The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Barry Harris helps

    and I've just discovered this monstrously good player:

    Chad Lefcowitz Brown - who I think can help a very great deal

    e.ghttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE6JRUyJS8g

    and this has (almost) nothing to do with the horn or the piano or the guitar.

    this guy is blowing my mind - and I've been practicing e.g. his approach tone/enclosure stuff recently. it's all just fragments of the actual music.

  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    That web address didn't post as a link, so here it is as one:

  4. #3

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    anyone any views on how dooden tonguing works on the guitar?

    when I try to close down the note with my tongue it just doesn't work somehow....

    (of course - this is a dimension of learning which does have to do with the particular instrument you play...)

    my worry is that e.g. if you don't wrestle with the guitar very resolutely - if you let the guitar dictate e.g. the way you articulate - you will not get where you want to go

    that thought actually leads to a stronger claim than the one I make in the title

    hard for me not to think that all the instruments need to mimic vocal rhythms and phrasing as much as possible (but that might be harder on the guitar - with its string crossing issues - than on most other instruments)

  5. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    anyone any views on how dooden tonguing works on the guitar?
    The dooden part is the easier one---accenting the downbeats in ascending lines. The reverse (accenting the upbeats in descending lines; is there a name for that in the video?) is trickier.

    How did Wes---who didn't use a pick at all---manage this? Slurs???

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    anyone any views on how dooden tonguing works on the guitar?

    when I try to close down the note with my tongue it just doesn't work somehow....

    the irrelevance of the guitar to learning to play jazz on guitar-54898484_401-jpg

    ?

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by TOMMO
    the irrelevance of the guitar to learning to play jazz on guitar-54898484_401-jpg

    ?
    oh I get it - sure thing - impressive tonguing

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    anyone any views on how dooden tonguing works on the guitar?

    when I try to close down the note with my tongue it just doesn't work somehow....

    (of course - this is a dimension of learning which does have to do with the particular instrument you play...)

    my worry is that e.g. if you don't wrestle with the guitar very resolutely - if you let the guitar dictate e.g. the way you articulate - you will not get where you want to go

    that thought actually leads to a stronger claim than the one I make in the title

    hard for me not to think that all the instruments need to mimic vocal rhythms and phrasing as much as possible (but that might be harder on the guitar - with its string crossing issues - than on most other instruments)
    Evoking vocal rhythms is pretty much the whole ball of wax, IMHO. Absolutely key. Notes - pitches and phrasing - come first. All else is technical execution.

  9. #8

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    You see young players with incredible chops.

    It may take more time to develop repertoire, vocabulary, have well trained ears and have an instant connection between an idea and its execution.

  10. #9

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    Looks like excellent jazz language building material. Thanks for the heads up Groyniad!

  11. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by citizenk74
    Evoking vocal rhythms is pretty much the whole ball of wax, IMHO. Absolutely key. Notes - pitches and phrasing - come first. All else is technical execution.
    This is why Herb Ellis was always saying "sing what you play (or play what you sing, however you want to say it)."

    Though to Groyniad's concern, one may have speech rhythms in one's playing---such as BB King and T-Bone Walker did----without playing bebop. Articulating the rhythms in a bebop way is thing unto itself, I think. And doing it on the guitar is, well, easier said than hummed! ;o)

  12. #11

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    this is another good one

    the best way to get this stuff is just to work on the sort of phrases from (most obviously) Parker or Clifford Brown or Sonny, Dexter etc. - and you might not bring it to explicit consciousness of course in the way this amazing guy has done.

    but I think this can happen by itself - without explicitly identifying it - more readily if you're playing a horn than if you're playing a stringed instrument. string crossing and position issues are likely to eclipse these crucial subtleties of phrasing.

    Both Chad and Saxologic (I'm sure I should know who he is - I bet he's famous) illustrate the phrasing with simple scales. I can't believe I've not appreciated the down-beat ascending / off-beat descending articulation explicitly until these guys turned me onto it.

  13. #12

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    Accenting the upbeats in descending lines is actually quite easy; pick the upbeat notes and slur the downbeat notes.

  14. #13

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    Work on articulation in bop heads; listen carefully

  15. #14

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    I find myself using a lot of left hand slurring for bird

  16. #15

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    It can never hurt to listen horns, so many incredible melodic ideas, articulation and groove.

    Regarding the OP first video, I would forget it. Somehow the phrasing is really stinks for me, especiall after the first 10 secs, the best I can say: weird or artifically rigid, maybe not the best as learning material.

    I also miss the point why to deep dive a horn specific technical thing. While it make sense to listen and learn from the great players, the instrument specifics may be beirrevelant

  17. #16

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    I agree with Gabor. I think on the guitar the thing to shoot for is to distill the influence of other instruments onto the instrument in a way which is natural.

    Charlie Christian wasn’t literally Lester Young on the guitar. Jimmy Raney didn’t translate Bird exactly on to his instrument.... Allan Holdsworth wasn’t simply Coltrane on guitar...

