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so we can not play jazz with out the "jazz guitar sound"? any new trends in this sound?...like using bridge pick up ? I know Scof do it... what about "jazz amps"?I /ve heard Ed Bickert do not like Fender amps but so many jazz giants like Fenders..:-)
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04-23-2015 12:25 AM
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I will say that I think a huge part of that is articulation. The way you attack the string. That also bleeds over into the discussion of what makes good jazz tone specifically (as opposed to "sound" generally). I still think it's "in the fingers" as they say. Real players with unique sounds find aspects of the signal chain to manipulate so that they accentuate the way they phrase and articulate already. They don't play to suit their gear. It drives me absolutely out of my skull how often guitar players get that backwards. If you don't have a sound in your ear and in your hands the $10k custom job isn't going make a lick of difference and - with all due respect - you probably are obsessing over tone when you don't actually know what you want yet. We're all guilty of that I'm sure.
Good examples of this sort of thing ---
Scofield has a very unique sound. But the brittle biting kind of tone accentuates the abrupt nature of his attack. Very jagged dynamics brought out when the sudden punches break up and the pianissimos sound glassy and clean - It's those jagged dynamics, string bends, lots of slurs. That makes his sound. He'd sound that way even if he played an L5.
George Benson swings like a mother and articulates every note like a machine gun - bright clean tone and some nice heavy strings so every one of those bursts is clean as can be and projects - but he'd sound like George Benson on a Tele strung up with 9s. Because he has a sound.
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But I think that Ed Bickert with his really old and mellowed Tele and Scofield with his Ibanez Semi Hollow and Ibanez Tube Screamer would sound a little different if they were playing an Gibson L-5 or even an ES 175.
I remember playing a 1995 G&L Legacy and loving the tone for Jazz or anything else. Then I played a new $1200 Strat and it was terrible to me.
Amps? I have played mostly through a reissued Fender Delux Reverb and love it, but go try a 47 year old L-5 through a Polytone Mini Brute ... Heaven, Pure Bliss!
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To me it's a matter of perspective ... putting the cart before the horse. If you want to haul a cart full of lumber then you need both cart and horse. But that doesn't mean that having the cart lead the horse and vice versa are equal in terms of getting the job done.
Yes - Scofield's Ibanez is part of his signature but he's Scofield because of what he plays and how he plays it. Not because he plays one guitar over another.
Guitar players think that when our sound isn't what we want that we need to change string gauges, add more reverb, by a more resonant guitar, add more compression, try a different scale length. In the meantime we forget to figure out what we're actually want to sound like when we finally get all that gear perfect. We also forget how many tonal adjustments can be made between the right elbow and the tip of the pick. Dynamic range and response? Pick control. Warmth? Pick control. Evenness of tone? Pick control. Punch or projection? Pick control.
Bear in mind that I'm not saying that the guitar doesn't matter. It needs to play well. It needs to suit your manner of playing. Obviously the better quality of tone in any number of areas is a good thing. But what a good guitar won't do is create a sound for you. I just really wish guitar players would hear flat dynamic range and response and make their first thought - "hmmm ... maybe I should play my scales pianissimo for an hour, then maybe do some very controlled crescendos and decrescendos for a while, then make sure I'm practicing at the neck and at the bridge and everywhere in between... then maybe we'll see how dynamic this guitar is" ... instead it seems much easier for us to say "damn ... I knew the laminate was a bad idea ... let's see if there's anything new and carved on eBay... hmm or maybe the scale length should be ... or get that new solid state ... speaker cab ... strings"
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what do you think about "jazz sound" with acousic guitars and nylonstrings guitars? These are completly different instruments. simply: acoustic guitar-acoustic sound ,classical guitar-nylostrings acoustic sound, hollow body guitar- 'hollow' body sound, semi-hollow- more electric hollow sound , solid body-electric sound , solid body with piezzo- electric plus pseudo acoustc sound...
may be this way we can think?Last edited by kris; 04-23-2015 at 02:07 AM.
