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make sure to report back to us
Originally Posted by charlieparker
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02-25-2026 07:48 PM
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but wes was just incredible. where were you when you heard 2:08 for the first time?
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Fair point. Taken to its extreme, the deep but not wide player might shred like a monster in the key of E but be absolutely lost on a Bb blues. And for the player to be advanced in a wide way, all of those tools in the wide bag o' tricks also need to be developed in sufficient depth; otherwise, the player runs the risk of being a jack of all trades, master of none. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
"What is advanced?" is a semantic argument that is orthogonal to the point I was making.
Mostly, I'm disagreeing with the generalization that mechanical limitations drive ideation, using players like Bruce and Pasquale as examples of players who don't seem to avoid certain ideas because of technical limitations. And acknowledging that for many players, limitations in their mechanical technique do limit their ideation, but I do not see "mechanical technique limits ideation" as an absolute.
Now, playing Devil's advocate for a moment, recognition of what's physically possible on guitar does affect every player to some degree - for example, absent any technical trickery like looping or polyphonic signal processing, six-string guitars in standard tuning are pretty much limited to chords in a range of under three octaves, and as a result guitarists generally don't try to play chords with the kinds of wide intervals that two hands on the piano can produce with ease. Let's call these sorts of limitations "intrinsic" and put them aside for purposes of discussion. Let's talk about what is reasonably possible on this instrument.
Putting aside those "intrinsic" limitations, "advanced" players have worked around many instances of what are dealbreaking limitations for less-skilled players, and they've had to master more than one workaround to get past more than one kind of problem; hence, the "wide bag of well-developed tricks" characterization of "advanced."
Because they've worked around so many of the typical challenges so successfully, players like Bruce and Pasquale don't avoid fast runs or string skipping, don't construct lines that require a certain number of notes per string, and pretty much play whatever they are thinking when improvising. For them, ideation drives execution; ideation is not subservient to mechanical technique in any significant way. And they got there by embracing the challenging stuff, not avoiding it - by pushing past their limits to refine their abilities to execute their ideas in real time.
I hope that clarifies. I certainly don't think I said or implied anything about Wes or George being unable to execute certain kinds of ideas, or dismissed their approaches. If anything, I've always said that the path forward (for me, at least) is to learn as much as I can. I'll never be done; for me, that is one of the greatest things about playing music and playing guitar: there's always something new.
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Duplicate post
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People always rail against semantics don’t they? Is it not helpful to have some clue of what the other person means Originally Posted by starjasmine
by a word or term? (Sometimes I’m not clear if the person railing against being pinned down on a definition fully knows what they mean lol.)
Doesn’t have to be watertight, just a general idea is helpful.
“Advanced player” is something people say (including myself) and I don’t think it’s clear to me what it means.
It is also not clear to me that advanced players have a technique that fits your description.
Everyone has their limitations. Whether or not a player sinks time into developing technique that addresses all possible situations is to some extent a choice at the expense of other things. The culture too has shifted? These days music is more complicated. There’s an expectation a professional jazz guitarist should be able nail a big repertoire of tricky bop heads and so on .Mostly, I'm disagreeing with the generalization that mechanical limitations drive ideation, using players like Bruce and Pasquale as examples of players who don't seem to avoid certain ideas because of technical limitations. And acknowledging that for many players, limitations in their mechanical technique do limit their ideation, but I do not see "mechanical technique limits ideation" as an absolute.
Now, playing Devil's advocate for a moment, recognition of what's physically possible on guitar does affect every player to some degree - for example, absent any technical trickery like looping or polyphonic signal processing, six-string guitars in standard tuning are pretty much limited to chords in a range of under three octaves, and as a result guitarists generally don't try to play chords with the kinds of wide intervals that two hands on the piano can produce with ease. Let's call these sorts of limitations "intrinsic" and put them aside for purposes of discussion. Let's talk about what is reasonably possible on this instrument.
Putting aside those "intrinsic" limitations, "advanced" players have worked around many instances of what are dealbreaking limitations for less-skilled players, and they've had to master more than one workaround to get past more than one kind of problem; hence, the "wide bag of well-developed tricks" characterization of "advanced."
Because they've worked around so many of the typical challenges so successfully, players like Bruce and Pasquale don't avoid fast runs or string skipping, don't construct lines that require a certain number of notes per string, and pretty much play whatever they are thinking when improvising. For them, ideation drives execution; ideation is not subservient to mechanical technique in any significant way. And they got there by embracing the challenging stuff, not avoiding it - by pushing past their limits to refine their abilities to execute their ideas in real time.
