Poll: How Fast Are You?

[West LA Jazz]

Not to harp on this song... I just ran into this link as I search for ways to get me ready to play this tune.

Read the description and history of CHEROKEE. Bill Cosby is hilarious. Cherokee will make you freeze!!! ;-))

http://www.learnjazzstandards.com/ja...nals/cherokee/

[Scott Jones]

I've never actually clocked it, but I play as fast as I need to play to clearly communicate my ideas in whatever context I'm playing.

[johnny67]

Playing fast guitar does not impress me in any way. Hearing music and having a melody stuck in my head afterwards impresses me.

[jzucker]

Scott Jones is a fabulous player. I'd love to be able to play on this level. We should be supporting players like Scott who are out there doing it as opposed to the typical jazzguitar.be stalkers who don't contribute anything other than continual bags of hot air.

Even if there was something to critique about Scott's playing, unless he asks you for it, I fail to see the point of it.

Now granted, there are guys on this board giving lessons and giving away arrangements of their solo pieces that are student level players. If you want to level some criticism, start with them instead of a guy who has dedicated his life to creative music.

[Scott Jones]

Thanks Jack, I appreciate your kind words brother, but it's cool man.

Rich seems like a straight forward cat with some mad skill accompanied by strong opinions. I don't expect to be above criticism, but it was a bit out of left field, I guess, seeing as my post was neither claiming anything or boasting, nor was I necessarily seeking critique...but hey it's the internet. It comes with the territory.

I've managed to play, compose, arrange, music direct, orchestrate full time for the past quarter century with a singular goal: to do my best for the overall good of any situation with which I've been entrusted and get better, all the while fully supporting my family. I must be doing something right.

[ecj]

Thanks Jack, I appreciate your kind words brother, but it's cool man.

Rich seems like a straight forward cat with some mad skill accompanied by strong opinions. I don't expect to be above criticism, but it was a bit out of left field, I guess, seeing as my post was neither claiming anything or boasting, nor was I necessarily seeking critique...but hey it's the internet. It comes with the territory.

I've managed to play, compose, arrange, music direct, orchestrate full time for the past quarter century with a singular goal: to do my best for the overall good of any situation with which I've been entrusted and get better, all the while fully supporting my family. I must be doing something right.

Good for you, Scott. And great playing. You sound more than good to me.

[West LA Jazz]

Thanks for your input! Coming from such a masterful player as yourself, I always appreciate those kinds of insights! Anyone with the balls to bust Russell Malone's chops, can bust mine anytime!

I am relatively new to this forum compared to the some of you gents and I assume ladies.

Not to step into a hornet's nest. I only discovered Russell Malone a few years ago even though he's been around for ages. Even though he's had a couple of solo outings (that I know of), I gather he is mostly a first call sideman to some really top level players including Elvis Costello's wife... Diana Krall.

Russell Malone is a pretty impressive player to me so ....

This is the 2nd time I've heard of someone here busting a pro level player's chops here.

My two questions...

A: What about Russell's playing doesn't said ball buster dislike? I'm not naming names because I wasn't part of the conversation.

B: Is said ball buster of Russell Malone a pro level player or a hobbyist who plays at pro levels?


PS: There are numerous clips of Russell Malone talking about advice her received from Jazz legends like Jimmy Smith (who humiliated a young Russell Malone and admonished him for not playing what the music called for) and Kenny Burrell who I think gave advice along those lines also.


PPS: Scott your stuff rocks the house. Keep on trucking!

[Scott Jones]

I am relatively new to this forum compared to the some of you gents and I assume ladies.

Not to step into a hornet's nest. I only discovered Russell Malone a few years ago even though he's been around for ages. Even though he's had a couple of solo outings (that I know of), I gather he is mostly a first call sideman to some really top level players including Elvis Costello's wife... Diana Krall.

Russell Malone is a pretty impressive player to me so ....

This is the 2nd time I've heard of someone here busting a pro level player's chops here.

My two questions...

A: What about Russell's playing doesn't said ball buster dislike? I'm not naming names because I wasn't part of the conversation.

B: Is said ball buster of Russell Malone a pro level player or a hobbyist who plays at pro levels?


PS: There are numerous clips of Russell Malone talking about advice her received from Jazz legends like Jimmy Smith (who humiliated a young Russell Malone and admonished him for not playing what the music called for) and Kenny Burrell who I think gave advice along those lines also.


