Advice on Improving / Increasing Speed/Chops in Jazz

[rpjazzguitar]

Getting economy in time is quite challenging and something I have to work on daily to keep up. Lots of practice with drum loops to really lock in the time feel that I want, and some days its working better than others. But I do feel like after...idk 4-5 years of deliberately choosing and practicing economy picking I have a good level of consistency with it.

The string changing thing is interesting as it touches on something I've been thinking about recently, which is that economy picking and alternate picking really aren't opposed techniques, but are on a spectrum with each other. Economy picking is just a rule that says whenever you can change strings with a sweep, do it, but it doesn't necessitate that you always have to change strings with a sweep. Wherever you can't, alternate picking rules are still in effect. That's where the rearranging the left hand comes in; Gambale's breakthrough was that he systematically rearranges the left hand to eliminate as many alternate string changes as possible (though even he doesn't do this 100%, because it's not really possible). Guys like Adam Rogers really don't do this; his left hand is governed by one finger per fret classical technique, with minimal stretches. He uses economy as much as feasible it seems, but he also uses a lot of slides. Some of his really cool, very chromatic descending lines are 4 nps, economy picked with a slide.

I embraced the Gambale thing of rearranging the left hand to get as many sweeps as possible, and I still practice a lot of things that way. In improvisational scenarios, I have increasingly been less strict on that; I'm probably 80% strict economy, 20% some alternate string changes and slides. For whatever reason I don't find myself string changing a lot, but when I do it's likely USX, as that's what my alternate picking technique gravitates towards.

Warren Nunes taught what he call "speed technique" which involved changing the left hand fingering to accommodate the picking. He was mostly an alternating picker.

Chuck Wayne's fingerings did the same thing, in a different way. He was a sweep picker.

I haven't studied Gambale, so I'm not commenting on his contribution.

[pauln]

I will try and post a vid later and yes I said I struggled at tempos above 100 bpm playing triplets, i.e. 300 nps.

I am currently doing 16th on a single string and it gets sloppy around the 70-80 bpm.

Eighth triplets at 100 bpm is 5 nps
300 notes per second would be a slightly sharp Eb 4
16ths at 80 bpm is 5.3 nps

Try this... do the tremolo test thinking in triplets emphasizing the first of each triplet.
That means thinking of those first triplet strokes as "down up down up", but what's
happening is "down-up-down up-down-up..." This will let your mind go faster to see
how much faster your hands can go. I'll bet you can hit 8 nps.

[Christian Miller]

I still reckon Monder uses his elbow more than you guys are letting on. But whatever.

I agree with Brent about circular picking, though I don't call it that. I was inspired by seeing Pasquale Grasso demonstrating briefly a tremolo with that picking motion on his My Music Masterclass video.

Monder studied with Chuck Wayne. This is how he learned to pick because that's how all of his students learned to pick. (CW students didn't get a choice in that I gather) PMB posted this.

CW Picking JJG.pdf

You can see that Monder and Jack Wilkin's right hand techniques are basically identical.

[Christian Miller]

Rest of the thread here
Chuck Wayne Picking

[charlieparker]

Here it is! Me stumbling to play 16th notes at around 75 bpm. In the end, I just do a tremolo by locking the wrist which is a completely different technique.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Wzg9mzUd8GU

[charlieparker]

You might not believe it, but I struggled a lot like this for most of my guitar playing life (1999 to 2024). I played with a bizarre Frankenstein combination of wrist, forearm, and elbow. I thought alternate picking was the way to go because of Guthrie Govan. He also advised players not to use circular picking because of some perceived inefficiency, too.

In order to fix my playing, I then messed around with Troy Grady's DSX picking in 2023 for a bit, but realised it was still alternate picking.

I finally picked up circular picking in Feb 2024, messed around with it for 9 months. Got it together somewhat and started going to jazz jams in Nov 2024.

--------------------

Edit: Here's something I wrote in another thread that may or may not be useful:

One - When I changed to this picking style, it forced me to adjust how/where I positioned the guitar. This was to ensure two things: A) that the angle of the pick hitting the strings was right, and B) how my right hand/forearm rested on the guitar felt right. I took a lot of cues from Pasquale Grasso, who plays the instrument in a classical position/posture. I tried to copy that, and now my guitar body is right in front of my chest facing the audience. (Yes, it is that high and that front-facing.) This has helped with not just my pick angle and right hand/forearm placement, but it has kept my shoulders down, relaxed, and tension-free.

Two - My guitar neck is at an angle that is really steep, almost like how a banjoist would hold up a banjo. (It looks like a clock-hand in between 1 o'clock and 2 o'clock from the perspective of the audience.) This has helped my wrists always be straight and relaxed.

