New masterclass video from Pasquale Grasso - single-note soloing

[NSJ]

The funny thing is, I've been working on a lot of songs and fixated with building a repertoire. Practicing some of this reminded me that I need rethink and go back to working on some technique. Specifically, in this case, trying to play triplets very fast like he does reminded me that my finger style technique can get sloppy. I really have to be exceptionally cognizant , when playing consecutive or a series of triplets to not repeat fingers: IMI MIM IMI MIM etc.

[christianm77]

But when you go to school and learn somestructured academic method to play stuff like Parker... it kills the whole idea of it to me.

I almost agree with you, and I'm not sure I can be bothered to argue the finer points. But hey, ho why not:

The problem with arguing down this road is that you come to the conclusion that the way in which jazz musicians were trained in say the 30s and 40s is now no longer existent. So we do need some sort of academic training whether it's from a college or as a result of our own self study to equip ourselves with a sense of tradition. Well unless we happened to grow up in New Orleans or something.

AFAIK there were complex systems of limitations in traditional jazz etc.

(Parker for example is coming out of a very prescribed tradition - his music is full of tropes from the past - a famous example would be his frequent quotation of the Picout High Society line which had to be learned by every budding reedsman - and so on so forth. Early recordings of Bird reveal a precise imitation of Lester Young's vocabulary.)

These traditions are not recorded in print. The communication of the jazz tradition was usually through mentorship, apprenticeship and the environment of the bandstand.

So yeah - academic study of jazz? Really not the whole picture.

But! The traditions of 18th century composition and improvisation - at least according to Sanguinetti and Gjerdingen -remain largely oral an communicated through mentorship and apprenticeship. Therefore they are unrecorded too in print. There are some manuals practiced for the education of non professional musicians. Conservatoires of the 17th and 18th (even 19th) centuries are rather unlike the institutions of today. Certainly not academic institutions in any way.

That's why it's taken until the 21st century for a book on the training practices used to educate musicians of this era - as opposed to retroactive analyses of their music based on later theory.

Also - the tuition of this period seems based not so much on limitations but on tropes, licks and patterns designed to side step venerable prohibitions on voice leading etc (though not all of them, hidden fifths are practically encouraged!) Gjerdingen compares this to Aebersold pattern books, but to me it instantly reminded me of Barry Harris's approach to teaching the construction of lines.

So academic study of Mozart? Really not the whole picture.

Compare to jazz, development of CST etc. In any case here we are and I'm quite glad I'm not an orphan in 17th century Naples or a African American in the US of the 1940s.

[SeanZ]

Anyone else catch him live last night from Mezzrow - his technique, if nothing else, is really awesome. Btw, if you're not aware of Mezzrow, they stream live jazz free 7 nights a week - all you have to do is sign up on their website. Grasso is there quite regularly as well as other excellent NYC guitar players.

[SeanZ]

here's the link to Mezzrow site - https://www.smallslive.com/events/live-stream-mezzrow/. I think you have to register at Small's which is their affiliate.

[Groyniad]

i'm amazed to hear people arguing enthusiastically that this guy does not play musically (or 'really well' - that he has technique but not real talent etc. etc.)

i'm really amazed - and disappointed

the line about an academic course on parker ruining the whole parker thing is just ludicrous - c77 seems to me much too polite about this

NOTHING can spoil parker - if Parker for you is somehow spoiled its because you lack the ears and sensitivity to hear what he is doing. NO COURSE ON SHAKESPEARE CAN HARM YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO SHAKESPEARE (sorry i meant parker) - you just have to hear the plays (hear him playing) - and THAT IS ALL. you take it from there. if it doesn't motivate you musically then the question is what does - and what are you doing about it.

it is just absurd and childish to complain that a certain way of trying to help people to get into parker ruins parker - or your experience of parker - or be-bop or whatever.

i've taught philosophy at universities for over twenty years - and this is the sort of thing the worst students say ALL THE TIME. the way plato is taught ruins plato etc. etc.

