A treatise on jazz guitarists on Quora

[Peter C]

Well Metheny's peculiar picking "technique" was the result of there only being thin picks availble in his local store, IIRC. Trying to visualize a parallel in the piano world...

[Peter C]

I occasionally like to play single lines with thumb only and enjoy doing so, but always have a pick on hand for the faster stuff.

I heard Jim Mullen say in an interview "Basically, it's all downstrokes". Yeah, right

[JGinNJ]

Arnt Arntzen, he's in The Louis Armstrong Eternity band that livestreams on RaioFreeBirdLand, so hours and hours of him playing in a group.

Here are some clips from SwingYouCats

A slow one

A fast one

I know the trumpet player, Danny Tobias from way back. He's from my area, was a couple of years ahead of me at the same college.
He's been playing a lot of trad gigs in NYC lately.

[Christian Miller]

I occasionally like to play single lines with thumb only and enjoy doing so, but always have a pick on hand for the faster stuff.

I heard Jim Mullen say in an interview "Basically, it's all downstrokes". Yeah, right

Looks like it from the video. The left hand does a lot of work.

Wes does sometimes alternate pick with the thumb. It’s not natural for me to do so, although I can do it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Jim doesn’t do it at all.

I’ve been studying Wes closely recently.

The fingerings are super important. A lot of slurring and raking.

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[Christian Miller]

this is a fantastic video. there are just as many ways to play the piano.

The major add 4 chord at the end of the Brad Meldau segment. Bloody lovely. I must add the natural 4th to more major chords.


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[ragman1]

The fingerings are super important. A lot of slurring and raking.

That's because, as he has admitted many a time, that he's not good at fast runs with his thumb and slurs to cover it.

[Peter C]

The left/fretting hand stuff is a given; Mullen has some "distal phalanx" flex (had to look it up) going on there that I just tried to consciously reproduce and yeah I can see that beginning to happen after years of practise and sheer dogged determination to get the job done without the help of stinky picks! The clip I posted is really happening from a groove perspective. Love it!

[djg]

The fingerings are super important. A lot of slurring and raking.

you need to play above your comfort zone, tempo-wise. then the slurring comes natural lots of LH index medius two-finger movements.

[charlieparker]

I agree with all of this.

I think one of the reasons guitarists don't have a standardised pedagogy like violin, piano or horns do is that there are many more ways of playing a guitar than there are of those other instruments. This in itself makes teaching quite a bit more difficult because what works for one guitarist might not work for another. I am thinking in particular about picking hand technique here. But, like I say, we are coming around to this fact and hopefully these things will be more common knowledge for guitarists, and guitar teachers specifically.

It is true that we don't have the chordal possibilities of pianos and we find fast lines like saxophone more difficult, but I think the strengths of the guitar is that it combines aspects of other instruments into one instrument.

For sax and trumpet, the pedagogy is pretty standard. You learn to read and play in large ensembles/bands.

Guitar isn't really an ensemble instrument in that it's more of a folk instrument played alone or in a small group or alternatively as a solo instrument in the classical instrument.

The piano is honestly more similar to guitar. The main difference is that most pianists learn the classical solo repertoire where as that is less common on guitar.

[James W]

The piano is honestly more similar to guitar. The main difference is that most pianists learn the classical solo repertoire where as that is less common on guitar.

It's less common because the guitar can be played with a plectrum or fingerstyle. I'm not entirely sure of the reasons why jazz guitar is more closely associated with the plectrum (but I can guess) but that creates a bit of a gap between the jazz style and the classical style. I get that the piano accommodates a variety of techniques, but nothing as fundamental IMO as the difference between plectrum-picking and fingerstyle.

[Christian Miller]

The left/fretting hand stuff is a given; Mullen has some "distal phalanx" flex (had to look it up) going on there that I just tried to consciously reproduce and yeah I can see that beginning to happen after years of practise and sheer dogged determination to get the job done without the help of stinky picks! The clip I posted is really happening from a groove perspective. Love it!

Jim can hold his own with anyone. He's a master.

I've not really studied his lines in particular, although I'd like to at some point. He has a different vocabulary to Wes, I think - more modern in some ways.

[Irishmuso]

The major add 4 chord at the end of the Brad Meldau segment. Bloody lovely. I must add the natural 4th to more major chords.


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Bloody lovely indeed. It can be heard at 17:57. What would be your notation and fingering for that Christian, dare I ask?