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clean sound or distorted or with chorus or with pitch shifter...? I/ve heard Jim Hall playing his great sounding D'Aquisto with chorus and pitch-shifter... This totally changed the natural sound-jazz sound of his guitar.
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I like the ability to change the tone of a guitar mid solo, smooth deep sounding neck pickup to sharp brittle bridge pickup. My modded Jazzmaster and Telecaster does this very well.
I also love Bill Frisell's sound and technique, oh and Marc Ribot 'skronk' sound. All achieved with pedals.
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The only effect I have ever liked for jazz tones has been a very subtle detune effect not exceeding 5 or 6 cents (or even two, one -6 cents and one +6 cents).
Originally Posted by kris
Larger stretches of pitch shifting don't do it for me, and I dislike chorus for jazz tones. I used to have an MXR Stereo Chorus and currently have a Mad Professor Electric Blue Chorus. As far as I am concerned, these combine well with overdriven sounds (particularly on bridge pickups), but then I dont't like overdriven sounds for jazz.
(All of this is strictly personal taste. I know you love Scofield, whom I truly appreciate as a great player, although I have never much enjoyed him for reasons that really I am unable to explain).Last edited by palindrome; 04-23-2015 at 04:01 AM.
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Attachment 19691
I like this Cds set with booklet.
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There is a "classic" jazz sound that we all know well based on decades of tradition, but nearly any guitar tone is accepted in jazz as long as it fits the context. By that, I mean one doesn't expect to hear a guy comping in a big band on a Strat with overdrive. It's not musically appropriate for the style, and will be out of place, because that's not a context for experimentation unless sanctioned by the leader. However, the same guitarist can certainly play his overdriven Strat when fronting his own jazz trio, and that will be accepted as his tone.
The only thing remaining is whether listeners like a person's tone, not whether a tone is accepted as "legit" or not in the jazz genre. It's (almost) all been done by now.
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Interesting video:
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I think the main sound will be the guitar and amp, and they need to organically respond to tone, volume, and pick attack and fingering. At that point, there will be specific ways that will work better to bring out the full potential of the instrument and amp, effects should be relied on to work with that sound rather than change it.
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I just spent hours trying to get a good tone from my Epiphone Dot with Gibson ES 335 pickups that I installed. I even tried a signal exciter to try and shape the sound through my Fender Delux Reverb '85 reissue. It's no use.
Next week, I'll try going through the amp with no exciter and no effects. I wonder if a Gibson ES 335 or ES 175 would sound better. Perhaps it's the amp that needs to be tweeked by an amp tech. Maybe I'll upgrade the guitar and then get the amp adjusted if that doesn't work.
Strange as it may seem, I got better mellow jazz tone from my 1975 Martin D-27 acoustically. I suspect that both my Epiphone guitar and amp need work. I'll go shopping and play a few guitars through a Fender Delux Reverb as a test.
Thanks for your comments. Very useful. Alan
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How you approach the instrument, how you navigate changes, how you think about playing is the most important part. Next is your technique, fingers or pick, how you hit, how you articulate and move (or not move) the note. Then the guitar/pickups/stings/pick/amp. Originally Posted by kris
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I have an Ibanez AF75 and I put flat wound strings on it. I cant seem to be able to dial in that warm kind of muffled jazz sound. I can play through my Blackstar or a Vox or my Fender Mustang. I turned the tone on the guitar down and the treble on the amp down but cant seem to get the right tone.
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On the Mustang, try the 65 Twin. Set your treble at 3, mid at 5 and bass at say 2.5 (on some jazz boxes the bass can be a bit boomy). A hint of reverb is the only effect that I would use.
On the guitar roll off the treble.
Hope this helps.