if you can't dig plato - even after someone who's been digging plato for thirty years has tried to help you dig him - then that says a whole lot about you and nothing at all about plato.

pasquale grasso can hear bud powell and parker - and he adores them. he's seriously done something about that. and boy does he get my vote.

isn't it crazy that the freshest sounding guitarist in - i don't know how long - is so self-consciously devoted to the music of the late forties! what a breath of fresh air. (and his technique is neither here nor there)

[Jazzism]

Yeah, isn't it really in the ear of the beholder. I hit him up for a lesson while in NYC. Interestingly those vids he has released don't even address some of his contrapuntal approaches. He's a really deep musician. I sat 5 feet away from him in mezzrow and yeah, his music is bursting with vitality.

[christianm77]

i'm amazed to hear people arguing enthusiastically that this guy does not play musically (or 'really well' - that he has technique but not real talent etc. etc.)

i'm really amazed - and disappointed

the line about an academic course on parker ruining the whole parker thing is just ludicrous - c77 seems to me much too polite about this

NOTHING can spoil parker - if Parker for you is somehow spoiled its because you lack the ears and sensitivity to hear what he is doing. NO COURSE ON SHAKESPEARE CAN HARM YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO SHAKESPEARE (sorry i meant parker) - you just have to hear the plays (hear him playing) - and THAT IS ALL. you take it from there. if it doesn't motivate you musically then the question is what does - and what are you doing about it.

it is just absurd and childish to complain that a certain way of trying to help people to get into parker ruins parker - or your experience of parker - or be-bop or whatever.

i've taught philosophy at universities for over twenty years - and this is the sort of thing the worst students say ALL THE TIME. the way plato is taught ruins plato etc. etc.

if you can't dig plato - even after someone who's been digging plato for thirty years has tried to help you dig him - then that says a whole lot about you and nothing at all about plato.

pasquale grasso can hear bud powell and parker - and he adores them. he's seriously done something about that. and boy does he get my vote.

isn't it crazy that the freshest sounding guitarist in - i don't know how long - is so self-consciously devoted to the music of the late forties! what a breath of fresh air. (and his technique is neither here nor there)

Well TBH man I do have some sympathy with what Jonah etc is saying.

First of all the criticisms of Pasquale - well it's easy to criticise, but I do feel his playing is very ... how to put this in a non douchey/sour grapes/judgemental sounding way? Formal - perhaps - precise, perfect, exact, polished, smooth, virtuoso, clean and yes ... modern.

A lot of jazz - well music - sounds this way to me today. Snarky Puppy sounds this way to me! Yes I just compared Snarky Puppy to Pasquale. To me it's not about style, it's about VIBE, and Pasquale's vibe is very modern.

(I would use a completely different set of adjectives to describe Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, Jim Hall, Joe Pass or Peter Berstein, for example, all players who work or have worked in Pasquale's genre.)

Those are not bad things per se. As an artist, there are other players I prefer, but Pasquale is really young. Give him a few years to live life and something will come out perhaps. His craft is incredible, but I'm yet to hear the art. But then what are these modern notions of art anyway? They would have been alien to one of those Renaissance painters we all venerate.

It feels stupid criticising him TBH, probably because it is stupid criticising anyone. If you like or dislike something, let it shine through in your playing. It's not like I can play like him.

My position re: academic study is that it's a bit pants but it's the best thing we have available - listen to records, study with masters in a classroom environment etc. These days you can go to college to be a rapper or a DJ. It's the world we live in.

My further position in response to Jonah is that the same forces that have been at work in Jazz have already changed the social nature of classical music during the 19th and 20th centuries. So classical music and jazz aren't terribly different. The composition and improvisation of baroque/classical music, like jazz, was taught orally through the apprenticeship system, just like jazz used to be.

A key them I've noticed (which I should probably number for quick an easy use) is that there is music theory and music theory. What do I mean?

1) Well there is the stuff that musicians use everyday to come up with music - patterns, ideas, licks, rules of thumb.
2) And there are grand theories of music - like Schenker etc. These are not so much for everyday musician use - they are more for academic musicological analysis.

