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The ones that I admire are:
1. Henry "Homer" Haynes (Homer & Jethro)
2.Ranger Doug Green (Riders In The Sky & Time Jumpers)
3.Paul Yandell (Played mostly with Chet Atkins)
I like these guys so much because they had and have the ability to play "in the pocket," which I try to keep in mind when playing in the Trio or the Monroevians (drummer, bass, accordion/violin, accordion, guitar (me)). Sadly, only Ranger Doug is still living.
One more:
4. Tiny Grimes (Cats And The Fiddle, Art Tatum) When they sang "These Cat's Will Swing For You," he was "Swing'n" on his Chicago (DGBE) tuned tenor guitar!Last edited by Donnie; 05-18-2017 at 05:23 PM.
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05-17-2017 05:18 PM
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
And BTW, "Warm" guitar tones only come from vacuum tube amps. Turn on the amp and 3 minutes later touch a tube. It will be "warm."
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Originally Posted by sgcim
I could take any one of those three categories and compare and contrast the time/feels and rhythmic language within them and find great differences.
Take Stern and McLaughlin for instance... IMO Stern has more in common with the bop guys feel wise than JM - he's a bop rooted improviser, and IMO swings in quite an old fashioned way. McLaughlin phrases in 16ths, improvises with a totally different concept, not much bop influence...
Eddie Lang doesn't really swing. He's kind of pre-swing - straight like ragtime. Django and Charlie Christian? Chalk and cheese..... Christian *swings*, Django too, but differently...
This points up the individuality of each player more than anything else, but there are millions of ways to use rhythm creatively.
This list was taken for the Essential Listening section of Scott Reeves, "Creative Jazz Improvisation".
When someone says some major player doesn't swing, it probably means the musician they're talking about doesn't swing in the style of one of the three styles of playing mentioned above.
An example- one older guitarist I know was given a CD of a younger, talented player.
I asked him how it was.
He said, " It doesn't swing", and flung it in my direction saying, "I don't want it, you can have it".
Because jazz has this kind of complicated, fuzzy identity that blends into other African Diaspora musics there is a fundamental confusion about it's identity at the edges and this is a Good Thing as it's always been a fusion of musics. Rhythm will always be an important aspect of this music and the jazz related music I tend to listen to has this quality - I'm not into the floaty stuff so much.
But some experienced players see jazz as a tradition, and that young players must earn their stripes by learning to, for instance, swing on *their terms*. I have a lot of sympathy with this viewpoint, but I also see the value of moving forward.
What doesn't help is most of them have no advice to offer on how to achieve this. They learned it on the stand, mostly.
But if we can teach other related music such as Samba or Afro Cuban music in class, why not swing feel? In my experience, this tends to happen much less, but maybe others have different experiences of jazz education.
TBH I feel the idea of jazz being 'free expression' and the whole mission statement of modern jazz being... er... modern.... is a bit of a problem here when players are really learning their craft. Furthermore young bright eyed students can RESENT the force of tradition seeing it as outmoded or constraining their creativitarr. I was like this myself!
To a quote/paraphrase Jimmy Raney '...find your own voice? You can't play yet!'
And yet, everyone expects to get their asses kicked by the full force of the tradition when learning to play Cuban stuff or Russian piano music.
Anyway I digress massively, as usual. ;-)Last edited by christianm77; 05-17-2017 at 06:06 PM.
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for anyone who doesn't know what swing is
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Originally Posted by nick1994
Heck yeah, he did. One of my favorite players.
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Originally Posted by nick1994
The impression I have at the moment is that swing feel has less to do with the “space between the notes” or the length of the notes being played (the extremes being ‘triplet-y’ vs really straight 8ths), and way more to do with the way accents are placed. I hear some really swinging Charlie Parker heads, and the length of the 8ths is pretty much DAAA-DA DAAA-DA etc, but he places accents in a totally different and to an extent unpredictable way.