PPS: Scott your stuff rocks the house. Keep on trucking!

Thanks!

My reply was to say that if someone will disparage someone like Malone, they will feel comfortable doing it to anyone.
At the end of the day, everyone has a right to their opinions. I just wish tact was a part of it. Other than that. I do not care.

[Stevebol]

Re: Wynton Marsalis clip, I can't remember when/ if I witnessed this level of technical competency, on any instrument.

Clifford Brown. Best sound I ever heard in jazz. Lot's of guys are fast but he had a perfect tone too.

[Lionelsax]

Guy works his way up to 16th notes at 600 bpm (at 5:22), playing "Flight of the Bumblebee". Owned!

When a guitar sounds like a Game Boy !!! Great performance, great timing.

[MarkRhodes]

You need one more voting button: "Does it really matter?"

I don't know how much it matters how fast one can play 16th notes cleanly. But I do know two things.

First, playing fast is central to jazz (-lots of classic swing tunes are above 200 bpm and some bop tunes push closer to, and past, 300 bpm). That's fast. If you can't play that fast, you have to sit out on those tunes.

Second, it is good to be able to play things faster than performance tempo because you're not always at your best and need a cushion. (If you can play a bop tune cleanly at 350, you're not going to have a problem handling it live at 320, even if you're not at your best.)

Piano players and sax players seem to have an easier time playing fast than do guitar players. Jimmy Bruno has talked about changing his picking so that he could handle fast bop heads / lines on the guitar. Other guitar players too have worked hard to figure out ways to hang at fast tempos on the guitar. For players such as John Scofield, who has admitted his right hand isn't as swift and sure as he would like, this meant developing a legato style with slurs and such. Conversely, many players whose style---Gypsy jazz, for example---requires top-flight right hand technique, have worked like dogs to develop it.

I think being able to play fast, really fast and clean, is important to this guy:

[West LA Jazz]

Let's face it, playing fast WHEN NEEDED is very important (Bebop etc). And we aren't even talking about classical music..yet or ever.

Now it takes HOURS of practice to acquire "chops" so most players who say it's not important actually mean to say that it's not important to the tunes they chose to play.

Scofield sitting in with a top flight bee bop group would have to resort to playing quarter and 8th notes.
I'm sure he'll sound nice but he won't be spewing notes as fast as say Benson or some of those other cats.

There's no need for speed if all you want to do is play jazz ballads and do so very very effectively.

It's ALL good!

[MarkRhodes]

There's no need for speed if all you want to do is play jazz ballads and do so very very effectively.

It's ALL good!

This may be true, though several players have commented that playing well on a slow blues is a great challenge because of the mix of fast and slow phrases. (That is, at 60 bpm, you will play eighths and sixteenths, some thirty-seconds, half-notes here and there- and you can be more daring in how you play around the beat, whereas on fast tunes, the 8ths tend to even out.)

[GuyBoden]

IMHO, I think very few players actually improvise when playing fast, they sound like they're playing well rehearsed licks and phrases. I'm not saying playing like that is easy, because it's not, it's a lot of very, very hard work.

[MarkRhodes]

IMHO, I think very few players actually improvise when playing fast, they sound like they're playing well rehearsed licks and phrases. I'm not saying playing like that is easy, because it's not, it's a lot of very, very hard work.

As Joe Pass said, "I'm not making it up as I go along!"
When the tempo is bright, you realize you must play what you CAN play and there's less material to rely on at top speed than mid-tempo or for a ballad. Now, some guys have a deep well of material they can execute above 300 bpm---Herb Ellis, for example---but they're only going to play things they can play that fast.

[West LA Jazz]

Regarding playing at high speeds...

IF music is a language (and it is),… no one can just get up one day and start speaking.

You have to practice with people who speak the language.

Like music, blocks of what makes any language what it is (understandable to a listener) becomes second nature and so in the heat of a musical passage the player can connect different phrases and altered phrases together to sound almost fresh and "fresh" each time.

Connecting these musical passages is also a function of finger patterns (that are memorized so much so that the player can play blind folded) and the memorization of musical phrases that the player can either play them backwards or jump in halfway through the musical phrase and still play it out to the end. Coltrane did this.

The player knows which finger patterns work with major, minor, dominant and altered chords. Soon the player is able to start from any point within the patterns. Each pattern is associated with a "sound". So you can break of a chunk and splice it backwards to create a different sound.

