Playing fast is a necessary evil on guitar?

[christianm77]

Once a guitar/lute maker told me that when he makes an instrument he does not think of sustain, he thinks about the decay.. he said: we actually have to deal with dying sounds... this concept changes the whole approach actully.
With early instruments it was especially important and they used open strings a lot, 'campanillas' effect - playing passages in arpeggio style using open strings - to make it sound like bells (especially with re-entrant tuinings)...

The idea of this luthier is to achieve good decay of sounds on the instrument (balanced first of all).. rather than good sustain

I think some modern players also play like this - the first man I would think of is Bill Frisell - he is all about listening how the sounds fade away even when he plays in relatively fast tempos...


And here we come also to another point... I believe it's not sustain what rally matters but control over sound when it sounds...

Church organ can have 'endless' sustain but no control after the key is pressed.

Bow instruments are the most flexible.. with good bow technique they also have endless sustain and almost limitless control over the sound till the very end.

Horns are more limited in that sense.


But with percuassive and plucked instruments we have no control as well as with organ. So organists has to deal with eversound, and we have to work with decays... to arrange decays - in a sense..


Electrics give more possibilities both in sustain and sound control... lots of equipment tat allows even to make it sound organ-like or after all you can use volume control after all...

that's why I thin real electrics is another story... like in archtectrure whne they began to use steel and concrete it makes no sense to compare it with earlier architecture - where they uses stone and woods for centuries - because the materiel created absolutely new realtions and artistic language.

Your post has blown my mind.

I am somewhat aware that the back end of the note gets a bit overlooked sometimes, but your way of formulating the issue is really cool. Nice one!

[Jonah]

Your post has blown my mind.

I am somewhat aware that the back end of the note gets a bit overlooked sometimes, but your way of formulating the issue is really cool. Nice one!

thanks.
But the 'decay' concept is not mine as I wrote above...

You know suddenly I thought.. maybe that's what Miles meant when he said that he wanted to sound like a guitar?

Maybe he tried to let the trumpet sound decay, fade way?


It's quite a challenge on the horn actually - you cannot just 'let it sound' to make it naturally - you have to control it all the way through...

And the more I think now the more it seems that Miles' sound is really something about it.

[rpjazzguitar]

A few months ago I subbed in a really good big band.

Their discussion was about when to release notes. I had never really thought about it before. Apparently, this goes beyond simply "playing" rests and following articulation marks. If they don't focus on it, the horns don't quite melt together perfectly and sound ragged.

I've always thought that horns had an advantage in control over the way notes speak. I take the point about bowed instruments, though. In classical music, a violin can sing and cry in a way that I guess a saxophone can't. But, in jazz, I can't recall hearing a violin played that way. Usually, the tone is so pure that it can edge into being bland.

Of course, like everything in music, somebody will provide a compelling counterexample -- because some players play their instruments better than you thought they could be played.

[Jonah]

I played trombone and trumpet during duty service in the army band... of course I cannot play like real horn players but still had to do some job.

I think that guitsr players often play a lot of notes not only because of sustain... or maybe it's even less about sustain.

Again Miles came to my mind. He said once about pianists:... seems that if you have 88 keys in front of you have to play something all the time...

This concerns guitar players too... the crucial point here 'in front of you'... pianists and guitarists visually see plenty of different notes, different options... even if they do not have to look, mentally they often stay influmced by this kind of visual organization...
it is like a temptation to play something since you have so many possibilities right here... a bit like a kid who sees computer with plenty of different keys he could press)))

Horn players see it in a different way...

And here's another thing too... with pianists and guitarists they often cannot overcome the fact that they have hands as medium... I mean it is much more indirect just from point of psychology than with horns... or even with bow (when you play with a bow - I tried - it seems that you just breathe - to me even more than with real horn... it makes your hand very cautious, very sensitive)...

It seems that sometimes they think: hm... let's see what happens if I press that key (that fret)... and with good technical skills it may turn into playing before you hear before you think... just before)))

[Tomcat]

Like in any art - the balance of opposite forces is the most important:

slow - fast
soft - loud
consonant - disonant


That's why I have only 2 CDs of John McLaughlin - though I admire what he's doing as a guitarrist I almost never feel like listening to his albums. Not enough of those contrast.

That's why I have over 20 albums of Pat Metheny, and listen to them regularly. I can find easily an PM album for any mood - from A Map of The World to Song X

[lawson-stone]

It's funny to me reading the title of this thread.

Fact is, I never heard more about playing "High-Loud-Fast" until I started hanging out with a couple of trumpet players. They were obsessed, totally obsessed, with "high-loud-and-fast" and except for the occasional Miles-Davis-like slow tune, they got impatient and bored, even walked off the bandstand, if we played anything that didn't feature them, playing high, loud, and fast.

