Amazing playing and jazz tone on a solid body guitar

[hans halmackenreuter]

It wasn't meant as a criticism to Mr. Sagmeister, but to the use of such backing tracks in general. I realize that it has an educational purpose, still not my cup of tea.

[Pocket Player]

Thanks guys !!!

[pingu]

His fast playing sounds great....and in pocket.

agreed .....
and really nice chords too ....
I wouldn't mind being able
to play half of that !

[MarkRhodes]

His fast playing sounds great....and in pocket.

I thought so too. He never drops the ball or drifts.

[Al_F]

Very nice!

Question, so his right hand is he picking mostly from wrist , may be even the fingers?

[Woody Sound]

who cares?!? It's just an example. He didn't release it as a commercial recording. This place can't see the forest for the trees. I'm really beginning to think the only function of jazzguitar.be is for photographing your guitar collection on the couch.

Well you did post this in the gear section...

[57classic]

His cd Conversation (2000), together with Pat Martino is one of my favorite Martino-albums.
I emailed Sagmeister once: he played his L5 on that.
The first whole-lot-of-times of listening I couldn't even hear when Pat en when Michael was playing.
Sagmeister is great, keeps up with the maestro almost like an equal.

One thing that puzzles me is that I couldn't find any reference to this album in Pat's biography.
Maybe I looked over it. Anyway, here's a song from it, a composition by Martino:

[jzucker]

Well you did post this in the gear section...

what's that got to do with putting the clip down because it was a backing track?

[jads57]

Excellent player for sure! Would love to hear him w/ a real band though.

[Woody Sound]

Neither is the continual typing/sniping that goes on in these forums where everyone types a good solo mister hackenmeister.

JAZ, sometimes I wonder if you're a J&H, or maybe just drunk once in a while. You're usually rational and well thought out, then you go and spout a childish name-calling personal attack at someone who simply stated his opinion about the backing track, with no malice toward the player. Maybe you need to take moment before you post.

[Dutchbopper]

Sagmeister is an accomplished player, no doubt about that. To state otherwise tells me more about the guys stating it than about Sagmeister. Players that can play really fast are often accused of playing "scales"or playing without "emotion." I have been reading that nonsense in jazz guitar fora for over 15 years on the internet. I have read it about Martino, Bireli, Benson, van Iterson, Oberg etc. etc. Of course these are all uninformed opinions. Basically it's the thing non jazz or inexperienced players will say.

Whenever I play fast bebop lines in my videos I sometimes get these remarks too from blues or rock players or even jazz ones. Fast = scales = no emotion = boring. I guess shredders in the Malmsteen vein get the same flak too (though probably with more reason, haha).

The simple fact is that some jazz players can execute interesting lines as well on fast tempi as slow ones. Martino, Farlow, Pass, van Iterson, van Ruller etc., the king probably being Bireli Lagrene. If you analyse what they play you will find the same intricacy or sophistication in their fast tempi as slower players have in medium or slow tempi.

Yet the "experts" often disqualify this type of fast bop playing as uninteresting "pyrotechnics" and than the compulsory addition follows that they rather listen to one note by Jim Hall (probably to underline their sophistication as jazz listeners). Of course I do not have to tell you what I think about that here.

Point is that certain players simply have faster processors built in that enables them to play the same shit faster than other players. To reduce that quality as scales or exercizes or pyrotechnics is ..... uninformed. You may not like it, but that is something completely different. Maybe your built in processor cannot catch up what is happening even (quite likely)!

Sure I hear horse shit being played on fast bop tunes by (amateur) jazz players that cannot handle fast tempi (yet). But this does not apply to guys like Sagmeister.

By the way, all the great speed masters play absolutely beautiful on ballads too (Bireli, Martino, Farlow etc.) That's because they can play.

Mmmm ... I think I want to turn this into a Blog topic.

DB

[mrcee]

Every once in a while I'll have a gf that tells me "It just sounds like you're playing scales".
Time to find a new gf.

[Dutchbopper]

Next time a blues player tells me that I play scales I will tell him that at least I know 25 while he only knows ONE that he plays over and over again. With 5 notes only.

DB

[targuit]

I think there is a lot to be valued in playing with nuance and subtlety as well as speed. Playing a bit ahead or behind the beat, triplet feel, that sort of thing. If you can do that while not just playing 'sheets of sound' eight notes that sound like scales, more power to you. Speed for its own sake becomes oppressive at least to me.

