-
If you think Oscar Wilde understood human nature better than Josef Pieper, I wouldn't bother to listen.
Originally Posted by princeplanet
Hear ya, let's take it up again in a bar sometime, where I can tell you what I really think about Josef Pieper
-
07-07-2014 09:53 AM
-
I think how you learned has an impact on what our preferences are. When I studied with Harry Leahey, he always wanted to be able to play any line or phrase on any string starting with any finger.
-
Well then you won't bother to read these fun quotes from O.W - Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.
Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.
In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs forever and ever.
The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.
In America the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.
Man is a rational animal who always loses his temper when he is called upon to act in accordance with the dictates of reason.
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.
Arguments are to be avoided: they are always vulgar and often convincing.
If one plays good music, people don't listen and if one plays bad music people don't talk.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.
There is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.
There are many things that we would throw away if we were not afraid that others might pick them up.
The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation.
The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.
The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.
Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.
The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.
By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, journalism keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.
He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.
If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn't. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
---------------------------------------------
And in the other corner in the red trunks. JP:
“What distinguishes - in both senses of that word - contemplation is rather this: it is a knowing which is inspired by love. "Without love there would be no contemplation." Contemplation is a loving attainment of awareness. It is intuition of the beloved object.”
“Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.”
“Of course the world of work begins to become - threatens to become - our only world, to the exclusion of all else. The demands of the working world grow ever more total, grasping ever more completely the whole of human existence.
“Happiness,... even the smallest happiness, is like a step out of Time, and the greatest happiness is sharing in Eternity.”
“The happy life does not mean loving what we possess, but possessing what we love." Possession of the beloved, St. Thomas holds, takes place in an act of cognition, in seeing, in intuition, in contemplation.”
“The ultimate meaning of the active life is to make possible the happiness of contemplation.”
“... the greatest menace to our capacity for contemplation is the incessant fabrication of tawdry empty stimuli which kill the receptivity of the soul.”
“No one can obtain felicity by pursuit. This explains why one of the elements of being happy is the feeling that a debt of gratitude is owed, a debt impossible to pay. Now, we do not owe gratitude to ourselves. To be conscious of gratitude is to acknowledge a gift.”
...Enduring comprises a strong activity of the soul, namely, a vigorous grasping of and clinging to the good; and only from this stout-hearted activity can the strength to support the physical and spiritual suffering of injury and death be nourished.”
“Happiness is essentially a gift; we are not the forgers of our own felicity.”
“The brave man uses wrath for his own act, above all in attack, 'for it is peculiar to wrath to pounce upon evil. Thus fortitude and wrath work directly upon each other.”
“...the intemperately wrathful man is less obnoxious than the intemperately lustful one, while the immoderate pleasure-seeker, intent on dissimulation and camouflage, is unable to give or take a straight look in the eye.”
“To know means to reach the reality of existing things.”
-----------------------------------------------------
....... set aside who has the deeper insight to humanity, I certainly know who I'd rather share a beer with!
-
07-07-2014, 11:56 AM #79destinytot GuestCome on, play nice! So much gets lost in translation. Actually, I've got a soft spot for JP simply because he's from near my mother's home town.set aside who has the deeper insight to humanity, I certainly know who I'd rather share a beer with!
I'd buy everyone a beer if could. Back to shifting around on three fingers and picking firmly.
-
hehe, yeah I know, German translations are often even drier than the original! Much of what JP wrote is of course important stuff we need to remind ourselves of.
Just havin' a bit of fun....