So I don't think a speed obsession is unique to guitarists, and certainly not missing from horn players.

[Jonah]

It's funny to me reading the title of this thread.

Fact is, I never heard more about playing "High-Loud-Fast" until I started hanging out with a couple of trumpet players. They were obsessed, totally obsessed, with "high-loud-and-fast" and except for the occasional Miles-Davis-like slow tune, they got impatient and bored, even walked off the bandstand, if we played anything that didn't feature them, playing high, loud, and fast.

So I don't think a speed obsession is unique to guitarists, and certainly not missing from horn players.

In jams where I had to comp all the way I really thought: what do these 20 horn players think about between 8 bars where they are allowed to solo... probably that's why they drink sop much... must so boring to be a horn player)))

[lawson-stone]

In jams where I had to comp all the way I really thought: what do these 20 horn players think about between 8 bars where they are allowed to solo... probably that's why they drink sop much... must so boring to be a horn player)))

True. I think a jam session with a lot of horn players can be boring for the horn players. I can also see why they'd enjoy impromptu ensemble playing and such.

[FuseHead]

I seriously studied Les Paul for nearly a year in my youth. Seems like he really knew how to cook in short bursts to truly flavor is pieces constructively.

I like to cook on guitar because it is fun, more fun to me. These days it is only about having fun for me. It does take discipline to decay notes in a constructive manner, and constructive decay is certainly overlooked by by myself and a lot of players.

Interesting thread indeed.

[John A.]

The OP talks about speed making an impression on audiences -- IME repetition + speed is what really gets the audience to pay attention. Play the same fast phrase for a whole chorus and the crowd goes nuts. But play a line of 16th notes at high tempo full of ideas, twists and turns, and a fair number of people tune out. It's so much information for them to process that they're not even grokking that it is fast, or how technically and intellectually demanding something like that is.

Ultimately for improv to be truly complete, as others have said, it has to balance all the elements loud/soft/fast/slow/consonant/dissonant/space/density/homophony/polyphony/articulate/eccentric, etc.

The ones who are really great can play something that seems totally loose, even simple, and doesn't even feel like it takes much effort. But then you actually listen closely or try to transcribe and go "holy shit!" I get this all the time with Sco. He has this way of making everything sound greasy and bluesy, and then you realize that he's actually playing really fast and spinning off one heavy idea after another. I often joke that he's nowhere near as sloppy as he sounds. Bernstein, Wes, and Jim Hall are some others -- there's a kind of almost nonchalance to their feel that masks the difficulty and sophistication of what they're up to.

John

[christianm77]

The OP talks about speed making an impression on audiences -- IME repetition + speed is what really gets the audience to pay attention. Play the same fast phrase for a whole chorus and the crowd goes nuts. But play a line of 16th notes at high tempo full of ideas, twists and turns, and a fair number of people tune out. It's so much information for them to process that they're not even grokking that it is fast, or how technically and intellectually demanding something like that is.

Ultimately for improv to be truly complete, as others have said, it has to balance all the elements loud/soft/fast/slow/consonant/dissonant/space/density/homophony/polyphony/articulate/eccentric, etc.

The ones who are really great can play something that seems totally loose, even simple, and doesn't even feel like it takes much effort. But then you actually listen closely or try to transcribe and go "holy shit!" I get this all the time with Sco. He has this way of making everything sound greasy and bluesy, and then you realize that he's actually playing really fast and spinning off one heavy idea after another. I often joke that he's nowhere near as sloppy as he sounds. Bernstein, Wes, and Jim Hall are some others -- there's a kind of almost nonchalance to their feel that masks the difficulty and sophistication of what they're up to.

John

Amen I love that.... something I aspire to

[lawson-stone]

...

The ones who are really great can play something that seems totally loose, even simple, and doesn't even feel like it takes much effort. But then you actually listen closely or try to transcribe and go "holy shit!" I get this all the time with Sco. He has this way of making everything sound greasy and bluesy, and then you realize that he's actually playing really fast and spinning off one heavy idea after another. I often joke that he's nowhere near as sloppy as he sounds. Bernstein, Wes, and Jim Hall are some others -- there's a kind of almost nonchalance to their feel that masks the difficulty and sophistication of what they're up to.

John

I call this "The Kenny Burrell Effect." I transcribed one of his solos some years ago because I thought "Hey, it's slow, laid back, not too complex..." but when I really drilled down into it, the utter brilliance of it just destroyed me, and then trying to play it convincingly just eluded me entirely.

