"Joe Pass Guitar Style" Rhythm Changes #1

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

I'm not a big fan of "think in terms of scales". I was watching an altered scale video by a jazz pianist and his advice was just "here's the scale, not noodle".

Jens Larsen always has good vids, however.

[lawson-stone]

So I got this solo up to 160 bpm and the odd thing is, it seems like a huge change. the notes and ideas flow differently. I know that the best plan is to play with perfect accuracy at a slow speed before trying to go faster, but dang it I haven't got all day, at the age of 66, and I'm very tolerant of error! So I kept bumping up the speed as long as I didn't lost the tempo and kept my place. It's a different solo at a quicker tempo, a better one, more fun to play.

Also working on the 2nd example in the book, but it's got some different concepts and it's taking a bit of work to lay it out.

[lawson-stone]

I had to post this. I found the audio track of Joe playing the chords for the Rhythm Changes solos and after playing through it a few times I had to do a clip and post it. This is just for fun.

Honestly, to hear Joe Pass count off the tune... even in a recording... was pretty amazing.

Posted just for fun, but comment is always welcome.

[Donplaysguitar]

Sounds good, is that about 120 bpm?

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

I like the sliding articulation for D-Eb-D at the start of the bridge (measure 18?). Since Joe repeats that phrase four times in the bridge (I think he does that in the next rhythm changes, too), I would try to repeat the articulations used to emphasis that.

[lawson-stone]

Sounds good, is that about 120 bpm?

Actually it’s 140


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[lawson-stone]

I like the sliding articulation for D-Eb-D at the start of the bridge (measure 18?). Since Joe repeats that phrase four times in the bridge (I think he does that in the next rhythm changes, too), I would try to repeat the articulations used to emphasis that.

Yes I thought that too but haven’t incorporated it. In his recording it’s amazing it sounds almost like mainly downstrokes


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[Eck]

I would flip the mental map from scales to arpeggios (altered ones at that) to approach lines like this, even though the lines are made up of both skips and steps.

My two cents.

Makes sense. That way I can hear where I am, I will have my fingering right and can go straight into the lines until the next chord change.
I’m gonna make an exercise for this on the maj and Mel min scale. (Darn I’m already exercising 2-5-1 tri tones where root note shifts up a string each time and now this!)


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[Eck]

The Galt scale is G Ab Bb B Db Eb F. That is, root, 3, b7, plus both altered 5ths and both altered 9ths.

If the chord is G7, you get the "alt" quality from Db. Eb. Ab. and Bb.

Eb7sus is Eb Ab Bb Db. That's all four of the alterations.

Abm(add9) is Ab B Eb Bb. That's three of the four.

Bbm7 is Bb Db F Ab. Also three of four.

You can learn the sounds by playing the notes of Eb7sus (or the others) against G7. Similarly for Abm(add9).

Making music will require making good melody with a mix of G7 notes and the altered notes.

My impression (from going about this in a poor way) is that the foregoing is more likely to produce good results than thinking "melodic minor a half step up". That's because playing an arp tends to leave more space in the line than playing a scale. I say "tends" because there's nothing stopping you from leaving notes out of a scale, but sometimes people play each note no more than a whole step from the previous one.

EDIT: Db13 is Db F Ab B Eb Bb (omitting the 11th). So, the tritone sub played as a 13th chord contains the 3 and b7 of the G7 .. and both altered 5s and 9s.

When I transcribe, I usually get the impression that the soloist is thinking about chord X over chord Y rather than scale/mode X over chord Y. But, maybe that's just what catches my ear enough to induce me to figure it out.

When I solo and it goes well, I hear the notes. Then it’s a question of what do you want to emphasise. Back to ole Whisper Not, if it were slower you might want to highlight the descending bass meaning the slight harmonic development, or play the same (probably Cmel minir) to emphasise continuity. For me when it goes the G is where I usually play an A to let myself hear the changed tonality, but u guess I could also do that by highlighting the D7b9 as that is the perfect set-up. I need those pointer notes otherwise I don’t hear where I am.


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[PMB]

Yes I thought that too but haven’t incorporated it. In his recording it’s amazing it sounds almost like mainly downstrokes


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Yes, they're definitely downstrokes but I think that's just because the tempo is slower and he wanted to give each note equal weight for the purpose of demonstration. As you know, JP usually played downstrokes when changing between strings (even if the line necessitated moving in the opposite direction towards the 6th string) so they were more common in his playing. However, to my knowledge he rarely played whole phrases in that manner, a la Charlie Christian.

