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Honestly, I love saxophone lines the best but whenever I transcribe them and play them on the guitar they don't quite pop the way they do on a horn.
This makes me question whether certain jazz lines only work on certain instruments.
I was thinking maybe piano lines might be more applicable, too, since they also can't sustain a note quite the way a saxophone can.
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02-10-2023 10:32 PM
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If you want to do sax lines, you could focus on ones that are more rhythmic. It's hard for those to sound bad. Usually when sax lines don't sound that good on guitar or keys is when they are rhythmically sparse and rely on the finesse or sustain of the instrument to sound good.
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Sometimes when I practice I use a Sonus MIDI converter to transform my guitar signal to a MIDI signal (it is not polyphonic - single notes only) and feed that to an old Roland sound expansion unit that is designed to produce the sounds of orchestra instruments (has 255 of these).
I know just what you are talking about! One of my favorite sounds is one of the trumpets... everything I play sounds lively and "pops" like you say, even simple scales and phrases of just a few notes sound amazing. So what happens is I find all kinds of lines that just kill, but when I bypass to just straight guitar the pop is gone and the lines sound lame... for a while.
Later, without the MIDI and just playing straight guitar sound, I return to those lines and "learn how to do them on the guitar" until that lively pop feeling begins to emerge. It feels like it just takes a while for my guitar to learn how to do it, but I know it's me figuring it out. After that, I find they are wonderful and they become part of my vocabulary.
The thing is, if I had encountered theses lines during ordinary practice I would have tended to ignore and reject them as possibly good sounding lines; only by hearing them through another instrument did I recognize their potential immediately. So I guess I'm suggesting don't give up and make the judgement too soon, and maybe utilize whatever the modern version of sound conversion to help with exploring new lines (pretty sure all of this can be done now days with software and some connectors). Actually, if you have a keyboard with MIDI In, you can use just the Sonus (still made) to play any of the sounds in the keyboard.
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Sometimes I use the ‘convert the midi’ setting on logic x to get transcriptions of my playing for YouTube, something Barry Greene. I like to play them back as electric piano because everything sounds better on electric piano.
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Parker lines sound good on any instrument.
for the more ‘sonic’ sax players like Trane etc it can be more difficult. You can get more of a tenor sax tone by abandoning a classic jazz tone and looking into drive and other effects of course… think of Holdsworth, Abercrombie, Rosenwinkel etc
Fingering and technique is a massive area for any guitarist trying to play sax vocab on guitar. Alternate picking this stuff in position is never going to do it …
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The first solo I transcribed was Miles's solo on 'Straight, No Chaser' from Newport 1958. Probably a good place to start would be Miles on 'So What'.
Then you can build to this -
If you're looking for a 'should' in this, I don't think you'll find it - there are benefits to be gained from transcribing guitar or horn or piano etc. lines...
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I'm mainly looking to build up some vocabulary to play on guitar. Rollins and Dexter are two of my favorites, and I have transcribed several of their solos.
Originally Posted by James W
The first solo I transcribed was Miles's solo on 'Straight, No Chaser' from Newport 1958. Probably a good place to start would be Miles on 'So What'.
Then you can build to this -
If you're looking for a 'should' in this, I don't think you'll find it - there are benefits to be gained from transcribing guitar or horn or piano etc. lines...
But, I've found the vocabulary I learned isn't that compelling on guitar. I was just wondering if the most efficient way to steal some riffs is to transcribe other guitar players.
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I cannot see the point.
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At the highest levels of playing the specific quirks of the instruments become part of the construction vocabulary. Valve trumpets can bend notes but will "break" at a point, so bending up goes kind of like... "doouuee(!)dobadubaduba" where the first part bends, but then breaks and the second part will "fall through" a series of pitches if you don't stop it. Sometimes horn players use the boundary of that bend break to play what sounds like a grace/ghost note (my sound expansion contains that trumpetistic bend breaking character). Originally Posted by charlieparker
Similarly with the Bb clarinet there is a shift in tone switching from the lowest register to the second register (maximized at the shift from Bb to B) which classical players spent great effort learning how to suppress or conceal. Sax has a similar thing where certain notes sound "weak and not quite right", but they are used on purpose as part of the phrasing. Flutes get over-blown to purposely include some of the octave pitch above. Violins have a lot of bow techniques that alter the tone (harmonic structure) even to the point of invoking the string to generate notes below the tuning of the low G string (by forcing the bow hair to move "skippy" across the string and inhibit formation of the string length's fundamental in order to drive a lower frequency for F).
As an insider, you know that the guitar is just chuck full of these guitaristic techniques and tones - there are dozens that are popular. Nothing wrong with listening to other instruments for ideas and inspiration; just keep in mind that when played on the guitar, some of the "compelling" nature comes from the guitaristic things that don't necessarily happen on other instruments. For example, there is a thing that is sometimes called the "rake". The idea is to play a single note, but you don't want it to have the usual ASDR profile of attack, sustain, decay, and release. What is desired is a note without attack that starts in full sustain. The way it is done is the attack is masked by the rake; you rake across about three damped strings and hit the string you want to play. The ear kind of suppresses the rake sound and is delighted at the apparent instant onset of sustain... classical uses a gentle form of this as an effect to highlight some melody notes, blues players use a more firm (BB King playing those single high notes) to violent (SRV) form of getting the tone.
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Learn lines from anything you hear that you like.
Learn from them.
Apply what you've learned in a manner idiomatic to your instrument. IOW, if you have to change a note or 2, and it lets you play much faster, or with the articulation you want, great. Because you can rest assured much of what you're hearing sax/organ/etc players do has been tweaked to be idiomatic to their instrument.
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... but never sound as good as Parker... at least not on the guitar Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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it’s ok if you play them at half speed Originally Posted by princeplanet
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Yes. Also, when you play tunes for other instruments on your guitar, you sail close to lobby music. Originally Posted by pauln
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It's a fine line between hotel lobby music and Freebird, as Segovia used to say
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Yes, I think the topography, mechanics, and frequencies of an instrument should ultimately determine how it is played. Classical composers, after all, wrote for individual instruments. In the case of jazz, certain instruments dominated so everyone looked to them for inspiration. Not so much now. The guitar has certainly come into its own and shaped its own idiosyncratic sound. As long as that sound is enjoyable, good for it, in my view. No absolute need to listen to saxophones, or pianos anymore, but by the same token, no need not to either. Originally Posted by charlieparker
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midiguitar2 software. Just plug your standard guitar into your laptop, no midi pickup or midi device needed just an audio interface.
MIDI Guitar 2.2.1 and the 3 best virtual saxophones - MIDI Guitar Demo - MIDI Guitar & MIDI Bass user forum
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