Three - With respect to my left fretting hand, my thumb never presses into the neck and, there is absolutely zero tension. It is placed so lightly on the neck that it feels like it's almost going to fall off. I rarely wrap my thumb around the neck unless I'm going for one of those large six-string Barney Kessel chords. My fingers don't follow the typical classical position where they are parallel with the fret wires; they are tilted at an angle of about 35-45 degrees. My touch is extremely light, which is due to the position of the guitar.

Four - I play a cheap strat copy with a small C neck and regular 10-46 gauge strings. The action is as low as humanly possible without causing buzz. I love my archtop and flats, but I'm a pussycat and like playing manageable guitars/strings that don't contribute to anymore repetitive strain injuries or tendonitis.

Five - I think note/chord choice also has an impact on how much strain you'd feel. If you're doing lots of chord melody, I think that increases tension in your fretting hand dramatically. For me, I don't do much chord melody. When I'm playing chords/comping, I mostly use the D and G strings. I play minimal harmonies, but I've kinda adapted Barry Harris scales of chords into a two-note system on the D and G strings to create movement and some illusion of playing many chords. They happen to be easy to play too, which is great for not straining the left hand.

The combination of the above has not just allowed me to play continuously for long hours without break, but I'm also able to play stretchy-ier lines/chords without too much difficulty when I need to.Hope this was useful.

Not to dismiss circular picking but I don't know too many players that I am really into it. Kenny Burrell is one, I think. Of the players I prefer, it seems that they mostly use Benson picking or Gypsy picking.

[James W]

Here it is! Me stumbling to play 16th notes at around 75 bpm. In the end, I just do a tremolo by locking the wrist which is a completely different technique.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Wzg9mzUd8GU

Hmm you say locking the wrist but it does look like your wrist moves when you change to a fast tremolo. Probably a mix of elbow and wrist.

If you were my student I would advise you to keep practising the tremolo and sixteenth note funk strumming at faster speeds such as 100, 130+BPM.

I think the strumming is useful if done with a loose wrist because it can be a good way of getting wrist motion going - but it doesn't matter if the movement is coupled with some elbow motion.

Personally thumb+finger motion has worked for me, what Brent calls circular picking, but you can use this motion to alternate pick though I do economy pick. But as I said before, things only opened up once I could smoothly tremolo on one string with the thumb+finger motion. There is a knack to it that you discover only experimenting at higher tempos. I could post a video later demonstrating it if you like?

[James W]

So here's my demo. Sixteenth notes at 160 BPM. I've been doing this for about 6 months so it's not dialled in yet.

Tremolo at 160 BPM - YouTube

[GuyBoden]

Speed in jazz may, at first be an objective in itself, but to approach it as such, as an objective in itself, especially on the guitar, can be a distracting, if not self defeating pursuit if that's your focus.
The impressive linearity associated with jazz performance is part kinesthetics (finger facility) and to a much greater degree, conceptual and linear control of melody, which is, by the nature of the music, infinitely varied through melodic integrity and an intimate knowledge of embellishments, ornaments, harmonic transformation, sequencing, motific development... and that's just for starters.
Jazz musicians don't necessarily play for speed, but to do justice to the the speed at which they can create musical statements. So it's not a matter of mastering a finite set of "licks" or elaborate lines, but rather it's a matter of being able to articulately play an infinite set of combinations with grace and feeling.

Of course to do this, you do need mastery of building blocks, that then allows you to form them into an arc and real time composition in the moment. THAT, you can't work out ahead of time.

Speed in improvisation takes being able to think clearly and with control. To play fast, start by thinking slow, play slow and be clear with what you're doing, where you're going and what lies ahead...with intention. That can be the opposite of the louder,faster,higher approach of rock.

Learn to play with control to create clarity in the line. Learn the sets of embellishment and linear tools (Oliver Nelson's Patterns of Improvisation, Ted Dunbar's A Stytem of Tonal Convergence for Improvisors Composers and Arrangers, David Baker's Techniques of Improvisation (many volumes of this relentless work), Maury Deutsch's books on melodic rhythms... these were all really helpful for me).
Learn to use these possibilities, learn to HEAR slowly and work your way up. Learn to hear complex harmony before you try to imitate chromatic lines, and be patient. There is no fast track to thinking fast in jazz.

Playing slow will make you address the ways around the fingerboard that will free you from clichés of habitual nonsense licks.

Listen to a lot of jazz and know what they're doing... not just the guitarist, but the horn, the piano, the bass. In jazz, you're not merely a soloist but one voice talking a complex and cooperative language in a conversation. It takes TIME to understand this. Until you do, you're not even walking, you're just running in place until you exhaust yourself and your listener.

[James W]

Monder studied with Chuck Wayne. This is how he learned to pick because that's how all of his students learned to pick. (CW students didn't get a choice in that I gather) PMB posted this.

CW Picking JJG.pdf

You can see that Monder and Jack Wilkin's right hand techniques are basically identical.

