Alternate Picking at Fast Tempos

[christianm77]

The point I wanted to make regarding bebop heads isn't to label Wes but to address his technique. Wes is an extreme example of downstroke focussed playing, of course. He was happy to accept its limitations and work around them because he liked the way it sounded and felt. I feel there's a lesson in there regarding feeling you have to able to play 'everything' (not that you ever will be able to) as opposed to accepting compromises which are right for you.

As a downstroke favouring player myself, I find it hard to believe that Wes would have found it possible to play the more scalic material in say, Donna Lee, nearly as well as he could execute the ascending arpeggios. Ascending scales would be OK - just put in some hammers. But descending? Needs pull off's and suddenly feels much more awkward - not that it isn't possible to do, just that in my experience Wes's stuff sits very naturally using his technique once you have puzzled out the fingering.

It just seems fundamental to his approach. Would love to be proved wrong!

Needless to say, his facility is still astonishing....

I think there are always compromises - whether it's tone, time, projection, speed, flexibility or phrasing. Alan Holdsworth has compromised certain things just as much as Wes of course. I think all the great players have their strengths and weaknesses but learn to play to their strengths.

[christianm77]

That is exactly the sound I have been preferring over the pick every note sound. Great example. Thanks for posting!!!

That is exactly the sound I have been preferring over the pick every note sound. Great example. Thanks for posting!!!

I really like the way this sounds - nice to hear it clean. Would by nice to hear it dry though, without so much ambience on the sound just to hear precisely how it's done.

I would like to here this done with less scalic and more linear material as well.

Gilad Heckselman has a touch of this technique in his faster playing, no?

Hard to do on an acoustic/archtop with a heavy set up. I still reckon I could do more ligado in my playing - maybe half and half ;-)

BTW - I like Eric Johnson's sound also - very legato, but relatively little slurring...

[Vladan]

Playing with thumb naturally falls to rest strokes/ economy ... as long as going down the strings, from lower to higher.
Going up, from high to low strings, it's either down stroke with hammer on/ pull off, or you use other fingers, or
you're f*cked.
I've noticed this, while for couple of years I could not find my "guitar pick jar", so I had to play with thumb mostly and
a little bit with fingers, except when I'd use a coin or whatever I could find to fit the need.
(My music income is far from letting me buy new pick every now and then. Eventually, I found the jar in some locker.
And ... here I am, on this forum...)

... I sincerely think all "those" techniques are emulating thumb playing with upstrokes enabled by using a pick.

Also, you can rest assured, all personal styles, technical and musical, were invented and developed to make it
easier for the user, not to make it harder. Have that on mind when someone pitches it as some serious business.
Musicians are lazy. The real ones. Unless they have some disorder, or are hyper active, ...
Unfortunately, inventors took some care to make it hard for the rest to figure what exactly is being done, so the number
of users would remain low, preferably 1 (one), per style.

All with a little help of corrupted minds at researchers and lecturers.

[christianm77]

Playing with thumb naturally falls to rest strokes/ economy ... as long as going down the strings, from lower to higher.
Going up, from high to low strings, it's either down stroke with hammer on/ pull off, or you use other fingers, or
you're f*cked.
I've noticed this, while for couple of years I could not find my "guitar pick jar", so I had to play with thumb mostly and
a little bit with fingers, except when I'd use a coin or whatever I could find to fit the need.
(My music income is far from letting me buy new pick every now and then. Eventually, I found the jar in some locker.
And ... here I am, on this forum...)

... I sincerely think all "those" techniques are emulating thumb playing with upstrokes enabled by using a pick.

Also, you can rest assured, all personal styles, technical and musical, were invented and developed to make it
easier for the user, not to make it harder. Have that on mind when someone pitches it as some serious business.
Musicians are lazy. The real ones. Unless they have some disorder, or are hyper active, ...
Unfortunately, inventors took some care to make it hard for the rest to figure what exactly is being done, so the number
of users would remain low, preferably 1 (one), per style.

