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Did they think the baby finger would never develop? Did they run out of patience? Did they just go with what felt best?
I am curious why some great guitarist neglect using their pinky and would rather shift positions or stretch their third finger. Has it turned out that its better for most to use the third finger instead of incorporating the pinky?
Someone please tell me the thought process. You wouldn't leave out the pinky on piano or other instruments.
Again, a short list includes Eric Clapton, Michael Schenker, Grant Green, and to a certain extent, Wes Montgomery also, so I am told.
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06-22-2014 09:44 PM
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Lol...in the past there was not the internet, so every bit of minutiae was not analyzed.
You could play or not. Shame that concept is lost these days.
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I can only speak from my own experience. I think because I played electric bass a lot in early years and I was using my pinky. I learn bass from a guitar fingering point of view and needed pinky to play scales.
I notice that when I play Jazz or sightread I use my pinky all the time, but when I play Blues and Rock because of all the bends the 3rd finger starts taking over, so its a strength thing for Rock.
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The early swing guitar players, Charlie Christian, George Barnes, Oscar Moore, played out of chord shapes using the chord tone arpeggios as home base. These basic chord shapes are those found on the first four strings.
The guitarists who picked up on the bebop vocabulary, Tal Farlow, Herb Ellis, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney, Wes Montgomery, all began as swing players influenced by Christian. They continued to use the fingerings that they had learned playing swing to play bebop.
Django Reinhardt also played from arpeggios but because he was restricted to using his index and middle finger, he played his arpeggios horizontally. As Wes moved from the Christian style into more bop-oriented music, his playing also became more horizontal.
Until 1959, when Miles released Kind of Blue and modes and scales slowly became more a part of jazz, guitarists could play pretty much everything that was demanded of them by using the older, chord-shape style of playing.
Actually, that's the short answer. Django, Christian, Barnes and Wes played the way they played because it was simple and it got the job done.
John Coltrane loved Wes and tried to get Wes to join his band. I'm certain that Coltrane didn't think "Well I'm not gonna hire this guy 'cause he only plays with three fingers". No, he wanted to hire Wes because Wes played his butt off and Coltrane thought he would be an asset.
Like Jeff said it's easy to become overwhelmed with information (and misinformation) these days. This can lead to a form of paralysis in which someone never actually becomes a player because they spend all of their time second guessing and searching for the one right way to do things instead of actually doing anything.
This important thing is to do something. Two fingers, three fingers, four fingers, lay it in your lap and use five fingers. How you do it is less important than just doing it. Whatever it takes to get the job done for the job you want to do.
Regards,
Jerome
P.S. As for other instruments, there are instruments that don't require all the fingers such as the trumpet.
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With the fretting hand the use of three fingers seems to me to help create a "triplet swing feel" to the melody with single note lines, especially the blues pentatonic type. But it seems to me that the iconoclastic guitarists just created their own style to express what they heard and felt. Of all the guitarists mentioned in some ways I still find Charlie Christian the most iconoclastic. But Wes, too, had his own style and voice. I've come to believe you play what feels right to you.
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It's funny that we're talking about Wes playing with three left fingers as if that were the only way in which his technique was unusual.
I imagine that, if you took ten people who didn't know how to play the guitar and told them to learn how by themselves with only a dozen or so jazz records as a guide, they would all end up playing the instrument in different ways.
Also, I wonder what reaction Wes would have gotten if he was a nobody and he posted his playing on the Showcase section of this forum.
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Can you imagine being a guitar teacher trying to teach your student to play guitar, and he/she wants to use the side of the pick and only three fingers on his/her left hand?
I wonder how that would go over?
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Use of the pinky is often connected with angle of fingerboard. Many blues players like to bend as much as a minor, even major, 3rd. They use a fingerboard angle closer to parallel to the floor, and with the thumb hanging over the bass end of the fingerboard, you can bend all day long with the stronger third finger, rather than the pinkie. So maybe the more blues-influenced players would be more likely to use their pinkie less.
