The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #26

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    I replied to this on the partial chords thread
    Thanks. I saw that.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #27

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    When I taught privately, I would insist on students using the thumb/first finger grip.
    Then I started teaching music in a public HS, and I'd be teaching 50 kids in each guitar class, and I'd always have at least ten kids in my band classes playing electric.

    There would always be one kid every year that had better chops than I did, and many of them used the three finger grip, so like some people said, do whatever works.
    Tal Farlow was even more extreme; he had no fixed method of doing anything.
    I tried to ask Jimmy Raney about how he picked, and he didn't even think it was important enough to talk about.
    These guys didn't care about 'Benson Picking' or 'Chuck Wayne' picking.
    All they cared about was the music

  4. #28

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller

    I would say this is the most traditional way to play jazz guitar as it is where you end up if you try to project on an acoustic guitar. If you start on electric I think you would be much less likely to use this approach. (Although Jimi Hendrix was also a rest stroke picker apparently, which might account for some of his strength of attack)
    A little off topic as I'm sure few here are trying to copy Jimi's technique, but I was searching through videos a while ago to see what his technique was. I was surprised to find, thanks to the footage we have these days, it was close to what I think we would call Benson picking. Check out this close-up at 2:52, preferably at half speed:
    Considering all of the focus on him over the years, I would expect the blues rockers to pick up on it, but I suppose they still see it through Grady's DWPS lens.

    As for jazz picking, I often think of Julian Lage's article on the diving board effect. I must have read it a dozen times by now and I still can't make heads or tails of it. I suppose it's mostly a recipe for low tension playing. I have to assume, however, it's also partially advocating for a form of rest stroke: if the pick simply falls through the string, where else can it land but on the next string?

  5. #29

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    Quote Originally Posted by Endaro
    As for jazz picking, I often think of Julian Lage's article on the diving board effect. I must have read it a dozen times by now and I still can't make heads or tails of it. I suppose it's mostly a recipe for low tension playing. I have to assume, however, it's also partially advocating for a form of rest stroke: if the pick simply falls through the string, where else can it land but on the next string?
    Low tension playing, yes. Advocating for a form of rest stroke, I don't think that's it.

    One thing he's looking at is the actual force used to excite the string. The jazz sound of a big body jazz box with huge flat wounds comes in part from the force relationship between the string and the pick - and the strings "win". The jazz box with huge strings makes it very resistant to anomalies in how the string initiates and sets up its vibration. The amount of relative energy transfer from the pick is weak compared to what the strings can load, so problems are self limiting.

    On modern electrics with lighter strings, it IS easily possible for the pick to "win" and overload the strings. What that means is that the establishment of the vibration of the string is disturbed and further prone to problems (buzz, damping of amplitude, frequency, harmonic, and sustain issues, etc.).

    So what he's writing about is letting the string "win" even when playing on a modern light strung electric -the sound of the string winning IS the sound of jazz guitar. This means the minimal energy transfer to the string. That's what the pick "falling through the string" means - it describes the feeling or perspective when you stop trying to push the strings around with the pick.

    A rest stroke is when you pick a string and follow through to the next string, which stops your motion... that means you have expended more energy than needed, and in fact are using the next string to absorb that extra energy. We could just as well call the rest stroke "the wasting of extra picking energy by absorbing it into the next string stroke". That is much more "pushy" than the "falling through the string" idea.

    Or I could be totally wrong...

  6. #30

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    Quote Originally Posted by sgcim
    When I taught privately, I would insist on students using the thumb/first finger grip.
    Then I started teaching music in a public HS, and I'd be teaching 50 kids in each guitar class, and I'd always have at least ten kids in my band classes playing electric.

    There would always be one kid every year that had better chops than I did, and many of them used the three finger grip, so like some people said, do whatever works.
    Tal Farlow was even more extreme; he had no fixed method of doing anything.
    I tried to ask Jimmy Raney about how he picked, and he didn't even think it was important enough to talk about.
    These guys didn't care about 'Benson Picking' or 'Chuck Wayne' picking.
    All they cared about was the music
    Or Benson for that matter. Or interestingly, Adam Rogers.

    OTOH I don't think we can take the likes of Raney and Tal as being a general case of anything to prove anything else of any kind. They were just really really good at music.

    I'm not sure what lessons I can take from this as a teacher. The main thing is, if it ain't broke...

    On the other hand, if it is broke, we should have the knowledge to recognise the fact and to fix it. Otherwise we can scarcely call ourselves teachers can we?

    Teachers like Chuck Wayne and maybe Rodney Jones are associated with very specific approaches to picking, and students form these schools number among the leading players of contemporary jazz guitar; Ben Monder, Pasqale Grasso, Sheryl Bailey, Miles Okazaki etc etc. So having the technical side sorted early on allows the student to care only about the music.