-
Are we allowed to discuss this a little bit in this thread? I simply cant bring myself to believe it, but happy to be convinced.... anyone got "proof" of this? It is certainly an astonishing claim! Originally Posted by monk
-
I read all of Oscar's books as a teenager, including "De Profundis." I don't dislike the man. I just don't think he was especially astute about art or human nature. I did once buy a coffee mug that contained my favorite line of his: "Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow." I re-read the plays sometimes for the laughs---which are many---but I read Pieper for the intellectual heft and clarity. Neither of which has to do with jazz guitar... Originally Posted by princeplanet
-
Well, I suppose we are free to discuss it, but that BK said that about CC, whom he met and saw play, is something no one here is in a position to dispute. I've read the same interview. I think I've posted links to it here (-this Forum, not this thread) a few times. Barney was a already a good player when he met Charlie, an adult. He watched Charlie 'up close and personal.' Originally Posted by princeplanet
If you won't take Barney Kessel's word for how Charlie played, whose would you take?
-
First of all, swing music was dance music. There weren't a lot of insane tempos. Originally Posted by princeplanet
The default pick stroke for eighth notes during this period seems to be down strokes if you look at the guitar methods from that time. Down strokes were considered to have a better, more consistent tone.
While there are no film clips of Charlie Christian playing, there are clips of contemporaries like George Barnes and disciples such as Herb Ellis and Bucky Pizzarelli. It's surprising how many jazz guitarists use mostly down strokes for medium and slow tempo tunes.
YouTube is full of videos of well-known guitarists who were influenced by CC. Check them out.
-
I just listened to Stompin' and then Topsy (live). I swear I can hear upstrokes. Surely you couldn't sound as smooth as he does with downstrokes only? Try it, it's damn near impossible! Besides, BK may have been mistaken, it's often hard to tell what a player's right hand is really doing.
-
95% of statistics are made up.
If you take Barney's quote to mean "Charlie played a hell of a lot of downstrokes" it allows you to get on with life and realize even Charlie used some upstrokes.
Whenever I have to rely on anecdotal evidence, I take it with more than a few grains of salt.
-
Here we go again. Originally Posted by princeplanet
Barney Kessel didn't say he used ALL downstrokes.
George Barnes is on record in magazine interview saying that he, also, used MOSTLY down strokes.
I've watched Bucky play on video and in person and can say that he also uses MOSTLY down strokes.
For the moment, I chose to believe Barney Kessel's statement, my own eyes and what I've found from researching old guitar methods over your ears.
-
Hear, hear! Originally Posted by monk
-
So maybe something like " CC played downstrokes except when double timing anything over moderate to fast tempos". Originally Posted by monk
Sure, I'll buy that. Not askin' you to believe my ears, I know you have your own...
-
07-08-2014, 10:39 AM #90destinytot GuestReally helpful advice. Thank you! Originally Posted by paulkogut
-
My experience:
Actually 3 - fingers concept really helped to get me into phrasing, not even chord shapes (though also this)- but more phrasing ... Actually I do not see how using chord shape method strongly prevents from using pinky... maybe in some cases.
I think players of old days did not use pinky because they start as self-taughts and self-taughts often neglect pinky....
And that caused the 'wrong' wrist angle to stretch out the 3rd fiinger...
But these two points (3 fingers and chord shapes) - forme certain fingering with slide shifts and junb to the adjecent string with the same finger, and this effected phrasing...
And after first players new ones just learnt from them.
So I think it is important to try this method to catch their phrasing and to feel comfortable with chord shapes
Especially after classical fingering, when you are used to play easily with pinky - the classical is just elaborated for other purposes. When I started to play jazz after classical I often saw that either I get lost becasue this fingering did not bring me where I wanted, or phrasing was too clear, too even...
It took me time to go over it and I got it only when I saw how the played and tried to imitate... of course I did not stop using pinky, but pinky became my advantage, instead of obstacle...
Last edited by Jonah; 07-10-2014 at 09:35 AM.
-
I wrote to guitarist Frank Vignola about this and he kindly wrote back. I wrote Frank because he is a top-flight contemporary player with deep roots in both swing and Gypsy styles.
His short answer to fingering was, "Whatever works." As for the masters, he concluded as follows:
"There are over 200 ways to play a C scale so I doubt any of the Masters gave too much thought to fingering only and probably on certain tricky passages."
I do not consider this the last word on the subject but I do consider it an important word.
(I will repeat this post on a few other threads that touch on this same subject.)