    Peter Bernstein is influenced by Monk but his use of open strings to imitate some of those chords is obviously highly guitaristic and imaginative.

    The influence is obvious in each case but they found their own guitaristic way of doing it, and I think the ear and a bit of imagination is the way forward. Non guitar music should encourage you to explore the guitar in new ways....

  18. #17

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    Btw this is Mike Morenos solution to the horn like phrasing thing



    I went through a phase of watching these sorts of videos, but these days I’m more likely to try and find my own solutions direct from the music. It’s helpful to have someone point out things to pay attention to though.

  19. #18

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    Approach notes, as best I can tell, was one of the few thing that Charlie Banacos had ALL his students work on. He really thought it was essential. Takes a lot of time to get them under your fingers, especially on guitar, but worth it.

    As far as articulation goes, it's always been a case of, as Schoenberg put it, "a centipede thinking about how to walk." If those kinds of prescriptions help you, by all means go for it, but consciously thinking about it always trips me up.

    The way I learned to articulate on the instrument was pretty simple. I had heard that Tristano had his students memorize and sing lots of solos. So I took a bunch of solos by Lester Young, Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Fats Navarro, Louis Armstrong, etc. and just listened to them on repeat for months.

    Even when I was in a subway station, and the noise from the trains would drown out the music from my cheap headphones, I could still hear Charlie Parker's accents cutting through the din.

    It's a bit like picking up an accent with a spoken language. You listen to it all day, and it gradually just seeps into your subconscious and comes out without you having to think about it.

    A lot of times, those prescriptions for swing (whether it's tied triplets, over emphasize the offbeats, etc) end up sounding like an American trying to imitate a British accent -- forced, theatrical, more than a little corny.

    (Incidentally, I've met a ton of Brits who could do a dead-on American accent when they wanted to. Probably a metaphor in there somewhere).

  20. #19

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    great stuff guys

    I did stress the difference between getting this stuff without explicitly focusing on it and getting it by explicitly focusing on it

    and the point was that its easier on horns to get it without focusing on it - because they don't land you with string crossing issues (you just have to deal with the transition between having all your fingers pressing down keys and none of them - D - C sharp on a flute - but this is nothing compared to having different strings)

    If you haven't got fingering alternatives down the strings often force bad phrasing on you - its one of the first things you notice if you come to the guitar from a wind instrument

    ---

    I learned more by listening and singing along to Parker for years in the car (at the top of my lungs) than by doing anything else

    but if I hadn't done anything else I wouldn't be able to play anything!

  21. #20

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    Gabor - you think he played the shoe shine boy and the cheesecake phrases badly??

    I don't

  22. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
    The dooden part is the easier one---accenting the downbeats in ascending lines. The reverse (accenting the upbeats in descending lines; is there a name for that in the video?) is trickier.

    How did Wes---who didn't use a pick at all---manage this? Slurs???
    ghost tonguing on guitar - has to be hammering on/off vs picking

    and yes - descending Chad recommends doo-ah

  23. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by dasein
    (Incidentally, I've met a ton of Brits who could do a dead-on American accent when they wanted to. Probably a metaphor in there somewhere).
    The international dominance of American popular culture means we are much more familiar with US accents than vice versa. You'd have to be a real Anglophile to nail it, there's no reason for an American to be familiar with Brit culture to the extent we are with US unless you went our of your way.

    James Marsters on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (90's rewatch binge lol) does a very creditable job (he copied Anthony Stewart Head's real accent, which is less well to do than the one he uses on the show.) The only thing that lets him down is some of the pronunciation of less common words like 'patronise' - in Brit standard with a 'ah', in US English with an 'ey'.

    (BTW my 3 year old is developing a fine London accent, somewhat similar to Ray Winstone lol (with a trace of what's called Multicultural London English, the cultural evolution of that one is very interesting). "can I have some moo'k?', 'oooh a li'uhl baybee' and so on)

    Anyway this awareness if US culture, has an effect on the way I communicate on the forum incidentally. I often use Americanisms here just to aid comprehension, and use Brit idioms a lot less than I would normally.

    However, sometimes don't realise that something I'm saying is a Brit idiom! Or alternatively that something I'm saying is less a Brit idiom than I think it is...

    Sorry what were we talking about again?
    Last edited by christianm77; 11-05-2020 at 08:16 PM.

  24. #23

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    phrasing

    - and the idea that it's better to study horn players than guitar players if you're a guitar player

  25. #24

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    and not to press Christian but MM's whole point is that you have to put a great deal of time and explicit focus into how you play what you play

    that's not Gabor's point

  26. #25

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    Quote Originally Posted by Groyniad
    phrasing

    - and the idea that it's better to study horn players than guitar players if you're a guitar player
    I must disagree with this. The guitar is a stringed, plucked, instrument. Furthermore, the electric guitar is overwhelmingly a plectrum intrument. And no apologies - none!

    So, legato? Hammer ons and pull offs? Sure, why not. But if you really want to play the saxophone, then go and play the saxophone.


    This oughta be about good enough:
    Last edited by GTRMan; 11-06-2020 at 03:51 AM.