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I used to joke that there are only two types of jazz guitarists those jealous of pianists and those jealous of saxophonists. But seriously do all the Bach etc. and just accept the limitations of the guitar versus piano and find a way to make it work. I feel your pain what I wouldn't give to play all that contrapuntal self accopmpanied off the chart Brad Mehldau badness on the guitar....oh well
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03-06-2012 02:33 PM
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"Was that a joke?".....Uhhmm well kinda. Note the little winking fella. But to your point, around here I can think of exactly two venues that have a house piano. One of those is very out of tune and is kept that way. Also, I've never seen a pianist walk in with a keyboard in one hand and an amp in the other. Probably because they also need a keyboard stand and a bench and because keyboards are fairly heavy and keyboard amps are also usually quite heavy so not really "pretty much exactly like us."
Originally Posted by bluewaterpig
<---This denotes that I am giving you a hard time.
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The piano is a very virtuous instrument, but then again, you hear Kurt Rosenwinkel and I bet you will want to keep playing guitar. The limits are sometimes opportunities and once you overcome them, like Rosenwinkel, you will find that it is all possible in the guitar too. You just better get a little creative, the electric guitar is a very wise instrument.
Last edited by solomarce1; 04-09-2013 at 05:14 PM.
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The #1 thing the guitar has over the piano is that getting it in tune doesn't cause anguish and temporary insanity. Who can stay in the room while a piano is being tuned? Arggh!
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There is a YouTube of Sonny Rollins talking about why he uses guitar players instead of piano....
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Kurt actually likes piano more than the guitar, I've heard him say.
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Yeah, but thats a sure fire recipe for sounding like crap. Guitar is harder, in my humble opinion. With piano there are 12 keys, but each key the exactly the same up and down the keyboard. The scale/arpeggio/fingering repeats every octave. Guitar there are 7 different scale patterns, with each note having at least 4 different locations, sometimes more. It's a bitch. Originally Posted by bluewaterpig
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I can imagine. The instrument it's just a tool, if you are really into music, with what ever instrument you play, you will try to make beautiful music out of it. There are advantages and disadvantages from instrument to instrument. Originally Posted by jtizzle
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I agree w/Sonny. I swear a piano players wet dream is having 10 extra fingers. Originally Posted by docbop
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I love that on a beautiful day, I can take my guitar, head out to the park, and play through my favorite tunes solo on a park bench. Portability, baby.
I also just like the way the guitar sounds more than any other instrument. Especially classic jazz guitar.
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I think that good piano players work just as hard to be good piano players as good guitar players work to be good guitar players and vice versa.
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Oh obviously. That's not in question. I'm just stating what a lot of people either forget, or don't know: guitar is a very hard instrument to play well. But as for as my FAVORITE instrument? The piano. I don't play it well or hardly at all, but I love it.
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What drives me crazy are guitar players who don't know how to play with piano players. Two instruments comping without listening to the other. I am little more than a horn player when I'm playing with a good pianist.
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Well, as for tuning, piano is one of the only instruments where the player has no ability to tune his/her own instrument. Either it's been done for you already, or it hasn't (unless you have a set of tools and the knowledge; pretty rare).
But really, we can rattle off all these pros and cons of the different instruments but isn't the bottom line that you play whatever instrument "speaks" to you the most and through which you are able to express your musical ideas (i.e., your "musical voice"). Then you put up with whatever baggage goes along with that choice...
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Not a day goes by in my life that I don't wish I was a jazz pianist. But getting my piano playing at the level where I am with guitar will take too long. Especially because of the keys disadvantage pianists have. Then I started playing traditional electric blues and now I'm almost happy again. Originally Posted by coolvinny
Pat Metheny also said the beauty of the guitar was lost on him for a long time.
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This isn't the most inspirational thread on the forum but I need to let all this frustration come out
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A few people mentioned working on Bach material, I think that's a good call. I recommend the Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin. I've been studying them for a while, they weave through the changes in such an amazing way, it's crazy.
Amazon.com: Bach: Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin: Johann Sebastian Bach: Music
I think the highlights are #4 on CD1, Presto in Gm, #10 on CD2, the E major prelude and the whole thing in B minor (except the first movement) on CD1. These are the most straightforward, eight notes, really cool lines type tunes.
But beware, after playing through those for a month or so every day I had a wrist ache that was kind of bad. It also went away after I stopped.
They don't give the changes but I have some of them.
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Beautiful thing about music, it's a language that deals with energy, transcends the language of concepts and words. Deals with pure principles, for a certain amount of time we can connect with others through a particular language that deals with energy, vibrations, and the silence that lies in between. What instrument you decide to use it's just the tool, what I love about guitar, it that it is not closed instrument, it's like an instrument for the people.
What I mean is that the guitar is used to play any gender, for any type of music of any culture, it's not considerate an classy instrument for the elite, it can be used that way and have that duality, but it is friendly to the people. That's why I think there are many guitar players today. You can grab a cheap guitar with bad strings in any place in the world and if you have something meaningful to say, and you can express this on your instrument, and become a creator of meaningful and beautiful music.
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Does anyone play both jazz guitar and jazz piano on here? I've heard that jazz piano is a lot easier to play for various reason than jazz guitar. Not sure if this is true though. I will admit that when it comes to jazz I dig piano a lot more than guitar. I just love the sound of jazz piano. Problem is I can't play piano well at all. I am a music major at college so I do need to become "proficient" on it to graduate, but I can't deny that I do love the sound of it more than guitar. Other than the difficulty of playing two handed do you find jazz piano easier than guitar? If so why?
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I don't think either instrument is easier or harder than the other. If you enjoy the sound of piano, then play piano. But I wouldn't waste a second worrying about how hard or easy it's going to be. Either instrument is going to be really hard and require a lot of dedication every single day for a long time.