[Danil]

Late participant here. I feel I need to submit what I've got for personal accountability and move on - this seems to be an eternal study, many dimensions where I need to improve and I can't even pay attention to several of them simultaneously.

Below is the etude #1 played twice against 2&4 to have a clear view of what is going on with all the imperfections: first time picking everything (my usual way), second -- doing slurs exclusively into downbeats. I've collected most of advises from this thread which made sense to me - so the fingerings are specifically chosen with slurring in mind.

It took a lot of effort to memorize the piece -- my illiterate brain refuses to make chunks for the most part of the study - were Joe Pass says Bb13 -9, I see just a set of notes, it was pretty much memorize by rote. On the other hand, having memorized this I seem to have better retention -- I've learned Dirk's 'Autumn leaves' version from this site rather easily - something I had no patience to do before. Hopefully this is a lasting improvement.

Technique wise -- slurring is unnatural to me, every two finger combination in both direction (pull-offs and hammer-ons) and slides feel different, only between index and ring or middle I have sufficient control. Another thing I become aware of is what I'm now sure is a deficiency in technique -- a tendency to keep thumb in place when doing microshifts or stretches. This creates additional tension in fretting hand which further impacts ability to execute slurs smoothly. It will take a lot to undo this habit.

Feel wise, I had a lot of fun -- playing with drum genius or records and trying to lock upbeats with skip notes and experimenting with downbeat/upbeat lengths with metronome.
To me it best sounded, when I treated metronome and strings as a single drum set - focusing on a sound of the pick clanking against the strings and trying to make it sound nice with metronome as a whole. It is somewhat elusive and I could make it work only up to 150bpm. Beyond that I just tried to make metronome clicks feel right.

any comments and suggestions are welcome.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Late participant here. I feel I need to submit what I've got for personal accountability and move on - this seems to be an eternal study, many dimensions where I need to improve and I can't even pay attention to several of them simultaneously.

Below is the etude #1 played twice against 2&4 to have a clear view of what is going on with all the imperfections: first time picking everything (my usual way), second -- doing slurs exclusively into downbeats. I've collected most of advises from this thread which made sense to me - so the fingerings are specifically chosen with slurring in mind.

It took a lot of effort to memorize the piece -- my illiterate brain refuses to make chunks for the most part of the study - were Joe Pass says Bb13 -9, I see just a set of notes, it was pretty much memorize by rote. On the other hand, having memorized this I seem to have better retention -- I've learned Dirk's 'Autumn leaves' version from this site rather easily - something I had no patience to do before. Hopefully this is a lasting improvement.

Technique wise -- slurring is unnatural to me, every two finger combination in both direction (pull-offs and hammer-ons) and slides feel different, only between index and ring or middle I have sufficient control. Another thing I become aware of is what I'm now sure is a deficiency in technique -- a tendency to keep thumb in place when doing microshifts or stretches. This creates additional tension in fretting hand which further impacts ability to execute slurs smoothly. It will take a lot to undo this habit.

Feel wise, I had a lot of fun -- playing with drum genius or records and trying to lock upbeats with skip notes and experimenting with downbeat/upbeat lengths with metronome.
To me it best sounded, when I treated metronome and strings as a single drum set - focusing on a sound of the pick clanking against the strings and trying to make it sound nice with metronome as a whole. It is somewhat elusive and I could make it work only up to 150bpm. Beyond that I just tried to make metronome clicks feel right.

any comments and suggestions are welcome.

Nice! Here's an idea: whether you are picking every note or incorporating more slurring on the downbeat, try reversing the picking: when you *do* pick a note, do downstrokes on the upbeat and upstrokes on the downbeat. Does that make sense? This naturally puts the accent on upbeats, and if you are doing lots of slurs, you end up playing downstrokes instead of upstrokes, which can eventually feel more natural.

I had a teacher who was crazy: play this exercise with all downstrokes! Now down-up! Now up-down! Now all-ups!

[Danil]

Nice! Here's an idea: whether you are picking every note or incorporating more slurring on the downbeat, try reversing the picking: when you *do* pick a note, do downstrokes on the upbeat and upstrokes on the downbeat. Does that make sense? This naturally puts the accent on upbeats, and if you are doing lots of slurs, you end up playing downstrokes instead of upstrokes, which can eventually feel more natural.

I had a teacher who was crazy: play this exercise with all downstrokes! Now down-up! Now up-down! Now all-ups!