I hope that clarifies. I certainly don't think I said or implied anything about Wes or George being unable to execute certain kinds of ideas, or dismissed their approaches. If anything, I've always said that the path forward (for me, at least) is to learn as much as I can. I'll never be done; for me, that is one of the greatest things about playing music and playing guitar: there's always something new.
I don’t think it’s at all disrespectful to anyone to say PG’s technique is obviously more flexible than Wes’s (I reference Pasquale just because I know a bit more about how he plays than Bruce). But, Wes is more flexible than one might think given the limitations he set himself by using his thumb and that’s one of the very obvious things that makes Wes so legendary in guitar circles
So I do in fact think there are some things he struggled to play. You can see that from his choice of repertoire as well. But also, I don’t think that affects my appreciation of him as a musician, and it may make me respect him more as an artist because of the clarity of his purpose and vision in how he wanted to sound.
(With PG I feel his technique is an aesthetic choice too. He wanted those pianistic sounds in his playing.)
But that’s the thumb aspect which isn’t everything I’m talking about.
The left hand posture is a road more frequently travelled, and I think for good reason.
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Oh one thing I will also say is that a lot of what people think are issues in picking such as string skips are primarily an issue with a specific picking style.
This has as much - if not more - to do with pick stance than whether or not you go down or up on this or that string especially in the case if alternate picking.
Classic planar ‘orthogonal’ alternate picking is obviously concerned with string changes and this can be mechanically difficult - some players never get fast with it - but makes It imo easier to lock into a rhythmic pocket. Two way Economy in the same position makes adjacent string changes easy but comes up against issues with rushing and strings skipping.
Classic rest stroke (Benson, Django, Joe Pass) styles solve string changes for certain combinations of notes on a string which means left hand fingering is critical. But string skips are far less of an issue. And you can alternate pick in that position if you tweak the mechanics. It’s complicated…
At risk of repeating myself, a lot of people don’t seem to like that final trade off. I would say it isn’t as much of an issue as one might think because of the way we tend to work on material at tempo. It’s just that the issues are less universal for the technique if that makes sense.
Interestingly some people who download my video pdfs find my left hand fingerings for bop heads etc weird or unplayable…
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I remember getting a VHS of this years ago (think it was this or another very similar of his UK TV appearances) and noticing the upstroke even then,cueing and rewinding on that cumbersome machine. Thank god for YouTube lol Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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That's the step change I think. There's only so many times you can play analogue media. So there was always a little imperfection in people's analyses and transcriptions of other musicians. Bruce Forman said that this encouraged people to find their now take on things, and their own style. Originally Posted by olliehalsall
I remember getting a VHS of this years ago (think it was this or another very similar of his UK TV appearances) and noticing the upstroke even then,cueing and rewinding on that cumbersome machine. Thank god for YouTube lol
Now we can be more accurate.
It's a blessing and a curse.
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Putting aside the hair-splitting over what "advanced" means, I'm simply saying that there are players for whom improvisational ideation is not appreciably subjugated by mechanical technique. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
IDK whether "a technique" is a typo or intentional; I've said explicitly that those players can utilize multiple techniques as necessary to execute their ideas.
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I do actually believe that there is a "universal technique".
The Spanish/Classical technique is, imho, the greatest technique humans have
devised to play the guitar. By a VERY great margin.
It hasn't really been used in jazz/popular styles much though.
Perhaps it will?
Or maybe not. Jazz/pop styles are really just folk music.
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As I said I don’t perceive a Cartesian divide there. I don’t see anything which would make me think that body and the musical mind aren’t working holistically. Originally Posted by starjasmine
[QUOTE
IDK whether "a technique" is a typo or intentional; I've said explicitly that those players can utilize multiple techniques as necessary to execute their ideas.[/QUOTE]
Yeah should be a plural there. Or perhaps ‘suite of techniques.’
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 02-27-2026 at 04:55 AM.
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If you are talking about left hand then that is objectively not true. Quite a few jazz guitarists have a classical style left hand and many have classical guitar training. Originally Posted by jazzyfan
In terms of players that use a classical right hand in jazz, that’s somewhat rarer, but not unheard of.
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Sometimes in discussion I lose track of what it was I was trying to say to start off with.
I think what it boils down to for me is two things
Firstly, if Wes had had classical guitar lessons would he still have been a great guitarist? Of course!
But would he have sounded the same? No.
