Benson Picking technique on Gibson L5 Wesmo

[MarkRhodes]

Sharing this interview from May '74:

Thanks! I hadn't seen that before. Good stuff. I didn't know his action was high....

[rpguitar]

An entire thread could be spawned from the comments Benson makes in that 1974 article. Very cool to have it posted. I'm glad he considers an L-5 to be a "decent" instrument.

[Patrick2]

An entire thread could be spawned from the comments Benson makes in that 1974 article. Very cool to have it posted. I'm glad he considers an L-5 to be a "decent" instrument.

"Decent" . . can be a very subjective word. ;-)

[MarkRhodes]

Interesting comment, "I have ... an uneducated right hand, like a barbarian." Kind of echoes Martino's similar comments about his left hand being the college graduate and his right being a drop-out.

That caught my eye too. I wonder what George's understanding of "technique" is. (He said he didn't have it but Martino did. To me, George sounds much more fluid than Pat, though Pat is a monster player too.)

[MarkRhodes]

An entire thread could be spawned from the comments Benson makes in that 1974 article. Very cool to have it posted. I'm glad he considers an L-5 to be a "decent" instrument.

I thought that was among the best Benson interviews that I've seen. Lots of good stuff there.

So, who was "X"????

[AlainJazz]

Before I switched to this technique, my max tempo was 210. 220 if I really really concentrated but it would sound choppy and I'd struggle. I just did a little experiment to see if there is any improvement. I'm now totally comfortable at 240 and 250. It gets choppy at about 270! That is an incredible jump for me. Just thought I'd share and thank you guys for motivating me to try this and stick with it.

[MarkRhodes]

Before I switched to this technique, my max tempo was 210. 220 if I really really concentrated but it would sound choppy and I'd struggle. I just did a little experiment to see if there is any improvement. I'm now totally comfortable at 240 and 250. It gets choppy at about 270! That is an incredible jump for me. Just thought I'd share and thank you guys for motivating me to try this and stick with it.

Great, Alain!

When you talk about playing at 240 and 250, are you talking about:
a) playing with recordings / play-alongs at that tempo?
b) playing eighth notes at that tempo with a metronome that goes that high?
c) playing sixteenth notes with a metronome set half that fast?

I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm curious about how players time their speed.

My metronome tops out at 208, so I do a lot of playing of sixteenth notes at slower tempos. (Sixteenths at 120 = Eighths at 240, for example.)

My speed varies. For example, I can some tremolo things very fast, and some things that use only two strings very fast. Things with four or more strings slow me down some.

[Groyniad]

X was miles - surely ('cause he did all that rock stuff - didn't he? or played with some other musicians who did that rock stuff)

what a fantastic interview!

i love the unapologetic and intense anti-rock sentiment ('you can't stop it. its like trying to stop a war.') - he sums up the heart of the problem with total conviction - the rhythm is so fixed and powerful 'you can't fight it'

'if you would cut the rhythm section - then you would here how horrible some of their concepts are' - amen

and this from the only artist who has really managed to bring the music into the (post-rock) pop mainstream (only Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole managed it to the same sort of degree - and that in a pre-rock era). could anyone speak more authoritatively on the topic? of course he didn't know when he did this interview how much success he was going to have busting into the mainstream ('finding a way to fight it')

i know very well how open we are all meant to be to different musical styles - i'm just totally crap at being open in that way.

'what do yo think about rock' - GB: well i don't think it gives a young mind a chance to develop

gold

the point about his right hand is NOT that it allows him to play super-fast runs - if we see his playing through the lens of rock and rock-fusion that might be what leaps out at us

the point is that it allows him to be rhythmically exuberant and imaginative. i have never heard a guitarist who can swing so easy and so hard, dart so effortlessly from chordal to single-note passages, and play with such total rhythmical assurance and panache. its the rhythmical ambition it allows for - the control of time - that makes his playing so compelling and his technique so enviable.

i think he could play any style within jazz that he committed himself to. he could do introspective and thoughtful (an album with bill evans would have been a joy), he could do forties be-bop a la parker and fats navarro, he could do kind of blue, he could do Kilimanjaro etc. etc. anything at all. i think he uses a strongly blues based vocabulary because he grew up with it and because people 'get it' so he can use it to communicate with them. (when i say 'he could do' this or that style, i mean he could totally destroy it - nail it like it had hardly, if ever, been nailed etc. etc.) so the right hand facility does not commit him to any particular sound or style.

wouldn't every jazz guitarist like to have his technique instead of their own (maybe not wes). they'd need an adjustment period sure - but then they'd be able to play pretty much anything they liked, just straight off. which of them could have resisted that deal?

thanks jazz guitar.be for such a genuinely helpful thread!

