Giving up single note lines

[mr. beaumont]

For a month.

Going to try to play no extended single note lines...going to focus on groove and harmony. My improvisations will be mostly chords, from little two note businesses to fuller stuff...I'm gigging so infrequently (though I got a good one tomorrow!) it's worth an experiment.

I'm going to check back in here and post recordings, probably just low quality soundcloud stuff, as often as possible.

This post is my official, "I said I'm gonna do it, so I better at least try" post. Feel free to encourage/discourage

[Pat Clare]

Sometimes while soloing I'll hold down certain notes of the chord with my first 2 fingers andadd quarter notes or half notes with my
other fingers to a type of linear movement within a chord.Harry Leahey used to talk about grabbing chords out of your single note lines
as a way of improvising.

[docbop]

Artists go through phases and it add to their creativity. In long run I think you'll be glad you're changing focus for awhile.

[matt.guitarteacher]

I'll be interested to hear some single-note-free improv. I think it's a cool experiment.

Are you disallowing octaves as well? I'd assume that they don't count as not-single-note? :-)

[MarkRhodes]

Sounds like a great idea to me. Nothing like putting yourself on the spot to get the creative juices flowing. I think Leonard Bernstein said the recipe for creativity was 1) a good idea and 2) not enough time....

[NSJ]

Good luck! You are a humble but I think very accomplished player, so I'm sure you'll do very well.

I am way behind you as a player, but I really try to think in this style. It depends on how one conceives of the issue. I Think of it as simply still keeping melody first with the goal of harmonizing lines to the extent one can, depending where one is on the fingerboard. One problem for many of us is that it becomes simply a guitar nerd harpoon like "chord melody" exercise of the same old block chords that weigh down the melody line like a lead balloon or bottom heavy anchor. And sink it to the bottom of the ocean. I have yet to meet a single piano player who knows what the term chord melody is.

The problem is that we (well at least me) tend to know and understand more then we can actually play. What we actually play is what we have consistently practiced.

I tried to keep it as simple as possible: how can one harmonize a line? I only think of two note patterns, Three note harmonizations, and four note combinations. Two note patterns are simply intervals (I have tried to internalize harmonizing the major scale in thirds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, ev8ths, 10ths, 11ths and 13ths--of these, I think that 10ths and 13ths are really really important to get down, technically) three note patterns are simply triads, both open (spread) and closed. Four note patterns are simply drop two and drop three block chords. .

I also have found a way to harmonize the chromatic scale with Triad pairs and have really tried to incorporate Barry Harris' harmonized major and minor 6th diminished scale. I also use guide tones on adjacent strings (either as P5, P4, or tritone) as a way to comp for a melody line.

Anything else beyond this I don't want to know yet, as it's still a struggle to fully internalize this information on the fly so it's readily usable. I mean: this is already a shit load of information that I seem to understand more than I can possibly implement.


I keep an old-fashioned paper and pen notebook of each song that I practice, with a specific harmonic ideas---by that I mean specific ideas that I can use to harmonize a line.

One technical problem I'm sure we all have to address (well you less than many of the rest of us) is to fully and seamlessly integrate vertical and horizontal playing on the neck. By that I mean as follows: say one is playing a melody line up or down the neck--The question will become: do you know the instrument well enough that you can harmonize any of the notes with the relevant one, two or three notes across the neck in that location? And by that I mean in any improvised way. Does one know the fingerboard so well that going up and down the neck seamlessly integrates with going across the neck?

anyway, I'm sure you know all this, and my apologies if this rambling post was too much Captain Obvious.
Looking forward to hearing all of the progress.

[mr. beaumont]

No, ramble on, this is fun! You know a lot more about the technical side than i do--lots of stuff to explore.

it won't be completely "sans single note" but there won't be extended lines...too many cliches in my playing...gotta bust things up a bit.

[ecj]

Cool project, Jeff. If I were going to try something similar I'd mine these sources:

1) Van Eps. 'Nuff said.
2) The third chorus of many Wes Montgomery solos
3) Anything Pat Metheny recorded on acoustic steel string.