There are obviously things in the middle, but to me there are different types of analysis that achieve different things. I put it to you that for a working musician it doesn't matter why something works, just that it does. IMO we need to be cautious about the way jazz moves towards 2) in the academic environment.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Pasquale studied with Barry Harris, who is very much in camp 1).

[Jonah]

Thank you for your Groyniad,

actually I agree with you more than you probably think I do.

I will comment shortly - excuse me this since I am always on the run next few days.

I would like to add also that I am not trying to make an argument. For me it is a pleasure of coversation even if the opionios are extremely opposite - and even if someone dislike something I admire I do not take it as personal thing aimed at me. I try to explain why I think this and that and if it does not work I withdraw.

NO COURSE ON SHAKESPEARE CAN HARM YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO SHAKESPEARE (sorry i meant parker)

I think we could look at this in a bit more detalized way... When we have in a modern world a course on Shakespeare it usually means analyzis of his work - it could be strictly academical or free and poetical (like Auden's lectures on Shakespeare for example) - but basically the idea is to analyze and interprete his works.
This of course will not harm your realtionship to Shakespeare.
But I believe there will be hardly anyone who will try to use it to write plays in Shakespearean style. And even if he does it will be more kind of excersise or study than a real piece of art.

Now to Parker... we also can analyze his music more or less in the same way - find musical logics in it and formulize it in terms of more or less academical concept. Will it harm your relation to Parker? No way. (Actually I never said that).

The thing is that academical method here is taken not just from point of musicolgy but also to learn to play Parker's style. And I see no problem here too. But will it be reproduction? Nice piece of retro-music?
Something like Hollywood retro-movies that try re-create old times by imitating how they looked like? Will it be enough to make a piece of art of it - to make it lively? I am not sure.

I admire people who patiently do that.

To explain myself here? As I said I see here one of the essential points in jazz music. I am convinced that jazz music truely lives only when it speaks live language. (on the contrary to classics - I explained why in my previous post).
By the way there's chance that some old style revive too - but usually it takes 1 or 2 generations of studying and imitating players before come those who speak this language as natives.

Maybe I get too deep in the things here... maybe deeper than needed.
Christian actully balanced my comment well enough so I have almost nothing to add to it. He said mostly what I would have said.

isn't it crazy that the freshest sounding guitarist in - i don't know how long - is so self-consciously devoted to the music of the late forties! what a breath of fresh air. (and his technique is neither here nor there)

My opinion on Pasquale does not mean that he is actually or really poor player musically. And as you said absolutely correctly - it's not his problem but mine, he does what he does and I can only wish him success. He definitely has his own approach and maybe he will find the way to develope it into his own musical voice too.. so far I just hear what I hear.

But to be honest for me it's not a problem at all... I am not trying to solve it and I am not asking anyone to change his or your point point. It is probable that in a year or so I will suddenly hear his musicality or maybe not.

Let me say also something on - so called -musicality - I split in two parts, there's what I call basic musicality this is the ability to phrase and articulate motives, lines, harmonies in time in a very clear convincing way..
Kind of very good speaking in short phrases or words, good control of intonation within these phrase etc.

Pasquale has it definitely.

But there's another level of musicality (which is not possible without basic).
This is the ability to make meaningful integral piece out of these motives, harmonies, lines... ability to make a story of these phrases, to draw characters, to make them live.. to make art (for this is what art is for me)

And this so far I cannot really hear in his playing.

I could get into details and analyze his videos and explain why I say I do not hear musicality in his playing.
But to be true I am already sorry I said this... though I really feel like this I am also conviced that stating negative opinion is case like this is absolutely not necessary.

Believe me I also have been amazed and felt really painfully when people who seem to admire and learn arts as I do suddely say harsh opinion on the works that to me seem to be the highest artistic achievements ever.
What can I do with that? Call the idiots? Argue? Just explain why I feel it's beautiful? I did all that sometimes I think... but today I feel it will be better to withdraw... and that I mostly do. Though as this case shows still not always

[NSJ]

Well TBH man I do have some sympathy with what Jonah etc is saying.

