The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    I have to admit I have no idea what people exactly mean when they refer to a guitarist's style or sound as "horn like". For example sometimes people refer to Wes Montgomery's guitar playing as horn like. I'm not sure if I hear that.
    It's true that the defining tone and phrasing of jazz is shaped by early horn players, like Bird, Dizzy, Lester Young, Clifford Brown etc. This influence has infused in all jazz players. So it's possible that what I hear as just "jazz" is referred to as "horn like" I'm not sure.

    1- Does horn like refer to phrasing or is it more about the tone (attack, note duration etc.)?
    2- What are some examples of very horn like and very UN-horn like (guitar like?) guitar solos?
    3- Why do some guitarist think it's desirable to make your guitar sound like another instrument?

    I personally like jazz guitar sound at least as much as any other instrument used in jazz. I have not heard sax or piano players being praised to sound "guitar-like". In fact I rather listen to a guitar player than a "guitar-like" sax player (or a sax-like sax player for that matter).
    Why do we guitar players take it as a complement if we are told we sound horn-like?

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  3. #2

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    Generally, it's attack and phrasing, I think. But it's a mostly meaningless term to me. I've heard it applied to players who sound nothing alike, and nothing like "horns" to my ear. It's like when a guitar player says a guitar sounds "warm." What the hell does that even mean? I just means "I like it."

  4. #3

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    To me horn like most of all means legato, or slur technique. Horn players don't tongue every note, so guitarists shouldn't pick every note.

    Horn like player, for me, the best example is Sco. Least horn like maybe Al di Meola, McLaughlin...

    is it superior? IMO yes, totally. In jazz, especially bebop related. If I wanted to play jazz from the beginning guitar would be my last choice of an instrument. It needs to adapt, while horns sound perfectly natural from the get go.

  5. #4

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    IIRC Charlie Christian was the first player to „play like a horn“. I‘ve certainly heard it in relation to Grant Green. He played all single notes and no chords, so the comparison comes easy.

    It is a way of phrasing, and also of playing single notes. I think you need to see where it comes from - Eddie Lang was certainly a great player, but horn-like? Django - horn-like? No way. I guess it took amplification to make that way of expression even possible.

    In these days, Bill Frisell comes to mind as a distinctly un-hornlike player.


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  6. #5

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    I think slurs are huge. I also think more focus on chord tones rather than scales up and down.


  7. #6
    Well, I don't play the horn but I believe horn instruments default to legato phrasing naturally. So IMO being horn-like is related to legato elements of the phrasing. Like tongued up beats, legato down beats (I'm not saying that's done always of course).
    By that measure, must un-horn like instruments are piano and vibraphone as true legato is impossible with these instruments.
    So, based on your criteria guitars should be reasonably high up on the "choice of instrument for jazz" list With guitar you can at least play 3 or 4 (if you include open strings) true legato notes in a row.

  8. #7

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    Interesting topic!

    Here are two of my favorite horn players (with a not-so-bad pianist!); what I would love to do (and love to hear from others) is learn how to play guitar like these cats play horn! If I sounded like them, and someone told me I sounded "horn like," I would break down in tears of joy! [I could insert any number of horn videos here; I thought this one was fun.]


  9. #8

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    I think it's a mixture of accents and slurs.

    I note that Billy Bean picked almost everything and I've never heard anyone accuse him of sounding un-hornlike! (er, whatever that means of course)

  10. #9

  11. #10

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    what makes a guitar sound like a horn is the blurring/slurring of the fundamental notes...legato..(besides ollie halsall) the greatest early exponent of modern sax style legato was allan holdsworth..he wanted to play sax!!! and he played it through his guitar...(he wanted to be trane not wes) and invented/fine tuned the technique..he later turned to guitar synth...in an attempt to get even more sax-like..but he lost me with that..and tech wise it doesnt stand up these days


    holdsworth was also part of later era- soft machine..with keyboardist mike ratledge..who played his organ like a sax and flute..so i'm sure there was some further influence on the mighty holdsworth



    cheers

    ps- be remiss not to mention the great jimmy raney..he tried to emulate birds riffage early on..he just didnt have the tech back in '51..tho he tried valiantly!
    Last edited by neatomic; 03-27-2019 at 07:58 PM. Reason: ps-

  12. #11

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    I think I play rather horn like,




    Its a combination of phrasing, swing, intensity, and not being “restricted” to what’s natural on the guitar. That being said, I take every advantage of the guitar layout, but it’s rarely just playing in a single “position”. Also quite important is having a “legato” sound, even when you’re picking every note.

    That being said, who doesn’t love a good old guitar blues lick. There’s a few in there I’m sure.

  13. #12
    The solo here doesn't sound particularly horn like to me. I'm hearing fast smooth alternate picked jazz guitar. Nicely played but it's nothing like horn to me. But then as I said, I'm not quite sure what that means...
    Last edited by Tal_175; 03-27-2019 at 10:31 PM.

  14. #13

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    Take a listen at 1:15 that’s not guitar like, first line of the bridge comes to mind as well. Imo of course.

