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Nice guitar... and nice thread you started, sir. Thanks!
Originally Posted by [email protected]
I am no pro, just a 69 y.o. aficionado. Books I use in my daily practice for dexterity and muscle memory: David Baker's How To Play Bebop (volumes 1, 2 and 3) and Improvisational Patterns-The Bebop Era. Also Jerry Coker's Elements of The Jazz Language For The Developing Improvisor.
This video brought me happy memories. Thanks again.
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02-04-2022 05:54 PM
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Fellow (ex) Angeleno here. I was active down there in things like commercials, movie trailers etc, and have now defected to Nocal. Retired and brushing up on my jazz chops! Originally Posted by [email protected]
Since you know theory, you might start by playing the scales in two octaves starting on the 6th string and beginning on the 1st, 2nd and 4th fingers. The 3rd is useful for some scales too but I think less widely used. Also two octave arpeggios (1 3 5 7) and maybe 1 3 5 7 9 11 13.
Also 1 1/2 octave scales starting on the 5th. string. A bit of that will get the fingers going. Start with major, and after that, move on to the other scale types (minor, melodic minor, harmonic minor, and modes) and then pentatonic scales.
Chords: What I did was all basic 4 note chord types, 4 inversions, all group of strings. You can start with 6 4 3 2, then move the 6 string note to the first string , so 4 3 21, and see how it goes.
At the same time, start playing some jazz standards, figuring out progressions, melodies and copping some solos. Maybe some chord melody arrangements if you can find them or by ear.
What I just described is how I learned, from a teacher named Harry Leahey in NJ, and he studied with Dennis Sandole, in Philly, who also taught Coltrane and I believe Pat Martino.
Needless to say, this is rigorous and takes a long time! Might be better to look for one of your LA session mates to help you get on a schedule. Good luck!
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Along with Bernard Pfeiffer, the Sandole brothers (Dennis and Adolph) were the center of jazz education in Philadelphia and the civilized world for decades after WW II. Dennis taught Harry Leahey, Pat Martino, Jim Hall, Joe DiOrio, Joe Federico, Benny Golson, Michael Brecker, Chuck Anderson, Coltrane, and a host of others I can't remember right now. You couldn't become a student of either of the Sandoles unless you were already a stellar musician. Both Sandoles played with major bands in their day, including Charlie Barnet, Tommy Dorsey, and Ray McKinley. Dennis was one of the finest guitarists in history. He was in the best studio bands of his day, recording for Sinatra, Billie Holiday, and many other great artists. He was also on many major movie soundtracks. I regret to this day that I let graduate school keep me from trying to secure a place as one of his students (assuming he would even have considered me). Originally Posted by bluejaybill
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Yes, Harry suggested that I go down and study with him, but I never quite got up the nerve! He was a bit intimidating. And quirky, as well as a bit of an evangelist for whatever religion he was a part of! Another one of his students once told me that you had to leave his fee on the piano, he didn't want to take it from you directly! But these stories may all be myth, he cast quite a large shadow at that time. I knew several folks who studied with him. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
I had no idea that he was a session player, and have never heard any recordings by him either. But supposedly he was phenomenal at theory and applying it to the guitar by all accounts.
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He was a bit quirky, for sure. But he and his brother both knew and taught music like few others. One of the players in the office for which I played in the '60s and '70s was a student of Sandole who played trumpet. He told me that the way Sandole taught him to develop his embouchure was to suspend his trumpet from the ceiling with wires and have him play it with his hands clasped behind his back. Originally Posted by bluejaybill
Last edited by nevershouldhavesoldit; 02-05-2022 at 09:08 AM.
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Are there any recordings of Sandole’s guitar playing in a small band or solo context? I was always curious.
one of the few foundational jazz edu gurus who wasn’t first and foremost a pianist. Sounds like he had a very interesting approach…. Always keen to hear more. Seems like this guy was talking about serial concepts and Indian Ragas as far back as the swing era…
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Interesting composer too.
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I'm glad Pat Martino learned from Dennis Sandole but I'm also glad Neil Levang didn't.
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Pat Martino is slightly negative about Sandole in his autobiography, he says he was having trouble with strings breaking (due to his heavy right-hand picking technique), and Sandole convinced him to change his picking approach, since it was at fault (according to Sandole).
Pat spent months of frustration trying to get used to the new approach, then finally abandoned it and solved the problem for himself by using heavier strings. He implies that Sandole was unable to see the problem from Pat’s perspective. (He also says Sandole had stopped playing the guitar by this time.)
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That doesn't surprise me at all. Many teachers with top shelf knowledge, skill and experience are a bit self-obsessed (to be polite). So they're most effective, and sometimes only effective, with students who respond to their teaching style and can tolerate or ignore their personalities and quirks. This is why I said in an earlier post that "[f]inding a good teacher who's on your emotional and musical wavelength is almost certainly the best way for most people to do it. I hated my piano teacher - she was a rigid musical fundamentalist who tolerated no improvisation and (I suspect) had absolutely no funk or swing in her entire body." She also thought she was always correct and that her students should play, hear, and feel music exactly as she did. Originally Posted by grahambop
Such teachers can't go with the flow - if they don't like yours, they build a dam to stop it when they might do better to help you to modify yours and/or navigate it with more efficiency, skill and grace. They leave you no choice but to go in the direction they choose for you. Such people are often best described with anatomic allusions and epithets.