But maybe I’m wrong (I’ll appreciate any comments and corrections). And I am afraid I’m going slightly OT – if so, sorry.
By the way, I re-read the OP and am pretty sure that (in Jeff’s terms) the question was “who are the guitarists whose music swings”? Surely not “which guitarists do you like”?
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Originally Posted by radiofm74
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Originally Posted by radiofm74
Nowadays, we take Bird as the lynchpin of what does and doesn't swing, but Parker wasn't swinging for many of those who grew up on swing music - too irregular and broken up. Lester Young swings mightily and with rhythmic creativity, but with much more of dancey regularity.
Also length of the 8ths is just one variable.... Placement of 8th against the beat is also worthy of study.
Also, there are 8ths and there are 8ths. The structure of lines offers four main types of 8th:
1) An 8th joining to other 8ths together (connecting upbeat)
2) An upbeat starting a phrase - for example a quarter on the 1+ before a line of 8ths
3) An upbeat ending a phrase - a push. For example a phrase ending on the 4+
4) Accented upbeats within the line
2, 3 and 4 are what I call structural upbeats.
1) may vary in placement from almost straight upbeats, to swung upbeats. Often in straight against swing playing the soloist lies behind the ensemble beat. 'Straight but relaxed.'
However 2, 3 and 4 - the structural upbeats, I think you'd be wanting to synchronise them with the ensemble upbeat. This will likely be close to or exactly a 3rd triplet placement, and it's this that I think is one of the things that makes me go 'aha! that swings!'
Horn players would learn this stuff intuitively by playing in a good big band. Guitarists.... not so much.
There are other aspects of course - 1/4 triplet combinations, 2nd triplet upbeats, straight structural upbeats against swing, triplet embellishments - for example, if you play for example quite straight 8s up on the beat, introducing triplet embellishments might give your playing some interesting give and take.
So, it all depends on your tastes and reference points. The thing is people don't seem (AFAIK) to think about rhythm in the same way as harmony in the sense of consciously shaping it, but why not? The process is the same:
1) Hear something you like
2) Work out what it is
3) Practice it
4) Internalise it
To get 1) you need to have a trained ear - so that requires both listening and also playing or singing to learn the sounds fro the other end. For instance, it helps to play a quarter triplet to hear one.
As with harmony that's kind of the main step. The other bits are relatively straightforward, given time.
So does Krantz, MacLaughlin swing? Well maybe not, but they have all made conscious decisions about how to express themselves through rhythm, and that's the important bit to emulate, IMO.Last edited by christianm77; 05-18-2017 at 07:49 AM.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by lammie200
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Each style represents a major change in the aesthetics of swinging, hence Group One says Group Two doesn't swing, Group Two says that Group Three doesn't swing (as in the example of my friend's opinion of the young guitarist's music), etc...
IMHO, the major schism took place in the 60s, with the use of even 8ths in jazz rock, or fusion.
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Sorry, I miss-typed. I meant Coltrane, not Parker. Although Parker may have had some influence as well. There has got to be tons of JM examples, but he did do "A Love Supreme" with Carlos Santana ions ago.
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Originally Posted by sgcim
1) the young player can't swing
2) he swings in a different way
3) he failed some other shibboleth related test
IMHO, the major schism took place in the 60s, with the use of even 8ths in jazz rock, or fusion.
I think your three categories are more reflective of people's general BS about music than any actual deep listening.
For example, Mike Stern 'doesn't swing' because he plays a 'rock'n'roll' guitar with a distorted sound. If Stern had spent his career playing the exact same notes on a heavy strung 175 through a polytone, I bet everyone would regard him as a top banana bebop guitar player. He has the lines and the feel IMO. I heard his electric bass player Teymur Phell play some of the great bebop I'd heard all year and swing *hard*.
For some cats - even some guys who seem too young for this rubbish - Rock and Roll is still THE ENEMY and the electric guitar deeply suspicious - however much you swing.
