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Beautiful. VERY well done.
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08-01-2022 08:44 AM
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Here's my attempt (this was from a livestream outdoors. The sound isn't the best so I advise speakers or headphones for the best quality!)
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Originally Posted by Digit
I can’t think fast either !
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Can you strum up and down across all six strings five times per second? That's eighths at 1800bpm! Lots of guitarists try to develop speed by focusing on the beginning of the notes... the ending of the notes are just as important.
Practicing, in a relaxed state without requirements, constraints, or distractions, speed helps the ear learn to hear fast as your ear and hand learn together how to hear and play fast with regard to rhythm, dynamics, phrasing, articulation, precision, and musicality. You want to be able to play well faster than needed in performance in order to acquire some reserve capability in both your ear and hand.
Performing, things may not be ideal and that reserve will be welcome if you are distracted by something going a little wonky with your tummy, equipment, your boss, your gf, your boss's gf, or whatever could sap your focus. This does not mean you use the reserve to play faster, but to mitigate or compensate for less than full attention in these situations.
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O.K..
So, after three pages of posts, what is the musical goal of playing as fast as possible?
There is really only one: to provide contrast as in Classical Music with separate movements of a piece or, to give your listener a change of pace(Jazz or other genres) when playing a full concert. However, the real question is how fast is fast, and when speed is the ultimate function . . . how soon before the piece loses musicality? I got caught up in that trap as a saxophonist in the 70's(thanks to Coltrane, Stitt, Parker) and believe I lost two years of important musical growth. I could play fast. . . really fast but I wasn't saying anything in my music. Speed is a necessary element in all good music but it shouldn't be the ultimate goal of a musician. It's just another tool in your bag of tricks to tell your story. . . not a dog and pony show for your audience or other musicians.
Marinero
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Yea chops are just part of playing jazz.
Personally... good technique or having skills to play fast are more useful when playing in ensemble setting, soloing is cool, but generally we as guitarist spend more time accompanying, comping, ensemble playing. And if other players can perform at what we seem to be calling, "fast tempos", you need to be able cover. The "speed of jazz" is not slow. Yes ballads are great and slow tempos and heartfelt slow melodic and chordal playing can be beautiful. But without the technique to subdivide to help create variations with feel etc... Anyway....
Having great technique and skills to perform fast.... are never the problem. Not having them can be.
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Being able to execute a wide variety of phrases reliably and cleanly at fast tempos including a lot of cross string picking and so on as opposed to optimisable shredding licks.
You know if you can play something like Donna Lee or 26-2 at 200+ that’s a different thing to being able to play a bunch of shred licks. The latter can be fun, but it’s not the bread and butter.
i find with true bop lines this reaches a ceiling quicker than guitar licks, even jazz guitar licks.
probably I’m repeating myself.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
In terms of the technique Tal, GB and Wes are all downward economy/directional pickers of various kinds. Any type of directional picking can indeed lead to rushing of phrases (I know only too well, being one of those myself.) but I see it more as an articulation issue than a matter of poor time feel; Wes has this going on sometimes for sure, but no one cares because he nails all the important stuff. There may be a drift, but he knows where the one is.
Its seems much easier to play solidly in grid and articulate consistently using alternate picking as with Pat, but you make sacrifices; one is you are locked more into an 8th note grid and there’s less rhythmic variety in terms of triplets and so on. The second is that it makes certain things much harder to play, such as cross string arpeggios and any figures with string skipping. Anyone who wants to play bop language is going to need a good solution for executing that stuff.
On the other hand downward directional/economy playing does tend to favour certain physically optimisable licks - Wes is full of them for instance. (Two way directional less so actually.)
So you pick your battles. For me, lot of it is in the left hand. The right hand possibly drives alternate picking more, but for anything economy oriented, the pick follows the timing of the left hand more than I thought.
So if characterise the challenge of directional picking as being able to slow down/control the simple, easy movements so they are in time, and the challenge of alternate picking as being able to optimise the complex movements so you can get them up to tempo.
A lot of people swap from one to the other.Last edited by Christian Miller; 08-15-2022 at 10:36 AM.
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On man.... I need to stop, Christian, "The man is like a funky Swiss watch." That's the best line I've heard in a while.
I'll be using that all week at gigs...LOL Thanks.
