You’re Practicing Jazz Guitar Backwards - Do you agree?

[GBRow]

Came across this video, and thought interesting.
Do you agree with the video? I am not sure.

[Doublea A]

Came across this video, and thought interesting.
Do you agree with the video? I am not sure.

I do agree.
Some guitar players play a lot of notes but it doesn’t sound like music.
IMO Solos should be melodic


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jage2]

I do think that solos over the same set of changes should sound different based on the melody. (Also, as we all know, the harmonic choices that the melody can provide a blueprint for the solo.)

[Aiq]

I think there are many ways to do it.

Trad, modern, avant garde, just do your thing.

I listened to Cobham’s Art of Five doing Autumn Leaves yesterday, the melody was vague. Still sounded cool.

[Cunamara]

Jazz musicians used to learn to solo with the melody and the lyrics in mind, they learned to use chord tones and particularly guide tones (3rds and 7ths) to function as a scaffolding for their solo. They could get as abstract as they wanted because they could always convey where the structure of the tune was underneath their solo. They could provide shape, communicate with the audience and band members as to where they were, etc. They could resolve the solo rather than just blazing away to the end of the form with no conclusion and then looking at the next soloist.

Now it doesn't seem like we learn that way. It's like we teach the alphabet and the grammar but not how to have musical content. Too often musicians sound like they swallowed Slonimsky and are regurgitating rather than playing music. As the saying goes, we play on stage what we practice in the rehearsal room; we should therefore be practicing music at least some of the time in addition to the technical information that we need to master. This would be good advice if I would follow it!

Earlier this year my wife and I went and saw Stanley Jordan. At one point he was simultaneously singing, playing guitar with one hand and piano with the other; the song was "My One And Only Love" and as technically impressive as the moment was, it was the emotion he conveyed that had both of us in tears. That's effective- or perhaps more accurately affective- music.

We should all periodically go back to Louis Armstrong; to Lester Young; to Count Basie and Duke Ellington; to Charlie Christian and others among our forebears to remind ourselves of what this art form is. Besides, it's so much fun. How many things that are good for you are like that?

[brent.h]

I whole-heartedly agree with the spirit and intention of the video.

I know he's trying to convey how a song's architecture can be a jump-off point for improvisation, but some parts are a bit problematic in terms of teaching.

1. He's using examples like Fly Me To The Moon, Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are... These are all songs that use the 3rd of a chord very prominently in the melody. But what happens when you have a tune like If I Should Lose You? The character of this tune is defined not by its 3rds, but by its non-chord tones (the appogiaturas). The problem here is that the beginner guitarist is gonna watch this video and think, "Oh ok, I'll just focus on the 3rds of a tune." He might get the wrong idea all tunes can be reduced this way. It's too reductive.

2) He demonstrates how relative minors and majors can be used as substitutes and then demonstrates how 3rds can be a jump-off point for his own licks, lines, phrases. Again nothing wrong, but the tacit emphasis on lines might prolong and promote the habit of playing note-y solos. Note-y solos can definitely be melodic, but our average, hobbyist jazz guitar joe might not be able to play note-y and melodically at the same time. I would have preferred the guy in the video to show how to improvise using the melody only, not lines or licks.

This is all my opinion. If this video works for people, (10k views after all), who am I to say anything.

[GuyBoden]

Rightly or wrongly, I think the over reliance on embellishing the melody as solo improv diminished after Bebop (1940-50's) and Coleman Hawkins.

Although, over reliance on embellishing the melody was how I played for my first 10 years of trying to play Jazz, and I was quite happy doing it too.


Edit: Players probably got extremely bored with solos based on embellishing the melody and started playing more solos based on the harmony.

[bako]

I agree that there is good value in relating strongly to the fundamental details of a song/composition such as title, lyrics, melody in our presentation and improvisation. When every song is reduced simply to chord sequences then it lessens the chance to express different elements given 2 songs with similar harmonic content.

Granted I only skimmed through this lengthy video but I saw no evidence of the speaker presenting playing examples that demonstrated the validity of his basic assertion, that his notion of practicing correctly leads to a better musical result. I make no assumptions about what the presenter is capable of as a musician, but given this omission, the video failed to offer evidentiary support in my opinion.