People are still remarkably stupid and judge everyone with their ears. If I bring a telecaster to a big band gig I get raised eyebrows even though it's far easier for me to get a Freddie Green rhythm tone on a tele than it is to play a rock solo on Maynard chart on an fat Archtop.
IMHO, the major schism took place in the 60s, with the use of even 8ths in jazz rock, or fusion.
There's been plenty of schisms in the history of the music. Was jazz/rock jazz? Dunno - most of it didn't swing. But if straight 8's music isn't jazz cos it doesn't swing, we need to be having a word with any Blue Note player who cut a Bossa. Does Dorham swing when he plays Blue Bossa?
TBH a lot of the earlier movements - free music, bebop, swing - were OK with disavowing the j-word. Only recently have people sought it out as a badge of honour.
Also the divide between straight 8's and swung? Not so simple.
But I'm pretty old school on this really. If there is any argument at all about whether or not a player swings, the chances are that he or she doesn't really swing consistently enough for it to be a key feature of their playing. Most of them probably *can* swing to some extent.
In contrast, no one says Wes or Charlie Christian or Grant Green doesn't swing. Along with touch and tone, their playing was largely defined by their swing and it was IMO a physical thing. You just feel it in your body.
Isn't that what the OP means? The MOST swinging. The players who are largely defined by their feel, more than their note choices or harmony however hip? And for that feel to connect with the body immediately in the way that swing does like no other feel?Last edited by christianm77; 05-18-2017 at 08:12 PM.
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[QUOTE=christianm77;773743]I would be interested to know the guitarist in question, it might help me understand where your friend was coming from. As it is I see a few different possibilities:
1) the young player can't swing
2) he swings in a different way
3) he failed some other shibboleth related test
I dunno, I feel for instance Stern has more in common time wise with Jimmy Raney than (post Mahavishnu) John MacLaughlin.
I think your three categories are more reflective of people's general BS about music than any actual deep listening.
For example, Mike Stern 'doesn't swing' because he plays a 'rock'n'roll' guitar with a distorted sound. If Stern had spent his career playing the exact same notes on a heavy strung 175 through a polytone, I bet everyone would regard him as a top banana bebop guitar player. He has the lines and the feel IMO. I heard his electric bass player Teymur Phell play some of the great bebop I'd heard all year and swing *hard*.
For some cats - even some guys who seem too young for this rubbish - Rock and Roll is still THE ENEMY and the electric guitar deeply suspicious - however much you swing.
People are still remarkably stupid and judge everyone with their ears. If I bring a telecaster to a big band gig I get raised eyebrows even though it's far easier for me to get a Freddie Green rhythm tone on a tele than it is to play a rock solo on Maynard chart on an fat Archtop.
In terms of the changes in overall rhythmic aesthetic? Maybe - BUT - this is much to do with the way rhythm sections changed as the soloists. The music itself changed. Guitarists are really the tip of the iceberg here. We need to be talking to drummers....
There's been plenty of schisms in the history of the music. Was jazz/rock jazz? Dunno - most of it didn't swing. But if straight 8's music isn't jazz cos it doesn't swing, we need to be having a word with any Blue Note player who cut a Bossa. Does Dorham swing when he plays Blue Bossa?
TBH a lot of the earlier movements - free music, bebop, swing - were OK with disavowing the j-word. Only recently have people sought it out as a badge of honour.
Also the divide between straight 8's and swung? Not so simple.
But I'm pretty old school on this really. If there is any argument at all about whether or not a player swings, the chances are that he or she doesn't really swing consistently enough for it to be a key feature of their playing. Most of them probably *can* swing to some extent.
In contrast, no one says Wes or Charlie Christian or Grant Green doesn't swing. Along with touch and tone, their playing was largely defined by their swing and it was IMO a physical thing. You just feel it in your body.
