Technical theory questions from a jazz pianist

[jazzpazz]

delete

[docsteve]

Yes and yes.

This might answer some of your questions:

[vintagelove]

Hello. Im a jazz pianists and saxophonist wanting to learn jazz guitar. And have some general questions about guitar playing.

Do good jazz guitarists invert chords making good voice leading with least amount of gap between the chords?

Do good jazz guitarists invert the chords making the top note of the chord the melody? Do they also work hard on making the melody note sing out over the chords?

Just some of the questions that comes to my mind. Im also wondering how long do you guys think it would take me getting some simple standards down like misty? No fancy playing, just pure and clean. Im a proficient piano and sax player, so I know all my music theory very well.

You're on the right track, just one note. You don't have to work hard to bring out the melody note on top of the chord. It's just the nature of the instruments voice that the soprano voice stands out.

What's harder on guitar is bringing out/balancing the inner voices.

[Christian Miller]

Hello. Im a jazz pianists and saxophonist wanting to learn jazz guitar. And have some general questions about guitar playing.

Do good jazz guitarists invert chords making good voice leading with least amount of gap between the chords?

Do good jazz guitarists invert the chords making the top note of the chord the melody? Do they also work hard on making the melody note sing out over the chords?

Just some of the questions that comes to my mind. Im also wondering how long do you guys think it would take me getting some simple standards down like misty? No fancy playing, just pure and clean. Im a proficient piano and sax player, so I know all my music theory very well.

We certainly try to!

I think you will find it surprisingly frustrating to apply piano knowledge on the guitar. Some things that are straightforward on piano can take a lot of work.

Otoh if you are happy to learn some basic rhythm/comping shapes and plug and play… not long!

[pamosmusic]

Yeah everything in all these other posts is true.

In an ideal world we totally do all that stuff, but a couple other points:

I have a buddy who got a lesson with Mike Moreno and tried playing a bunch of fancy chords and Mike stopped him and held up his guitar and said “Hey man … this is not a piano.”

His point at the time (according to my ninth hand knowledge) was that the guitar tends to play a more rhythmic percussive role than piano. So small chord shapes, sharp rhythms, decent voiceleading.

With that said, I think for me voiceleading is more helpful for finding motion within chords. We can’t play big piano voicings, so we’re usually stringing together smaller voicings like triads or shells to give the impression of larger harmonies. But big picture—like across a phrase or a few bars—I’ve found recently I end up focusing a lot more on the top voice and creating a melody than on the inner voices and true good and proper voiceleading.

And to Christian’s point, really high quality swing style jazz guitar is surprisingly simple. If I’m playing duo, I’m using shell voicings (akin to your left hand— Root, 3, 7 or R 7 3) almost exclusively and focusing more on bass motion and stuff more than voiceleading, and in that stripped down format the voiceleading is pretty easy. It takes a really really really long time to sound really good, but it’s kind of shockingly easy and fun to get off the ground.

EDIT: simple is not the same thing as easy. But it’s nice to know you can pick up some real serious tools very quickly and get down to the business of figuring out what makes those dudes sound so hip. There’s a great article on this thread detailing all the subtleties of Freddie Green’s playing that you might really enjoy.

Absolute gem re Freddie Green style

[rpjazzguitar]

George Van Eps called the guitar "a lap piano".

There are players who stick close to three note chords and players who don't.

Getting a melody in the soprano voice while voice leading in the lower notes is commonplace.

I think a difference is that it's really not easy on guitar, especially to nail the movement while keeping strict time.

All that said, a really good comping guitarist can have a lot in common with the way a pianist comps. But, again, it's hard on guitar and not many players can do it.

[Tal_175]

Do good jazz guitarists invert chords making good voice leading with least amount of gap between the chords?

Drop chord inversions are usually the first thing jazz guitarists learn to create horizontal movement with smooth-ish voice leading. That's just the basic approach however that you're expected to grow out of once you learn the fretboard better.

If you check out the comping or chord-melody playing of the more experienced jazz guitarists, they rarely move up and down just with inversions. The use of voicings with different extensions, chords that function similarly, or passing chords are more common.

[Cunamara]

As Pat Martino points out, the geometric nature of the instruments are so different. The piano is a line of notes which can be added or subtracted with structural consistency, the guitar is a matrix which is structurally inconsistent (due to having 4ths from string to string, except for two that are a minor 3rd).

The Tim Lerch demo is great. Tim uses the Ted Greene method to a great extent, as well as having roots in Bill Leavitt from studying at Berklee. In terms of learning the mechanics of the fingerboard, the Leavitt books are a great place to start. Alternatively, the venerable Frederick Noad books were the start for many a fine guitarist with classical technique.

[ragman1]

Im also wondering how long do you guys think it would take me getting some simple standards down like misty? No fancy playing, just pure and clean. Im a proficient piano and sax player, so I know all my music theory very well.

I'm wondering why you're asking that. It would obviously depend on how well you took to the guitar, how much work you put into it, and so on. It wouldn't happen overnight, that's for sure!