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Wow, insightful stuff! Thanks for that, I really wanna read the whole thing, is it available on line for free? If not, I'm sure its worth paying for.
Originally Posted by Bop Head
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01-31-2024 11:09 PM
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That's Diz' famous autobiography "To Be Or Not To Bop". Several copies in the Internet Archive, you can use a Google account to log in and borrow, but also worth buying a physical copy. Or borrow from your local library. Originally Posted by princeplanet
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Now that I started to go to the jam sessions where the pros go I realize that although my improvisations often suck big time the players and the audience really díg my blues based touch. Originally Posted by princeplanet
I get how we can still be dynamic within a limited range (say, soft to medium), but why not expand that range to be soft>>>LOUD!
It's just my personal taste, but I can't listen to soft guitar players going "plinkety plink" all night. I've always wondered why that's encouraged and have come to the conclusion that it's easier to control one's playing with a softer touch. That and the fact that players who can't control their loud bits can sound amateurish, or at least not seem able to marry the loud part of their dynamic range to the sound of their instrument and amp.
We've seen this kinda discussion on this forum a few times and I know that there aren't too many like me that seem to prefer players that can really "dig in" occasionally (but not in a ham-fisted kinda way). Dunno, I think I look for some excitement, which is probably why I listen to way more horn payers!
I find myself listening to singers, horns and pianists much more than to guitarists.
One thing BTW that hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread is the vocal as ideal for jazz lines -- for horns as well.
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Not sure if you know about audio tech terms like compression and expansion (all that stuff is part of my living), but from my knowledge of guitar amps along with pedal FX etc, I know (as I'm sure we all do) that certain guitar / FX / amp combos will serve to narrow the already narrow dynamic range of the guitar. Many guitarists seek "comfort" in this, hehe... Take that stuff away and listen to them acoustically and many don't sound musical (poor articulation, expression etc). Certainly when compared to acoustic players (especially classical). Originally Posted by pamosmusic
But you can dial up a combo of guitar and amp (no fx) that, rather than compresses a range, can expand the dynamic range. Soft strikes seem even softer than they'd sound acoustically, while louder strikes are not just louder, but more aggressive (overdrive etc without curtailing amplitude too much). I have a Princeton amp set up like this, and when others play my guitar and amp through it, it sounds really poor to me because the sound is dialled in for some digging in. If you don't have wide natural dynamics this kind of sound exposes you. Acoustic players sound fine playing electrically through this sound, but the plinkety plink guys that are used to hiding behind compression, or chorus, or reverb.... they sound rather lame.
I'll also add this, FWIW, from my observations. A player with a harder touch (hopefully controlled) can also sound bad playing through a set up that is dialled in for a much softer touch. But a loud dynamic player with control over their range can immediately lighten their touch to suit the sound. This is definitely not the case the other way around! If you're a softie, you will not be able to immediately adjust your range to be louder and sound good. That takes years, not seconds! It took me 10 years (along with thicker strings and higher action) to train myself to have the control I wanted playing harder, and that's about 9.5 years longer than I expected it would take!
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Yeah. This all makes sense. And I think I probably agree with you too. Originally Posted by princeplanet
I'll also add this, FWIW, from my observations. A player with a harder touch (hopefully controlled) can also sound bad playing through a set up that is dialled in for a much softer touch. But a loud dynamic player with control over their range can immediately lighten their touch to suit the sound. This is definitely not the case the other way around! If you're a softie, you will not be able to immediately adjust your range to be louder and sound good. That takes years, not seconds! It took me 10 years (along with thicker strings and higher action) to train myself to have the control I wanted playing harder, and that's about 9.5 years longer than I expected it would take!
I guess I'm usually coming at it from a technical angle. So I tell students to practice dynamics, decrescendo first and try to play as quiet as they can without losing the pick. Not because the quiet is better or more useful than the loud, but because quiet often means relaxed for a beginner, and loud means tense. So it's easier to dial up that relaxed feeling to a louder dynamic than it is to try to shake the tension out of a beginner who's using strength to get that loud dynamic.
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A whammy bar, a volume pedal, light strings.
Push the whammy bar on descending phrases and pull it on ascending phrases.
A bit of distortion, and a bad setup in order not to be really in tune.
Some electronic buzz to emulate a breathy sound.
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Respectfully disagreeISTM that fetishizing another instrument leads to missing the opportunities offered by the guitar.
You can do both.
I even think you should preferably do both (but I also think you should do whatever you find motivating/enjoyable at each time).
If you've transcribed 30 jazz solos from 5-10 different guitarists, you're not going to "miss opportunities offered by the guitar" if the next 5 jazz solos you study are played on a different instrument. Nothing prevents you to return to studying guitarists at any time.
I would rather believe that there are missed opportunities if you only focus on studying players of your own instruments. I've seen a lot of players, of many instruments fall into that trap.