All with a little help of corrupted minds at researchers and lecturers.

For real? I sometimes practice with my thumb when I can't be bothered to find a pick, but that's something else... I think it's a good thing for my playing though...

I agree with what you say - if by 'those' techniques you mean rest stroke and Benson picking. Alternate picking and bi directional economy playing (how I used to play) feels very different.

[GuyBoden]

Well, yeah, not to get into petty labeling, but I don't consider Wes a "bebop" player...Wes is a bopper, hard bop, they call it...slower, bluesier, less busy in the heads...

I agree, I don't class Wes Montgomery as a truly Bebop player either, but I don't really care, he's just fantastic, I've had most of my Wes Montgomery's cds for over 20 years. To my ears, he has his own bluesier thing going, with lots of classy beautiful lines.

[vhollund]

Tal Farlow is a great Bebop guitarist
And extremely fast

[GuyBoden]

To my ears, this is bebop guitar, but what do I know, I just listen.

[vhollund]

It is

Bebob starts with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Monk, Mingus and that whole gang of greats who moved forward with them and in the late forties
If you compare to Benny Goodman from the Swing period, there's not all those Vsubs and b5 and b2s you find in the Bebop though they often play the same songs
Then again the people who evolved jazz , didn't call it bebop themselves. That was a publicity/radio stunt
The musicians where just trying to surpass themselves and the competition

[christianm77]

Tal Farlow is a great Bebop guitarist
And extremely fast

Yes, a true bop player. (Still prefer Wes though :-))

[christianm77]

It is

Bebob starts with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Monk, Mingus and that whole gang of greats who moved forward with them and in the late forties
If you compare to Benny Goodman from the Swing period, there's not all those Vsubs and b5 and b2s you find in the Bebop though they often play the same songs
Then again the people who evolved jazz , didn't call it bebop themselves. That was a publicity/radio stunt
The musicians where just trying to surpass themselves and the competition

Actually I find the harmony less significant than the rhythm and the phrasing, and specifically the form of the phrases. If you look far enough into it you can find the 'funny notes' in swing. Bird sounds like bebop even without using anything beyond chromatically embellished triads, pentatonics and blues licks. I can think of no clearer example than the difference between Now's the Time and a straightforward swing era riff blues tune. Now's the Time sets up and subverts your expectations. Compare it formally to something like Benny's Bugle which conforms to the expectations it sets up (I don't mean that as a criticism).

Although I will agree the use of a larger harmonic palette was part of the bop movement, it was not it's key innovation. This is often missed because analysis often focusses on the vertical rather than the horizontal aspects of melodic lines.

But yes, musicians were interested in moving jazz forward (wherever that was) - Monk for example, has little in common with Bird, beyond an interest in doing something else with the raw materials. Charlie Christian was certainly part of that trend, so in a sense he is a bop guy - certainly if he'd lived. But not in terms of playing the bop language as it is now understood academically. Formally his melodic and rhythmic language were moving into something new.

[mrcee]

I've heard that at the time of his death Monk and Christian were planning to put together a band.
Now that could have changed the world.

[vhollund]

For sure ^

You make a really good point there Christian
I totally agree, and have been saying similar things about bebob and phrasing in my earlier posts

[3625]

I've heard that at the time of his death Mpnk and Christian were planning to put together a band.
Now that could have changed the world.

Oh Wow

[christianm77]

Oh Wow

Well you can hear them play together on the Minton's Playhouse recordings - this was before Monk had achieved his mature style though - to me he's more like a conventional Harlem stride player on those recordings. But you can hear them play riffs that would become Rhythm-a-ning, for example.

Definitely Charlie's best playing on record, I think!

[3625]

Well you can hear them play together on the Minton's Playhouse recordings - this was before Monk had achieved his mature style though - to me he's more like a conventional Harlem stride player on those recordings. But you can hear them play riffs that would become Rhythm-a-ning, for example.