Good luck!

[wizard3739]

This one concept is very high on my bucket list.

wiz

[Takemitsu]

Feel free to encourage/discourage

There is NO WAY you can pull that off. What a lousy idea.

[mr. beaumont]

Cool project, Jeff. If I were going to try something similar I'd mine these sources:

1) Van Eps. 'Nuff said.
2) The third chorus of many Wes Montgomery solos
3) Anything Pat Metheny recorded on acoustic steel string.

Good luck!

Yeah...i'm really after a Pat Metheny/late Jim Hall idea, I think. I already pretty much dig what Wes did--not that I can pull it off anywhere as good as he, but the concept is actually pretty simple...

the Van Eps stuff is probably over my head. All the contrapuntal stuff...which isn't really my favorite sound anyway, probably because it is over my head (and ears)

Im gonna go back and transcribe more Ed Bickert too.

[mr. beaumont]

There is NO WAY you can pull that off. What a lousy idea.

there we go! Now it's a challenge

[NSJ]

Sometimes while soloing I'll hold down certain notes of the chord with my first 2 fingers andadd quarter notes or half notes with my
other fingers to a type of linear movement within a chord.Harry Leahey used to talk about grabbing chords out of your single note lines
as a way of improvising.

I try to practice something akin to this but the opposite. Hold down a melody note on the first 2 strings while arpegiating a 2-3 note chord sequence underneath on strings 6-5-4. The trick is to articulate the melody note louder (rest stroke--accenting) with a more sustaining note value (whole note, half note) and to outline the 3 note sequence (eg, R-M3-m7, is the shell voicing of a dom7) with faster note values (eg, triplets or 16th notes) more softly than the melody note. It gives the feeling of movement, and sounds much better (to me any way) than the usual block chord plucked simultaneously.

[TH]

Not infrequently, I'll hear Ben Monder playing an entire solo with what can only be called chords. In reality, it's single line playing but 4 voices simultaneously. It's a different way of thinking, surely a result of conscious effort and practice in that mindset. Good for you for going that way.
Mick Goodrick, too, is fond of using the "chord solo" as a high art. Sometimes, often even, I'll be listening to him playing and it'll be so completely and other worldly beautiful. He'll create something like Bach/Ravel/Stella by Starlight and not a hint of single line playing.
I think it's a great incentive to really explore the implications of advanced voice leading, Jeff, as long as you're in the pool. Piano players accept this as a matter of course. Go for it! Have fun
David

[NSJ]

Not infrequently, I'll hear Ben Monder playing an entire solo with what can only be called chords. In reality, it's single line playing but 4 voices simultaneously. It's a different way of thinking, surely a result of conscious effort and practice in that mindset. Good for you for going that way.
Mick Goodrick, too, is fond of using the "chord solo" as a high art. Sometimes, often even, I'll be listening to him playing and it'll be so completely and other worldly beautiful that I'll have to stop playing myself. He'll create something like Bach/Ravel/Stella by Starlight and not a hint of single line playing. You don't follow up something like that, you just start over.
I think it's a great incentive to really explore the implications of advanced voice leading, Jeff, as long as you're in the pool. Piano players accept this as a matter of course. Go for it! Have fun
David

What comes naturally to a piano player is extremely difficult to a guitarist. I'm seriously trying to study a lot of this and recognized that it's best to extract the most essential information to internalize. Four-part lines? Yeah that's not happening anytime soon. But two-part lines? That's just intervals, no? One thing that v Eps, Sid Jacobs, and Martin Taylor all agree about, as a way to break away from the conventional block chords we all know, is the intervallic primacy of 10ths. For me, 10ths act as an anchor, a place I can get a foothold or musical bearing that has to be so internalized that it becomes automatic, without thinking. So, if I'm playing a Melody note on the first or second or 3rd string, I should automatically without thinking know where the 10th lies on the 4th, 5th or 6th string. Automatic, without question. Same thing with playing any melody note on the first or second string: I should know where the 13th is on the fifth or sixth string automatically without thinking.

