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07-11-2013, 02:47 PM #1Dutchbopper Guest
A while ago I posted some Chris Potter clips on my Facebook page that floored me. These solos made me think about the state of jazz guitar as opposed to jazz saxophone. I could not come up with any guitarist approaching this, not in form (which makes sense) but ... not in content either. I asked my Facebook friends and they couldn't either. Is it the limitation of the instrument? Anyway, the vids are a humbling experience.
Last edited by Dutchbopper; 07-11-2013 at 02:51 PM.
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07-11-2013 02:47 PM
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Great Staff!Chris Potter is one of my favorite sax player...:-)
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07-11-2013, 02:59 PM #3Dutchbopper Guest
Just think of having to play this stuff on guitar. That would be the Youtube guitar vid of the century.
DB
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I think it is a lot of work to adopt it ...but there are a lot of fantastic ideas.
Originally Posted by Dutchbopper
Just think of having to play this stuff on guitar. That would be the Youtube guitar vid of the century.
DB
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I have always played transcriptions written for other instruments...
Opens a door or two to other sounds by other than guitar players...
All should look at a few....not fingerboard oriented improvisation...
time on the instrument...
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Man, I love this stuff! So much to learn about improvising and the song still coming through.
Thank's DutchBopper for posting this.
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I'm very interested in learning more about this and I have been thinking about this lately actually. Here are some questions and comments:
1) How hard is it for a guitar player to play Potter's (first) solo? Is it impossible? Or just super hard?
2) Why can't guitarists come up with something like that? One possible answer is that guitarists do have to spend a lot of time on chords. If they focussed on single lines they would come up with stuff like that.
3) Piano players have to spend time on chords too and they play amazing lines. So then one question that I would have is: what are the things that guitarists can do that horn and piano players can't do? We do have many different ways of playing notes: picked, pull-offs, hammer ons, slides, bends. So maybe we should celebrate and accentuate those things?
4) It does seem that playing bigger intervals especially in some kind of pattern is much easier on the sax and so that might explain some of it. You just can't drop down an octave and a half mid-phrase at high tempos wihout literally missing a beat on a guitar, even with Benson picking. :P
5) I don't know if Robin Eubanks, who plays with Chris a lot, could come up with anything like that on his instrument.
6) Also, you are really talking about a burning dude at the top of his game.
I don't know really. Very curious what the pros around here have to say about all of this.Last edited by jster; 07-11-2013 at 06:25 PM.
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Yeah, to be honest, there's a heck of a lot of SAX players that ain't doing this either...
thanks for posting...lots to dissect from a great player here...
Also, to be fair to guitar players, Jim Hall was doing some of this stuff, albeit with less "chops"...oh...forty years ago.
rhythm is just as important in these lines as harmonic content, imho...Last edited by mr. beaumont; 07-11-2013 at 06:27 PM.
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There are sax players doing solo stuff, but they don't tend to do standards they are getting out there. Mark Turner, Greg Osby, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Lee Kontz, and others have solo sax albums. Even Sonny Rollins has one that consists of two half-hour improv's. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
What I find a close is saxophone trios with no harmony instrument that help keep them in song format and not just free improv.
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These are truly incredible solos. Potter is just ridiculous on both of those vids.
The only guy that I think really hangs with this kind of modern jazz playing on guitar is Metheny. He has the wide intervals, time displacement, manipulation of form. His concept is different, but I think it's hard to say that it's not as good or as advanced as what Potter's doing.
What's lacking is that he doesn't use the post-Coltrane modern-sax vocabulary. But listen to all that stuff he's doing and ask yourself, how hard would it be to do that on sax? Pretty freaking tough.
I also have to say that, purely subjectively, I find the lyricism and structure of Metheny's solos more advanced than almost anything I've heard done on sax. He's hyper-melodic in a really incredible, unique way.
ecj
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I used to not dig Chris a lot, then I checked him out on Unity Band, and loved him, then went back to his own stuff and was mindblown. That being said, Chris is a beast and can't really be compared to anyone. I would take that as far as using Coltrane (who I hear people compare Chris to a lot), they're just in two different leagues. Taking no merit from Coltrane, who at his time was doing some insane stuff, Chris does play a lot, just like Coltrane, but the lines are so different, and much more creative (take into consideration the passing of time, different times).