Last edited by nevershouldhavesoldit; 02-06-2022 at 08:32 AM.
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Inspired teachers don't necessarily have great teaching chops.
So, you can teach teaching technique like instrumental technique, BTW. Some teachers are gifted, but they don't have chops. A bit like how Django was a brilliant guitar player and couldn't read a note.
So I get the impression I'm a good teacher in this technical way, in that I have decent technique. I've had training and I do the things good teachers do; I reflect and improve, I ask lots of questions of the student rather than make students, I centre the student's needs, use psychology in a constructive way and do all the other stuff they tell you to do at 'how to teach music' college. I get my lessons observed and my supervisors go 'this matches up with my conception of good teaching that I learned at college.'
TBF it actually works. I make lessons fun. I don't often have to nag students to practice, etc etc.
But this is not the type of stuff we are talking about here. That is not the world these guys belonged to, and obviously I'm not a Dennis Sandole or a Tristano. Or Barry Harris. These guys were shaping the music, they had their own thing, and that was that. They were top level musicians who had a take. A unique conception of music backed up with a track record playing with the best musicians in the world and so on. Students would take what they needed from figures like this.
(OTOH people would take a hand in their own learning; it was probably less spoon fed than a lot of modern education, at least judging from accounts like Paul Berliner's)
I would say this as a teacher; one's own experiences, preferences or for that matter the way you were taught are not the be all and end all of what you can teach to students. In the end, it's more interesting to me to explore with a student than to impose a concept.
(This seems to be more the way Jim Hall taught.)
But there's a lot of ways to do things.
Also the world has changed. When Sandole was teaching that might have been the only place to get the info. Now the info is easy to get; the teacher's role has shifted...Last edited by Christian Miller; 02-05-2022 at 07:21 PM.
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Wow.... lots of advise... I would tell the op you already play an instrument and know music. Practice the mechanics till what you hear is reached by your fingers naturally. I think being able to articulate your own thoughts is a better use of time than copying someone else's.
I watched Laurence Welk as a kid too for the moments when he'd let people showcase, your dad was great. Perfect guitar to start with.
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I believe I spotted Neil LeVang playing this guitar in the Welk "Salute to Frank Sinatra" episode (Nov. 4, 1978). You can see it here (fast forward to 29:45). Nice coincidence, that it showed up on this week's episode. Originally Posted by [email protected]
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Just want to say I came to be a huge fan of your dads at a much later age in my life. I realized that he was a true guitar hero in every sense of the phrase.
I loved Vintage Guitar article and how he navigated the waters of working with Lawrence Welk. If there was anyone I could have taken a music and business lesson from on guitar your dad was it!
Last edited by jads57; 02-07-2022 at 09:05 PM.
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Didn't Howard Roberts used to play a blond Gibson oval hole?
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I don't remember ever seeing one in natural, but his "signature" Gibson (and Epiphone) was an oval hole. I think Gibson only made them for a few years, with epi picking up the concept about a decade later. Originally Posted by Victor Saumarez
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Perhaps I'm muddling him up with Howard Alden? Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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yeah, he had one as did Alden, forum member MartyGrass has one too. Originally Posted by Victor Saumarez
I had a sunburst one a long time ago.
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Here's the one from MartyGrass
Gibson Howard Roberts Revival
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Other way around. Epiphone first (standard and custom) with carved top, then Gibson with laminate.I think Gibson only made them for a few years, with epi picking up the concept about a decade later.
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correct, but then Epi reintro'd them w/lam bodies Originally Posted by stevo58
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there was a cool solid body on the Saturday episode but I didn’t catch the name of the song. The guy even got to stand up Originally Posted by losaltosjoe
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I guess that's true if you want to consider Epiphone to have been a different manufacturer from Gibson in the '60s. But those 1960s HRs were built by Gibson in Kalamazoo and were basically L4Cs with big holes in the top and Epiphone logos. The later Epiphone HRs were made by Samick and (at least to me) are not at all the same guitar and were nowhere near as nice as the originals. Technically, my statement that "Gibson only made them for a few years" is correct. They made them, but they then sold them as Epiphones. Originally Posted by stevo58
I remember being wow'ed by one that I got to play at Wurlitzer in Boston while I was in college in the mid-'60s. The acoustic sound was soooo much nicer than my 175DN's - but I didn't care about that very much because Wes played a 175 and so did I
. Even worse, I thought that the hole looked silly. Like I've said before, we grow old too soon and smart too late.
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Howard Alden played a Howard Roberts model for some years, then fell in with George Van Eps and got Benedetto to build him a 7-string similar to it, with an oval hole, and played that for many years. I think he may have retired it recently, but I'd bet he still has it even though he's been playing a newer Benedetto lately. I had thought the blonde HR was a Gibson, but looking at videos more closely, it appears to be an Epiphone.
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