I get the idea and in the beginning I actually tried to use downstrokes when doing the slurring.
But two issues made me to revert back: first - regular picking motion helps me to know where I am in a bar and second - for downstrokes I tend to use rest strokes which result in a somewhat staccato sound for downbeats (I hear downbeats more staccato and upbeats legato). So it sounded wrong and it is just too much for my poor brain to adjust and undo those habits. I'm afraid I have to stick with the way I pick (although I understand usefulness of such exercises).

[Christian Miller]

Everything’s unnatural until you practice it…

not saying one should practice everything, but it’s always worth bearing in mind

[kris]

Everything’s unnatural until you practice it…

not saying one should practice everything, but it’s always worth bearing in mind

Practicing, playing concerts with different musicians - this makes us play consciously.
Years of work.

[Danil]

Everything’s unnatural until you practice it…

not saying one should practice everything, but it’s always worth bearing in mind

Is that about picking direction or legato use?
Not having a smooth legato -- it is what I realized when doing this study and I put it on my routine list. Regarding inverted picking, given how bad I am doing other things, should I really pursue it? I mean, I probably could relearn it with any particular picking pattern, but will it be a noticeable improvement worth of an effort?

[Reg]

If your trying to figure out how to pick something.... it's kind of ass backwards. Your picking should already have organization, by that I mean... you pick to articulate and play notes. There are a million analogies... of learning how to do something by memorizing from one example of something else, as compared to actually learning how to do that something, (picking).

Accents are usually organized by rhythmic patterns that repeat. By that I mean... melodic lines or chords have rhythmic targets and sub targets that have a pattern.... or the perception of a rhythmic pattern that repeats, that detail that makes you actually sound like your playing something that has musical organization. As opposed to the noddle thing...

As far as the scale, arpeggio BS.... the terms are just to help define what one can use as references... again for musical organization as to how note(s) can be framed harmonically or pulled from, again which are musically organized sources for the many possibilities of what one might want to play or are to help when someone else is playing... so you can add something musically organized to support etc... again to help one sound like they know what they're doing.

Picking.... is standard beginning exercises that need to be worked as soon as one is able. Most guitarist don't and usually hit walls early and often.

[Christian Miller]

Is that about picking direction or legato use?
Not having a smooth legato -- it is what I realized when doing this study and I put it on my routine list. Regarding inverted picking, given how bad I am doing other things, should I really pursue it? I mean, I probably could relearn it with any particular picking pattern, but will it be a noticeable improvement worth of an effort?

anything really; I think it pays to be a bit flexible with articulation.

[Danil]

Reg, thank you for your answer.
I do respect your abilities and knowledge, but I find the reply to be a bit abstract.
I believe I have my picking to be organized - I've invested heavily in alternate picking for years and I can sweep and do gypsy style picking. It is not perfect, but I don't need to think about it most of the time up to upper medium tempos (and I don't strive to be blazingly fast) -- it just works and I can control accenting to certain degree.
My main troubles I believe are elsewhere: I'm a bad musician as a whole with underdeveloped ear, not knowing what to play (not sure I'll ever solve that, since I'm old already) and technically left hand is not that fluent and well synchronized with the right hand.
Can you be please a bit more clear where should I place my focus?

[rpjazzguitar]

I get the idea and in the beginning I actually tried to use downstrokes when doing the slurring.
But two issues made me to revert back: first - regular picking motion helps me to know where I am in a bar and second - for downstrokes I tend to use rest strokes which result in a somewhat staccato sound for downbeats (I hear downbeats more staccato and upbeats legato). So it sounded wrong and it is just too much for my poor brain to adjust and undo those habits. I'm afraid I have to stick with the way I pick (although I understand usefulness of such exercises).

Sounds to me like you can pick it just fine.

If I were to suggest an avenue for development, it would be to focus on the notion of swing feel (or, alternatively, bop feel). Probably hard at the tempo you played it, but maybe doable at a slower tempo. Maybe try playing it with a totally exaggerated swing (or bop) feel to get things rolling.

Stated another way, the issue I'm addressing is one of note placement, but also accents. Maybe more about accents. Not that you didn't have accents, but that my taste is to hear more emphasis or exaggeration.

I'm trying to imagine what that melody would sound like if it was being played for dancers.

For some definitions (which are difficult), for swing feel it's that placement of dotted eighth-sixteenth which gets more like a triplet depending on the tempo and therefore can't be notated entirely accurately. I hear the emphases on One and Three, but the note right before those beats has to pop also.