    Personally, I wouldn't want someone who plays very well already to relearn their technique. I wouldn't see the point.

    Classical instrumental training focusses on strict technical appoaches; classical guitar is an obvious one. The needs of classical music are obviously different to jazz, but that said classical technique bloody works for those purposes, and sometimes I feel that standardising picking technique somewhat would get rid of a lot of the confusion and frustration many players feel regarding technique.

  7. #31

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    Quote Originally Posted by pauln
    Low tension playing, yes. Advocating for a form of rest stroke, I don't think that's it.

    One thing he's looking at is the actual force used to excite the string. The jazz sound of a big body jazz box with huge flat wounds comes in part from the force relationship between the string and the pick - and the strings "win". The jazz box with huge strings makes it very resistant to anomalies in how the string initiates and sets up its vibration. The amount of relative energy transfer from the pick is weak compared to what the strings can load, so problems are self limiting.

    On modern electrics with lighter strings, it IS easily possible for the pick to "win" and overload the strings. What that means is that the establishment of the vibration of the string is disturbed and further prone to problems (buzz, damping of amplitude, frequency, harmonic, and sustain issues, etc.).

    So what he's writing about is letting the string "win" even when playing on a modern light strung electric -the sound of the string winning IS the sound of jazz guitar. This means the minimal energy transfer to the string. That's what the pick "falling through the string" means - it describes the feeling or perspective when you stop trying to push the strings around with the pick.

    A rest stroke is when you pick a string and follow through to the next string, which stops your motion... that means you have expended more energy than needed, and in fact are using the next string to absorb that extra energy. We could just as well call the rest stroke "the wasting of extra picking energy by absorbing it into the next string stroke". That is much more "pushy" than the "falling through the string" idea.

    Or I could be totally wrong...
    Yes I think you are. Well at least, a bit.

    So I want to make clear that not all rest stroke picking is GJ picking, and what I'm saying here is about the latter.

    Main thing is, we have this thing called gravity and the hand and arm have significant mass.

    Therefore, a downstroke itself is not something that requires much or any energy at all. The arm wants to go down. The next string down just stops the fall.

    When I use rest strokes, I'm really not putting much into it at all. I don't push much if at all, there's no need. Maybe just to overcome the resistance of the string.

    The thing that takes energy is the recovery stroke. In gypsy style picking we instead rotate the wrist rather than reversing the downstroke. So, ascending runs in particular end up being very energy efficient because there's no recovery needed much... so guess what rest stroke style players do a lot haha.

    Now, fast alternation on one string. It might not surprise you that I found that quite difficult for a long time. The secret is that it uses a different mechanic - wrist rotation only, which is more similar to alternate picking, which again might not surprise you. Using arm weight here would waste energy because you'd have to make a load of recoveries against gravity. It's easier to stabilise the arm and rotate the wrist.

    (Troy Grady has also found many players make rest strokes without realising it, it seems a very natural thing to do.)

    In any case the physical side of gypsy picking is that to me it actually feels very uncontrolled compared to other styles. You are controlling what the body wants to naturally do as little as possible to get the job done.

    Not sure of GJ picking would work on the ISS haha.

    EDIT: I don't think what Julian Lage describing is exactly the same thing, but there are some commonalities.

  8. #32

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    Regarding Gypsy Jazz I just found these two examples.


    Same guy different angles


    You can find great recordings of totally unknown (beyond gypsy circles) great players if you do a YouTube search for “Sinti Gitarre” (Germany) or “Manouche guitare” (France) mostly recorded in private situations, people jamming in living rooms or at birthday parties.

  9. #33

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    Another interesting example, a lockdown online cooperation due to lack of gigs, an original of the first guy (the one with the dark guitar, Diknu Schneeberger), the other one is obviously from the Reinhardt family and has a totally different way of holding the pick.


  10. #34

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    Quote Originally Posted by Christian Miller
    Main thing is, we have this thing called gravity and the hand and arm have significant mass.
    I do admit some ignorance about rest strokes. As far as I can tell, I've never done one in my life.
    Strings are about 0.6" apart where we pick them and a fall that distance would take about 0.06s
    Wondering how long is recovery and what would be the upper limit of rest stroke picking speed?
    (I know that you know a falling body's acceleration due to gravitation is independent of its mass)

  11. #35

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    Two-finger pick grip is mandatory for me. I love hybrid too much. One tweak I am making though. I have a tendency to grip the pick between the thumb and finger tips/pads. I'm trying to move to a "trigger" grip, where the pick rests against the first knuckle of the index. Your thumb and index sort of criss-cross each other.