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I think Monk's answer is very good about Charlie and the early swing players playing out of simple chord shapes. I think there's a further aspect to this that Monk takes as a given---because he knows a lot and has thought about this a lot---but others may not. Playing out of shapes is not just playing shapes but using the notes of chords as anchors.
Many patterns, such as Upper neighbor-chord tone-lower neighbor-chord tone, repeat pattern on next chord tone... are much easier to execute if you DON'T think in terms of a scale. One advantage of working so much with simple chord shapes, triads, is that one's ear knows when to expect chord tones to come up. It can become easy to play a long line ("stacked triads", say, G, Bmb5, D, F, Am, C, Em, G; or a simple triadic run to a heavily accented note: C, Dm, Em, F...then, bam, the note all that got you to) without thinking about what you're doing at all but nonetheless knowing exactly what you're doing and how it will sound. It becomes easier to shift accents around, to add in-between notes to slow the arrival of a chord tone, for example. It's much easier to actually DO this than to start by thinking which scale would give you all those notes...
I think this allows for a lot of sliding whereas if one were thinking in terms of scale patterns, one might finger differently.
I also agree with Rob about the third finger and bending.
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"Technique is a means to and end " as told by Harry Leahey. It's the music being made that counts. Peter Bernstein uses 3 fingers and is one of the most respected players on the scene.
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Wes was a "nobody" the night Cannonball Adderley walked into The Missile Room. We all know what resulted then.
Originally Posted by ColinO
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Mark, Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
I strive to be clear when I post. I thought my comment about the chord tone arpeggios being home base was descriptive but your comment about using the notes of chords as anchors is so much better. Thank you.
To further elaborate on this shape based anchor approach: With any chord shape, if one knows the numerical pitches of the notes in the chord, all the other diatonic and chromatic notes surrounding the chord are easily visualized intervallically.
For instance, the b7 is a whole step below the one, the flat three is a half step below the three, the four is a half step above the three, the six is a whole step above the five, the b7 is a step and a half above the five and so it goes.
Hopefully this will be more clear.
Thanks for the assist,
Jerome
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Good point. But how many nights had he played there before someone who knew what they were looking at walked in? Originally Posted by monk
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Well, we both know that he had been playing there for years honing his craft. Today, the first time someone learns to put all their fingers down simultaneously on a C chord they post it on YouTube. The ever-shrinking world of the digital information age makes it more difficult for someone to fly under the radar. But now, over 50 years after Wes gained world-wide recognition, it's extremely difficult to grasp what an impact he made. Originally Posted by ColinO
In the 18 years between the death of Charlie Christian and the emergence of Wes Montgomery, while many fine guitarists came onto the the scene, there were no innovators. Wes was the game-changer who set the the entire jazz community (not just the jazz guitar world) on its ear the same way Charlie Christian did. Wes completely changed, as Christian did 21 years earlier, how jazz guitar should be played.
Joe Pass maintained throughout his life that three were only three innovators in the history of jazz guitar: Django, Charlie and Wes.
I have no doubt in my mind that if someone wandered in out of the backwoods who was capable of effecting the same paradigm shift that Wes and Charlie did and posted a video in our Showcase that only the most dense among us would not realize that the world had changed for all of us.
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To play devil's advocate a bit, harmonically, was Wes really that innovative?
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^^^
I think I've inadvertently written something that was unclear and came off as perhaps rude. I apologize if I sounded flippant. I thought this was kind of a light-hearted thread about unorthodox technique. My point was that "perfect" technique may be something that is overvalued somewhat. Great players sometimes have technique that is not conventional. I'm certainly not about to start an argument about Wes' greatness as a player - or about anything else for that matter.
I'll try and be more careful about what I write in the future.
Cheers, Colin.