Anyways, yeah, not a lot of SAX players are even doing shit like this. However, three guys on guitar that I think are doing some crazy stuff that I would put up next to Chris' would be first, Julian Lage. Some of his lines are insanely strange, really outside the box, wide intervals, great note choices. I'll actually refer you to a set of videos on youtube, from the 2012 winter jazz fest in NYC. I was actually at that show, after watching that my perspective on him changed, I really think he's a really creative player.
The other player is Mike Moreno, who has a really huge and unique bop vocabulary. His lines are great in the way that they sound traditional, but they really aren't. Hard to explain, but you get the idea from listening to him, then deconstructing what he's doing. I'm transcribing currently some stuff from a video on youtube of him playing Anthropology by himself, some really cool lines.
Bernstein is the third, which is funny because he's one of the most straight-ahead guys I know, but his lines are probably the weirdest out of everyone I know. His chops are great too, but kind of far from Chris, or even the two other guys I mentioned.
Some other things to mention: Some props to Chris, the guy has PERFECT time! he keeps time, without fluffing on beats, and he's playing by himself. One of the hardest things to do, and going back and putting it next to the Mike Moreno video i mentioned, Mike does fluff on a lot of phrases, skipping or adding beats, Chris doesn't do this at all.
However, that's also something that aids him in here, not having a band, because he has a lot more freedom to do a lot more creative stuff (such as jumping into Giant Steps/Countdown changes in many spots, and that's one of the easier things he does since countdown is tune up reharmonized) which he maybe wouldn't be able to do with a band since they might restrain him at some points. Not saying he would not have done some other type of magic without a band, but if you have such good time like he does, it's much easier to sound great without a band.
But anyways... thanks, now I have my next transcription projects!Last edited by jtizzle; 07-11-2013 at 08:48 PM.
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LOL. I was super close to posting that Metheny video.
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Damn, that Branford video is pretty inspiring. I love seeing guitar players handle sax-stuff, because it helps make sax players stop ragging on guitar players, and it makes guitar players stop ragging on guitar players. I particularly enjoy this vid because of how hostile Branford is towards guitar players in general.
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Well it also depends on how one uses the transcription. People can learn a whole solo note for note, but learn it with little analysis, it won't rub off on you as much as if you really sit down and do the science on the solo. Nowadays one solo does me better than 10 when I used to be heavy into transcribing, just cause I really sit down and figure out what they guys are playing. Also, the point of transcribing (at least for me) isn't learning to play like certain guys, rather, it's to learn what they did, to add it to my own playing. Originally Posted by Richb
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It's awesome! I love it!
The question is : how many times could you listen to it? Could you listen to this every morning for a year? He's just playing what he hears, in my opinion, if I listened to this every day for a year I'd start to hear what he hears. But he just played that off the cuff and would never play it again the same way. But examining the ornamentation and motivic ideas gets you closer to what he is "thinking". Guitarists don't play like this because they think like" guitarists". And listen to guitarists! I don't really listen much to other guitarists. I listen to saxophone players mostly, because they play circles around us! I feel I can only play what I hear, and if I listen to the saxophone I can play like the saxophone. Anythings possible!
Keep listening to him and eventually "hear" like him. Know the tune, elaborate in a free fashion, improvise in and out of time and work on your "technique" and the ideas will come. You'll develop it naturally around the need to express what you "hear". I'm motivated to play like "that". There are no limitations imposed by the instrument, in my opinion. We may not be able to express some of the multi phonics but we can still get the notes and phrasing. The guy obviously spent time in the shed, that's where the answers "are". But this "solo" is like a snowflake...... no two alike.