In bop tempo the eighths are even. Apparently, I hear them differently than other posters. I wouldn't bet the farm that I'm right and they're wrong. There's more than one way to play music. That said, I hear the emphases on One and Three again, but with even eighths and a jackhammer attack. I studied bop with Warren Nunes and that's how he played. Apparently, something rubbed off.

So, maybe the trick is to sing the line (or a similar but simpler one) until you find a feel that seems propulsive and makes people want to tap their feet along with your playing. Then get it onto the guitar. My guess is that you have more than enough technique to do that and the needed change is just to focus on the rhythmic feel that you want.

If you can't get there for some reason, then it's a question of expanding that sensation. Some musicians have benefitted from dance classes. I think it's worth finding a way to play with a super strong bass/drums combo (paying them works) -- and listen carefully to the drummer while you play.

EDIT: I learned something from Reg's response. As I understand it, he's making the point that the articulation needs to track the melody and harmony. The melodic underpinning may be the original melody of the tune and/or the melody of the improvisation. The harmony, similarly, is the tune and what you're implying in your improv. The result is that the accents that may sound best depend on the improvised line (and the other factors mentioned). So, my comment about accenting one and three is too simple (although Warren Nunes sounded terrific when he did that). You might, for example, be playing an idea composed of three eighth notes. In that case, if you accent the first of each three notes, your accents are not going to be on the beat every time. /XooX ooXo/oXoo XooX/. And, that's only if you start the first one on One.

So it all hangs together. But that said, I still think that a key point is not to overlook it. There are so many other things to keep in mind when soloing that it's easy to lose sight of the rhythmic feel, at least, for me.

[Reg]

Reg, thank you for your answer.
I do respect your abilities and knowledge, but I find the reply to be a bit abstract.
I believe I have my picking to be organized - I've invested heavily in alternate picking for years and I can sweep and do gypsy style picking. It is not perfect, but I don't need to think about it most of the time up to upper medium tempos (and I don't strive to be blazingly fast) -- it just works and I can control accenting to certain degree.
My main troubles I believe are elsewhere: I'm a bad musician as a whole with underdeveloped ear, not knowing what to play (not sure I'll ever solve that, since I'm old already) and technically left hand is not that fluent and well synchronized with the right hand.
Can you be please a bit more clear where should I place my focus?

hey Danil... sorry if I sounded abstract, generally when I get technical. I loose people. My mistake.
Anyway... you sound great, have skills and all the good stuff.... But when you say organized, what do you mean... straight alt. picking. I agree with Rick.... I didn't hear any accents that were organized.... except by the tempo and getting the notes out. That seems more like a technical organizational thing....

How can I actual play the thing as compared to ......How can I make the line sound musical... using basic contrapuntal and harmonic organization with... Rhythmical organization that reflects and uses the Tune as the reference from where to start and create musical relationships from.

If you were to notate the phrasing and articulations.... with the above organization....that would be more in the direction of Musically organized.

Think like you were going to notate out a 5 part sax soli... and your playing the lead line. Or...

Thinking simple.... how can I give the line feel and imply the style while playing. Maybe...

Take the 1st A section and notate some ...

Phrasing with dynamics, articulations and expression markings, and organize them with how you want the lines to work with,
1) the Form and sections, AABA etc...
2) melodically and harmonically shape the line
3) make the rhythmic organization work with the above

This usually involves picking targets and sub targets that the music will imply.

I can go on, but that would be a good start to help the line come alive during performance.

When you go through this process enough, you develop plug and play Musically organized performance techniques...
Like Licks... or Chord Patterns...

[Christian Miller]

Late participant here. I feel I need to submit what I've got for personal accountability and move on - this seems to be an eternal study, many dimensions where I need to improve and I can't even pay attention to several of them simultaneously.

Below is the etude #1 played twice against 2&4 to have a clear view of what is going on with all the imperfections: first time picking everything (my usual way), second -- doing slurs exclusively into downbeats. I've collected most of advises from this thread which made sense to me - so the fingerings are specifically chosen with slurring in mind.

It took a lot of effort to memorize the piece -- my illiterate brain refuses to make chunks for the most part of the study - were Joe Pass says Bb13 -9, I see just a set of notes, it was pretty much memorize by rote. On the other hand, having memorized this I seem to have better retention -- I've learned Dirk's 'Autumn leaves' version from this site rather easily - something I had no patience to do before. Hopefully this is a lasting improvement.

