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Originally Posted by destinytot
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07-26-2014 02:42 PM
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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.
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Originally Posted by rpguitar
"Decent" . . can be a very subjective word. ;-)
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Originally Posted by M-ster
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Originally Posted by rpguitar
So, who was "X"????
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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.
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Originally Posted by AlainJazz
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.
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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!
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Originally Posted by Groyniad
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.
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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07-27-2014, 03:39 AM #311destinytot Guest
Excellent post, Groyniad - thank you.
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Originally Posted by Groyniad
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.)
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Originally Posted by Philco
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Destinytot - thanks for posting that great article!
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You know, guys, I think this thread has become the best source for talk about Benson picking on the web!
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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.
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Originally Posted by ecj
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.
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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.
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Originally Posted by setemupjoe
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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.
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Last edited by nunocpinto; 07-28-2014 at 07:30 AM.
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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.
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Originally Posted by nunocpinto
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Originally Posted by ecj
Please Delete.
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