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Welcome, antvass1963! You might, in addition to what Archtop Bill suggested, try lowering the neck pickup a bit. This may bring a little more "wood" to the tone. Also turning up your amp's volume and turning done your guitar's volume may help. I have learned that all these factors interact. It my take some experimentation to get you in the tone zone, but playing an arch-top is fun any way you slice it, so it's all good.
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A favorite trick of mine for bringing earthy wood out of the neck pickup is to lower the body of the pickup, and then raise the polepieces to taste. Especially on a solid-body, but also on a semi- it goes quite a ways to cleaning up the mud. You end up with good string-to-string definition, and retain warmth. Originally Posted by citizenk74
Assuming he's got a tube amp, this is great advice. I've owned a few SS amps, but didn't have the insight at the time to try this, so I don't have an informed opinion regarding them. But with tube amps, this is almost certainly going to improve tone. Let the power section sweat, and put the control in your right hand. Gotta be sensitive when you pick, but once you master that, the world is your oyster. Originally Posted by citizenk74
Also turning up your amp's volume and turning done your guitar's volume may help. I have learned that all these factors interact. It my take some experimentation to get you in the tone zone, but playing an arch-top is fun any way you slice it, so it's all good.Last edited by Thumpalumpacus; 08-26-2016 at 02:54 AM.
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Here's a guy who A/Bs 21 guitars. Their prices range from $100 - $3500 using mostly the neck pick up.
It's an interesting video. Click on the times before the guitar brand names to jump through the video if needed.
Last edited by West LA Jazz; 08-26-2016 at 06:19 AM.
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IMO it's all about the picking.
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A while back I got interested in the Jim Hall tone quest, specifically after hearing him on Sonny Rollins's "The Bridge" and Art Farmer's "Interaction." One of the things I realized is that he rolled off a lot less treble than I thought he did. There is still a lot of high end there. I was able to approximate his tone on my archtop- which is a carvetop with a floater, not an ES-175 with a P90- with adjustments to my picking technique. I tend to have a snappy, dig-the-pick-in approach but Jim tilts the pick for a softer attack. He also uses the amp to be able to pick softer, which warms up the tone. Of course there are also the factors of his ES-175 and his Gibson GA-50 amp; compared those recordings and, say, Bossa Antigua with Paul Desmond with his recordings made with the D'Aquisto or the Sadowsky. Those guitars have a pronouced high end "ping" on the attack that the Gibson didn't have. Originally Posted by christianm77
But then listen to Jim's first album as a leader- you could be forgiven for thinking it was Tal Farlow for the first dozen bars: bright, woody, lots of thunk and fast bebop lines. Very different from what his playing would become. Then listen to the Jim Hall Trio Live vols 2-4 CDs, which to me is one of the pinnacles of jazz guitar playing, along with the original Live album. I think the vols 2-4 are even better because the times constrictions of a vinyl album were not an issue.
As for "the jazz guitar tone," there isn't one. Compare Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, Tal Farlow, Grant Green, Johnny Smith, Kenny Burrell, Jim Hall, Joe Pass (say, Intercontinental and Virtuoso), Gene Bertoncini on nylon and archtop, Kurt Rosenwinkle, Jonathon Kreisberg, Allan Holdsworth (if you consider him jazz). Some are dark, some are bright, some do both.
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Pick near to the neck pickup (or over it), not near the bridge or bridge pickup. Makes a big difference.
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With a classical guitar with the right picking, you can have a really good jazz tone, sometimes with simple things, you can make great ones.
The sound is into your fingers.
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I play an Epiphone Dot through a Mustang, and I agree that the 65 Twin setting (with the knob settings mentioned here -- especially when it comes to rolling down the bass) is the one to use to get near the tone you're after. Others have suggested that you pick close to the neck pickup, and I've found that to be helpful, too. Originally Posted by Archtop Bill
The AF75 seems like a fine instrument. I used to have an AK95, and I regret parting with it.
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Bass to 0 Originally Posted by antvas1963
Tone to 0
Mids to 11
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