How do you work on articulation?

[pamosmusic]

That would be an interesting exercise to record and share.

Would be interested in seeing any of the exercises mentioned in this thread recorded and shared.

[Christian Miller]

It probably depends of the size and strength of your hand/fingers too.

Using the little finger for fretting has become defacto for most modern guitar players who use 3NPS patterns, which is probably the most common finger patterns for rock/pop guitar.

You can use 3NPS for each position and stretch the index or little finger to move to another position, so it initially seems easier to shift positions.

Ah well you see under the influence of Lage Lund and maybe classical guitar I would tend to avoid position shifting with the little finger altogether. Influenced maybe my piano playing Lage only uses the little finger when changing direction.

EDIT: actually I think I misunderstood you here. You can stretch out and then ‘collapse’ the hand to make a small position shift? Sure…

My belief is Position shifting is not itself a problem- Guitarists make it a problem by thinking too positionally. 3nps is as positional a mindset as trad positions. That’s not bad per se- you should totally learn them and then move on. Ultimately of course it’s about being able to play a scale from the bottom of the guitar to the top and back again. That’s what Allan was getting at with the 4nps thing though guitarists got the wrong end of the stick.

(I personally dislike 3nps, I’m not of fan of stretching except where absolutely necessary - usually in polyphonic music. But a lot of impressive players play that way for sure.)

Julian Lage pointed out in a masterclass how little actually movement is required to make a shift right up the neck. Studying classical guitar is interesting too; the positions are very abruptly moved without any sliding.

ultimately shifts are achieved through movements of the forearm - become too preoccupied with finger use and maybe it seem like a challenge. It’s a different movement that needs to be cultivated and trained.

Another reason by one fingered scale practice and playing things along one string is great haha.

anyway thats all more about technique..

[Christian Miller]

Not that I’m especially dogmatic about it. Obviously if you are working on an Allan solo as some of my students have you are going to be dealing with stretch positions and 3nps stuff. It’s up to me as a teacher to have the knowledge to coach them through that sort of stuff.

[Reg]

So you’re playing all your technical stuff using the rhythms from the studies?

Really... No. That was just one of many, and more in the direction of like Spider drills. Brainless mechanical drills for technical skills and of course sight reading. You can't sight read very well if you can't recognize rhythms.

I'm not trying to be rude...but this just shouldn't be that difficult. To become accomplished etc...it takes more work on technical skills... Without them, you very much limit your options of what you even have a chance of playing. I'm not talking about memorizing in the classical tradition... Jazz is about playing Live.
Disclaimer... memorizing tunes etc...is also part of playing... we all do. But It takes years of playing and being able to adapt what one has memorized. Like at gig I play last night... a Quintet...playing tunes in different styles, changing time sigs etc..like as we start...LOL, being able to expand what or how you have tunes memorized ... live while your playing. (just for the record... I'm very average pro)

When you've put in the boring time on Technical skills... you can play a head with different rhythmic accent etc.. without really even thinking about it... the patterns are already there.

[pamosmusic]

I'm not trying to be rude...

Well that’s good to know.

(just for the record... I'm very average pro)

And at least we have that in common.

My apologies if the question was annoying or dumb. When I’m teaching, I tell students that they only get better by leaning into the things they don’t do well.

I guess I just try to practice what I preach in that respect.

EDIT: I guess also part of my preoccupation with this stuff comes from the fact that I’m a full time private teacher. A student does the things I say and then says “why doesn’t it sound like jazz.” I always direct them to listening, but I’m not comfortable as a teacher throwing my hands up and saying “listen to the masters” and “practice more.” Even though those things are obviously key.

I consider an important part of my job to be helping them learn how to listen, giving them the tools to understand what they’re listening to, and teaching them how to practice. So when I find my answers to their questions to be inadequate in those respects, I try to find better answers.

[pamosmusic]

I guess I just try to practice what I preach in that respect.

Ha! No pun intended.

[carvingcode]

Scat singing was developed as a way of communicating jazz phrasing. The saying "if you can say it, you can play it" fits in the discussion about articulation.

[Christian Miller]

Well that’s good to know.



And at least we have that in common.

My apologies if the question was annoying or dumb. When I’m teaching, I tell students that they only get better by leaning into the things they don’t do well.

I guess I just try to practice what I preach in that respect.

EDIT: I guess also part of my preoccupation with this stuff comes from the fact that I’m a full time private teacher. A student does the things I say and then says “why doesn’t it sound like jazz.” I always direct them to listening, but I’m not comfortable as a teacher throwing my hands up and saying “listen to the masters” and “practice more.” Even though those things are obviously key.

I consider an important part of my job to be helping them learn how to listen, giving them the tools to understand what they’re listening to, and teaching them how to practice. So when I find my answers to their questions to be inadequate in those respects, I try to find better answers.

yeah me too. And you and I both know that Sonny Rollins can play the notes of a major triad and it will sound like the best jazz ever. So there is a mystery to it.

quite a lot of the mystery is in the rhythm and phrasing. Again as Sonny said - if you can play one note and play it with rhythm you can play jazz. Now, can one of your students who ask ‘why doesn’t it sound like jazz?’ do this? From my own experience with such students I’m willing to bet no. They run out of rhythms to play very quickly if they can do it at all.

so they need rhythmic vocabulary and language.