I love the way how Sid Jacobs explains it- paraphrasing him here "so you want improvise. You think to yourself: OMG what the fuck am I going to play? And my going to play mixolydian, Lydian dominant, The altered scale, OMG, what am I going to do? By the time I figure it out, everyone's left the room and the song is over. But there's nothing more fundamental than understanding 3rds--thirds give us the most important information about music in terms of tonality: major or minor? And if you invert thirds, you get sixths. And if you displace both of these by an octave, you get 10ths and 13ths. And if you can approach each note of these intervals from a chromatic half step from below or a diatonic scale step from above, well you are beginning the road to Bach....."

and he stressed over and over again how knowing 10ths (both major or minor) has to become second nature on the fingerboard.

Martin Taylor calls or refers to 10ths as his musical "scaffolding". As seen here--

Jazz Guitar Scaffolding System | Martin Taylor

and if one picks out any exercise from the hundreds of pages of v Eps "Harmonic Mechanisms" books, I have to imagine that many of them contain 10th intervals.

[AlsoRan]

For a month.

Going to try to play no extended single note lines...going to focus on groove and harmony. My improvisations will be mostly chords, from little two note businesses to fuller stuff...I'm gigging so infrequently (though I got a good one tomorrow!) it's worth an experiment.

I'm going to check back in here and post recordings, probably just low quality soundcloud stuff, as often as possible.

This post is my official, "I said I'm gonna do it, so I better at least try" post. Feel free to encourage/discourage

You got my attention with this thread.

Using chords to improvise is so cool, and you are closer to fully exploiting the guitar's full potential. Great as Coltrane, Bird, and Miles were, they could not play a chord solo on their instrument.

Dutchbopper posted a Martijn Van Iterson video in which the fellow used a lot of chord fragments. I immediately noted the extra facet of expression it brought to the solo.

With the guitar, we can have several voices crying out instead of just the one voice the saxophone and trumpet can emote. While they have their own great merits and strengths we can't emulate, we guitarist need to realize what we have in our instrument and maybe not limit ourselves to trying to sound like a brass instrument, as many do.

Jazzpunk started a thread on guitar goals for 2015, and your thread reminded me of my desire to include chord fragments in my soloing as a long term goal. Maybe 2015 is the time to start to work chords in!

Good luck!

[TH]

Easy peasy:

Looks like he's not breaking a sweat. And not even moving his arms as much as a piano player would.
David

[matt.guitarteacher]

Great Bach type stuff on the Ted green site using tenths .

[AlsoRan]

Is this the type of improvisation you are wanting to master, Mr. B? (This was the video from the Dutchbopper I was referring to earlier). It is so nice, in my opinion.

[NSJ]

Easy peasy:

Looks like he's not breaking a sweat. And not even moving his arms as much as a piano player would.
David

Ok I just stole something very cool from that video where he said he builds chords from certain intervals "go up a (P)5, then a (major)7th, then a (minor) 7th.

Resultant voice dispersion -R-5-#11-b3. Nice. If you move the P5 up an octave (ie, on the 2nd string), it's much easier to play (barre it) and you can really hear the m2 tension between the #11 and the P5.

[sjl]

I think progress always comes from a certain limitation.

[mr. beaumont]

Is this the type of improvisation you are wanting to master, Mr. B? (This was the video from the Dutchbopper I was referring to earlier). It is so nice, in my opinion.

Is MVI ridiculous or what? Man, chops, taste, tone...total f-in' package.

Lemme see if I can find a video of what I'm talking about...this isn't far off, though, but I'm going to limit myself more this month...I like sjl's comment about limitations, I think it's so true...

[mr. beaumont]

Here's like day 1, square 1...

[sjl]

I like your search.
I am doing something similar but in the opposite way, I have no chops and I have begun to work with the new Vincent book, I want those minicells in my ears in order to build longer ones. From something boring and previsible to something hipper.

[AlsoRan]

I like your search.
I am doing something similar but in the opposite way, I have no chops and I have begun to work with the new Vincent book, I want those minicells in my ears in order to build longer ones. From something boring and previsible to something hipper.

What book are you referring to, sjl?