    This is because I have an issue accidentally muting the string I'm trying to pick with the index finger tip. But who knows, you may find it a more stable way to lock the pick in place.

  12. #36

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    Quote Originally Posted by timmer
    Two-finger pick grip is mandatory for me. I love hybrid too much. One tweak I am making though. I have a tendency to grip the pick between the thumb and finger tips/pads. I'm trying to move to a "trigger" grip, where the pick rests against the first knuckle of the index. Your thumb and index sort of criss-cross each other.

    This is because I have an issue accidentally muting the string I'm trying to pick with the index finger tip. But who knows, you may find it a more stable way to lock the pick in place.
    Over the many years my pick has gradually migrated from kind of deep in my fist with a lot of the pick sticking out to where it is now - held lightly between the ends of my index and thumb, very little of the pick tip just barely sticking out. Somehow this feels extremely stable, hybrid feels great, and it allows confident situational variation in slant picking, edge picking, string hopping, and other mechanics without thinking about it.
    I rest it on the side of the tip of my index in front of the first knuckle, my index pointing straight into the guitar, the thumb tip of pad on top, my thumb pointing to the nut. If you imagine the pick as the infield of a baseball diamond (pointy end as home plate), I grip the pick on the left edge, on the line between third and home.

    Overthinking picking technique-p-i-jpg
    Last edited by pauln; 09-12-2022 at 04:46 AM.

  13. #37

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    Quote Originally Posted by pauln
    I do admit some ignorance about rest strokes. As far as I can tell, I've never done one in my life.
    How do you know? Thanks to Troy Grady's magic camera, we now know people often do rest strokes without realising at high speeds.

    Sweep picking is an extreme case of rest stroke picking when you think about it; but with two way rest strokes.

    Strings are about 0.6" apart where we pick them and a fall that distance would take about 0.06s
    Wondering how long is recovery and what would be the upper limit of rest stroke picking speed?
    (I know that you know a falling body's acceleration due to gravitation is independent of its mass)
    Well the mass of the hand is perhaps more important for driving the strings which is more important for acoustic guitar. Yngwie uses rest stroke picking more from the wrist, for instance. But what the pick does is similar (at least according to Troy.)

    For upper limit of rest stroke picking speed see Yngwie, Stochelo etc. Obviously Django was no slouch. The run at 1:22



    Yeah I think you are hung up the physical movement of the pick in space which is not the main bottleneck. We are human beings and therefore a physiology is a determining factor of how fast we can make a movement - and importantly, repeat it. For an optimisable (fast) technique I think it's more important to concentrate on the nature of the motion, how complex it is, and how it works with the body rather than the amount of movement that needs to be done.

    Most people who hit a ceiling in their playing speed are making motions that are too complicated. Rest stroke down-picking is very simple because it the wrist/arm moves in a (more or less) straight line, or more accurately movement from one joint. True free stoke alternate picking always requires a composite movement to avoid getting trapped by the strings on both sides, which is a bit harder to get together (though many great players have done this.)
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 09-13-2022 at 07:11 AM.

  14. #38

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    I may just not know what rest strokes are... if the're brief pick contacts against strings not sounded, I don't believe I do that. But maybe you can tell from my description if and when I might be rest stroking.

    When I pick, I use any combination of these movements

    series of up strokes on one string
    series of down strokes on one string
    series of alternating strokes on one string
    Series of random stroke directions on one string
    string changes that share the same stroke direction*
    string changes that do not share the same stroke direction**

    I only move my hand to position the pick over the strings
    I move the pick (up, down, and hop) flexing my thumb and index
    I edge pick both rotations, and flat
    I do not use pick slanting, I do let the strings slant the pick both ways
    Strokes feel less than 1/4 the distance between adjacent strings before I hop out of the plane.

    *I lift the pick tip out of the plane of the strings for all strokes except string changes that share the same stroke direction.

    **There are two ways, using D and G strings example
    D down G up or G up D down - picking motion inward >| |<
    D up G down or G down D up - picking motion outward |< >|

  15. #39

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    Quote Originally Posted by pauln
    I may just not know what rest strokes are... if the're brief pick contacts against strings not sounded, I don't believe I do that. But maybe you can tell from my description if and when I might be rest stroking.

    When I pick, I use any combination of these movements

    series of up strokes on one string
    series of down strokes on one string
    series of alternating strokes on one string
    Series of random stroke directions on one string
    string changes that share the same stroke direction*
    string changes that do not share the same stroke direction**

    I only move my hand to position the pick over the strings
    I move the pick (up, down, and hop) flexing my thumb and index
    I edge pick both rotations, and flat
    I do not use pick slanting, I do let the strings slant the pick both ways
    Strokes feel less than 1/4 the distance between adjacent strings before I hop out of the plane.