Sorry that was just too good. Anyway
As Marinero said earlier... something about speed being a tool and not a dog and pony show, sorry if I missed the point... but personally it's both. As a working musician, I got over myself a long time ago. I mean I have a huge ego and I'm full of shit etc... but that's just part of performing. Yes... I've always pushed having all the "tools" you can develop, and the dog and pony tool sometimes is what the audience wants. The last thing you want is to perform for musicians.... I mean sure play a few things to show you have skills etc.... but reading an audience and making whatever music your performing work for them and represent the band or artist your performing with is generally the point. Making music can make the world a better place.... but it can't save it.
Here are a couple of recordings from last century... Henderson's Punjab with a college band and one of my way too many originals with a different group of musicians I worked with. They're... nothing much, but I guess we should get back into the practice of somewhat backing up what we say. Although again when you put out a line like GB being....The man is like a funky Swiss watch. That's better than any music... thanks
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Each of us likes to hit it our way, with some “leading” it, ie putting the attack of a note at the earliest possible nanosecond that isn’t so early that it’s heard and felt as premature. Others like to hit each note square on the spot at which that infinitesimal ideal beat would have fallen, and still others let each beat bloom a bit before “following it”. The most expressive players use this range creatively, while simpler players just play everything one way. For emphasis or tension, I often crawl through a phrase and catch the beat a bar or two later in a ballad. I may use a quarter note quintuplet etc to fill a 4/4 bar, sometimes dropping a quarter note rest somewhere it to heighten the suspense. Since I got a tiny digital recorder and started listening to myself after every gig, I now know how far is too far because I’ve gone there too many times.
Art Tatum was perhaps the ultimate beat bender. In the middle of a flying line, you start to wonder if he’s lost the beat. But if you count through the solo, he comes right back to comp or play the head on the 1 like a metronome, no matter how wild his phrases may have seemed or how far from a regular beat you thought he was. Players who take this route through a tune may even use “nonuplets” or “decalets” or other odd beat / note clusters with seemingly reckless abandon - but they know what they’re doing and it works for the great ones.
A sad ballad often sounds best playing the notes on the tail of the beat. A burning run through ATTYA feels even more intense when leading the beat. But no tune sounds good unless there’s some kind of structure and strategy to the playing. Imprecise timing is not expressive - it’s just sloppy, whether from weak playing or overreaching.
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"something about speed being a tool and not a dog and pony show, sorry if I missed the point... but personally it's both. As a working musician, I got over myself a long time ago. I mean I have a huge ego and I'm full of shit etc... but that's just part of performing. Yes... I've always pushed having all the "tools" you can develop, and the dog and pony tool sometimes is what the audience wants." Reg
Hi, R,
And you make a very important point: namely, tools ARE an important part of your bag of tricks. However, speed for speed's sake is a different flock of canaries. For example, if I had an hour to listen to Jazz guitar, I would prefer to listen to Kenny Burrell rather than Pat Martino. They both have consummate skills but also a different view of music. Kenny certainly has the chops for speed and uses them, at times, but not to the extent of Pat who, I believe, speed is his mantra. And, as far as playing to what the audience wants . . . that is the key to getting repeat gigs, however, at what point do you become a paid chameleon rather than an artist exploring your unique world?** So, in the past, when I went to listen to Gene Ammons it was for a different reason than when I went to hear Sonny Stitt. And, for me, that's the rub. You can't be all things to all audiences and be honest to yourself. To reiterate, speed is a tool . . . it's not the goal.
Marinero
**This, of course, is the age-old dilemma of a full-time working musician.
M
Marinero
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Originally Posted by Marinero
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
But of course, PM is no shredder, certainly brisk enough to create tension and excitement, but just so ridiculously clean and articulated, even when quite young. I don't listen to his albums other than the first 2 or 3- which are godhead - but I do listen to a lot of his sideman work, where I find his playing more interesting, especially with Don Patterson and Wills Jackson. Outrageously underrated.
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Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
Just casual measure of deviation one can manage and still sound nice.
For guitarists it may help to imagine you are placing your notes tail first.
So from a timing view, imagine a note duration is placed or laded down
with a focus on when they end sounding, letting the start position relax.
Imagining tail first placement is hearing ahead widening the beat width.
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Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
But . . . that's the point. A guitar is not a piano or horn and it has a different nature and execution. Don't try to make your guitar into a saxophone because it doesn't work. Find the nature of the guitar as expressed through your personality and tell your story . . . do most musicians really do that today? Hmmmmmm.
Marinero
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This is so great:
From Bar Chords to Bebop
Today, 02:33 PM in Improvisation