So it comes down to the way that different players sound and feel, and there’s a physical aspect to this. In studying Wes I am taking this side of things seriously. I love the way Wes sounds.
Secondly it comes down to effective ways to play the instrument.
So - is properly schooled and well implemented classical technique a great way to play? Yes!
If your style has an aspect of polyphony it’s pretty much a must. That’s its USP as far as I can see, and as classical guitar is focussed primarily on demanding solo repertoire it’s easy to see why things have evolved the way they have.
Is the “self taught” thumb over style a great way to play? Also yes!
It is perfectly healthy - more so that an imperfectly implemented classical technique, it sounds different, and allows different techniques from classical. Classically schooled players can sometimes struggle with basic requirements of jazz guitar that are alien to them. Rhythm guitar/strum comping is a classic example.
In general I characterise this sort of approach as coming from an ensemble focus.
And you can be a raging virtuoso using either style.
I think that many players, including myself, are in a sort of uneasy grey area between these two poles. This is an aspect of my own jazz playing I dislike and I would rather do one or the other - although I can play classical style when I need to I do struggle with the three fingered thing. There’s also potential to do yourself harm in this area if you aren’t careful and have poor ergonomics.
Stretching with a collapsed carpal tunnel is one classic danger area.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 02-27-2026 at 05:28 AM.
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One big aspect for electric guitar playing is the flat fingered style allowing for left hand muting which allows the right hand to be a lot more “free.” The idea of lead guitar as an extension of rhythm and chordal playing makes a switch from one stance to other undesirable. We see this in Wes, Jimi etc etc.
OTOH if you play with a more arched finger stance you have to consider muting from the right hand. This means your technique will be quite different from rhythm guitar.
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Sorry, yes I meant the RH. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
The LH is hardly in discussion for any type of guitar playing.
It's never a problem, really....whether you use 4 or 3 fingers is quite easy to accommodate....it's the RH that's the heart of the Classical Technique and in fact it's the RH that's the most difficult to train generally - in any style.
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LH "muting" is really a misnomer, imo. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
You can't really mute with the LH much at all.
The best that can be done is that you can mute the string above the string you are playing- at best.
The real problem with muting is all those lower ringing strings while people are playing the top strings.
Think Gypsy style or Benson style or Sandole style. I've never understood why those ringing strings didn't bother the players?
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So many strong, absolutist opinions.
What happened to your post about Wes Montgomery can’t play “at all”.
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Yup..that open d is the bane of my life Originally Posted by jazzyfan
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Juts because you can't do it doesn't mean it can't be done, I play with a pick and mute the inner strings of chords with my left hand all the time. For example, I might mute the D string in this chord - | x-3-(x)-4-5-x | - or mute the G string, etc. Originally Posted by jazzyfan
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Tbf not everyone appreciates jazz guitar Originally Posted by Aiq
Quite why they’d be hanging out on a jazz guitar thread is anyone’s guess….
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That is left hand muting. It’s an essential technique for playing rhythm guitar etc. it’s an aspect of plectrum guitar only Originally Posted by jazzyfan
Re ringing open strings - this is always more of an issue for solo practice. With a group it tends to disappear into the overall mix. For a non compressed clean tone, at least. It’s something you notice much more solo.
Otoh if you playing with distortion etc it’s more of an issue. But according to Troy Grady maybe not. This is quite interesting although im not sure it matches with my personal experience (I use right hand muting when playing distorted)
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When I hear “LH mute” I’m usually thinking more of releasing pressure on the fretted strings, à la Freddie Green
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Montgomery is probably my fave jazz guit. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I was simply making the point that when it comes to playing the guitar that he can barely play
in the strict terms of operating the instrument well.
This is very common in jazz guitar.
Players are constantly described as "the best guitarist" or other typical nonsense.
Most aren't even close to being "great" guitarists.
They are more like great musicians that are iconoclastic.
I've always said that if you are one of the tiny group that is iconoclastic, that you can then afford to play the instrument badly.
The rest of us had better be damn good at operating the box. Most aren't.
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Oh yes, I forgot about the LH muting in rhythm guitar. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Sorry, my mistake. In rhythm guitar it's used constantly.
I was referring to muting undampened strings in single line solos.
And Troy Grady is WAY off the mark on undampened stuff not mattering, as are you when you talk about the "noise" vanishing in an ensemble.
It's a major problem and people hide the problem from others and themselves because they have sunken a massive cost into the flawed technique that they have worked hard at baking in.
They should have known better and used their ears.
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