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Articulation is comprised of over a dozen things, but the common denominator of all of them is control, which means the fine detail of how you execute the transfer of energy into the strings.
Try this:
Plan to practice late at night when you have to be quiet.
Set your guitar volume and tones all the way up so all the artifact sounds you usually suppress by turning those down a bit come through fully (the "dinks" of fretting a string to the fret, the "clicks' of the pick against the strings, the "squeaks" of shifting on the strings, the micro "buzzes" of imperfect finger placement in chords, etc.)
Play for a few moments and set you amp volume to a level that is quiet enough; then turn it up to the next higher numeral on the volume control.
Now go through your usual routine of playing songs, exercises, or exploratory whatever with these exaggerated artifact sounds at elevated volume.
You will feel like you are having to play with delicacy to keep the volume (and the artifact sounds) down.
After about 15-20 minutes a strange thing will happen; you will begin to think the amp has gotten quieter! This is the hands learning articulation.
As you keep playing you will begin to feel like you aren't having to hold back to keep the level down; more energy is being transferred, but it is going into the lines and chords instead of the artifacts sounds.
Keep at it until you realize the perceived level of energy transfer is the same as when you usually play.
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05-17-2023 11:45 PM
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Yeah, this is a good approach if you wish to clean up your articulation by economising movement and energy. I often play unplugged too, which places a different microscope over your technique to evaluate your dynamic extremes- are your soft notes too soft?, loud notes too loud? etc. Also good for slur articulation - if you can clearly hear slurred notes unplugged it means you don't need to rely on amplification. It makes you work harder.
Originally Posted by pauln
But I think everyone has to work out their preferred dynamic range, so, if it's piano to mezzo, mezzo to forte, or even ppp to fff, you need to practice exerting the correct pressure. It takes a lot of focus and concentration. Recording yourself is essential, IMO.
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I been working on 3-4 note slurs (legato) a lot this last year, I recorded my playing a few years ago and found that my timing when playing 3-4 note slurs (legato) was terribly out of time. Just so sloppy. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
So, I practice playing 3-4 note slurs religiously with a metronome and very accurately place each slurred note correctly in time. I started with whole notes, but have progressed to using eighth and sixteenth note slurs. I started as slow as possible, about 30bmp.
Getting a 3-4 note slurred note's volume correct when descending was incredibly difficult when I first started, but with diligent practice it has very slowly improved.
A simple practice exercise is to play a 3-4 note slur without picking, just fret each note at the correct time.
I'll repeat my advice, record your playing, if your slurs are sloppy, spend a lot of practice getting them in time with a metronome. Also, try to get the slurred note at the same volume as a picked note, this is especially difficult with descending slurred notes.
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'I’ve found I’m kind of lost when it comes to deciding what to do with a triplet phrase'
I think it is very important observation.
I play flutes (not jazz) as an amateur for my own pleasure - and articulation makes such a dramatic difference there that I litterally was at a loss which one to choose, especially when you play long lines of the same values like in baroque pieces.
Somehow on guitar and piano it is less noticeable, not that it is unimportant or negligebale. But the nature of such resonant instruments kind of overshadows nuances. these instruments always create a sort of 'harmonic enviroment' even when one playse sigle-notes line.
And also the factor of 'attack and then dying sound' is important too.
And on winds (or bowed strings) every single note sounds so solidly and big and it can be controlled all the way it sounds.
Sometimes simple cadence on flute played as a sigle line ca sound more convincingly than the same cadence in full chords on piano or guitar.
This is exactly because of articulation possibilities. Melodic line sometimes can tell more about harmony on these nstrumens (with good player) than full harmonic layout on harmonic instruments.
(It all depends of course on particular player and context too though).
But the important thing is that electric guitar became very close to the melodic instruments in that sense, it has more sustain, quick response that allows almost must attack, and possibility to reduce the resonance and make tone much fatter.