Also, almost any of Chet Baker's solos have this quality. You think, Oh yeah, this'll be easy... but then you think "Could I have ever thought to play this line, in this way?"

[Jonah]

The ones who are really great can play something that seems totally loose, even simple, and doesn't even feel like it takes much effort. But then you actually listen closely or try to transcribe and go "holy shit!" I get this all the time with Sco. He has this way of making everything sound greasy and bluesy, and then you realize that he's actually playing really fast and spinning off one heavy idea after another. I often joke that he's nowhere near as sloppy as he sounds. Bernstein, Wes, and Jim Hall are some others -- there's a kind of almost nonchalance to their feel that masks the difficulty and sophistication of what they're up to.

Great post...

I usually say these guys really show the difference between license and Liberty

[paco]

The late Bob Brozman, in one of his instructional videos for resophonic guitar made the comment, "the difference between amateurs and pros is that pros control when the note stops."

[KirkP]

The number of notes per minute has no correlation to my interest in a performance. For me it's about using all the degrees of freedom the instrument gives you to tell a story.

The main advantage horns have over guitar is the ability to extend and vary a note as it's played. Guitarists can do this to some degree through technique, choice of instrument and effects, but we can at best only emulate the effects of human breath.

Much more important to me than speed is phrasing. I generally like to hear speech-like phrasing. In general I'd much rather hear hip phrasing than blazing 16th notes.

I have no problem with fast playing if the melodic lines and phrasing aren't sacrificed, but speed isn't a necessity.

[sgosnell]

If speed were the only important factor in guitar playing, we would be listening to rock shredders, not jazz.

[citizenk74]

As a bass-playing friend of mine is fond of saying, "It's about space, tension, and resolution."

[lawson-stone]

I like to think of this a bit differently. When I listen to Joe Pass, or Jim Hall, or Pat Metheny, or Joshua Breakstone... I don't think about "fast" or slow, but rather that none of these world-class players seems to experience any technical obstacle to expressing their musical ideas. If they have a slow idea, they play it wonderfully. If their idea involves speed, they can execute that. They do not experience the guitar as a barrier to expressing their musical ideas, but rather a supple medium that they can bend to their inspired wishes.

So more and more, I'm thinking first I need to come up with some decent musical ideas, that can inspire and drive my quest for technical improvement. Not that one has to come before the other, but Joe Pass once told me that nobody says "Hey that word is really hard to type!" He said the guitar was just a musical typewriter and all words are the same.

If you're Joe Pass, i guess!

[christianm77]

I think Yngwie says it best:

[KirkP]

Less can't be more, but less can be better.

[zdub]

Listen to Jim Hall, is what I'm saying

Yep. He always makes you listen to the space between the notes.

[rpjazzguitar]

+1 on Jim Hall

Jim Hall's comping on Desmond's album Glad to Be Unhappy still strikes me as astonishing.

There is plenty of silence in his comping Beyond that, he was a master at using two string ideas in various ways. The drummer and bass player complemented this perfectly -- I don't think Jim could have played that way with a busy drum or bass part. He used double stops, he'd hold a note on the E string while passing notes down the B string, he had his own vocabulary of chord sounds. He made the guitar sound, to me, as full as an orchestra, while playing very sparsely.

I always loved his ballad playing.

[Jonah]

[Jonah]

[John A.]

I like to think of this a bit differently. When I listen to Joe Pass, or Jim Hall, or Pat Metheny, or Joshua Breakstone... I don't think about "fast" or slow, but rather that none of these world-class players seems to experience any technical obstacle to expressing their musical ideas. If they have a slow idea, they play it wonderfully. If their idea involves speed, they can execute that. They do not experience the guitar as a barrier to expressing their musical ideas, but rather a supple medium that they can bend to their inspired wishes.

So more and more, I'm thinking first I need to come up with some decent musical ideas, that can inspire and drive my quest for technical improvement. Not that one has to come before the other, but Joe Pass once told me that nobody says "Hey that word is really hard to type!" He said the guitar was just a musical typewriter and all words are the same.

If you're Joe Pass, i guess!

Metheny and Hall would probably disagree with you about having complete freedom to play whatever they hear. They both have said that their styles (Metheny's e.g., Metheny's extensive use of slides, slurs, hammer-ons, etc.; Hall's emphasis on space and motion in 2-3 voices) grew out of their inability to play fast and clean, and pick every note. These guys hear tons of stuff that they can't play, and developed distinct voices and methods of adapting their ideas to what they can execute. Sco is another who often says stuff like this.

So, yes, I agree that using the search for ideas to push your technical boundaries is extremely important. But i also think it's useful to turn some of those limitations around and use them as a source for ideas and personality.

John