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100%. Where would we be if Charlie Christian hadn't learned to play horn lines on guitar? Originally Posted by orri
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Hard to disagree with anything you say here, but it’s worth pointing out that the thread isn’t “how to get some useful musical skills from other instruments” but rather “trying to sound more like a sax.” And it sounds like that’s sonically as well as musically. Originally Posted by orri
So that’s a bit of a different thing. Sure there is something to learn from the endeavor, but also a rabbit hole there to fall down too.
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Interesting that you notice this with students. I just see the whole thing like resistance training - like if you do running training in the sand with a 50 pound weight strapped to you back, you're gonna find it easy to run normally, or if you practice a musical piece 20bpm faster than you can comfortably play it for long enough, when you slow it back down suddenly you have so much more control at the "normal" tempo. Let's face it, right hand technique is a bitch any way you look at it, and in a way, it's kinda like our version of the horn player's mouthpiece - it's where the personality comes from, and I'm sure we all know how sax players can talk forever about their damn reeds! Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Oh man yeah my experience is the exact opposite. Originally Posted by princeplanet
Interesting that you notice this with students. I just see the whole thing like resistance training - like if you do running training in the sand with a 50 pound weight strapped to you back, you're gonna find it easy to run normally, or if you practice a musical piece 20bpm faster than you can comfortably play it for long enough, when you slow it back down suddenly you have so much more control at the "normal" tempo. Let's face it, right hand technique is a bitch any way you look at it, and in a way, it's kinda like our version of the horn player's mouthpiece - it's where the personality comes from, and I'm sure we all know how sax players can talk forever about their damn reeds!
the default is tense as all hell. Relaxation needs to be taught. Though it is a little weird. We’re generally pretty relaxed and good technique is making your hands and wrists look with a guitar the way they always look.
But the second you put a guitar in someone’s hand, they’re all tension. That louder dynamic, people intuitively think that it’s strength. Quieter they tend to relax. So having them play quieter is a way of getting them to experience the feeling of relaxation in the pick hand. Then you can tell them to keep that feeling as they play louder. Whenever they lose it, they’ve reached their max dynamic. It won’t be much at first, but it’ll get a little louder over time.
This is part of the reason why rest stroke is such a useful teaching tool for beginners. It teaches them to use gravity and follow through to get a huge sound, rather than force.
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Ah, like the one inch punch, maximum strength from minimum movement, yeah I get that. But try using a 3mm pick with heavy strings and heavy action playing single lines on an un-miced acoustic where you wanna be heard at the back of the auditorium - that's gonna require some tension, even to just stop the pick from moving around between your fingers. Take someone like Pat Martino, I'd be very surprised if he didn't have a firm grip on the pick (especially early on), in fact, even his left hand moves around with exaggerated movement - hardly text book technique! But he needed to get around like that to apply enough force to play his guitar the way he set it up. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
With light strings and light action you can get away with minimum force, where both hands are barely moving, I totally used to play like that and thought that was good technique. But now I like to fight my axe to get it to talk, if ya know what I mean...
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I taught myself how to play lines on the guitar by emulating my sax playing or kind of.
How to emulate a sax sound is not so interesting and it's a waste of time.
Maybe articulation is the way to go.
That's not a good example here because with time, my guitar playing became better than my sax playing.
I'm sure you can't perceive it but every time I'm soloing on the guitar I'm thinking of the saxophone.
Phrases I can't play on the saxophone because of the weather, the reed, the way I feel... It's not a good instrument if there is nobody around.
On the guitar it's a saxophone even if there are some guitar tricks but not a lot.
It's all about articulation.
I'm sorry, I'm just talking about my experience and feeling, you might say it's rubbish.
Emulating a sax tone on the guitar is a waste of time and so is reading what I wrote.
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Yeah not wrong. Thats the tough part. Theres always going to be tension in your hand. It would be impossible to be completely tension free. So you have to constantly be minimizing it and working on being as relaxed as possible and helping folks get an understanding of what feels good and how much is too much. Originally Posted by princeplanet
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I can't tell you how many respected guitar teachers I've seen preach relaxation as part of learning to play. And especially learning to play fast(er). Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Hopefully all of them! Originally Posted by ruger9
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Overall, I was suggesting incorporating MORE dynamics into the playing, as described in #3. Originally Posted by princeplanet
My point of #4 has the assumption that pull offs and slides are the guitarists' known ways to slur. However, in the occasions when picking is inevitable, try to emulate saxophone slurring with a minimal attack. That's all.
A sax player is able to execute an entire line with a single breath simply by popping fingers on the keys, with no articulation at all. We can do well by learning ways to minimize our attack likewise.
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Agree. Egregiously! Lack of attack doesn't = sax. Sax players don't have to play with a soft attack. It can be aggressive. Even Yakety. Originally Posted by princeplanet
It's what I don't enjoy about players who go too far down this road: they usually lose all the variabilities of attack, which is something the guitar has in spades and note for note. Most of the time it ends up sounding more like a synth.
I say this as someone who tried to emulate brass for much the 70's, since that's what I was mostly inspired by. Didn't have the tools we have today. I had a distortion pedal for sustain, which is what I thought was most important about the sax. And wah, and envelope filter. I also tried an early Roland guitar synth, which sucked.