And still I think that on harmonic instruments the fact that you can play a few notes at a time and you have also overall resonance (often quite big) affect how the articulation works.
Imagine you play only melody and them you play it in intervals (or with bass or harmonized with chords or even just occasional counterpoint notes etc.) - iI am sure you will unconciously change your attack slightly and - which is more important - the perception will change too.
Because additional counterpont notes add msucial information which on melodic instruments should be expressed just with sigle-note line.
Therefore - though one can of course practice single line on guitar trying to achieve vocal or horn (or bow) articulation more or less litterally - I believe that lots of possibilities for such an expression lies in specific possibilities of harmonic instruments.
As a conclusion: I know a few extremely skilful classical guitarists (and lutists) or pianists who were obsessed with attack and nuances of sigle note articulation and hand fantastic control over it but the result was that this was very much noticeable in performance (you could really say 'hey, he changed attack here and there' - and you admired but both felt a bit strange like somebody points out something too directly).
On the other hand I noticed that with great preformers articulation is often very approximate and it does not sound as if it was prepared.
I think it is connected with broader, longer breath in phrasing, kind of integrity of musical thinking.
You say something because you have a flow of thought and feeling, everything is interconnected, developes and that implies natural meaningful articulation and it can be very different every time.
And the good listner also in this situation will hear the meaning rather than nuances of how you articulate separate notes.
But you need to have technical skills anyway but sometimes it is so subtle that I am not even sure it can be practiced conciously.
Tbh I think this is mostly natural gift... usually even with the beginner you can see that he/she has 'a touch' - maybe undeveloped yet but still they have it - or not... and though it can be cultivated but it will not sound as natural most probably.
As for excercise - I think if you are already a player than you can make it up yourself - I woudl say: everything that goes against your mechanic patterns of articulation is good to practice... but I would not conciousl imply it in real music.
(I am not talking about purely technical things - like so called 'technical legato' etc. when you just have to do it becaus eit is unplayable otherwise... music is physical process, it i real, imperfectness of reality is what makes it living, one must be able to use it)
PS
Too much philosophy here from side... sorry))
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How do you work on articulation?
I speak very slowly
Re. slurs, etc, I just find they happen naturally when playing. I guess it's got to with an inbuilt sense of time and rhythm.
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I find people automatically assume LEGATO = slurs/hammers
Nope. You should be able to pick all notes in a Legato way. The simplest way to practice is pick 4 continuous frets, 4 continuous half-steps, assign them 1-2-3-4. Pick 1 in a legato way (continuous sound) until you pick 2, which you play in legato way (no cutting off short, continuous sound) until you pick 3, which you play in a legato way, etc.
1-2-3-4
then back down
4-3-2-1
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Articulation is the color in your playing. To me the guitar is close to the human voice and it gives you lots of different kinds of articulation. A bit „dirt“ in your playing sounds a lot more exiting than only strict and clean playing. It‘s the cherry on top.
That said, I always think of singing while I‘m playing and try to articulate a bit this way.
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Guitar players be like: "I only listen to horn players" (proceeds to pick every note)
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Yeah this is a difference of terminology. Electric guitar players use legato to describe someone like Rosenwinkel or Holdsworth who does lots of left hand slurring. Originally Posted by NSJ
Classical guitar teachers use legato the way you’re using it. Smooth and connected, even if every note is played individually.
Not disagreeing with your point here at all, just saying that I don’t think an electric guitarist would disagree with you either, even though they apply the term a bit differently.
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It depends much on local tradition of terminology and teaching. I find that in music it is more than in any other art that the teaching methods and traditions differ in different European (post-European) cultures depending on where they come from... how they were formed and influenced by major national musical schools in EuropeI find people automatically assume LEGATO = slurs/hammers
(I was always perplexed by the fact that 'parallel key' in English is 'the same tonic major/minor key' and 'Paralleltonart' in German is what 'relative key' is in English... of course it is just the matter of terms... but still... what do English and German people mean under parallel then? Or how do they apply it to keys realtions?)