    Interestingly, I think a lot of the magic of the horns, specifically trumpet, is the large amount of overtones present on their instrument. Now, I teach beginning horns, and I can tell you the trumpet is HARD. You really need to practice a lot. But if you put in the work, I’ll be damned if you can’t hit practically any note (with conviction), and it sounds bad ass.

    on a separate note,

    While there is a lot of alternate picking, there’s also a lot of legato. I’ve worked hard to make the two as close as possible.

  15. #14

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    When I hear of the guitar being played "horn-like", this is what I think of.




    I don't think of it as legato primarily. Mind you, I don't have any special insight into the general understanding of the term, but I always took it to mean "phrasing with a vocal quality, like a horn."

    Like this.


  16. #15

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    And by "horn-like," I don't think timbre, but the shape of lines.
    Last edited by marcwhy; 03-28-2019 at 07:45 AM.

  17. #16

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    There are strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion... Some people use "horns" to mean exclusively brass, but saxes are called horns, too.

    "Horn-like" to me suggests not so much the phrasing and articulation of trumpets played well, like Miles in the 50s with The New Miles Davis Quintet, but more the lack of constraint regarding picking the right notes to play.

    Part of that probably echos of having read about the guitar technique of playing vertically up and down a string described as horn-like, meaning trumpet, in a conceptual sense. Phrasing on the guitar lends itself to certain "guitaristic" choices of notes due to the mechanics of fingering - how the notes "fold" on the finger board from string to string as one's notes ascend and descend with respect to a position.

    I think the vertical single string technique, at least conceptually, was thought to be more trumpet-like in that with almost all the trumpet notes being fingered with just the first two valves, it was relatively free of constraints, and particularly free of the temping cliches which the availability of adjacent strings suggests to the usual guitar techniques. I guess the idea was that vertical exercises on the guitar were meant to break the guitarist of some of these cliches, force a more abstract conceptual approach. Both phrasing and articulation, well played on the trumpet like Miles, do seem to sound very free of "trumpetistic" cliches (I mean freedom and excellence of note choice, not the tone that is clearly a trumpet).

    marcwhy
    And by "horn-like," I don't think timbre, but lines.

    Exactly!

  18. #17

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    I suspect the phrase came into being when Charlie Christian arrived on the scene with the electric guitar. The way his solos flowed with such freedom and the way they sounded reminded listeners of a sax player such as Lester Young, especially compared to the acoustic unamplified solos which used to be the norm. In fact some people hearing the CC records for the first time thought it was some kind of saxophone being played.

    I’m not sure what ‘horn like’ really means now though, everyone seems to interpret it differently.

  19. #18

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    Quote Originally Posted by neatomic
    holdsworth was also part of later era- soft machine..with keyboardist mike ratledge..who played his organ like a sax and flute..so i'm sure there was some further influence on the mighty holdsworth
    When Holdsworth joined Soft Machine in 1975 the band had been without a guitarist for six years, during which the band moved away from rock and towards jazz. The band also had been without a sax player since 1972, when Elton Dean left, and Holdsworth effectively took his place. Holdsworth's brief, it seems, was to play guitar but not like a rock star.

  20. #19

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    Sco is definitely horn-like player... and he uses all the equipment to achieve this... bkt only guitar technique but also pedals and all...

    actually to me he sounds somewhere between the tenor and trumpet...

    the conseption of 'horn-like' guitar comes from the point when guiatr became soloing instrument in jazz.. one of them.

    I think horns just the first thing that came to mind those daus but basically the idea is linear playing with typical breath realted articulation... so this probably voice-like too.
    (it is an interesting topic.. I thing first jazz instrumetalists were influenced by typical Afro American vocals but then it was backwards influence and jazz vocalists became influnced by intruments (Billie Holiday often really sounds much like sax, Lester Young sounds like vocals).

    Guitar by its nature is very resonant harmonic/plyphonica/chordal instrument... it is not as resonant as harp or lute but still in history and in folk music its resonance was one of its important expressive characterists, one of the expressive tools.

    And using open tunings and open strings was much connected with it, players used its strings resonant quilities.

    And this is the thing that horns cannot do!

    Miles Davis used to day that he often tried to imitate guitar on teh trumpet... he tried to articulate in a way that it sounds like the sounds are attacked and duy out gradually and being overimposed one on another like an shadowy echo.

    Of course it is not possible on the horn litterally but it is possible to make an impression of it.

    Horn-style jazz playing almost totally ignores thins quality... partly because this resonance was the most effective in acoustic guitars and in amplified version they tried to avoid it becasue it was often uncontrollable and muddy... especially at the beginning of amplification era.

    In some sense elctric guitarsists were pushed towards 'horn-style' by everything that was around: equipment, soloing and language tradition of the day.
    And also by the fact that the guitar came a bit late as a solo instrument, and guitarists had to prove themselves to be a soloist an dall they competed with were mostly horn-players.