I like Holdsworth, Rosenwinkel likes Holdsworth. These guys play what they" hear". Great "guitarists" , but ultimately great MUSICIANS , and in the end it boils down to being " musical". If you want to express yourself like Potter then just do it. We ( guitar players) may have a lot of "catching up" to do, but we can get there. Wow, ranting and raving but hopefully sending a positive vibe man!
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I have to kind of echo was richb said - guitarist can have a similar vocabulary as saxophonists, but it's the articulation that we guitarists can't come close to. Sax guys can slur notes even when spitting them out at ridiculous speeds, and do that elastic rubber band thing that we can only dream about.
OP - I know the feeling - I started playing alto sax back in the 90's and I seriously began thinking that I might switch. I knew that wouldn't have the time to maintain both instruments, even as a full-time muso, but in the end, I couldn't give up the guitar, so the sax had to go...
I love Chris Potter - in all settings. I've got him on albums with Sco, Adam Rogers (great stuff!), David Binney (more great, great stuff!), his own stuff and his own Underground band - just a monster in every way. *Very* creative, endlessly, non-repeatative, motifs -for-days...and great sound on the instrument....and great time-feel.
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I wanted to add that one of my favorite records is What Now? by Kenny Wheeler (trumpet, flugelhorn) that also has Chris Potter, a fantastic pianist named John Taylor and Dave Holland on Bass - just a beautiful record!
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This is a great staff!
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Chris Potter on piano and sax.
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That's not "the state of jazz guitar as opposed to jazz saxophone." That not some saxophonist, that's CHRIS FREAKIN' POTTER. There are many fine saxophonists but it is fair to say that in many ways Chris Potter sets the bar. Originally Posted by Dutchbopper
Bingo Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
J, the point is that it's practically impossible on tenor sax . . . unless you're Chris Potter. It's not hard for him because a) he's a musical freak, in the positive sense; b) he has worked his fingers to the bone maximizing his gifts; and c) he's been able to do that work with people at or next to that level since he was a youngster. Originally Posted by jster
Are there jazz guitar players who are that good and work that hard and played a lot with jazz avatars as youngsters? Yeah, we can think of some: Pat Martino. Julian Lage. John McLaughlin. Lionel Loueke. {Insert your choice here.} But that's maybe six to ten people over the past sixty years.
Isn't it amazing that we get to hear and appreciate these people? Even if we are not lucky enough to be one of those people, we are still very lucky.
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Very interesting thread, I've always been a sax lover (but never played it) and been of the same opinion but really looking objectively after reading all these responses (and those transcription vids...wow!) I think we can hold our heads up with pride. Metheny, McLaughlin and Rogers in my opinion would be called as my expert defence if the need arose..
It not just chops of course, that's not what we're talking about it's the musicality combined with the chops which makes top sax players seemingly untouchable but I think we can hold our own.
Metheny had to invent new techniques to try and compete with the players around him, his ghost note LH tapping technique is pretty phenomenal and although I've seen a lot of people try and do it (and teach it) no one touches PM for it.
In terms of keeping up with sax players I think Adam Rogers does as well as anyone.
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Adam Rogers solo has everything going for it, blues feel, motif development, great time, chops, intervallic licks... the whole lot. I don't reckon 99% of sax players could match this.
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Originally Posted by Foulds Jazz Guitars
You are kidding aren't you?
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Just getting carried away!
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Back in 1990 I had a regular Niteclub gig where we would trade sets with the jazz band...(Ralph Lalama, Jim Chapin, Jerry Weldon, etc)....basically NYC Jazz veterans. On a couple of gigs, Chris subbed for either Ralph or Jerry.
Like myself he was barely 20 years old at the time and just starting to make a splash in the NYC scene....No surprise he was absolutely incredible even back then. Chapin used to say watch out this kid is going to be huge.
Getting up to play after him (or any of the those guys!)...was a pretty humbling experience every week....especially since we were doing Classic/Prog Rock covers...lol....
Anyway, they were all really cool guys and they would always make us feel good by saying something like "play that original tune with all those time changes, that's pretty cool"....
It was after seeing those guys play every week did I realize I had a lot to learn.
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