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Originally Posted by unknownguitarplayer
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05-09-2017 01:17 PM
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My favorite McLaughlin records are Que Alegria and the live album with similar trio (Kai Eckhart replaces Dominique DiPiazza). McLaughlin's music is unique, his technique is astonishing, and his music can be frighteningly intense and achingly beautiful. In terms of peaks and valleys, his music has everything. I also love Shakti, and the friday night in san francisco for pure athletic joy.
all that said, I've just never enjoyed hearing McLaughlin playing anything swing related, and I don't think he sounds good on cherokee at all. what he's playing has nothing to do with the rest of the band.
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Yes. I have mostly only heard Metheny years ago on Jazz Radio ..for example
And hearing this recently I was surprised that he can
Play this well...
And I notice that his Playing is remarkably free from
Blues Clichès - and he actually has more interesting unique things to explore...very Lyrical and Melodic etc. and free...I can hear why he is so highly regarded...seems like he improved his technique a lot since he first emerged...but maybe I am too unfamiliar with all of his Material...I always thought 'James' was
Brilliant - an Instrumental as Memorable and Melodic as a Beatles Tune -
A few Santana Instrumentals are like that too...
Anyway - JM may consciously avoid Blues Clichès -
.
Metheny sounds like he has too much to say Musically to play them..at first he sounds ' Blues Lite'
but then I realize he's too brilliant to use most Blues Clichès or maybe avoids them purposely ...
Pat's a Happy sounding Improviser- kind of Rare in that way...Last edited by Robertkoa; 05-10-2017 at 11:37 AM.
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Originally Posted by sgcim
Robert K Scorpio
Can I be famous now ?
Oh I forgot I have to either Play or Write Something Great first...
That quote is something I wrote for myself..actually.Last edited by Robertkoa; 05-10-2017 at 10:30 AM.
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Originally Posted by henryrobinett
Jazz are Brecker and Benson- they are so Funky and Eloquent at the same time that their Jazz sounds like Blues Funk and R&B even though it's harmonically expanded..
If McLaughlin had Benson- like Time Feel and added some Polyrhythmic Stuff here and there...it would be amazing...but ..almost no reason( for me ) to Play Guitar if someone did that...ha.Last edited by Robertkoa; 05-10-2017 at 12:19 PM.
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Originally Posted by Robertkoa
On the other hand, JM tone is appealing to me in that video, and the whole band is awesome!
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Originally Posted by pcsanwald
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Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
Different strokes! I think Elvis is one of the greatest musicians of our time. His album "Painted From Memory" with Bacharach is perfect, and he has a great episode of "Piano Jazz" with Marian McPartland, who was a huge fan as well.
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Originally Posted by lammie200
JM is great. One of my biggest hero's. But not everyone plays everything great. I don't think he play bop well. And that's ok, right? It's not his thing. And by the time Miles got JM it wasn't his thing any longer either. Miles wasn't interested in playing bop stuff. Jazz was no longer about that. It went modal and free. JM was a perfect fit.
But since that time jazz returned to a more wholistic approach. Where modal lived side by side with swing and bop and free, funk and hip hop, country and classical. A cool time. I like it except for the money and lack of gigs.
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JM on acoustic guitar has always been a huge inspiration for me.
I spent many many hours listening to Live at Royal Festival Hall with Kai Eckhardt and Trilok Gurtu while working in the darkroom in the 90's.
His duets with Katia Labeque on the flip side of "Mediterranean" are beautiful, intimate and full of delicacy
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My introduction to JM was Extrapolation... no mention of it so far?
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I think my introduction was Turn It Over. Tony Williams Emergency.
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Originally Posted by pauln
very close in many ways to sounding like Modern Sax...( not the Tone so much ).
When you hear him ' doubling' some of the Horn Lines it suggests that much of his ' time feel' was by
choice - not by Limitation ....
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The expression of musical rhythm is as much an art form as anything else. Beyond a certain point - i.e. can you play accurately in time?
It's not like players who have developed their craft have simply good or bad time the way any more than they make good or bad note choices.
When Jack Wilkins says Metheny or Jarrett's standards playing is 'off' we must assume he is referring to previous models, such as for example Wes or Bill Evans. Standards playing is based for him perhaps on a certain vocabulary and rhythmically this includes a particular way of phrasing eighth note swing as much as it does specific note choices (more so in fact.)
A detailed understanding of what swing is and how it manifests itself and has changed over time is I think is well worth going into. One poster I find particularly worth listening to on the forum is Robert Koa - he has good ears, man! Taught me a lot already.
What specifically distinguishes MacLaughlin or Metheny from Wes or Kenny Burrell? That's much more interesting to me than the pitch choices. Wes can play the whatever scale and sound like Wes, and Metheny can play chord tones and sound like Metheny.
Anyway the detail here is really interesting. Thanks.Last edited by christianm77; 05-10-2017 at 05:36 PM.
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I'm curious to know, as has been mentioned about JM or DiMeola, how being grounded in flamenco time and feel translates to playing jazz rock electric guitar with a plectrum.