Definitely Charlie's best playing on record, I think!

Cheers, Christian - I'm down with the Minton's recordings, and I agree - much prefer it to the Benny Goodman stuff. It's the real gear. ("ba ba baa do ba!")

The concept of a dedicated Monk style quartet with CC is mind-blowing. The vibe of that would be unbelievable.

[MarkRhodes]

Raney, IMHO, represents the closest thing we have to Bird on the guitar, Here he explains how he did it:

Great clip. Thanks. When he demonstrates playing like Parker on guitar, he sounds more like Parker (-to me) than any other guitarist I have heard.

Jimmy Raney did a couple play-alongs for Aebersold. Great, great stuff.

I love his statement here that his main goal was always to get better.

[christianm77]

Cheers, Christian - I'm down with the Minton's recordings, and I agree - much prefer it to the Benny Goodman stuff. It's the real gear. ("ba ba baa do ba!")

The concept of a dedicated Monk style quartet with CC is mind-blowing. The vibe of that would be unbelievable.

Sure. My new project is a bit of a mix of Charlie Christian and Monk... Might be fun to go further with it...

[fumblefingers]

Matte Henderson:

Freak Kitchen - Teargas Jazz:

well that first video from the Holdsworth copycat was interesting. it covered both upstream and downstream concepts in a very "upstream and downstream for dummies" sort of way. very nice.

[vhollund]

He has been very into the lydian concepts of George Russel

[mrcee]

Miles Davis, known for occasional ridiculous statements, made one in an early 60s Down Beat blindfold test, I believe, that Charlie Christian was the only good guitar player he'd ever heard. He went on to hire some great ones so I guess he didn't let that stop him.
It's OK Miles, we love you and know what you were trying to say.

[pkirk]

Miles Davis, known for occasional ridiculous statements, made one in an early 60s Down Beat blindfold test, I believe, that Charlie Christian was the only good guitar player he'd ever heard. He went on to hire some great ones so I guess he didn't let that stop him.
It's OK Miles, we love you and know what you were trying to say.

someone posted a bickert youtube interview in this forum where Bickert says he was asked to back Miles in 1959 or so, and Miles told him "no offense, but I don't like guitar players". I can see late 50's early 60s Miles thinking that way, and I'm not sure its a ridiculous statement. The staccato pre-FX bop guitar playing doenst have the expressiveness of a horn, and at the time, piano was almost always the default chordal instrument, and very few (no) guitarists had a harmonic palette as rich as pianists'. The guitarists Miles used later were rock/distortion guys when it comes to soloing. And the transformation of using guitar instead of piano in jazz was many years away.

Of course, if he had bothered to listen carefully to Bickert, I bet the two of them could have made some great music together...

[vhollund]

And then there was the Beer Incident, where Miles poured beer over a guitarist head for playing something Miles didn't want him to play

[mr. beaumont]

Sounds like an easy way to get a free beer.

Jus' sayin.'

[mrcee]

True, not really a ridiculous statement. Maybe a little bombastic or overwrought.
Miles also said that with guitarists and piano players both you were always having to "reel them in". Sure true with both
pre and post FX guitarists. (me included) In my opinion.

Again, regardless of the guitar's limitations in straight jazz in terms of expressiveness and harmonic palette etc, it is capable of creating great rhythmic drive. Charlie Christian sure did. I'd like to hear more.
Listen to Guy's Got To Go from Minton's. At the end of about the 3rd bar you hear a woman call out "Alright!" like she was really feeling it. Like Bob said "One thing 'bout music, when it hits you feel no pain".

[christianm77]

I don't think Miles liked jazz guitar players. He liked rock and blues players - I believe that's why he chose John McLaughlin over George Benson and Joe Beck.

I mean he had three guitarists in his band at one point in the seventies:-) Maybe he liked the blues in Charlie Christian.