Thing is, the sax is just a way better instrument for what it does than guitar. A sax player is intimately involved in the note from the beginning to the end. We mostly hit a note and stand there. Like a vibes player.
I complained about it to a sax friend.
"Yeah... but you can play more than one note at a time! Why don't you do more of that?"
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I egregiously agree with this as well. Minimal attack is a good thing to be able to do. Originally Posted by mikeSF
I just don't like it when it goes so far that's all there is.
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No! Reading your post and listening to your examples is definitely NOT a waste of time! In fact I found it most insightful. I've often wondered how a player of both instruments might come up with different ideas for each, and why. Now, I have to say, I enjoyed your sax version a little more than the guitar version, despite you saying you think you're a better guitar player than a sax player. Is it because I like the sound of the sax more than the sound of the guitar? Maybe... or was it because of the quality of the lines that came from the sax playing? Personally, I think it was a bit of both! Maybe it's just a lot harder to sound compelling on the guitar? Do you really think you play the same kinds of lines on the guitar as you would on the sax? Or do you find the mechanics of the guitar "forces" you into some "guitaristic" ideas? (shapes, etc?) Originally Posted by Lionelsax
Finally, I'm curious to know how improvised both versions were, were there some lines that were "composed"? How do you find the difference in truly improvising on both instruments? Is one easier than the other? Thanks for sharing this!
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Hi ! Thanks for listening ! Originally Posted by princeplanet
No! Reading your post and listening to your examples is definitely NOT a waste of time! In fact I found it most insightful. I've often wondered how a player of both instruments might come up with different ideas for each, and why. Now, I have to say, I enjoyed your sax version a little more than the guitar version, despite you saying you think you're a better guitar player than a sax player. Is it because I like the sound of the sax more than the sound of the guitar? Maybe... or was it because of the quality of the lines that came from the sax playing? Personally, I think it was a bit of both! Maybe it's just a lot harder to sound compelling on the guitar? Do you really think you play the same kinds of lines on the guitar as you would on the sax? Or do you find the mechanics of the guitar "forces" you into some "guitaristic" ideas? (shapes, etc?)
Finally, I'm curious to know how improvised both versions were, were there some lines that were "composed"? How do you find the difference in truly improvising on both instruments? Is one easier than the other? Thanks for sharing this!
Everything comes from the same brain, I use the same process, it's sure that guitar has got limitations, shapes are the limits and it's a blues, that's a problem. Many guitarists come from blues shapes and tricks but I try to avoid them. The best way would be no shape at all, I sometimes reach that goal when I stay on a lonely position.
About the sound I think it's just a psycho-acoustic phenomenon, I think you've got some experience with rock bands like everyone.
Have you ever tried to play a rock solo with clean sound ? It doesn't sound so good, no sustain, no surprising sound, the saxophone has got everything that a clean guitar can't get without distortions and other effects.
About the process, how does it work ? I don't know, muscle memory, repetitions, feeling ? I really don't know.
No shape at all would be the solution...
This is another example, the same tune (Solar) with a bad saxophone and the cheaper mouthpiece on the market I don't play anymore compared to my Nighthawk.
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One thing many seem to forget or miss is that guitar is a polyphonic instrument and a horn is not. What that inherently forces the horn player to do is to create chordal melodies. CC did this often by use of working around arpeggios and chord outlines, often stepping into them chromatically from above or below to give them swing, so as not to so obviously define them, but to infer them to a good extent even as a melody seems to just be there.
Imagine yourself as a horn player playing alone trying to make a melody but at the same time being alone and needing to infer the chords at the same time to try and "hear" it all at once.
CC was certainly around horn players enough, and his approach seems to do just that from the opposite perspective, using a chordal based instrument to at the same time infer melody, hence the often arpeggiated perspective.
While doing all that the phrasing is also key to the feel. I can do none of this as a player, but I can understand it as a listener. Maybe someday I'll get there.
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Well, that's another topic. Originally Posted by tjmicsak
When you are soloing, ones who are comping are a kind of help, they play the structure and you're not lost.
Once you know how things work you don't need their help, they just have to embellish your solo. That can't be done if everyone is looking at a Real Book, a tablet or kind of.
In fact you need nobody when you are improvising.
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To move the discussion to something specific: Am I alone in hearing something hornlike in the playing here. Both in the phrasing, the slipping in and out of notes, the dynamics and the time, as well as the tone.
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Originally Posted by Lionelsax
- If you need the rest of the band to keep you from getting lost, you don't know the tune.
- The rest of the band is not there to embellish your solos. They provide context for your solos, which should fit with, relate to, or otherwise complement the music.
- If you "need" nobody while soloing, you should either play unaccomplanied or find a band willing to lay out when you solo. Good luck with that.
- Using a common lead sheet, chord chart, etc can keep everyone on the same changes, especially when there are multiple commonly played versions of a tune and / or the band is unrehearsed.
- It takes a certain level of musicianship to be able to follow a chart while blending well with the rest of the band.
- You don't have to be a top studio pro to achieve this level.
- Reading, listening and playing simultaneously are like walking and chewing gum at the same time.
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