    The typical horn-style features for me:

    1) tendency for long controllable sustaine (whatever works - amps, pedals, sinths)
    2) phrasing realted to breath
    3) techniques imitating typical horn (or vocal) articulations which can be really detalized and complex

    To me there pros of this

    - I am convinced tat playing some wind instrument or singing is very good for plucked or key player, becasue they learn breath which is the nature of most music (except stricly instrumental one by its aesthetica... like Phillip Glass for example).
    - becasue they learn not only to begin the sound but also to END it... it is common problem for guitarists and pianist they just forget about the sound after it naturally dies a bit.
    - and it developes the instrumental techniques


    Cons:
    - lack of so-called 'guitarism' , the natural qualities of guitar are not being used intesively
    But it is not a big problem really as there are always players to come who do this (today guitar became much more guitaristic)


    By the way it is very interesting that piano from the very beginning was much more a sort of a 'drum' instrument conception.

  21. #20

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    It's hard to put into words, but yeah, I think phrasing is a big part of playing horn like. Pretty much any instrument that isn't played using breath is not "forced" to have natural phrasing. While this can be a great tool at times, it can also lead to what many would consider bad or unnatural phrasing. Or not "horn like".

    While it's kind of subjective bad phrasing to me it is like someone who speaks or writes in run on sentences never pausing or stopping for the brain to digest what has just been said whether music related or in other forms of communication so the listener or reader cannot really understand what is going on and is forced to say huh what did I just read or hear and guitar players are notorious for this especially in jazz and heavy metal where they may be technically brilliant but very hard to listen to for many listeners at least including me.

    It. Can. Also. Go. The. Other. Way.

    A natural solution to this can be to sing your lines as you play them. Doesn't mean you have to play slow, either - listen to Ella scat. Wow!

    I had a friend back in the day who was technically great at heavy metal but played endless fast lines. One day he said to me "how come people like BB King? He stinks - so simple". I said he talks with his guitar! Horn like. I like it!

  22. #21

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    At the risk of putting my hand in a hornet's nest, I think this is a good example of two guitarists, one playing distinctly guitaristically in terms of phrasing, the other far more horn like. Not saying one is better than the other but Martino's lines always come across as distinctly guitaristic to me. His lines, besides beving very long, are often remarkably even in their phrasing in a way I don't hear too often in horns. Compare that to Scofield's greasy, slurring way of playing shorter phrases.
    Last edited by Average Joe; 03-28-2019 at 08:22 AM.

  23. #22

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    This is a question with many layers.

    -What exactly does it mean and what are the implications for me as a guitar player and musician?

    OP claims that "horn-like" is generally desirable (even though he isn't sure about the meaning). Several members here confirm the assertion (but with no consensus of the meaning).

    I know of keyboard players that try to play "guitar-like". I don't appreciate it and can't see why a horn-player would appreciate me trying to sound like a horn.

    The general audience (non-musicians, hobbyists) as well as occasional columnists may dream up attributes to describe music and artists, but they often don't know what they talk about. "horn-like" may refer to tone, style of playing, a guitarist that holds his own in a band with horns, or just the music played according to simple mind logic: "saxophones play jazz. Ergo, If you play jazz, you're horn-like".

    If a horn-player told me my playing was "horn-like" I would be confused...It would be like me telling a horn-player he sounds "guitar-like".... just bizarre.

    When I play "Four brothers" on guitar - does it make my playing "horn-like"? From the perspective of another guitar player, a horn player, a drummer or a columnist?

    The closest I get to sound like a horn is when I play with distortion and kick in a wah-pedal. But this is the Jazz-guitar forum. My goal is to sound "archtop-like", whatever that means to you.

  24. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by marcwhy
    And by "horn-like," I don't think timbre, but the shape of lines.

    I tend to think that way too, but I have read that some of the people who heard Charlie Christian play thought he WAS playing a horn. A tenor sax, I think. (I don't own the book linked below but have read it via inter-library loan. It's where I read that at least some people mistook Charlie's guitar for a horn.)

    A Biography of Charlie Christian, Jazz Guitar's King of Swing by Wayne E. Goins, Craig R. McKinney |, Paperback | Barnes & Noble(R)

    Given that Charlie was probably the first electric guitarist many people heard, especially playing solos rather than just comping chords, they had no preconception of what an electric guitar sounded like. Perhaps "horn" was the simplest comparison for a jazz fan----horns were the dominant solo instruments of the time.

  25. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
    Given that Charlie was probably the first electric guitarist many people heard, especially playing solos rather than just comping chords, they had no preconception of what an electric guitar sounded like. Perhaps "horn" was the simplest comparison for a jazz fan----horns were the dominant solo instruments of the time.
    I think this is the most likely explanation of the origin of the term. Later as the electric guitar sound became well known, people had increasingly more subtle personal interpretations of the term to distinguish different players and assumed that's what's reasonably meant by "horn-like". That's one theory.

  26. #25

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    I have played guitar my entire life. I have played other instruments too, including horns. I appreciate the unique character and qualities of different instruments, but at one point in time I decided to focus my efforts on the guitar, in particular electric guitars. Each and every instrument has strengths and weaknesses. In my book, the piano sets the standard for near perfect, but with a very different approach to expression compared to a violin or a saxophone. I know of keyboard players that try to play "guitar-like". The guitar is unique in a way it can play the role of a piano as well as an expressive solo instrument, proud to sound like itself, a guitar.