    *I lift the pick tip out of the plane of the strings for all strokes except string changes that share the same stroke direction.

    **There are two ways, using D and G strings example
    D down G up or G up D down - picking motion inward >| |<
    D up G down or G down D up - picking motion outward |< >|
    Ok so you pick a string (not the E)

    one of two things happen - you miss the next string or you bump into it. The latter is a rest stroke.

    If you don’t bump into the next string it could be for a number of reasons.

    But if you pick downward *into* the guitar like Django, Wes and apparently Yngwie you will inevitably bump into the next string unless you take some sort of evasive action, like lifting the tip of the pick out of the plane of the strings.

    This takes an extra motion from the hand. Depending on how that motion is made it might be costly and inefficient or highly optimised.

    The least efficient version of this is something called ‘string hopping’ according to Troy Grady. If you are encountering a hard upper limit in your picking across the strings you are probably doing this (if not it ain’t broke so don’t fix it obv). Usually I fix this by getting players to do rest strokes because they are very efficient once you get out of the habit of missing the next string, which is often quite ingrained because people want to play cleanly.

    When at speed, rest strokes are very quick, you are using the next string over to provide positional feedback and the movements your right hand make can be very simple. Therefore I think of it as quite an easy technique, though it can be counterintuitive for players who are used to carefully missing the next string over.

    If you pick outward from the guitar, you’ll naturally have a free stroke. Depending on lots of factors you might naturally do a rest stroke going down, up or both.

    When I do a descending free stroke the ‘evasive action’ movement usually comes from my fingers and thumb, a very slight movement. It’s important to be able to do this to play some combinations of notes such as descending arpeggios, as rest stroke picking really sucks for stuff like this, but my default is downward rest stroke picking.

  16. #40

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    Thanks,
    My pick strokes do have an "outward from the guitar" component... when changing strings that component becomes the beginning of the hop.
    It seems like I let the strings slant the pick... maybe that let's me use less lift above the string to clear the pick tip and prep its orientation for the next stroke. I never expect my techniques to fall into the usual categories because I'm self taught since over 50 years ago.

    I value clarity and control, articulation and phrasing, emotive expression. I can play almost twice as fast as needed but would never subject a music audience or my band mates to "stunts" like that in the real world on stage.

  17. #41

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    Quote Originally Posted by pauln
    Thanks,
    My pick strokes do have an "outward from the guitar" component... when changing strings that component becomes the beginning of the hop.
    It seems like I let the strings slant the pick... maybe that let's me use less lift above the string to clear the pick tip and prep its orientation for the next stroke. I never expect my techniques to fall into the usual categories because I'm self taught since over 50 years ago.
    Sounds like you may be a 'two way pickslanter' of some type.

    Anyway, I do wonder if sometimes being self taught is better than being taught by someone well meaning who doesn't really understand how picking works, as you are more likely to do what feels right and easy and less likely to try to do it 'properly'. At least IME.

    I see a lot of divergent solutions to the problem of picking, there's many ways to do it right and actually not that many ways to do it wrong (most bad pickers string hop). Some of them (like Bruce Forman's technique) can be hard for me to watch as they look 'wrong' to me, but if it works, it works.

    Some teachers such as the Chuck Wayne school teachers and Rodney Jones (or the Manouche guys) have one effective solution that they teach to everyone and consequently there are many technically secure players that emerge from these schools. It's again interesting that these approaches are so different! Grady's been very good at revealing some common themes and broad categories of picking approaches. My hope is that guitar teachers take notice of Troy's work to become more informed on the diversity and mechanisms of effective picking techniques.

    I value clarity and control, articulation and phrasing, emotive expression. I can play almost twice as fast as needed but would never subject a music audience or my band mates to "stunts" like that in the real world on stage.
    It's good to have headroom!
    Last edited by Christian Miller; 09-14-2022 at 05:54 AM.

  18. #42

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    My method was and still is...

    Chain Of Command
    Mind's ear --> left hand --> right hand

    Standing Orders
    Left hand - "There is just one rule: use four fingers always, all styles, all tempos, all positions, no exceptions"
    Right hand - "Please notice the left hand, here's a pick, you're on your own to figure out satisfying left hand"

    I send musical requests to the left hand ("make it sound like this") and the left hand uses its one rule to create a fingering solution. This includes dozens of small forces and motions, but the solution's primary schema of strings, frets, and sequence timing is exactly what the right hand needs to derive the corresponding picking solution's reduced primary schema of strings and sequence timing (which includes dozens of additional small forces and motions).