First of all the criticisms of Pasquale - well it's easy to criticise, but I do feel his playing is very ... how to put this in a non douchey/sour grapes/judgemental sounding way? Formal - perhaps - precise, perfect, exact, polished, smooth, virtuoso, clean and yes ... modern.

A lot of jazz - well music - sounds this way to me today. Snarky Puppy sounds this way to me! Yes I just compared Snarky Puppy to Pasquale. To me it's not about style, it's about VIBE, and Pasquale's vibe is very modern.

(I would use a completely different set of adjectives to describe Barney Kessel, Tal Farlow, Jim Hall, Joe Pass or Peter Berstein, for example, all players who work or have worked in Pasquale's genre.)

Those are not bad things per se. As an artist, there are other players I prefer, but Pasquale is really young. Give him a few years to live life and something will come out perhaps. His craft is incredible, but I'm yet to hear the art. But then what are these modern notions of art anyway? They would have been alien to one of those Renaissance painters we all venerate.

It feels stupid criticising him TBH, probably because it is stupid criticising anyone. If you like or dislike something, let it shine through in your playing. It's not like I can play like him.

My position re: academic study is that it's a bit pants but it's the best thing we have available - listen to records, study with masters in a classroom environment etc. These days you can go to college to be a rapper or a DJ. It's the world we live in.

My further position in response to Jonah is that the same forces that have been at work in Jazz have already changed the social nature of classical music during the 19th and 20th centuries. So classical music and jazz aren't terribly different. The composition and improvisation of baroque/classical music, like jazz, was taught orally through the apprenticeship system, just like jazz used to be.

A key them I've noticed (which I should probably number for quick an easy use) is that there is music theory and music theory. What do I mean?

1) Well there is the stuff that musicians use everyday to come up with music - patterns, ideas, licks, rules of thumb.
2) And there are grand theories of music - like Schenker etc. These are not so much for everyday musician use - they are more for academic musicological analysis.

There are obviously things in the middle, but to me there are different types of analysis that achieve different things. I put it to you that for a working musician it doesn't matter why something works, just that it does. IMO we need to be cautious about the way jazz moves towards 2) in the academic environment.

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. Pasquale studied with Barry Harris, who is very much in camp 1).

#1 is the lifeblood of the practitioner of the art; we are what we play and what we practice. Number two only comes after a serious survey and analysis of entire genres of music and is strictly the purview of the academic.

The apprenticeship system still exists in Indian classical music: perhaps up to 20 years of serious study with a master teacher, which probably also includes doing his laundry and bringing him some tea. By way of a comparison, Oscar Ghiglia spent 10 years studying with Segovia .

Like many, Pasquale studied both within a college format and as an apprentice . He has a degree in classical guitar from the University of Bologna . But he also studied with Chuck Wayne's student. And was taken in by Barry Harris.

On another forum, there was a big thread on Alan Holdsworth, how unique he was. Of course I agreed, but I said in my personal opinion he has been surpassed pipe someone like Pasquale. And by surpassed, I mean "I can't stop listening to him ". I called Pasquale the bud Powell or Art Tatum of the guitar . People pooh-poohed it as an original, and someone trying to copy a 1940s and 50s style.

The fact that someone is trying to play like Art Tatum on the guitar is mind blowing. There was nobody like Art Tatum. Absolutely nobody. Perhaps he and Thelonius were the two most original piano players around .

There is too much "looking for the new" all the time. Art Tatum and Charlie Parker remain massively under - appreciated.

Jimmy Raney once said that all he wanted to do was to play like Charlie Parker on the guitar. I mean that is no small feat man. Absolutely nothing to sneeze at or ridicule .

What differentiates Pasquale, in part, from the bebop guitarists like Jimmy or Barney or Tal is his classical background and his right hand and ability to play contrapuntally . That contributes to his perception of being perfect or excessively polished and perhaps lacking there requisite "grit ".

