of the ii7 as V7sus4. It opens the tunes up, helps me understand the form and hear the tonality better, and it gives me different ideas for bass lines and improvised melodies. After playing the tune a while in that way, I reintroduced some ii7s, but it felt bit more free and fluid, and...musical.
This is also a good tune to practice in multiple keys. After all, to B part is nearly identical to the A part, modulated up a 4th. For practice, one could just keep modulating up by 4ths and go through every key. Playing in various keys helps me break out of patterns and play a little more freely.
Here I’m fooling around in Bb eliminating some ii7 chords, then adding a few back in or replacing with tritone subs.
I pretty much neglected the bass and most of the melody there. I’ve also messed around with focusing just on a bass line and comping. Maybe I should next focus on improvising more interesting melodic lines and phrasing, playing just the melody with a bass backing track. Then attempt to pull those elements all together..Last edited by KirkP; 07-30-2019 at 03:35 PM.
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I'm curious how much of what we play is improvisational and how much is arranged. I think both have a place and both are splendid. My own interest is improvisation, since I spent maybe 20 years playing finger-style solo jazz guitar mainly with memorized arrangements. I found it very hard to break out of those and play improvisational, spontaneously. I know others don't necessarily have that problem, but in our exploration of "What's New" I've wondered what the balance between arrangement and improvisation is. I'm just having a tough time breaking out of the particular way I play this tune right now.
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Originally Posted by lawson-stone
Overall I kind of have the opposite problem from you. For most of my playing life I've focused on improvisation, especially single lines. This has always come pretty naturally, so path of least resistance has lead me to neglect chord melody. Recently I've been trying to improve my chord-melody playing and build some repertoire.
John
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Everything John A. said is exactly the same for me, word for word. Saved me the trouble of writing it myself!
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Originally Posted by lawson-stone
Of course, playing the original melody constrains what I can do with the bass and inner voices. I can be much more free with the bass and inner voices when I’m improvising a melody line. So I might try to alternate mindsets between “melody is king” and “bass line is king” in the practice room. After going back and forth between those two mindsets a bunch of times, I think they begin to coalesce.
When I’m playing the tune, I tend to think of a stripped down harmony something like this:
But I’ll add chords back in on the fly, perhaps playing something more like this:
But I’ll vary something each time.Last edited by KirkP; 07-31-2019 at 01:33 PM.
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Originally Posted by KirkP
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Originally Posted by lawson-stone
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Every time I learn a new tune I’m afraid it turns into “how many new and interesting things can I try over the first A section.” I’ve been forcing myself to play through the song in its entirety, but damn if that first A section still doesn’t get most of the attention.
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Originally Posted by wzpgsr
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So this will be my final effort on this tune for now. I have struggled with playing clean, and today my wife commented to me "Well, you've been away from your guitar for 6 weeks. Does that make a difference?" Indeed, the hands lose a bit of the strength needed to hold some of those chords! I hope you still like some of the ideas I've tried to use here. I also enjoyed playing through my 1960's era Silvertone 1484 head played through the speakers of a Yamaha G100-210. Mic'ed the cab with an SM57 and ran the other channel direct from guitar to board.
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Originally Posted by lawson-stone
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Originally Posted by lawson-stoneOriginally Posted by lawson-stone
Again, I think this can be a tough one to pull off.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 08-03-2019 at 09:12 AM.
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Morning noodles. Rough but different ideas. Double time feel and more blooz...
Sent from my SM-A505U using Tapatalk
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Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
The real problem with your video is it's backwards so I have to listen to it in reverse.
So Paul McCartney actually rises from the dead at the end.
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