-
this technique sounds amazing but does it exists a guide to how to play it?
a pentatonic scale is easy to play with only three fingers; but major scales or arpegios or chromatism seem a bit difficoult to me.
any help?
(edit) ...and the thumb position is not clear to me: watching at some Benson's clips, his thumb is almost always over the fretboard, while the main four finger technique needs the thumb exactly opposite at the other fingers, in the middle of the neck back (sorry for my poor english).
and again the main three fingers are placed not parallel to frets but obliques, like a violin player...Last edited by gianluca; 02-28-2016 at 05:56 AM.
-
gianluca you are officially - the reanimator!
Three fingered style for me is thumb over the neck. You tend to avoid stretches this way and slide around a lot. Some of my students play this way (it is good for gypsy jazz and swing IMO) and I encourage them to alternate 1st and 3rd finger as much as possible, with a bit of 2nd finger.
In any right hand fingering the thing avoid is playing the next string with the same finger and a shift. Playing either the same finger or a shift is fine, but doing both is awkward. So for a G major scale at the 2nd fret, standard shape, I would suggest
1 3 1 / 1 3 1 3 / 3 1 3 / 3 1 3 1 / 1 going up
1 \ 1 3 1 3 \ 3 1 3 \ 3 1 3 1 \ 1 3 1 going down
Where / is slide up and \ is slide down
But you might find other combinations that are more comfortable.
With this type of fingering, you may find you need to do a different fingering when you play scales in intervals (3rd, 4ths etc)
-
so, just a very little use of 2...
-
Yeah, I feel that using combinations like 1 2 3 puts the hand out of shape and it's more natural to use a 3. The aim is to make everything feel as natural as a blues lick... Originally Posted by gianluca
Bear in mind that Django fretted everything with 1 and 2, so you only really 'need' two fingers for a surprisingly large amount of single note playing. But 1 and 3 more natural if you have a functional ring finger...
Finger 2 is very useful though.... For arpeggios for example.
-
There are videos on Youtube of Wes Montgomery, George Barnes, Garrison Fewell, Jimmy Raney, Bucky Pizarelli, Frank Vignola and other swing/bop guitarists who use this technique. Watching them will be more instructive than any amount of discussion we have here. Miles Okazaki's demonstration of Charlie Christian's Stomping at the Savoy solo is excellent.
The difference between Gypsy Jazz and American Swing is that common chord shapes are the left hand point of reference in Swing rather than the diagonal arpeggios of Gypsy Jazz.
-
I did not read the whole thread yet, so pardon me if I say something redundant.
Just Friday night as I was recording some tunes in my living room, oddly enough I ended up slicing my left fretting hand fifth finger doing a long slide. That was enough to make me not use it as much for the next 24 hours. That happens sometimes with steel strings but not for me so often with nylon. Anyway, I was 'forced' to use three fingers largely for most of the night, though I can't stop using the fifth finger out of habit.
But what I think is beneficial with the three finger technique as people have already noted is in the phrasing. One is forced to do more position transitions, perhaps introducing also a more 'triplet feel'.
-
my interior fight is if to start a (I presume) pretty long period to learn and familiarize with the 3 fingers techinque or goin' on (or improve) my efforts on the "normal" 4 fingers technique: in a different video, mr. okazaki shows a very solid 4 fingers techinque (a chromatic scale video)... Originally Posted by monk
(edit) I can't figure how a chromatic scale could be shaped with 3 fingers...Last edited by gianluca; 02-28-2016 at 01:38 PM.
-
gianliuca,
Swing and bebop is not about playing scales. Guitarists tend to be obsessive about scales. Pianists, horn players and string players see and use scales for what they are. A means to familiarize oneself with their chosen instrument and build technique.
Learning songs is paramount. Songs are what you will play on the job. They are also the form upon which you will base your solos.
Regards,
Jerome
Reply With Quote
Julian Lage Trio, Amsterdam, April 17 2024
Today, 02:19 AM in The Players