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So, when I listen to clips from players, from the rank beginners to the superstars, some are sloppier than others.
Decent jazz improvising involves juggling a bunch of things: interaction with bandmates, note choice, rhythm choice, phrasing, placement, thematic development, expression, tone, attention to mechanics, etc: all the things we talk about endlessly here. All of us play at some level, can do certain things easily, can do other things decently, struggle but occasionally can pull off certain things, and fumble on certain things. So I'm curious about people's opinions (regardless of playing level, since I think it concerns the very basics of how we approach improvising) on playing cleanly .
One thing I struggle with is in performance, not "staying within my limits" during solos. What I mean is that
I'll reach for ideas that I'm not certain I can pull off, and often don't quite pull off. The result is that I find my playing sloppy, in a way I don't hear at all in my guitar idols. For example, it might take me a chorus to lock in, then I'll play a chorus I find pretty good, then I'll start taking risks, and often fall flat. In other words, in 3 choruses: Tentative, Decent, Cringe-worthy. This makes the entire solo sloppy.
So how do you approach
1. getting right up to, but not crossing that line,
2. locking in instantly.
3. Anything else related to playing cleanly?
I can list some obvious approaches: relax, listen more carefully to bandmates, work out everything ahead of time. Anybody have other thoughts?
And by the way, I'm not necessarily suggesting always playing cleanly is better than occasionally playing sloppily, but I'm interested in what people do to "stay clean."
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02-26-2017 01:41 PM
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I warm up with some exercises I learned from Frank Vignola. All downstrokes. All. Downstrokes. Nothing but downstrokes.
It helps to iron out tricky passages in heads or in solos I'm learning. Using all downstrokes makes it easy (well, easier) to keep the time even.(And to keep it slow: it seems to be a universal truth that guitarists want to play things faster than they actually can. Seen another way: we may be the only musicians whose ingrained response to playing something just right is that we obviously weren't playing it fast enough!
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I'm really bad about this. I think it's that I don't "practice performing" enough. Ironically, I find myself being pretty judgmental of others for not just "levelling down" and playing something more comfortably within their limits, and then I'm horrible about it myself when it comes to certain kinds of improv.
Originally Posted by pkirk
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I was going to post some thoughts, but I have played so few decent solos in my musical life that I think I would do well just to listen in on this thread. Exactly a topic I need to have some input on!
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(1) Howard Roberts observed that a lot of guitar players, and some surprisingly big names (unnamed), have timing issues with right/left hand coordination. The tip-off is hearing "thwack" when they play...indicating the note has not been fretted quite cleanly, before it's played.
(2) I also believe a lot of bad articulation comes from the idea of "picking" itself. I had a friend who spent 8 mos. completely re-tooling his classical fingersytle playing, as his teacher, a world class player, said he was plucking too much---rather than just lifting through the strings, with very light pressure.
I play with a very thin pick, 38 mm, a la Robert Conti....I also strive to just move the pick up and down (predominantly)...in other words, the string is just getting in the way of the pick---not the reverse.
For those who are athletic, I liken it to "hitting through" a golf ball, or tennis ball, or baseball...or kicking a soccer ball...we don't kick, or hit AT the ball, but kick or hit through it....the string just happens to be there.
(3) I think a lot of articulation really ought to come from the fretting hand.
(4) Finally, I believe watching the fret board is harmful...the actual visual image prevents you from playing fluidly, or quickly for that matter, and interferes with hearing what you're playing, which is MUCH better feedback...I kind of noticed this while doing some picking exercises, as I was watching TV....I played much better. I also read about various players playing in the dark, e.g. Barney Kessel.Last edited by goldenwave77; 02-28-2017 at 06:48 AM.
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I once read a book called "Practice like you play" or "Play like you practice" I don't remember exactly but the premise of the book is stated in the title. I often practice, the songs in the order I plan on performing them. I put the amp to my left , everything is just the way I plan on doing it. My practice sessions are really more like rehearsals. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
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If you can change the order to Tentative, Cringe Worthy, Decent that would make a difference., i.e take the risks earlier.
Another approach has been discussed but I will repeat anyway: cringing is similar to regular performance anxiety, it can be reduced by some cognitive behavioral approaches. This might allow you to develop ideas that sound like "call and response" to what might sound tentative or cringe-worthy statements.