As a kid in a classical guitar class I was taught about the difference between 'technical legato' and 'semantic (musical) legato'...
first was referred to slurs/hammers as a technique
second was about articulation and not necessarily a slur or a hammer
But on guitar those two are connected of course... first is often (not always) a techical tool to realize the second.
Second... well, it is just what it is.
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You know simetimes people say: 'It is very well articulated speach'... It does not mean that all the sounds are pronounced in a ver well articulated manner. It is usually about the meaning expressed in a very clear, coherent, natural and at the same time not oversimplified way.
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On the point about about it being innate …
I think we frequently confuse “a thing we don’t think about in real time” with something that is “innate.”
Most of the time we’re talking about something someone works at all the time, but which is not something they think about in the moment they’re improvising. I can improvise pretty freely with a major scale, and i don’t think about it while I’m improvising, but it’s not innate. The thinking just happened while I was practicing the day before.
I think the same might be true of articulation.
To that end, I’ve had a lot of success training myself to slur into downbeats, when possible with string changes etc. One way I’ve enjoyed practicing this is by learning my bebop heads in all positions. The position shifts change where the string changes happen, which changes where the slurs are possible.
I made this for a student recently. He was working on “Four.” So this is Four in five different fingering positions, with slurs written into the downbeats, when it’s possible in that position. Kind of fun.
Attachment 101722
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Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your point of view, in common guitar speak, Legato playing means Slurs, Hammer-ons, Pull-offs. Originally Posted by NSJ
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Yeah, it’s maddening haha. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
Although tbf legato is used to describe a musical result by electric guitarists who have a bit of wider musical knowledge like Vai and Satriani - it’s just than for distorted rock and fusion lead guitar that result is most commonly achieved by using a mixture of the above plus slides and so on (and probably a bit more picking than you’d think in the case of Allan Holdsworth.) in fact bending is about the most legato thing you can do on guitar but it is rarely referred to as such I notice.
Terminology creep has ended conflating the two related but separate meanings.
However the wider understanding of the term gets lost a bit. I used to say that I wanted to pick legato and got ‘does not compute’ looks from other guitar players. Kurt did a masterclass about this a while back and I felt vindicated…
My articulation ethos on guitar is legato and hornlike… that’s not true of all jazzers.
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Yeah I really like this. Originally Posted by Jonah
My trumpet player friend has been sending me videos of Clarke Terry talk about doodle tonguing. So articulating with a strong first eighth note and a weak or ghosted second note and he says “you wouldn’t dare walk into a restaurant and order chicken Noo-Dull soup.”
So in that case a strong clear articulation on each syllable makes the word sound wrong.
it’s here … about ten minutes in.
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As for misleading 'leagto' term on guitar...
In classical many articulation terms come from the bowed strings...
legato, non legato, detache, marcato, portamento, staccato, staccato accento, tenuto, portato...
And on violine for example they are all both about meaning and specific technique.
But on piano or guitar they are often more about just meaning.
The sign kind of tells you: imagine how a violinist would have played it and try to express it on your instrument.
I think originally they just tried to imitated a violine.
A bit off-topic
Actually if we look retrospectively... the origines of modern classical instrumentalism lie in baroque era.
And it reminds me a lot a process in jazz.
Instruments tried to imitate vocal (often litterally) - and nothing can surpass violine in that quality.
Then instruments with their technical virtuosity began to affect vocal techniques - when virtuoso singers trie to imitade cascade lines and big leaps of violinists, trumpeters, flutists. And there were even competitions between singers and players.
Is it not how it developed in jazz? Horns tries to imitate vocal intonation and phrasing first but then they began to influence jazz vocalists in turn.Last edited by Jonah; 05-19-2023 at 02:49 AM.
