Bebop Technique

[AllanAllen]

Slow down! I’m busy this week.

[Christian Miller]

How do you make up your worksheets
Peter? They look nice.


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[Bop Head]

How do you make up your worksheets
Peter? They look nice.


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I am not Peter, but this looks simply like the Finale Maestro music font plus Times New Roman for the text.

[pamosmusic]

I am not Peter, but this looks simply like the Finale Maestro music font plus Times New Roman for the text.

Peter? Hello?

Yeah my secret? Never use jazz font.

It’s just finale. I’ve gotten pretty good at the spacing and stuff over time. Not sure beyond that.

[Bop Head]

[...] Never use jazz font. [...]

I have never understood why people would voluntarily use ugly imitations of handwritten notation. Probably they think jazz notation has to look like that because of the handwritten notation in the original Real Book.

Yes, your sheets look really good, although Times New Roman is not my favorite serif font.

[Christian Miller]

Peter? Hello?

Yeah my secret? Never use jazz font.

It’s just finale. I’ve gotten pretty good at the spacing and stuff over time. Not sure beyond that.

I find that sort of thjng hard to do on Musescore. Perhaps it’s a skills issue. I just end up posting a million screenshots into word which is LAME


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[Christian Miller]

Bop Head is a man of specific tastes.


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[GuyBoden]

I find that sort of thjng hard to do on Musescore. Perhaps it’s a skills issue. I just end up posting a million screenshots into word which is LAME

No it’s not a skills issue, I'm a software Engineer and I don't find MuseScore very good, but it's free to download and use that's why it's popular.

[Christian Miller]

I mean neither was Sibelius… and that cost a lot more


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[Bop Head]

I find that sort of thjng hard to do on Musescore. Perhaps it’s a skills issue. I just end up posting a million screenshots into word which is LAME


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You know you can shift text frames up and down with the arrow keys? You know how to not stretch shorter examples over the full page-width? You know how to change text fonts in MS 4? (Probably you know all these things, but that is what I would use to get a better page layout. On my to-do-list is integrating Lilypond into TeX, ConTeXt to be more exact, but that is a longer undertaking from which I expect to get the best layout results.) And instead of making screenshots I would export a PDF, import it into Inkscape and export as an SVG having only the size of the example. Vector graphics quality vs. pixel graphics.

[pamosmusic]

You know you can shift text frames up and down with the arrow keys? You know how to not stretch shorter examples over the full page-width? You know how to change text fonts in MS 4? (Probably you know all these things, but that is what I would use to get a better page layout. On my to-do-list is integrating Lilypond into TeX, ConTeXt to be more exact, but that is a longer undertaking from which I expect to get the best layout results.) And instead of making screenshots I would export a PDF, import it into Inkscape and export as an SVG having only the size of the example. Vector graphics quality vs. pixel graphics.

Just plonk it on over to PixelGoober

Sounds like forking over for the extra functionality of Finale is a little easier.

[charlieparker]

I assume the same thing of our jazz greats, Wes, Grant etc. The way they play notes is often as interesting as the notes they choose.

I don’t make the assumption that what my guitar teacher told me to do in CG lessons as a teenager means that there’s nothing to learn from the way those guys played. And yet I’ve heard people talk about Pat Metheny’s ‘bad technique’ because he moves his fingers too much and sticks his thumb over the neck. And so on.

I find this mind boggling. Would Wes have sounded better if he’d played with his thumb behind, fretting with his finger tips? No idea, but he certainly wouldn’t have sounded like Wes.

Interesting post. Classical guitar technique has been codified and documented in many books. How would one even go about learning Wes' left hand technique? Maybe nowadays there are videos and resources one can turn to, but before YouTube it was probably pretty hard to find videos, teachers, or material related to that style.

It's interesting how common that technique is among black guitarists. Is it taught in that community?

As to how much it actually matters, I'm not sure.

[Christian Miller]

Interesting post. Classical guitar technique has been codified and documented in many books. How would one even go about learning Wes' left hand technique? Maybe nowadays there are videos and resources one can turn to, but before YouTube it was probably pretty hard to find videos, teachers, or material related to that style.

It's interesting how common that technique is among black guitarists. Is it taught in that community?

As to how much it actually matters, I'm not sure.

I don’t think it was taught. More it’s a convergent evolution between players. It’s a natural way to play, but for schooled players it would feel unnatural of course - there are many things that may need to be unlearned. A lot of people don’t want to do that, and I understand.

Most younger players use a more classical left hand.

One player who consciously moved towards this technique is Miles Okazaki.

I think it makes a massive difference in terms of sound and phrasing. Not better, just different.

God is in the details. If you are interested in the nuances of specific peoples music, yes I think it does matter. If you just want to operate the guitar well with a technique that works pretty good for everything, stay with ‘legit’ technique.


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[charlieparker]

I don’t think it was taught. More it’s a convergent evolution between players. It’s a natural way to play, but for schooled players it would feel unnatural of course - there are many things that may need to be unlearned. A lot of people don’t want to do that, and I understand.