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I record a lot of my rehearsals and most of my gigs, so I've had a chance to think about this.
And, I can certainly relate. What I notice is that I start sparse and build from there. That part is fine. But, then, as I try to bring the solo to a climax, I start reaching for things. Most often, I miss what I'm going for and there's a bad note choice, or a poorly spoken note, or an extraneous non musical sound, or something.
My solution: I keep practicing. The problem: no matter how much I practice, there's still going to be plenty of opportunity to reach for something I can't execute. And, that's where I am with it. Wondering if I should discipline myself to play more simply or if I should accept the problem as part of what I do, for better or worse -- while continuing to practice.
That said, I've noticed something else. The better the other players, the less likely (or less severe) the problem is. So, on the few opportunities I've had to play with world class players (at a tempo I can handle), I played better. I guess it's not a surprise (great players generally make it easier, not harder), except for somehow not having the problem of reaching beyond my grasp.
Wild guess: having better support rhythmically made the whole process of soloing easier. With no confusion about the time, or the harmony, the busy-ness of the comping, the sound, etc, maybe more of my brain could be devoted to executing the lines.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 02-26-2017 at 10:35 PM.
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So I think you're saying try to react differently to a cringe worthy moment: turn in into part of a statement. that's a good point. Originally Posted by medblues
but how about "staying within oneself"? Mark mentions guitarists always want to play faster than they can. If this is true, isn't this tendency true of all musicians? Is it the nature of the guitar to be played sloppily?
I'm really trying to understand something that isn't matched to playing level. There are famous great players whose playing has sloppy moments, even in studio recordings, and there are famous great players each of whose solos are musical gems, even when in informal, awkward live situations with an unfamiliar band.
Some of the most incredible jazz is "over the edge": e.g. I was relistening to Ornette with Dolphy on Science Fiction recently and despite having that record for 30 years, this was the first time I could hear how far they transcended the idea of playing cleanly to arrive at something much deeper than the typical concerns of jazz improvisors.
An example of someone whose playing is never sloppy is Peter Bernstein: he never sounds like anything but perfect to me. Everything he plays sounds intended and confident. How does he stay in perfect control even while playing amazingly difficult stuff? And how did he get to where he never sounds like he tried but came up short? presumably he knows a lot of stuff he can't execute. How does he avoid trying it? I've heard him live a bunch of times, and it's always like that. Kind of like he has completely eliminated his ego from his playing.
And just to name some guys in this forum, (apologies to those I don't name) when I listen to grahambop or M-ster, the clips they post have that vibe. They play great stuff, and it is always very clean and controlled.
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I always think of Joe Pass as someone capable of playing almost crystalline, hard, clean lines, and yet he also hardly has a track without some kind of clam or missed note. His live recordings, especially in ensembles, feature a lot of reaching and pushing and some missed notes. He seemed to take that in stride, as part of the price of doing business in the world of jazz improvisation. I always admired that he didn't go back and use studio tricks to "fix" his mistakes.
Barney Kessell is also someone who almost made the appearance of sloppy technique part of his style. I say "the appearance" of sloppy technique because I just don't think Kessel was being careless for a moment. I think he had a period where he liked those muffled notes and smears and stuff. But his studio work during the "Wrecking Crew" days was clean and clear as diamonds.
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Barney was really reaching for stuff on his "jazz" records. Reaching IS jazz. I don't trust jazz that's too clean
But to address the OP, the key for me is to always slow down and breathe. Tension is the enemy of "clean."
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Yeah, so e.g. smooth jazz is what you get when you value clean over substance, and it doesnt match my taste so much. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Barney was really reaching for stuff on his "jazz" records. Reaching IS jazz. I don't trust jazz that's too clean
But to address the OP, the key for me is to always slow down and breathe. Tension is the enemy of "clean."
I suppose "relax" is one answer to this. Maybe how clean someone plays is a reflection of their personality. As a type-A always impatient kind of guy, maybe my playing can never be clean? Getting an uptight person to relax is a complicated thing.
I didn't want to mention Barney Kessel, but since he got mentioned, a lot of his stuff was sloppy, but, he could be absolutely clean in jazz too, like on the Julie London recording, or on the poll winners recordings.
