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Hey. On piano inversions are like the bread and butter of jazz. It's so common that when not using any inversions it's referred to as block chords, which are rare.
eWhen I see guitar players comp or chord melody they seem to use their chords in root position. And not often their inversions. Im curious as to why this is? Maybe its not needed, as the chords are often builds on E and A strings, making them not jump too much?
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04-17-2024 08:14 PM
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This is definitely not the case. Guitar players invert all the time. The chords will not often be close-voicings because they’d be unplayable, but guitarists play inverted and rootless chords more often than root position chords by a very very wide margin.
Exception being rhythm guitar where they are responsible for, or it is stylistically appropriate, to play the bass as well. Then primarily shells on the lowest four strings.
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Both. Shell voicings are most commonly played on the E D and G strings, or the A D and G. R73, and R37 respectively. When you get to a voicing with the root on the A string, you can swap out the root for the fifth, which generally lands on the E string, making it 5 3 7 and using the same string set as 1 7 3
8 x 8 9 x x for C7
8 x 7 9 x x for Fmaj7, fifth in the bass, no root.
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You were inverted.
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Yeah, rhythm guitar is really it's own thing...I'm always surprised when people don't get that (nobody in this thread, but when I started a thread about rhythm guitar last year people were talking about comping in general and I was like "no...RHYTHM guitar" )
Back to root position voicings, I find when I'm comping, even when I play a root position voicing, I don't often actually play the root on the bottom.
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I wish that album was on Spotify
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I just ordered a copy off discogs for $0.99 +shipping, fun little shopping spree. Also got Red Norvo Trio, Benny Goodman Trio, and Teddy Wilson Trio records.
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My wifes car still has a CD player so I still use mine. Well, one of them at least... Danny Gatton's The Humbler is the only one I play.
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I wouldn't mind resurrecting that rhythm guitar thread.
I'm playing big band regularly and I'm not sure when to stick to Freddie G. and when to branch out.
Freddie played with Basie and Walter Page. Steady rhythm, swing and sparse piano. And, the arrangements were all consistent with that style.
Often, Freddie G. seems like the best thing to play, but I often start to think, there must be a way for the guitar to contribute more without making mud.
It's not difficult to branch out when there is no piano. It's liberating. But, then you have to read the piano chart and cover essential lines that only the piano chart contains. Like the Basie ending -- not so good with silence instead of that piano lick.
But, it's a hard thing to discuss without charts and recordings and so forth.
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I think the style dictates everything. The Freddie style is an old way of playing..I love it, but of course it's not what you're going to hear in a modern style big band...
Like even though that's an old tune, the arrangement tells me that this is not the time for Freddie Green style...
But I also doubt many of us are playing in big band situations like the above...
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Are you only seeing intermediate level guitar players that are playing with just another intermediate level guitar players?
I ask this because for years I only used 6th and 5th string root position chord voicings and I only played with fellow guitar players that were at a similar level of experience. Since there was no one playing the bass, and only two rhythm centric instruments, these types of voicings worked. But when I started to play a duo with a piano player, or trio with two guitars and bass, I started using inversions, as well as comping (instead of just basic rhythm).
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Hmm, when I played with my college big band, the bass player gave me dirty looks when I played voicings on the bottom strings like those, felt I was invading his territory and muddying his lines (which was true at times). And then Joe Williams, the Count Basie vocalist, told me that in a big band, the sound of the guitar should be "felt rather than heard," so I had to find a middle ground between traditional and modern big band styles. In fact, our repertoire demanded that anyway, for example, there were tunes that called for wah-wah pedal rhythm comping.
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