Ok I'll take your word for it, despite what I can see.

But my original point stands - elbow motion is a perfectly legitimate picking motion.

[charlieparker]

So here's my demo. Sixteenth notes at 160 BPM. I've been doing this for about 6 months so it's not dialled in yet.

Tremolo at 160 BPM - YouTube

Interesting that you are using circular picking, also. Looks pretty efficient. Maybe more people use it than I realize.

[CliffR]

Here it is! Me stumbling to play 16th notes at around 75 bpm. In the end, I just do a tremolo by locking the wrist which is a completely different technique.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Wzg9mzUd8GU

What about if you switch off the metronome and just pick as fast you can, but from the wrist as you're doing for most of this video? Maybe try making smaller motions, and also with the pick making a very shallow contact with the string.

[James W]

Interesting that you are using circular picking, also. Looks pretty efficient. Maybe more people use it than I realize.

Thanks. Yeah it's more common than people might imagine. Brent gave a link to the circular picking thread, check it out. There are also a few videos on Troy Grady's Pickslanting Primer (which is on his website) that will be of interest, one about finger motion itself and another about how jazzers pick. People like Allan Holdsworth, John Scofield and Emily Remler used this motion...

[James W]

Monder studied with Chuck Wayne. This is how he learned to pick because that's how all of his students learned to pick. (CW students didn't get a choice in that I gather) PMB posted this.

CW Picking JJG.pdf

You can see that Monder and Jack Wilkin's right hand techniques are basically identical.

Ok, I've read most of this article now. (Just for the record). All good - except, if I didn't know better, I would be confused by the mention of 'consecutive' picking rather than alternate, that is, how Chuck Wayne would use two consecutive downstrokes or upstrokes, which would appear to be totally illogical if I didn't know that the guy must be referring to string crossing. As such, not a very beginner-friendly article.

[Christian Miller]

Ok, I've read most of this article now. (Just for the record). All good - except, if I didn't know better, I would be confused by the mention of 'consecutive' picking rather than alternate, that is, how Chuck Wayne would use two consecutive downstrokes or upstrokes, which would appear to be totally illogical if I didn't know that the guy must be referring to string crossing. As such, not a very beginner-friendly article.

The older players didn’t have this terminology. Even Gambale referred to his technique as “speed picking” in the 80s. Chuck Wayne is often credited as the originator of what he today call economy picking, but it’s fair to say it has been independently discovered by other players.

But the specific refinements that differentiate CW picking are explain quite well in the article I think.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[TF]

I remember reading an interview with Donald Fagen where he said that he wanted to become a jazz artist when he was young, but he couldn't play fast enough. So he took a different path.

Of all the aspects of music that might connect with a general audience, speed is low on the list. When my wife hears (a famous speedy virtuoso guitarist), she makes a face like she ate a bad pickle. She is not alone.

However, if you find yourself jamming with a group of young eager-beaver sax players just out of music school, then yes, speed is very important.

[AllanAllen]

I remember reading an interview with Donald Fagen where he said that he wanted to become a jazz artist when he was young, but he couldn't play fast enough. So he took a different path.

Of all the aspects of music that might connect with a general audience, speed is low on the list. When my wife hears John McLaughlin, she makes a face like she ate a bad pickle. She is not alone.

However, if you find yourself jamming with a group of young eager-beaver sax players just out of music school, then yes, speed is very important.

Of you go up at a jam and are the guy who plays tasteful 8th notes after 12 choruses of horn players ripping it up. You’ll be the one who shines.

[PMB]

Ok, I've read most of this article now. (Just for the record). All good - except, if I didn't know better, I would be confused by the mention of 'consecutive' picking rather than alternate, that is, how Chuck Wayne would use two consecutive downstrokes or upstrokes, which would appear to be totally illogical if I didn't know that the guy must be referring to string crossing. As such, not a very beginner-friendly article.

Yes, that's a little confusing. Chuck Wayne actually described his technique as 'consecutive-alternate'. He would alternate pick in passages with an even number of notes per string but keep picking in the same direction (consecutive) when moving from a string where an odd number of notes occurred. Unlike Joe Pass and Gypsy pickers, this pattern would be followed whether moving in a general upwards (towards to lower 'E' string) or downwards (towards to higher 'E' string) direction. He was one of the first guitarists to play 3nps string scales to the keep these actions consistent and also to facilitate slurring and bursts of speed.

As Christian suggested, other players of Chuck's generation like Philadelphian Joe Sgro were thinking along the same lines (much like Leibniz and Newton independently inventing calculus). In CW's case, it was seeing Charlie Parker in a nightclub performance that prompted the change.

[PMB]

Joe Sgro:

[DawgBone]

Of you go up at a jam and are the guy who plays tasteful 8th notes after 12 choruses of horn players ripping it up. You’ll be the one who shines.