The easier part for piano is that the keys are easier to press, and guitar requires coordination between both hands to get sounds out. Chords take longer to learn on guitar because you have to train your hands to work together. But that doesn't mean piano is easier. My recent piano teacher was meticulous about how you held your hands, how you pressed the keys, and every detail of the sound that resulted. I thought I was bad at certain aspects of guitar, so I thought piano might work out better for me. But I soon realized how difficult piano was going to be and that I just didn't like it quite as much. I decided to invest all my practice time on guitar (although I took three semesters of piano and learned a lot from that experience).
So let me save you the trouble. Play the instrument you love. No instrument is easier or harder. Any aspect of a particular instrument that's easier will just mean that people have higher expectations for you to be good. Does that make sense?
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I am fairly proficient at both. I’ve played both professionally. My rock chops are better than my jazz chops, but I can hold my own.
The right answer is any instrument can be difficult depending on the desired outcome, an argument could be made that a pan-flute is more difficult than a piano.
That being said, from a physical perspective, piano is much easier to address. Also, the linearity of a piano keyboard makes theory, to some extent improvisation easier. It is visually easier to see scales and relationships.
On the other hand, on guitar, the repeatability and reuse of “patterns” by simply moving up or down a number of frets makes things a bit easier.
Even when playing guitar, sometimes I am visualizing a keyboard. I am not saying that is good or bad, but because I’ve played both for the same duration, from a theory and visualization perspective, I refer to the guitar neck as well as a keyboard when playing the guitar.
I’ve seen many players of different instrumenst have some basic skills at the piano. Many colleges, does not matter the instrument of study, require a piano pedagogy course.
Sometimes I debate whether diluting (dividing) my time between guitar and piano has actually hindered my progress. It has been helpful from a gig perspective.
Regards,
Rick
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I have played piano, and to me it seems it is indeed easier than guitar in more than one way.
1. Piano is easier to read on because the notes are laid out from lowest to highest. Each individual string on guitar does this of course, but with the 6 strings all at set at different pitches it quickly becomes very complicated. Having read music notation on 5 different instruments, I can easily say guitar is by far the hardest, and not just by a little bit. Not only because the of the easier layout, but because you can play 10 notes at once without the pedal and almost limitless with, the same piece of sheet music will be harder to realize on the guitar than piano. For example, something that on piano would be considered grade 5, might end up being something like grade 8 on guitar.
2. The piano is just a better designed for a solo arrangement of music that involves harmony and a melody simultaneously played, for obvious reasons.
3. The logical layout of the piano of course makes it easier to understand scales, arpeggios & chords and the theory behind them.
Despite all this, the guitar has advantages over the piano. It's easy to carry with you. It's hands down the "coolest" instrument. It's vastly cheaper to get a good quality guitar than it is to purchase a good quality piano. When most people think of cool musicians or bands, what instrument is at the top of the list? Surely not piano, it's guitar of course. We get to use all these cool gizmos like wah-wah pedals and distortion. We can shred. Pianists can "shred" too I guess, but nobody cares, except for classical piano aficionados. To my ears, guitar just sounds better. It has more personality, and with all the tone altering tools at our disposal, we can each find the very specific guitar sound we want. I like the sound of a piano, but to me few instruments sound as cool as guitar. Part of the beauty of the guitar is doing more with less. We don't have 88 different notes (7 octaves) and 10+ note playing fingers to work with. So we learn to focus on the most essential notes.
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I have some limited piano skills, and play a lot of guitar. My take is that piano is an easier instrument to develop basic jazz skills on, but piano pedagogy is much more disciplined and the standards of performance are way higher than on guitar, IMO. I think because no one really knows how exactly you're "supposed" to play guitar, guitarists get away with a lot for better or for worse.
One thing to keep in mind is that the keyboard is really the foundational instrument of most Western music, so other than the saxophone it's probably the most natural instrument to play any Western music on, including jazz. I learned it because of it's use in arranging and songwriting, where it's just more logical than guitar.
All that being said, you'd be crazy not to just go with the instrument that you like the most. If I didn't love the sound of jazz guitar, why would I put in the hours?
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[QUOTE=oleo20;207458]Does anybody else get this same frustration that I get?!
I envy piano players so much - left hand coming whilst soloing makes everything sound much more organic - especially outside playing. Just the general sound of a piano and it's versatility is really starting to appeal to me...the one thing that I love about jazz guitar is chord melody ala joe pass, Martin Taylor etc but I find myself listening and envying great piano players like
Herbie, McCoy, bill Evans, keither Jarrett, Oscar Peterson etc much more than I listen to great guitarists.....I've been playing for about 9 years and I am starting to think that giving up on jazz guitar and starting to get to grips with learning jazz piano is the only thing that will satisfy my ears at the moment!!
Any advice? Or similar feelings from
Any of you guys?[/QUOTE
It is funny....If you study music seriously you will see that a virtuoso pianist will need 3 hands to play masterworks of guitar...I see only 2 problems with guitarists = 1) Guitar is much harder than piano for real music studying...2) GUITARISTS ARE LAZY FOR STUDYING DEEP MUSIC THEORY AS GREAT PIANO COMPOSERS DID DURING EARLIER YEARS OF THEIR LIFE...
That`s all folks
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Originally Posted by cantstoplt021
It's easier to "fool" the audience on piano, i.e. play massive arpeggios which sound impressive but are in fact just pattern repetitions. That's about the only thing which is easier on the claviature, in my opinion.
Also: Technique. My piano technique is grotesque(but sounds alright) and can probably be cited as the cause for my double tendinitis last November until this January.
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