Was the use of certain drugs by jazz musicians in the 50s a (risky) attempt to address this?
Don't classical music apprenticeship have formalized methods to deal with this?
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Re: classical players--they might, but they're also never going to be on stage improvising, listening and reacting to a band spurring you on at 280bpm.
There are really good clean players, though too. Grant Green, for as "dirty" as he could play, his articulation was outstanding...Jimmy Raney was damn clean...especially as he got older. That guy was something, he kept getting better and better...
Maybe the sign of a great player is they can play sloppy and still sound great, because of the ideas.
I know my sloppy playing just sounds...sloppy.
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Pkirk, thank you for that, it's much appreciated. I think you've come up with a brilliant question here, it's one I've thought about a lot, and I still don't know the answer to it! It's always struck me that the great players never really seem to put a foot wrong no matter what they aim for, and I don't know how they do it. Originally Posted by pkirk
As as far as my approach goes, I always thought more in terms of melodic phrases rather than individual notes, if that makes any sense. I learned a lot from listening to Dexter Gordon, I liked the fact that everything he played had such great phrasing and structure to it.
So I guess I always have some ideas in my head as a starting point, then I try to break away from them. Sometimes it works better than others. Sometimes I get a bit bored with the same old ideas cropping up.
I like Peter Bernstein's idea of using the melody of the tune itself as a source of new ideas. I never used to do that, but recently I've been trying that and it's surprising how much you can derive from it, and it helps me to get away from my usual ideas a bit.
I also know exactly what you mean about how timing suffers when you try and reach for an idea that's just outside your grasp. Happens to me and I hate it, good time is so important. Almost any bunch of notes can sound good if the time is solid!Last edited by grahambop; 02-27-2017 at 06:45 PM.
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Reaching outside your grasp I see as essential to learning. There are obviously contexts where it's not so well advised. But some of my most memorable live listening moments have been where the player is on a high wire, stretching himself to express a thought he hadn't thought through. And sometimes it's an epiphany. And sometimes it's like, wow, how did you recover from that. It's the courage of the act, going beyond the expected, that amazes me. It takes guts. To do this with sense requires an understanding of form. Otherwise it might just be the unpredictable actions of a lunatic.
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For me, I find that not looking at the fretboard helps a lot, as does getting "in the zone". The two are probably related.
Beyond that, I'm still searching for the answer myself. I do find that the more I practice, the cleaner I play. But you already know that one!
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Whenever I use the 0.38, it doesn't take long before it starts to curl up like an elf's shoe, so I use an 0.46. It helps compensate for what I think is an innate heavy-handedness on my part, which really shows itself when I use a thicker pick. After a long time of trying to use what "the big boys" use, I realized that I have a better feel with a thin pick. Originally Posted by goldenwave77
I also have better control when I use lighter gauge strings (D'Addario Chromes, with an 0.11 on top -- a set not too different from Conti's "Preferred Gauge Strings," as it turns out).
Light strings, light pick, low action, adjust all the knobs and let the amp do the work. I'm just a hobbyist, but this is what works for me.
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I agree with other posters that you can experiment with phrasing/articulation while keeping the harmony/changes tight or you can experiment with note choices while keeping the time tight, it is when both get sloppy one feels like one is in cringe territory. Originally Posted by pkirk
The pros have so much time that they can do most of their cringy (!) adventuring in private jams, woodshedding, studio takes etc, when they perform to audiences they already have much new stuff already matured. Amateurs don't have/spend enough time to fully develop new things.
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This discussion has made me think of something related... there are some players who are not "clean" but in a most beautiful way. If "clean" means a kind of surgical clarity, then Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell are not "clean" in that sense. They are technically excellent, but both players seemed to enjoy exploiting some string and fretboard noise, that ghosting of a buzz when one is fingering lightly. I hear this especially in Kenny Burrell and I really enjoy it. It makes his playing instantly recognizable, whereas the players who are so perfectly, surgically clean are often hard to distinguish from each other.
So to be clear, I'm not saying this kind of "not precisely clean" is due to inadequate technique; rather it seems to me to be a kind of "natural distortion" in the guitar itself that some players are really skilled at exploiting.