Technique wise -- slurring is unnatural to me, every two finger combination in both direction (pull-offs and hammer-ons) and slides feel different, only between index and ring or middle I have sufficient control. Another thing I become aware of is what I'm now sure is a deficiency in technique -- a tendency to keep thumb in place when doing microshifts or stretches. This creates additional tension in fretting hand which further impacts ability to execute slurs smoothly. It will take a lot to undo this habit.

Feel wise, I had a lot of fun -- playing with drum genius or records and trying to lock upbeats with skip notes and experimenting with downbeat/upbeat lengths with metronome.
To me it best sounded, when I treated metronome and strings as a single drum set - focusing on a sound of the pick clanking against the strings and trying to make it sound nice with metronome as a whole. It is somewhat elusive and I could make it work only up to 150bpm. Beyond that I just tried to make metronome clicks feel right.

any comments and suggestions are welcome.

Hi, I wasn’t offering specific feedback on your video, more making a general observation BTW on practice. I think this sounds great!

So treat this as a neutral observation; guitar is about trade offs and compromises.

What I would say is a technical note; I suspect you’ll encounter a hard upper bound on your tempo here because of the way you are using your right hand; the movements you are making look to me quite hard to speed up, complex motions moving out of the plane of the strings etc. I may be wrong of course…

BUT I also think this movement is helping your feel! It’s rhythmic and locked in.

i don’t know whether this is a product of the way you practiced it or whether you normally play this way.

Sometimes I feel there’s a trade off between efficiency of motion and accuracy of articulation. I am an efficient right hand player but I often catch myself rushing because certain movements are easy to make. See above for the notes on Chuck Wayne, Tal etc. The main advantage as I see it of alternate picking is that it is inefficient and forces you to focus on subdividing.

The Pat Martinos of this world have found ways to make alt picking function at faster tempos by optimising their right hand movements; what works mechanically at medium tempo will not necessarily work at turbo bop tempos.

[Danil]

Reg and Rick -- thank you.
What I gather from you answers is that a more defined articulation is needed, so the lines would tell a story and not sound so robotic (I admit my tendency to find gratification in just firing notes evenly). I need to dwell on this and to practice accent placing and observing dynamic marks more stringently were I see them.

Regarding note placement, upbeats specifically -- when playing with a rhythm section, do we have really a choice? I mean we probably should sync to the ride skips (Reg mentioned rhythmic mud resulting from playing evenly over triplets)? I'm listening to drumgenius tracks and many sound more tripletish to me (at least in up-medium range).

[Danil]

Hi, I wasn’t offering specific feedback on your video, more making a general observation BTW on practice. I think this sounds great!

So treat this as a neutral observation; guitar is about trade offs and compromises.

What I would say is a technical note; I suspect you’ll encounter a hard upper bound on your tempo here because of the way you are using your right hand; the movements you are making look to me quite hard to speed up, complex motions moving out of the plane of the strings etc. I may be wrong of course…

BUT I also think this movement is helping your feel! It’s rhythmic and locked in.

i don’t know whether this is a product of the way you practiced it or whether you normally play this way.

Sometimes I feel there’s a trade off between efficiency of motion and accuracy of articulation. I am an efficient right hand player but I often catch myself rushing because certain movements are easy to make. See above for the notes on Chuck Wayne, Tal etc. The main advantage as I see it of alternate picking is that it is inefficient and forces you to focus on subdividing.

The Pat Martinos of this world have found ways to make alt picking function at faster tempos by optimising their right hand movements; what works mechanically at medium tempo will not necessarily work at turbo bop tempos.

Christian, thanks

Yes - my picking motion is complicated and ceiling is not far away. At ~240 eights right hand starts to build up tension and it doesn't work well beyond that. Even when I simplify motion, I really can't be comfortable doing tremolo above 320 bpm in eights. On the other hand -- my left hand is even slower than right, to say nothing about brain.
This picking motion comes from my preference for evenness and definition + desire to have a solid string crossing.
I have a wish to be able to play classical studies with a pick in a musical way. This is hard -- wide string skipping results in a need to constantly adjust pick angles to balance sound, hence the complexity of the motion. Below is Allegro by Carcassi I just recorded just to illustrate (I need to polish this, really not happy with how it comes out -- hopefully CG players won't notice this). I'm not sure there are any shortcuts, it seem complexity is unavoidable. But, this approach helps to play unguitaristic lines (and this Joe's Pass study really doesn't feel to be guitaristic, which is a bit frightening).

[Danil]

Btw, I thought that Pat Martino has a somewhat similar picking technique just much more advanced, judging by evenness and the how much weight he is able to put into a note. I need to look closer at his right hand may be it is possible to find some clues.