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I mostly hybrid pick chords. I even like using my right hand pinky to play extended chords and melody lines. But I always thought hybriding single lines was just lazy. Recently I saw one jazz-fusion type player who used hybrid picked single lines and now I think it is not only a good way to increase speed but it allows for saxophone like articulation of alternated notes.
Do any of the modern or older prominent jazz guitarists use hybrid lines in soloing?
Here is a Josh Smith video that discusses the technique:
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08-18-2023 09:19 AM
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I tend to associate it more with country-type playing, mainly owing to the aspect of Guthrie Govan's use of the technique for single-note lines - both what I've seen in videos and in magazines - I have an article by GG from an issue of Guitar Techniques from years ago on hybrid picking, and every day I play through a few of the licks/exercises for about 15 minutes.
I've noticed it in the styles of Ant Law and on this forum, Jack Zucker. I guess you could call it lazy but others might say it's more economical - and like economy picking, some people will point out that there are people out there who can do one-note-per-string alternate picking really fast so why both with sweeping? - well, you bother with sweeping because it is more suited to one-note-per-string stuff. In any case even if you could plectrum-pick everything you'd want, fingers produce a different tone so it would be nice to have that choice available.
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Would this player be Tom Quayle? He's kind of the king of legato hybrid picking technique.
Originally Posted by Tal_175
I think it's a really cool sound but I wonder how well it translates from an overdriven, light string gauge solid body set up to the clean, heavy gauge, archtop set up of traditional straight ahead. It wouldn't surprise me if there are players out there I don't know about who pull it off, but instinctively it seems like it would be difficult to produce the classic straight ahead sound in that way.
I think it's a great technique for the Rosenwinkel-esque stream of modern jazz guitar however. There are a lot more legato elements in that style.
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Ok! I guess I missed this in my previous reply - sorry. Originally Posted by Tal_175
Yeah it's a good technique. I haven't got too far with it yet. Good for intervallic-type lines. I recall seeing a video about it on instagram but having checked the person's youtube channel, the video doesn't appear to be there. Anyway, this video from what I recall stated that better speed can be achieved by brushing the string with one's fingertip, rather than catching the string. I also wonder if Troy Grady's 'start with speed' idea applies here - maybe? It's likely to be really ugly to begin with but from what I recall from my classical guitar years, only practising slowly just results in lots of tension. So a certain amount of just-going-for-it speed work needs to happen...
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Yeah I’m firmly in the Why Not camp. Tools in the toolbox. Originally Posted by James W
I don’t work much on flat out picking single note lines with hybrid picking, but I work on lots of hybrid picking stuff where the pick acts as the thumb. So I definitely play short single note passages alternating my a and m fingers while holding the pick. Like while I’m comping or playing solo guitar or whatever.
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Yeah this is the rub. The swing bebop time-feel is so hard to reproduce with fingers. My old classical guitar teacher would always show me videos or recordings of guys playing jazz with fingerstyle technique and I never heard one I couldn’t pick out as fingerstyle in two seconds in a blind test. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
I think part of it is that I think of picking as being an articulation. An upstroke sounds different than a downstroke no matter how much you work on evening them out. Thumb sounds different than fingers. Alternating i and m sounds different than i and a. Alternating two fingers sounds different than alternating three.
So at the end of the day, it has to be a musical choice. What is the rhythmic effect of the hybrid picking? Are the right hand fingerings being chosen for their musical value or for the speed they unlock? Guitarists are notorious for paying loads of attention to the speed and none to the sound they produce.
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Yeah, Tom Quayle is a good example but it wasn't him. I wonder if in this technique people use the fingers only for picking intervallic notes on other strings (other than the string that the pick plays) or do they use fingers for upstrokes on the same string also for the effect? Originally Posted by BreckerFan
Last edited by Tal_175; 08-18-2023 at 04:39 PM.
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Sam Dickinson out of Toronto plays seamlessly btw pick and fingerstyle
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I’ve never really felt the need to hybrid pick single lines but having got into it for counterpoint stuff like Bach inventions, maybe I should give it a try.
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From what I've seen in a linear context it seems primarily to be a method for navigating string changes. Coming from a completely different style, Tosin Abasi's thumping/selective picking stuff seems like it could be used for lines. It's not really how he uses it and it would again have a very particular sound, but maybe someone in jazz needs to try it out haha Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Well I think Ants doing a pretty good job of that.
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I haven't checked him out, any recommendations for where to start? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I'd suggest both his first record, Entanglement and his most recent one with saxophonist Alex Hitchcock Same Moon In The Same World, but I have all his albums and they're all great. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
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Yeah he’s nay a bad player given he hasn’t learned to string skip properly and tunes his guitar to make it easier /jk
seriously, I think it goes to show - whatever you need to do to meet the challenges of the music you wish to perform. I hear Ant very much as a composer, and I think that’s what he’s taken from people like Ben Monder, when I chatted to him. Actually I get the impression that for a virtuoso player I think he’s kind of more interested in that then being a player for playings sake. His main focus is playing this very challenging contemporary music rather than standards, although I enjoy his standards playing. I also don’t really see him as a web-friendly shredder type though he certainly has the chops.
Trio HLK is cool as well. He’s also been a sideman for Tim Garland for a few years. He also has a criminally under viewed YouTube channel. Seems to be picking up a little though, but I suppose people would still rather watch fusion shredding on backing tracks than original music performed by fantastic musicians ….
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Yes, I love his arrangement of 'Satellite' -
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I do a fair amount of hybrid picking especially for blues chord stabs and chord melody but i have been interested in in learning some single note stuff mostly in a country context. I went on a search for a YT tutorial and could not really find one where they really broke down the nuts and bolts or gave a simple starting point or exercise. Perhaps because as Josh says everyone does it differently.
Any suggestions/resources on how to get at least one simple country lick started?
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Lorne Lofsky is another fingerstyle player (with a thumb pick). I think most of his playing alternating btw thumb and index.
Easy to find his stuff out there on the internet.
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Looking at Allan Holdsworths right hand I think he may have done this a bit
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If you haven't heard Tom Quayle, he's a hybrid player worth checking out. Jazz and fusion
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