You can transcribe rhythms only and use them as the basis of lines. I think Bellson is indispensable. It is about reading but the interesting thing about reading rhythms unlike pitches on the guitar which can be a matter of ‘typing’ is you have to audiate them. So it works like transcription in reverse. Plus you learn to read!

So - in this approach you don’t count, you divide the 4/4 bar in two (invisible bar line) and practice audiating/singing the little two beat rhythmic cells. There’s not that many of them. (Bellson contains some very awkward ways to write out these rhythms but it’s good preparation for charts.)

the other thing that’s helped me is that in general mostly we can either play new stuff or improvise.

Only high level players can do both (Sonny again - and even he could be hit and miss). many have a bag of patterns and licks that they use much of the time. (Even to the point of working out or refining solos in part or even in full.) If we are honest, improv rarely resembles the ‘making something from nothing’ image of popular imagination. (It’s more a set of informal and unrecorded practices for music making in general.)

Certainly it’s a stretch to imagine this is possible for baby jazzers so to speak.

So, players who can’t improvise like jazz can’t expect to sound like jazz when they improvise. I mean it’s obvious, and yet we sometimes teach as if this is possible (chord scales for beginners).

They can however sound like jazz when playing something that’s worked out or borrowed.

That’s why licks are such a solid idea. You kind of have to go through that phase I think. You can go from playing a head or solo to forms of playing that include limited player freedom (play lick a or b) eventually moving to variation of material and construction of material (eg Barry harris) and so on…

[jazzshrink]

Scat singing was developed as a way of communicating jazz phrasing. The saying "if you can say it, you can play it" fits in the discussion about articulation.

I disagree. The origins of scat predate jazz in America, and can be traced back to West African music where vocals using specific syllables were added to the percussive line of the music. In jazz, it was and is a vehicle for vocal improvisation, not merely a means of "communicating jazz phrasing".

[pamosmusic]

I disagree. The origins of scat predate jazz in America, and can be traced back to West African music where vocals using specific syllables were added to the percussive line of the music. In jazz, it was and is a vehicle for vocal improvisation, not merely a means of "communicating jazz phrasing".

You might be right about this. I think maybe what the earlier post was referring to is the way horn players use syllables to hear (and sometimes execute) some phrasing.

I mentioned in an earlier post that a buddy of mine was talking to me about Clark Terry’s “Doodle” phrasing. Which sounds silly, but he means literally pairs of eighth notes articulates like the word “Doodle”. Stress, no stress — hard consonant soft consonant.

at least from what I understand.

[Christian Miller]

You might be right about this. I think maybe what the earlier post was referring to is the way horn players use syllables to hear (and sometimes execute) some phrasing.

I mentioned in an earlier post that a buddy of mine was talking to me about Clark Terry’s “Doodle” phrasing. Which sounds silly, but he means literally pairs of eighth notes articulates like the word “Doodle”. Stress, no stress — hard consonant soft consonant.

at least from what I understand.

yeah - all of that can be applied to sight reading rhythms from bellson and so on.

one reason why I’m not crazy about Konnakol syllables in jazz - they sound great in Carnatic music (obviously) but they seem to me a bit too sharp and explosive for jazz. But there’s no reason why you can’t do Konnakol with a different syllable set.

I have a soft spot for Mike Longo’s approach which is a sort of modified counting into rhythmic solfeggio. It’s very clever.

[pamosmusic]

Dug up “Stick Control for the Snare Drummer” the other day. I’ve had it for a long time (maybe this is what I was thinking of, and not Bellson?) but never really made much of it. On revisiting it, I’m kind of hooked.

I’ve been taking these patterns and switching the R and L for down and up pick strokes. You get some super tough patterns, especially when applied over diatonic intervals or other patterns.

[emanresu]

Hm. I remember when starting in jazz school, coming from classical. I knew nothing about it and had to start listening to jazz.
The very first thought was "why so many notes all the time?" and the next "why do they pick all the notes? they all sound equal that way".

When studying classical guitar, the legato (mechanical one that is) was very difficult to get right. Took a lot of work to get it working well enough.
When switched to electric guitar, I was asked to use a pick and pick all the notes... while it was sooooo much easier now to get the slurs right. Funny

Well, haven't been thinking about this for a long time. Except needing to learn the same stuff(scales&arps, but licks - not so much ) with different fingerings - that has something to do with articulation.

[paul.trapanese]

I like Scott Henderson’s advice of making the picked notes the same volume as the hammer on’s and pull offs. That way it’s more seamless.
I think he is a master of articulation. Even without overdrive. Very nuanced.


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[Stefan Eff]

Listen close to Julian Lage‘s playing. He‘s my master of articulation.

[pamosmusic]

Well, haven't been thinking about this for a long time. Except needing to learn the same stuff(scales&arps, but licks - not so much ) with different fingerings - that has something to do with articulation.

Interesting. Different fingerings for different articulation.

You mean playing something on a different combination of strings? Or enabling different left hand slurs? Or something about the fingering itself?

[emanresu]

Interesting. Different fingerings for different articulation.

You mean playing something on a different combination of strings? Or enabling different left hand slurs? Or something about the fingering itself?

Both. For arps, there are way less slurs. But some combination is impossible to play fast, smooth and comfortable, so a different fingering might be 10xbetter choice.
For scales, the good, logical and comfortable slurs happen on different places in different fingerings.

I don't use the pick so there is similar reason for different fingerings for the right hand too.

But I only learn them to the bones... really not thinking about it much at all.