100%, this should be repeated again. Winning with less work. It's all about the phrasing and swing of the notes anyways and speed does not usually deliver as hard in that department if only because it is happening to fast for most listeners to digest. Shredding after another shredder without at least building it up first is being musically deaf.

[James W]

When I wrote my comment earlier in this thread, I excluded the following text (and kept it somewhere temporarily).

----

Zooming out, knowing how difficult it can be to play jazz guitar, sometimes I wonder about these things:

How do I navigate this music?
How much do I improvise?
Improvise with the melody?
Improvise with the bop idiom?
How much rhythms to add?
When do I play?
How do I play?
What do I play?

These 'philosophical' questions could help you decide which techniques to develop or not develop, and how much speed you need or not need.

Here are the changes I noticed in my favourite musicians on fast tunes:

Early in his 1920s career, Louis Armstrong played virtuosically. Not shreddy like a rocker or a bebopper, note-y enough. By the 1930s and in the big band era, he changed his playing quite significantly. He stopped playing too many notes and would play only a few that would soar and float above everything (using a tonne of half note triplets, hemiolas, and quarter note triplets).

On the other hand, Frankie Trumbauer played with so many bends in the 1920s you'd think he was a guitar player. By the 1930s, he played fewer bends but even more notes and even faster – practically shredding triads up and down!

Pre-WW2 Prez didn't rely on too many licks, and he was really focused on asymmetry of rhythms. Post-WW2 Prez relied heavily on linear licks (do-re-mi-fa-sol style), the mordent ornaments, and honking one-note rhythms.

I'm guessing that these guys had a change in a musical philosophy, and therefore a change in their playing, technique, and ultimately speed. Perhaps check out some of your favourite players and see how they changed? That could be an inspiration to what kind of technique/chops you need and how much.

Regarding Armstrong, it may have had something to do with his technique that led to the change in style. Something to do with his embouchure which wasn't quite the correct way?

[pauln]

How do I navigate this music?
If I understand the question (which I might not), I hold the tune in my mind as "how it goes" meaning only how it sounds. However this thing I hold is not a linear "step by step" through the progression harmony as usually represented as written on paper nor memorized as a sequence of changes. To me "how it goes" feels like it is represented as rotations in a space of chord types' sounds.

Imagine the type ball has chord symbols instead of a character set; the sequence of rotations presenting the ball's chord types in order for the tune is "how it goes".
Now imagine that the ball is a collection of not chord type symbols but is a collection of the way they phenomenologically sound, that is closest to the internal feeling. Every change of harmony is a geometrical movement within a space of sound.
The more I read that back the stranger it sounds... still my best sense of it.

How much do I improvise?
In a trio, almost continually, intros, chords, melody, solos proper, comping, endings

Improvise with the melody?
Of course

Improvise with the bop idiom
Unless swing, blues, gypsy, fusion, chord melody is advised (see What? below)

How much rhythms to add?
Rhythm is functional, foundational, a given; integral, not additive

When do I play?
In a trio, pretty much almost all the time in various ways

How do I play?
By ear, aural intuition, exclusively. No books, charts, lead sheets
I play "barefoot"; clean no pedals

What do I play?
Jazz from 30s to 60s, some Latin, popular, a dozen tunes I've composed. For individual tunes, I gauge the audience, use my musical judgement, and go for the best balance of authenticity, appropriateness, and allure (the Jazz versions of the ancient trancendentals of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty)

[sully75]

I'm just starting to dig into the Troy Grady stuff but I watched the whole Pickslanting Primer just now and it's very helpful. I found the whole thing a bit cheesy and I have zero interest in metal music but ultimately picking notes on the string is not genre specific.

I'm really interested in the Antigravity Idea (as far as I understand it). Mostly downward pickslanting but upwards when needed. I've been doing pretty strict gypsy picking for a couple years and this seems like something I can adapt to.

[James W]

I'm just starting to dig into the Troy Grady stuff but I watched the whole Pickslanting Primer just now and it's very helpful. I found the whole thing a bit cheesy and I have zero interest in metal music but ultimately picking notes on the string is not genre specific.

I'm really interested in the Antigravity Idea (as far as I understand it). Mostly downward pickslanting but upwards when needed. I've been doing pretty strict gypsy picking for a couple years and this seems like something I can adapt to.

It's good that you're finding the Grady stuff useful.

I subscribed to your youtube channel and had noticed you're a downward pickslanter.

[sully75]

It's good that you're finding the Grady stuff useful.

I subscribed to your youtube channel and had noticed you're a downward pickslanter.

I've been working on more or less pure gypsy jazz picking for a couple of years. I am not fast, but the motion feels natural to me. But it does limit the way you can play a lot of things, so I would like something that I can add to it.