[Philco]

the point is that it allows him to be rhythmically exuberant and imaginative. i have never heard a guitarist who can swing so easy and so hard, dart so effortlessly from chordal to single-note passages, and play with such total rhythmical assurance and panache. its the rhythmical ambition it allows for - the control of time - that makes his playing so compelling and his technique so enviable.

Oh yeah + infinity.

One of my early posts was about how GB's technique allows him to be so in the groove. Nothing is rigid. It all moves with the groove. The plectrum flexes, his wrist moves, even his thumb is not actually that rigid.

I know we get caught up in the minutiae and we have to……but I think the big picture is about relaxation which leads to freedom from physical restriction.

[AlainJazz]

Great, Alain!

When you talk about playing at 240 and 250, are you talking about:
a) playing with recordings / play-alongs at that tempo?
b) playing eighth notes at that tempo with a metronome that goes that high?
c) playing sixteenth notes with a metronome set half that fast?

I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm curious about how players time their speed.

My metronome tops out at 208, so I do a lot of playing of sixteenth notes at slower tempos. (Sixteenths at 120 = Eighths at 240, for example.)

My speed varies. For example, I can some tremolo things very fast, and some things that use only two strings very fast. Things with four or more strings slow me down some.

Hey Mark, I'm talking about playing tunes. I used irealB to set the tempo. Also not just eighth notes but rather a mix of everything just like if I was really playing with the band. I've never played with a metronome.

[destinytot]

Excellent post, Groyniad - thank you.

[MarkRhodes]

X was miles - surely ('cause he did all that rock stuff - didn't he? or played with some other musicians who did that rock stuff)

That was my first thought too. But a) Miles wasn't the only guy who veered from jazz toward rock and b) some of his fusion stuff is still highly regarded by jazz fans. So I think it at least possible that George Benson was talking about someone else.

I agree that what makes George so special is the "effortless" right hand that allows him "never lose the groove." (What I like about JC Stylles is that he plays with a strong sense of groove too. It's not just fast, it's flowing and alive.)

[MarkRhodes]

Oh yeah + infinity.

One of my early posts was about how GB's technique allows him to be so in the groove. Nothing is rigid. It all moves with the groove. The plectrum flexes, his wrist moves, even his thumb is not actually that rigid.

I know we get caught up in the minutiae and we have to……but I think the big picture is about relaxation which leads to freedom from physical restriction.

I agree this must be stressed. After all, we've heard (or at least heard of) rock guitarists who play hyper-fast but without any flow at all. (Eddie Van Halen can flow---he has a phenomenal right hand too---but most "shredders" don't have any flow at all.) What we're after is that effortless flow.

[JPP65]

Destinytot - thanks for posting that great article!

[MarkRhodes]

You know, guys, I think this thread has become the best source for talk about Benson picking on the web!

[ecj]

Thanks so much for posting that interview. Really interesting to hear his perspective about fusion, especially on his own music.

I think when Benson is talking about "technical" playing he means alternate picking. He always talks about not being able to "skip strings" which, I think, means doing outside or inside picking across adjacent strings, because he uses that old-school gypsy-style approach where every string is played with a downstroke rest stroke.

If you look at the guys he reveres for their technique - Martino, McLaughlin, Johnny Smith - they're all heavy alt-pickers.

I like the system Benson came up with more. It's so freakin' fluid.

[MarkRhodes]

I think when Benson is talking about "technical" playing he means alternate picking. He always talks about not being able to "skip strings" which, I think, means doing outside or inside picking across adjacent strings, because he uses that old-school gypsy-style approach where every string is played with a downstroke rest stroke.

If you look at the guys he reveres for their technique - Martino, McLaughlin, Johnny Smith - they're all heavy alt-pickers..

Interesting take on it.
By the way, can you skip strings when you Benson pick? I mean, is the point here that Benson picking doesn't work well when string skipping, or that HE (George) has trouble skipping strings but others using the same pick grip might not.