[christianm77]

Yes, his achievement as a player is obvious and extraordinary which is why I always urge guitarists who haven't heard him to check him out. See what's possible. A bit like Holdsworth, it's true. And who can argue that there isn't a lot to learn from a player like that?

My - and I suspect others - appraisals of other musicians are based largely (I think) on what we are trying to achieve as players. I have always tended to dismiss players that don't fit into my world view. I know the stuff that interests me and the stuff I'm working on.

I'm wondering if I can be a bit more open than that. After all if I really know what I'm all about, what's to stop me checking out and enjoying someone who has taken a different path?

BTW regarding grit - I want to stress I am no longer talking about Pasquale here - but about music in general - no it's not really about that at all.

There are many musicians IMO who play with perfect technique and also the grit and fire that I mean. A lot of these players are in fact classical - Martha Argerich? - but many jazz players too.... Clifford Brown springs instantly to mind, but I'm sure I can think of loads more.

It's not to do with the way music sounds and everything to do with the way music feels. To me, it's when music feels a bit 'controlled' or as Gyorgy Ligeti put it - 'music shouldn't have it's tie all straight.'

[fasstrack]

Jaki Byard put me in my place when I was young and stupid and trash-talking about some musician.

"Everybody's a big-time critic, but nobody plays s%^t'.

I learned. Will you?

[matt.guitarteacher]

Jaki Byard put me in my place when I was young and stupid and trash-talking about some musician.

"Everybody's a big-time critic, but nobody plays s%^t'.

I learned. Will you?

Sheesh...

[fasstrack]

Sheesh...

Well, I just felt that certain people were getting a bit glib, and I'd like to hear what they can do where it really counts.

Disclosure: Pasquale is my friend, and a very sweet guy. I've known him since he was 21, and he was great then. He's worked hard to get where he is, and I'm not all too thrilled to read guys who ought to know better slam him on a guitar nerd site.

[Jonah]

Jaki Byard put me in my place when I was young and stupid and trash-talking about some musician.

"Everybody's a big-time critic, but nobody plays s%^t'.

I learned. Will you?

I was not stupid when I was young (just getting more stupid with years though) ...

but probably it was your personal lesson?

[Jonah]

Well, I just felt that certain people were getting a bit glib, and I'd like to hear what they can do where it really counts.

Next time they serves you bad meals at the restaurant... be ready to hear that you should first cook it yourself and then critisize the cook.

[Jonah]

Disclosure: Pasquale is my friend, and a very sweet guy. I've known him since he was 21, and he was great then. He's worked hard to get where he is, and I'm not all too thrilled to read guys who ought to know better slam him on a guitar nerd site.

Summary:

He is a sweet guy...
he is your friend...
he is great...
he's worked hard...

Do you think these points make good service in conversation about him as a musician?

I knew plent sweet guys who worked hard and whose friends thought they were great. So what?

[fasstrack]

I was not stupid when I was young (just getting more stupid with years though) ...

but probably it was your personal lesson?

It was, but worth passing on, I think. If it doesn't apply let it roll off your back...

[fasstrack]

Summary:



Do you think these points make good service in conversation about him as a musician?

Always better to look for the good in anything (It's facile to look for the bad). It's called optimism, and it helps in life...

[christianm77]

Well, I just felt that certain people were getting a bit glib, and I'd like to hear what they can do where it really counts.

Disclosure: Pasquale is my friend, and a very sweet guy. I've known him since he was 21, and he was great then. He's worked hard to get where he is, and I'm not all too thrilled to read guys who ought to know better slam him on a guitar nerd site.

Yes, you are right. I don't think anyone on this forum - perhaps anyone in the world - can play like him.

I know I can't :-) I'm probably guilty of discussing him too much in the abstract, getting a bit carried away. It doesn't matter what I say.

Anyway as Oscar Wilde put it 'the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.'

Pasquale is a world class player and will attract criticism from professional critics and random numpties alike as he goes through his career.