Most younger players use a more classical left hand.

One player who consciously moved towards this technique is Miles Okazaki.

I think it makes a massive difference in terms of sound and phrasing. Not better, just different.

God is in the details. If you are interested in the nuances of specific peoples music, yes I think it does matter. If you just want to operate the guitar well with a technique that works pretty good for everything, stay with ‘legit’ technique.


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My point was that there aren't a lot of resources for this alternative technique. Maybe less true these days with guys teaching Benson's style. So your average kid is going to end up learning what most books teach. As for how natural that style, it's hard for me to gauge. Do unschooled rock guys use it?

I am also skeptical that it wasn't taught at all in the African American community given how prevalent that style is. And by taught, I mean more in the gypsy sense by word of mouth and imitation.

[Christian Miller]

My point was that there aren't a lot of resources for this alternative technique.

No there isn’t. I saw the Wes arpeggio on a website years ago. I think that’s a bit of verbal lore …

Maybe less true these days with guys teaching Benson's style. So your average kid is going to end up learning what most books teach. As for how natural that style, it's hard for me to gauge. Do unschooled rock guys use it?

Yes, absolutely.

As far as thumb overs ‘naturalness’ - the kids I teach tend to play that way until I nag them not to lol. It takes specific instruction to get them to do it the classical way.

From what I know and my instinct (without doing a PhD) I don’t suspect pedagogy had much to do with it historically. Not all learning or even all teaching is pedagogy, however.

I feel people who are used to being taught in a formal way don’t always realise how readily info can absorbed in other ways. Watching the way players play for example and emulating them is an old way of doing things in jazz. Barry Harris recalled watching the hands of pianists in clubs to learn their voicings, and so on.

I think there would certainly have been informal teaching, put your hand like that, try this shape etc… information gleaned from apprenticing, hanging out, mentorship etc. (One thing a lot of traditional learning environments have apparently is a relative lack of verbal instruction.) But worked out classical style systems of teaching with things like technical studies, method books? well I don’t think that exists in print, let me put it that way. I don’t know that it’s possible to rule it out.

AFAIK most of the formal music education available at the time was based in European classical, including within the African American community (cf Cass technical school for example, but many other examples going back further.) Kenny Burrell and Jim Hall studied classical guitar, and their playing technique reflects that. I would expect jazz guitar teachers of the time would have modelled their left hand pedagogy after classical, looking at the books etc. it was the hallmark of a schooled guitarist!

But I might be wrong! I just don’t really know.

For me, I watch players hands and go with what seems to flow on the fretboard. I transcribe and try to reconstruct that way the player played the notes. If it feels good, it is good by and large.

I am also skeptical that it wasn't taught at all in the African American community given how prevalent that style is. And by taught, I mean more in the gypsy sense by word of mouth and imitation.

I honestly don’t know. If you want to know more detail on this I would suggest hitting up Dennis Chang. He knows a LOT of stuff about this type of thing.

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[Bop Head]

No there isn’t. I saw the Wes arpeggio on a website years ago. I think that’s a bit of verbal lore …



Yes, absolutely.

As far as thumb overs ‘naturalness’ - the kids I teach tend to play that way until I nag them not to lol. It takes specific instruction to get them to do it the classical way.

From what I know and my instinct (without doing a PhD) I don’t suspect pedagogy had much to do with it historically. Not all learning or even all teaching is pedagogy, however.

I feel people who are used to being taught in a formal way don’t always realise how readily info can absorbed in other ways. Watching the way players play for example and emulating them is an old way of doing things in jazz. Barry Harris recalled watching the hands of pianists in clubs to learn their voicings, and so on.

I think there would certainly have been informal teaching, put your hand like that, try this shape etc… information gleaned from apprenticing, hanging out, mentorship etc. (One thing a lot of traditional learning environments have apparently is a relative lack of verbal instruction.) But worked out classical style systems of teaching with things like technical studies, method books? well I don’t think that exists in print, let me put it that way. I don’t know that it’s possible to rule it out.

AFAIK most of the formal music education available at the time was based in European classical, including within the African American community (cf Cass technical school for example, but many other examples going back further.) Kenny Burrell and Jim Hall studied classical guitar, and their playing technique reflects that. I would expect jazz guitar teachers of the time would have modelled their left hand pedagogy after classical, looking at the books etc. it was the hallmark of a schooled guitarist!

But I might be wrong! I just don’t really know.

For me, I watch players hands and go with what seems to flow on the fretboard. I transcribe and try to reconstruct that way the player played the notes. If it feels good, it is good by and large.



I honestly don’t know. If you want to know more detail on this I would suggest hitting up Dennis Chang. He knows a LOT of stuff about this type of thing.

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I just did a Google image search for Kenny Burrell and apart from one relatively early photo where he is actually playing a classical guitar most of the time it does not look very classical. Thumb up high and three fingers on the fretboard. Despite having studied with a guy named Joe Fava who is pictured here.