Isn't that what the OP means? The MOST swinging. The players who are largely defined by their feel, more than their note choices or harmony however hip? And for that feel to connect with the body immediately in the way that swing does like no other fe
The older guitarist had played jazz gigs in the 50s with players like Bill Evans, Eddie Costa, Buddy Rich, etc..., and played on an LP with Kenny Burrell and a well-known bass player.
The younger guitarist had an MA in jazz performance, and played with some younger jazz players I'm not familiar with. He's definitely in the category of a self-promoting 'gig whore' , playing as many gigs as is humanly possible.
Since I've heard the young player live, and he does swing, I'd say that the older player was saying that the younger player's CD contained music that purposely didn't swing, so that it would appeal to a larger audience, although it was still billed as a jazz album.
This is what I meant by the schism in the 60s, with musicians like Gary Burton purposely playing music that didn't swing so he could reach a wider audience, and John Coltrane's recording of 'My Favorite Things' which featured him playing extremely unswinging rhythms in his solos, regardless of waht the rhythm section was playing.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
As far as Mike Stern, I heard him live at a club in the late 80s,
when he was trying to play jazz, and he wasn't swinging.
A sax player saw him playing at the Manhattan School of Music in the 90s, and he thought Stern was some college kid just learning how to play jazz.
That was a long time ago, and he's improved a great deal, but like Coryell, McLaughlin, Scofield and most of the other players in 'group three', the fusion players were basically rock players who got turned on to jazz by the modal jazz of Coltrane's 'My Favorite Things', which became so popular in the 60s among rock audiences specifically because Coltrane didn't swing on that recording (this is excluding the rhythm section and Trane's earlier recordings).
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Originally Posted by sgcim
That was a long time ago, and he's improved a great deal, but like Coryell, McLaughlin, Scofield and most of the other players in 'group three', the fusion players were basically rock players who got turned on to jazz by the modal jazz of Coltrane's 'My Favorite Things', which became so popular in the 60s among rock audiences specifically because Coltrane didn't swing on that recording (this is excluding the rhythm section and Trane's earlier recordings).
But he is a jazz musician and obviously one of the greatest, especially IMO on ballads... Also there are those long hypnotic pieces where he just plays the minor pentatonic and it's amazing.
As a young rock guy that really connected. Along with Elvin's drumming.
But McLaughlin, as it turns out, did swing in the 60s. In fact, he comps like Red Garland on the swung upbeats, and plays tasty hard bop guitar (see the McLaughlin time thread). I am told by people who remember the scene in London at the time that he was known as a feel guy before he developed his picking chops.
But I'm tired of this wedge between hard bop, soul jazz and jazz rock. In fact hard bop led to jazz rock - organ trios, electric guitar, soul influences, Cannonball Adderley's group is a case in point. Soul jazz brought in more straight 8 feels. Motown was played by jazz musicians. There is a natural progression in Miles's music. And, for instance Tribute to Jack Johnson has a swing to it.
But then I suppose Miles's music isn't really fusion or jazz-rock per se... That said, the best fusion has that soul grease going on... I love Jaco for that...Last edited by christianm77; 05-19-2017 at 03:34 PM.
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I don't know who saw Mike Stern in the 90's barely able to Play Jazz...
He probably had/ has separate 'Styles' when he bends a lot of Notes with Higher Gain versus ...
'Straight Ahead' Jazz or whatever the term would be.
He's not my Hero or anything , ( TBH I do feel some necessity to compete with top Jazz Guitarists Technically and in a few other ways )but I saw him with Michael Brecker at University of Miami probably early to mid 80s ( ? ) and Stern was Playing more like what I posted earlier..long Phrases .. swinging 8ths and 16ths etc. not much gain..no wide bends or Vibrato..Straight Jazz/ BeBop phrasing.
I remember hearing Stern where he played like a Rocker with gain and bends and more Pentatonic on a few Recordings.....he can really go either way .Last edited by Robertkoa; 05-21-2017 at 03:14 PM.
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The older guitarist had played jazz gigs in the 50s with players like Bill Evans, Eddie Costa, Buddy Rich, etc..., and played on an LP with Kenny Burrell and a well-known bass player.