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For me, Wes's swinging feel and his phrasing were what gave hime his sound. Also his use of block chords and octaves. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Hamonicly he took advantage of all that was around him, but I agree with your premise.
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I got that from Carol Kaye! ;o) Originally Posted by monk
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Originally Posted by Pat Clare
I also like that he played pop tunes on the later records and played them with his great swinging feel and superb phrasing, he knew that these pop songs would make money and would pay the family's bills.
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There is a cool video series on Wes on YT that is fun to watch. Recommended.
Anyway, Wes has different styles in one. He can play the blues, but with a jazz inflection. He can play those chord solo ballads that are very nice. He had his Riverside recording, my personal favorite with his brothers and others. And he has his pop period, which is not my favorite. Not out of 'elitist' jazz purity, but because he is more restrained and conventional. I like Wes in the years he more purist. But his style always was his own. In fact, while I like the notes he played, I would not recommend that everyone play the fingerings he played. Just my opinion.
Jay
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Colin, Originally Posted by ColinO
As we are all aware inflection, and sometimes intent, is sometimes difficult to convey in writing over the internet. I certainly didn't think you were being rude or flippant. When I answered your questions I was trying to point out that if someone of Wes' ability that we all had never heard before posted a video here that I think we would collectively have a "Cannonball moment" and recognize what we had heard was special. Think about how many clubs in different towns Cannonball must have gone into and heard a player who was "local good" before stumbling on to someone who was world-class.
You're absolutely correct in your assessment that there are any number of players who are idiosyncratic in their approach to the instrument. It has been pointed out in other discussions that success/greatness leaves clues. I think that time examining these idiosyncrasies can be time well spent.
Regards,
Jerome
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Pinky is the weakest finger, the most difficult to use. People don't like doing difficult things so develop bad habits. Originally Posted by AlsoRan
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There's a great chapter in Jim Hall's Exploring Jazz Guitar, Jim takes one of his blues heads and 'explores' various fingerings. In summary, every choice matters, what finger, what string, what attack all contribute to the character of the line. Following that line of reasoning, you can't get the full effect of a line you cop from another guitarist without also copping their fingering. That's not to say you must do that with every guitarist you're influenced by, there are plenty of cats I've taken a little bit from without going through the trouble to be exact. But it's important to realize that cats like Wes and Jimmy Raney developed fingerings that allowed the bebop lines to flow and phrase without being 'riffy' or 'boxy' and more on par with the horns and pianists of the day. If you're playing 'all the right notes' but your lines still aren't feeling 'bebop' enough, this might be the concept to explore. Go to the Youtube for Wes and Jimmy, go catch Peter Bernstein any time you have the opportunity, and take it from there.
PK
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Truly excellent points, Paul. Originally Posted by paulkogut
Stochelo Rosenberg and other gypsy jazz guitarists have spoken in interviews that while much of the vocabulary that is taken from Django's playing can be played with three or four fingers with no deleterious effect, there are some phrases that demand to be fingered with only the index and middle finger because it's easier to play and also because that's what it takes to make it sound right.
As you have aptly and correctly pointed out, playing the right notes isn't enough. It's not just the notes we play but how we play them.
There are great lessons to be learned from great guitarists but in many cases we have to check our pride and preconceived notions at the door when we enter and proceed with an open mind and humility.
Regards,
Jerome
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About fingerings, one of the things I appreciate about the three Herb Ellis books ("Swing Blues," "Rhythm Shapes," and "All the Shapes You Are") is that he includes the fingerings for his lines. Some of them puzzle me even now---I've had these books awhile---but for the most part, they make a lot of sense.
Frank Vignola is another player I like a lot but his fingerings are very different and some seem willfully complicated. Frankly, I finger those lines in a way more familiar to me and let it go.
Robert Conti has the simplest "fingering protocol" one can have----one finger per fret, and the index determines the position--and I think that's one key to his being able to play so fast yet sounding every note distinctly.
Of course, not every is trying to play that fast....
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