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Originally Posted by medblues
Perhaps I'm asking the impossible, but I feel that many of the responses are kind of sidestepping the point I'm trying to focus on (not that there's anything wrong with that) but let me try to be more explicit. I'm not asking "what can I do to play more cleanly?" I already know the answer: choose the right parents, practice all the time when you are a teenager, and practice several hours a day after that, combined with a at least 300 gigs with better musicians per year....... What I am asking
Assuming that one is familiar with one's own playing abilities, how does one cultivate the restraint needed to play entirely cleanly?
For example, I know I can't play long clean sequences of 8th notes at quarternote=280bpm. it follows that If I'm playing a swing tune at a completely comfortable 140bpm, things might get sloppy if I double-time. On the other hand, double timing on a 120bpm tune is no problem. So I need the presence of mind to recognize that what I can do comfortably on a 120bmp tune will turn to mush on the only slightly faster 140bmp, and so at the higher tempo I need to anticipate. Substitute whatever is the right metric for 120->140 in your case, be it 60->80 or 150->180 depending if you are joe beginner or Pat Martino: same question applies. Lots of practice may change the relevant range, but it doesnt change the question.
Honestly the only response that I can come up with is "relax". But this seems like a unrefined answer: are there others which shed more light on the a mindset while improvising? I think grahambop gets to the point a bit a little bit when he mentions channeling Dexter. (Dexter always sounds relaxed even while he;s burning it up). I'd guess perhaps also that part of the "sing along while you play" advice is aimed at this point: it gives you an external way to hold you back.
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Then I guess one should relax and focus on the rhythm and not think about note choice (what to play next, where to place your fretting fingers). You should be able to double time pretty fast if you are only playing tremolos or vamps like Pat Martino does extensively.
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@pkirl: I know a pro who took some lessons with Kenny Werner and apparently your "issue" is the first thing they worked on. Apparently Kenny is big on starting with simple and gradually building. In that lesson apparently Kenny kept stopping him and saying "no, simpler, only what you've mastered" to the point where the pro (who was then not a Pro) felt like he was playing super unhip. Maybe take some skype lessons with Kenny?
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I think I understand the question -- and I struggle with a similar issue.
I don't have much helpful to say, but I will share those few things I think have helped.
1. Playing a lot in groups and recording most of it. I think this helped me hear/understand what I was doing poorly.
2. Practicing tunes with Irealpro - in 12 keys. And, when I stumbled, slowing it down to where I could execute. This helped with what might be called "fluency". I found this surprisingly helpful, meaning that I could detect some benefit, whereas with a lot of stuff I've spent time on, I got nothing into my playing.
3. Recognizing that not everybody can play fast. So, instead, I've worked on ways to play over fast tunes without playing continuous eighth note lines. I got a really good tip on this forum that I should think about more often. Instead of trying to do all those notes, play a simpler rhythmic idea and cycle it through the changes.
4. I changed guitars to one that I can play more easily. I also adjusted string gauge to get a level of resistance that worked best.
5. All that said, I just came back from a session where I played clams in my solos because I tried to play stuff that's really a little beyond my level.
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I tend not to double-time very often (maybe on ballads), so that gets me out of that problem! These days I think I'm more interested in just trying to construct really good lines without venturing into 16ths.
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In this regard I'd like to share this experience:
Some months ago, I played a gig that ended in a jam session that went into afro-beat and reggae. I did not anticipate for that, was out of my hum because "my" gig was spoiled. Anyway, I was the only guitarist and didn't want to spoil things so I played along. I didn't think much of it (although I did have fun in the end!) until some days later a movie of the jam turned up on facebook. Somebody had recorded (filmed) almost the entire gig in Facebook live. And to my surprise I sounded very, very good! Normally I hardly ever like my playing in live recordings - recognizing everything topic starter describes - but this time everything I played was functional, well timed, spot on and even tasteful in the music genre!
So wtf had happened?!? It honestly puzzled my mind, but I think first of all, I was relaxed - no nerves at all. Secondly, I didn't feel I had to proof myself, or show off my technique and chops and show that I am a "jazz guitarist". Lastly, I think I put myself (reluctantly at first) completely in the service of the music and set aside my ego....
I must say it was a truly humbling experience. I now work on figuring out a way to summon that mental state in every gig!
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