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I was a classical guitar major in college and classical guitar teachers love talking about “legato” and they mean it like I imagine you did. Smooth and connected, even when picking each note separately. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I always thought of it as a technical shorthand in a lot of those instances. There are so many ways to cut a note short on guitar (pick plants to early, finger frets poorly, finger leaves fret too early, free finger drags string etc). Even a good player can’t consciously police what every finger is doing, but if you focus your ear on “legato” then your fingers can make a lot of those minute corrections on their own.
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Yes, Guitar "Legato" terminology is in a complete mess. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
"Smooth and connected", yes, but, leaving your finger too long on a fret can be a problem too.
The great modern Legato player Tom Quayle explains why here at 3m10s:
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I’ve got a lot out of Toms teaching. While I can’t ‘legato’ like him - and tbh I’m not sure if I’d want to for myself, it’s not really my style - I think what’s good for ‘legato’ technique is good for left hand fretting in general. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
for myself I’m feeling that what I want to achieve on the instrument works better with a principally three fingered technique though . I’ve long noticed quite a few - perhaps even a majority - of the top jazz players, esp the one I like - mostly favour three fingers for single note playing. It’s clearly a deliberate choice as they have no trouble using their pinkies for chords etc (Miles Okazaki wrote an article about it.) For me it swings more and sounds vibier. The little finger tends to rush (at least for me) probably out of overcompensation.
So you can spend a lot of time working on equality of the little finger as players like Tom or Pasquale do, or you can avoid the problem by using three fingers.
I think the tendency to ‘set’ the first finger comes from a psychological need to compensate for the weakness of the finger. That and general overfretting. However on a big box with big strings you do need to use a little more force than on a futuro-tron with slinkies.
That said I think Pasquale just has crazy fingers honed through hours of classical guitar technique in childhood. I’ve played his guitar, he’s got proper strings on it.Last edited by Christian Miller; 05-20-2023 at 06:54 AM.
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Yea it seems many guitarist have difficulty with articulations from just not having enough technique to be able to play lines etc.
If you can't pick every note your going to have trouble having articulating options...
I know it's old... but put time into playing through percussion studies. The old school standard was Bellson's books.
Generally after you were able to read through the studies... you would add accent patterns etc...
It's just a much more thorough approach than reading Tunes. (I mean your going to always read heads etc... but most charts don't have articulations).
Again... there is technique practice and performance practice, they're different, right.
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I would be interested to hear more about this. Originally Posted by Reg
I’ve tried to work on the Bellson in the past.
I’ve been working with drum rudiments using “right-left” as an analog for “up-down” and that’s been cool. But I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do with the longer Bellson studies.
Do you play them all on single notes? Cross strings? Use a scale?
I never quite figured it out.
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I used to play through Bellson book too for a while in the past. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
What I did was either playing chords to this pattern (I used some changes or improvized them) or to play it melodically and convert the rhythmic pattern into harmony-melody realtionship and how accents in melody are conenceted to harmony in meter.
For example harmony goies 4 to the bar (I used different changes, not just one chord all the way. And melody follows rhythmic Bellson pattern of an excercise and I have to figure out different melodic solutions. It was fun. A bit artificial - probably that is why I quit it - but fun.
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Yea... the better your at playing melodic patterns, scales arpeggios etc... the more choices you have.
If you do as suggested and play the rhythms in a Jazz or swing style of feel. (everything becomes triplet feel).
The articulations almost become natural.
Anyway.... workout accent patterns and just apply them to the studies. I use to always use my speed studies which were designed with scales and arps.
My speed studies would just be....
Scales,
-2 octaves up and down
-2 note patterns, same 2 octaves up and down
-3 note etc..
-4
-5
-6
etc
Then same with arps... all of them triad, 7ths, 9ths, 13's...and then arps of chord patterns...
You know the drill
Just start with simple scales... first. It's fun... I still like doing this BS. It does help to have chops etc...
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So you’re playing all your technical stuff using the rhythms from the studies? Originally Posted by Reg
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That would be an interesting exercise to record and share. Originally Posted by princeplanet
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