[Dutchbopper]

Speed is very much part of the bebop tradition. You can't play bebop tunes if you can't play fast. They are supposed to be fast and require fast soloing. The boppers used it as a means of expression and a tool to generate excitement and they very much liked to explore the boundaries of what was possible and there certainly was a competitive element in it. Bird often played impossibly fast lines.

From Wiki:

"Bebop or bop is a style of jazz characterized by a fast tempo, instrumental virtuosity and improvisation based on the combination of harmonic structure and sometimes references to the melody. It was developed in the early and mid-1940s. This style of jazz ultimately became synonymous with modern jazz, as either category reached a certain final maturity in the 1960s."

So yes, sometimes it was speed for its own sake (Cherokee, Oleo etc.) That was all part of the bebop game.

All my favourite players can play really fast.

DB

[destinytot]

Whenever I play fast bebop lines in my videos I sometimes get these remarks too from blues or rock players or even jazz ones.

Thank you for posting those, by the way - and please keep 'em coming!

Mmmm ... I think I want to turn this into a Blog topic.

It would be great if you did. (I'll add that it's a topic that left Sean Levitt marginalised and demoralised.)

[Dutchbopper]

Someone actually dared to marginalise Sean Levitt? SEAN LEVITT?

DB

[mrcee]

Jim Hall could play fast if he wanted to. So could Paul Desmond and he said that if he practiced a lot that he started playing too fast. Fast is one of the many facets of jazz. Not the only one, but if a person can't handle it they should maybe start looking around for another style of music.

[Flat]

The playing in the fast sections is not very expressive or dynamic, in my opinion... It's also unclear what prompts him to switch from playing slow to playing fast. Is it something in the song? The connection with the song is not very strong.

Of course, 'different strokes.. etc'.

Dizzy, I wanted to say pretty much what you said, but frankly I was afraid to until you went first.

I'm not nearly a good enough player to critique a guy who plays so very well -- no doubt about it.

But as a listener I have to admit that I found all the fast sections utterly uninteresting. Like he's showing me how fast he can play. My mind just tuned out in those spaces. Yeah, he knows his scales, and yeah, he's nimble and quick as a lick and still clean.

But to my ears, those parts were all technical and not in service of the music. Like a poet who's talking too fast to sound like poetry. Or like a great player teaching a class in how to drop in and out of double time (which could be a great and valuable lesson).

All the other parts were absolutely delightful and very musical and very cool indeed. And yeah, a really sweet jazz tone on a solid body Yamaha, absolutely.

All imho, ymmv, and have a nice day.

[destinytot]

Someone actually dared to marginalise Sean Levitt? SEAN LEVITT?

DB

Yes, they did (but I won't pretend to be objective about it).

PS All I'll say here is... "Follow the money."

[Encinitastubes]

I think speed gets a lot of flack in the guitar world because some fast players lack in the subtlety department while some subtle guitar players lack in the technique department. With other instruments, speed and subtlety are more part of the overall technique. I think one of the problems with guitar is that it's just so hard to play. Scales lay out nicely while arpeggios and larger intervallic jumps that are more evident in other instruments are not so simple. Consequently, a lot of guitarists get caught up in practicing scalurar runs.

Getting back to the guitar, amp and gizmo part of the thread, does anyone else hear a bit of compression? It could be the recording, but I'm hearing it somewhere.

[mrcee]

I think that we need to keep in mind that these were not performance videos. If they were than I stand corrected.
But all that I need to know about this guy is the cut with Martino. Brilliant.

[mr. beaumont]

Jeez, it's a guy burning over a backing track. Some of you all are acting like this is a recording from an album being touted as "the greatest guitar record of our time" and that you feel the need to debunk it. Petty.


If I've learned one thing about guitar players, it's that the ones who speak up the loudest to criticize fast playing usually can't play fast.

[Dutchbopper]

"When I hear X play so fast, *I* the listener, don't feel the emotions I like to feel when hearing jazz, so it puts me off." You can't argue with that, though it would remove the temptation to argue if it was stated that way in the fist place....

Excitement is an emotion too. It's different from sadness or beauty.

Whenever I hear a wannabe SRV wailing on the blues with long notes being bent all over the place I generally experience the emotion of boredom. But that's probably not the emotion the guy is aiming at

DB

[targuit]

Joe Pass certainly could play fast, yet in his An Evening With Joe Pass DVD, he remarks, paraphrasing," I used to like to play fast. I don't like it as much any more!" with his playful dry wit. Joe could burn, but he could play ballads, too.