I believe this is when creativity has kicked in (after all this memorizing) and this creativity also depends on how deep your well of musical "words and phrases" the player possess.



I took a class with Bruce Forman last year. He noticed that I held my pick at an almost 45 degree angle to the string. He encouraged me to make it almost parallel. This caused me to think back to when I started playing like that. I remembered that it was my solution to using heavier picks and trying to strum and pick without the heavy pick chocking on the string at higher speeds. Lighter picks are easier to attack the strings in a parallel motion because they have more "give" to them and sort of brush over the string easier.

Last year, I felt I needed more finger dexterity to play songs like ATTYA are full speed and so for the past nine months I have used a certain teacher's (who some on here often bash) method to increase finger speed and most importantly getting my right hand to talk to my left hand (hand Co-ordination). In 9 months the difference has been really discernible. Now playing at 300bpm isn't far off but it's not the be all end all.

My thing is it's good for me to have IF and when I need to deploy faster passages, I don't have to stumble.

Finally, any time I hear Al Dimeola playing slow sweet passages I pay more attention because some how Al playing slow passages is like a storm that suddenly decides to whisper.

Develop chops if you have to but deploy with discretion and as needed.

[MarkRhodes]

IF music is a language (and it is),… no one can just get up one day and start speaking.

You know, it just struck me that although we talk about music being a language, we give ourselves much more credit for novelty / spontaneity in our speech than we deserve. I think we can all be "broken records" on pet subjects. When not repeating ourselves, we tend to suggest much more than we make plain.

Writers have a saying that good dialogue is the illusion of real speech. Anyone who has read a court transcript knows the vast difference between how people actually talk and how vivid characters in good fiction speak.

I think of good jazz lines the way I think of good dialogue----idealized speech. The way we wish we talked all the time but rarely do.

[Vladan]

Somewhat tagential on above ...

[West LA Jazz]

Pat Metheny quotes from this video interview:

“Until the 50s there weren’t that many players who could (sort of equally hang) at the same level with Charlie Parker”
(By "hang" I take it Pat is talking about competence on the instrument that is relatively new to Jazz)

"Guitar is still a relatively new instrument in jazz"

"At it's best music transcends style"

"The beauties of the invention of jazz is that it allows people to bring who they are to the table"

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I love Pat Metheny's music but he is probably more outspoken than almost anyone I can think of in music.
But his success is undeniable even though I won't forgive him for condemning Kenny G! :-)

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I love it! This topic just won't die. I guess we're still kibitzing over what a new art form should be and sound like.

[MarkRhodes]

Pat Metheny quotes from this video interview:

“Until the 50s there weren’t that many players who could (sort of equally hang) at the same level with Charlie Parker”
(By "hang" I take it Pat is talking about competence on the instrument that is relatively new to Jazz)

I remember the disappointment I felt after seeking out early bebop recordings with guitar on them---it didn't sound good to me at all. They seemed to be straining to keep up, playing lots of arpeggios in a stiff fashion. Mind you, I couldn't have done half as well, but I just didn't care for those guitar parts. (I'm not saying this about ALL sessions with guitar players on Charlie Parker records, but only about the first ones I tracked down and heard. And I'm not saying those guys were bad or anything like that; I'm saying that as a kid who played guitar, was coming to love jazz, and found out there were Parker records with guitar on them, my response was, "O.....O well.")

[EOE]

I used to study all of Michael Angelo Batios lessons and play all his tunes so yea I got speed. but what I want now is to play great melodies . I am rediscovering Santana trying to figure out how to blend blinding riffs with soaring melodies.

[Arpeggio]

I don't want to brag, but last night I played so fast that the tailpiece on my guitar exploded.

That is nothing. When I get going humming birds flock around my hand thinking it's their mother. It's annoying because they are not from my part of the world and can't deal with the climate so they die and I get shtick from the the RSPB for all the bags of dead humming birds. It's so annoying.

[stellarstar]

Does legato count? If that's the case I can play 32nd notes at 200bpm

[ecj]

Does legato count? If that's the case I can play 32nd notes at 200bpm

Haha, dude...no.

You are claiming that you can double-time at 400 bpm.

[soto]

Hmm that's about 25 notes per second... I guess I could do that if I found a wormhole to a supermassive black hole and was experiencing time dilation.