[setemupjoe]

Benson picking doesn't impede string skipping. Benson's approach to the neck does much to inform us as to how he gets his signature sound and style. I must admit my playing became much more aligned with his idea of working up and down the neck instead of across the strings after I started using this technique. At the time I had no idea how he played across the neck so it's interesting that I started working out similar pathways. I originally came up learning the 12 position theory from Leavitt's Berklee books so it was a significant change. Nowadays I'm a hybrid of both systems.

[MarkRhodes]

Benson picking doesn't impede string skipping. Benson's approach to the neck does much to inform us as to how he gets his signature sound and style. I must admit my playing became much more aligned with his idea of working up and down the neck instead of across the strings after I started using this technique.

Thanks, Mark. Could you give a bit more detail about this? For example, when working up and down the neck instead of across strings, are you working off chord shapes? Or do you orient yourself some other way, such as triads or whatever?

[setemupjoe]

The example below shows a more traditional across the neck fingering (1a and 2a) and then a variation going up the neck (1b and 2b). 1b and 2b should be played with the same fingering on each pattern. i.e. in 1b the first three notes form the G triad and you use 2nd finger, 1st finger and 4th finger to play the G, B and D.
Repeat that fingering for the next three notes and then the last three notes.

Sam goes for exercise 2b. F#, G, B and D would be fingered 1st finger, 2nd finger, 1st finger and 4th finger. Repeat that fingering for the next two sets of 4 notes.

[nunocpinto]

Thanks, Mark. Could you give a bit more detail about this? For example, when working up and down the neck instead of across strings, are you working off chord shapes? Or do you orient yourself some other way, such as triads or whatever?

Mark, watch this video: it's really a different perspective from the "traditional" scale patterns. Try it for a bit and you will see instantly how they improve your flow and dexterity on the fingerboard. It's like a "new" door opening

[nunocpinto]

Interesting take on it.
By the way, can you skip strings when you Benson pick? I mean, is the point here that Benson picking doesn't work well when string skipping, or that HE (George) has trouble skipping strings but others using the same pick grip might not.

A very interesting question that seems to get always vague answers here; and that take us back to the ambiguous and somewhat "dangerous" "generalization" that it's all about rest strokes on every down stroke & strings change. well it can't be as you clearly can see on this video with Chet Atkins.

[ecj]

Interesting take on it.
By the way, can you skip strings when you Benson pick? I mean, is the point here that Benson picking doesn't work well when string skipping, or that HE (George) has trouble skipping strings but others using the same pick grip might not.

Mark - I can skip strings when I Benson pick. It took a little while to figure out the motion to do it, but I can play traditional alt picking patterns way faster with the tech than I ever could with standard grip. The key was not to do the "door knocking" motion (oscillation) that Tuck Andress talks about, but to do more of a "knob turning" motion (rotation). This gets the pick out of the plane of the strings.

This is my vid that I sent to JC Stylles for coaching, and he told me that I was doing everything right shape and position-wise, and just needed to focus on getting rid of a little tension and improving my economy of motion. You'll see me alt pick everything in the first half when I'm showing some of his exercises. At the end the licks I'm playing are more "Benson-y" and use the rest stroke thing:

Nunocpinto - I think you're wrong about the rest stroke thing. You don't have to play rest strokes with this technique, but Benson pretty clearly does. Rodney Jones coaches all his students to do rest strokes, too.

[MarkRhodes]

Mark, watch this video: it's really a different perspective from the "traditional" scale patterns. Try it for a bit and you will see instantly how they improve your flow and dexterity on the fingerboard. It's like a "new" door opening

Thanks, Nuno. I watched it. Had just finished the morning's practice (-first things first!), so I'll try this on the guitar later today. The concept seems solid, and I think he is right that a lot of jazz guitarists play this way, so it's worth a shot.

[MarkRhodes]

Mark - I can skip strings when I Benson pick. It took a little while to figure out the motion to do it, but I can play traditional alt picking patterns way faster with the tech than I ever could with standard grip. The key was not to do the "door knocking" motion (oscillation) that Tuck Andress talks about, but to do more of a "knob turning" motion (rotation). This gets the pick out of the plane of the strings.

This is my vid that I sent to JC Stylles for coaching, and he told me that I was doing everything right shape and position-wise, and just needed to focus on getting rid of a little tension and improving my economy of motion. You'll see me alt pick everything in the first half when I'm showing some of his exercises. At the end the licks I'm playing are more "Benson-y" and use the rest stroke thing:.

Nice, vid! Looking good!