Thinking aloud, off the top of my head: Flamenco guitarists are perhaps the only finger-stylists who can hang, speed wise, with plectrum players in terms of single note lines. (as a point of reference, Joe Pass mainly played fingerstyle, but when the tempo was ramped up, he knew to pick up a pick (his pick was weird: he cut a small teardrop pick in half, which apparently allowed him to obtain a certain tactile feel or grip of the pick).
John M and Al D play strictly alternative picking. In flamenco, to repeat a finger is an absolute NO-NO when playing picado (unless, of course, the repeated finger use is separated by a slur/legato/ligado. Failure to alternatealso kills the rhythmic feel.
Do you mean John M's feel and time is different because he maybe locked into a longer rhythmic cycle???Flamenco rhythm usually based on iterations of a 12 beat cycle with accents on the 3,6, 8, 10 and 12. Indian (Hindustani and Carnatic) classical music is even more complex with its talas (various beat cycles and accents).
In other respects, playing flamenco doesn't translate to electric guitar. Rasgueados on a steel string? Forget about it. The reason they play only cowboy chords (err, sorry, "por medio" y "por arriba") and with the capo is because the open strings are necessary for the attack and sound of the rasgueados.
In jazz, open strings are frowned upon. Generally.
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Might be worth pointing out that there is a link between Flamenco and Indian Music & Dance, deep down... Silk roads, gypsy migrations etc.
JM is obviously a devotee of Carnatic (?) rhythmic concepts, which are quite in vogue in jazz education generally.
If I had to call it, I would say JM's phrasing is based primarily on additive mono-metrical rhythm, but it's a long time since I've listened to his later stuff. Different rhythmic approaches - including vocalisations - give a different feel to rhythm even though the basic mathematics might all be the same.
One interesting point from the book on Cuban music someone suggested here is how the author points out the contrast between Cuban rhythmic concepts (derived from Congo) compared to the African-American rhythmic inflection which is related more to West African rhythmic concepts.
The 6/8 displaced onto beats 2 and 4 (see Larry Koonse's fantastic Over the Barline video) is and this is something I hear in say Wes (and most if not all of the American jazz players of his generation) and can also derive many of the key rhythms of classic straight ahead jazz. That's something that's rather important to my concept of Swing. That Bembe lilt against the European 4/4.
I hear this less in the more modern players such as JM.
Obviously the influence of Cuba can be felt in New Orleans - and most obviously in bebop, so it's a complex fusion of influences as always. The classic NOLA march beat is kind of a fusion of Cuban Clave and US 12/8 lilt.Last edited by christianm77; 05-10-2017 at 07:47 PM.
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Incidentally dead straight can swing really hard if you have a really 12/8 inflected drummer. As Robert Koa points out, Benson's upbeats are very often pretty straight.
Also I believe there might very often be a habitual difference between the position of a joining 8th (between two beats) and the placement of structural offbeat - a push or anticipation - in jazz phrasing. How consistent this is I couldn't say ATM, and probably varies from player to player, but structural offbeats do often tend to be on the 3rd triplet of the beat.
Some players also hang back on the beat so they are catching the swung upbeat but also playing straight - Jimmy Raney springs to mind, and this is a feel I like to play around with because it's so flipping cool when it clicks..
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Originally Posted by ronjazz
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Lol. Yes. 70s fusion extrapolated to now. There's not enough history represented for me to think of it as 21st century jazz. That's just me though. The ability to swing is still a fundamental component for me. Not that it has to swing but the artist should be able to. JM doesn't. ITS OK. He's still great.
Maybe it's that he's always playing too fast to swing. When the band is swinging 8ths but you're always playing 16ths and above it's hard to swing that. Meaning you're not swinging the 8th notes. The way you do that is in how you phrase. Coltrane. Brecker. Hubbard. Brownie. They can play double time and phrase in a swinging manner.
Also when playing fast it's easier to get the phrase if you articulate on the beat. Not always. But if you're always starting your phrase on the up it can confuse the other guys on the bandstand to not feel where you are. They might think you've lost the beat, which unfortunately guitar players are famous for doing.
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I see Pat Metheny mentioned often here too, so I re read the OP... I mean that's kinda rediculos to bundle him with JM. Nothing in common. PM rhythm is sublime, swings like a mofo. Im not a fan of his solo albums, but the one I had with John Scofield, and the concert with Joni Mitchell and Jaco, thats enough to see.
And yeah, I remember that recent thread that ended up discusig PM ability to swing and got locked I think? I had a good laugh.
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Originally Posted by pauln
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You know PM is one of my favorite guitarists, but I couldn't say he swings his ass off. I mean he CAN. But he's a melodic player primarily. His phrasing isn't really built around be swinging. He plays over the bar lines a lot. That purposely blurs and makes vague. SWING is deliberate and not blurred or vague. It's the opposite of that. All the note placements are designed to make you feel the rhythm in your bones regardless of the notes, almost. Pass and Wes swing. Very deliberate.
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Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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True. No argument there. But we're talking about swing which is a very specific thing.
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Another way to look at the fingerboard
Today, 10:35 PM in Theory