In general, the jazz world being so small most professional criticism is generally polite, and bland, but this might not always be the way. It often surprises people that artists can be offended or hurt by criticism... It's not beyond possibility that someone might read what's written here about them.

[Groyniad]

jonah - your response is thoughtful and i'm sorry if i was too critical of your post

i find pasquale grasso's playing hugely exciting (so not too 'polished') - largely because it actually manages to generate much more of the sort of excitement you find in bud powell than almost any other player i can think of on any instrument

i've been trying to capture that sort of excitement in my own playing for a long time (though i've been focused on other disciplines really - so i've an excuse for still being a long way off)

look - if you listen to his wes montgomery prize 'piece', the cole porter - i would not be surprised to discover that he learned that 'solo' note for note - but it would not diminish its musical impact

that impact is generated by the sheer exuberance of the tempo and the ease with which he plays at that tempo

i'm not sure i've ever heard playing like that (and bright soloing is of the essence of the genre)

if pg was an established great it would be less inappropriate to say 'well he's great of course, but its not really my thing'

as it is - given how far he is from being recognized for the jazz-hurricane he really is - i think its a bit much to criticize him - especially if the claim is that he's just not very 'musical' (since 'musical' is the ultimate quality in a musician). he's a young struggling musician - and given that we should all be profoundly positive about his utterly obvious and unusual achievement.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Well, I just felt that certain people were getting a bit glib, and I'd like to hear what they can do where it really counts.

Disclosure: Pasquale is my friend, and a very sweet guy. I've known him since he was 21, and he was great then. He's worked hard to get where he is, and I'm not all too thrilled to read guys who ought to know better slam him on a guitar nerd site.

I guess I missed the 'slam'. Thought it was a pretty well thought-out response. Christian can play, has links to his stuff, and admitted to not being the same level player. I don't see how you could offer a critical opinion much more graciously than that post. Maybe you're talking about something else? Must've missed it. Sorry.

I've seen glib, and from people who really CAN'T show it in their own playing, but this ain't it.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Jaki Byard put me in my place when I was young and stupid and trash-talking about some musician.

"Everybody's a big-time critic, but nobody plays s%^t'.

I learned. Will you?

honestly, this post...

name dropping , condescending towards others younger than yourself, basically calling someone else young and stupid...

[fasstrack]

Yes, you are right. I don't think anyone on this forum - perhaps anyone in the world - can play like him.

I know I can't :-) I'm probably guilty of discussing him too much in the abstract, getting a bit carried away. It doesn't matter what I say.

Anyway as Oscar Wilde put it 'the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.'

Pasquale is a world class player and will attract criticism from professional critics and random numpties alike as he goes through his career.

In general, the jazz world being so small most professional criticism is generally polite, and bland, but this might not always be the way. It often surprises people that artists can be offended or hurt by criticism... It's not beyond possibility that someone might read what's written here about them.

I guess if you want to be and stay in the public eye when you're not​ being talked about is the time to get nervous...

[fasstrack]

I guess I missed the 'slam'. Thought it was a pretty well thought-out response. Christian can play, has links to his stuff, and admitted to not being the same level player. I don't see how you could offer a critical opinion much more graciously than that post. Maybe you're talking about something else? Must've missed it. Sorry.

I've seen glib, and from people who really CAN'T show it in their own playing, but this ain't it.

Maybe you're right. And maybe I came on a bit strong. Just defending a friend. I do stand by what I said, or rather what Jaki said, in principle. Easy to talk mess, hard to play good. I'm sure Christian sounds good, others here, too. Was speaking in general...

[fasstrack]

honestly, this post...

name dropping , condescending towards others younger than yourself, basically calling someone else young and stupid...

I said I was the one who was young and stupid. Thought I made that clear. If I unwittingly insulted anyone else in a 'carom shot' I apologize.

Pasquale is 35 years my junior, and he and others his age have things to teach me, so I don't get your condescending reference.

Name dropping? I played with Jaki for 1 1/2 years. He taught me a lot, and I was just trying to pass a bit of it on. Maybe not in the most tactful way...