The younger guitarist had an MA in jazz performance, and played with some younger jazz players I'm not familiar with. He's definitely in the category of a self-promoting 'gig whore' , playing as many gigs as is humanly possible.
No judgement and I hope it goes really well for him... It's what you have to do. But no-one can learn to swing doing an MA. Might put older cats backs up, but they'd be the first to go on about 'I don't know how you young cats manage now' - well let me tell you old timer, due to the permanent existence failure of the apprenticeship system and also most of jazz legends on your CV we get by by HUSTLING THE **** OUT OF ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN. ;-)
I have had a similar reaction to fresh faced young musicians with a sales & networking approach (*cough* Janek Gwizdala *cough*) but you know what? That's what you have to do. Especially if you play the guitar. That's what the scene is now. You need to sell yourself AND you need to be able play really ****ing well.
(Actually that's what Metheny had to do. Not so new then.)
Since I've heard the young player live, and he does swing, I'd say that the older player was saying that the younger player's CD contained music that purposely didn't swing, so that it would appeal to a larger audience, although it was still billed as a jazz album.
Do people really not like swing? It makes me feel happy in my soul.
I don't get it. But in London it's been swing crazy for 6 years, maybe people prefer straight 8's pop funk wherever you are based.
This is what I meant by the schism in the 60s, with musicians like Gary Burton purposely playing music that didn't swing so he could reach a wider audience, and John Coltrane's recording of 'My Favorite Things' which featured him playing extremely unswinging rhythms in his solos, regardless of waht the rhythm section was playing.
If you say so, I dunno. I know Fusion was big in the 70s, bigger than swing based jazz. But that's just style. Burton could play the crap out of bebop. If you are playing straight 8s music you will play rhythm differently....Last edited by christianm77; 05-19-2017 at 04:01 PM.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
now it's like the rest of the world- EDM/Hip-Hop zombies.
I heard the Bull's Head was closing a few years ago.
Other than people like Tubby Hayes, Dick Morrissey, Jim Mullin, Jimmy Hastings, Terry Smith, Johnny Dankworth, etc...(most of whom are dead) I didn't think there were many major jazz musicians left in the UK.
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Originally Posted by sgcim
You've got to love the Japanese. They seem to hang on longer o forms of music that is waning in other parts of the world. 80's Hard Rock and Metal guys can still go over there and make good money. Some live there permanently.
Here is what I consider to be a swinging clip from Swingout Sister - Twilight World. (Man, I loved that singer, Corrine Drewery and the music sounded so good in the London clubs, sigh...)
Forgive the momentary indulgence - Back to Jazz Guitar!Last edited by AlsoRan; 05-21-2017 at 09:40 AM.
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Originally Posted by sgcim
But I think London has had quite a few venues close due to rents getting too high.
In the past 10 years or so we've had a bit of a craze among young people for all things swing and early jazz related. This hasn't had much to do with any pre-existing jazz scene, and hasn't really been a listening vibe, but it has meant gigs.
Other than people like Tubby Hayes, Dick Morrissey, Jim Mullin, Jimmy Hastings, Terry Smith, Johnny Dankworth, etc...(most of whom are dead) I didn't think there were many major jazz musicians left in the UK.
What we lack is the history and continuity you get in NY as well as a nice compact scene like the Village. That used to be Soho, but there are only three or four jazz places in Soho.Last edited by christianm77; 05-20-2017 at 05:11 AM.
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Anybody knows Ronnie Singer? He's the greatest.
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I read somewhere someone saying that swing is not necessarily space between the notes because you've got guys playing their lines straight but the lines still swing because how they articulate the offbeats. for me, that's not swing. putting the snare on the 2 and 4 doesn't make the music swing it gives it forward motion, so when accenting the off beats of quavers or semiquavers they're not swinging they are going forward. people are being too vague about what it is, it's the space between the notes.
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Originally Posted by nick1994
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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