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???
Old school solo guitar/CM guys like Joe Pass didn't use artificial harmonics (mebbe beyond the final note/chord). Who introduced them to solo guitar/CM? Lenny Breau or perhaps someone earlier? I like AH as long as they're not overdone; then they become akin to those passages shredders do with fret tapping that sound like a nightmare JS Bach once had
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10-06-2009 12:54 PM
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seems like lenny and ted greene had the lock on that...not sure who developed their technique first, though. johnny smith certainly used them, but not just during chord melody pieces.
i once saw howard alden take an entire chorus in artifical harmonics. it was amazing.
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But would, say, a pianist be equally amazed? When I was a teen I was gobsmacked by Al DiMeola's technique: his blindingly-fast muted runs. (I think my first A.D. album was Casino). A non-guitarist friend of mine heard it and just shrugged, "sounds Spanish, meh". (I guess no one said meh back then, but anyhowdy...)
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Lenny got it from Chet, but then went crazy places with it that no one has yet to accomplish from what I have heard. Ted stated often that he got it from Lenny.
There were guys doing it before Chet, but none of them had the same level of exposure/recording that Chet did, so Chet often gets credit for it.
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that makes sense...anybody who played some classical guitar certain had run across the technique.would a piano player have been impressed? i hope so, it was a damn good chorus!...the note choice, not just the harmonics.i know there's a lot of big lenny fans here, so i'm wondering, which records should i have?...i've got 5 o'clock bells, and i gotta admit, aside from being impressed as heck with his talent, the record really doesn't move me...i get the same reaction to joe pass solo records, really...to me, johnny smith, george van eps, ted greene and howard alden are the kings of solo jazz guitar...and i wish to god wes would have done more unaccompanied stuff, because his solo playing is pretty much better than anybody, IMHO.
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My favorite Lenny discs solo are Cabin Fever and The Complete Living Room Tapes. The latter features Brad Terry playing sublime carinet on a few tunes, and both are fairly poor production quality, but the playing is really stellar.
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Mr B - big Lenny fan here - check out 'The Velvet Touch of Lenny Breau' - it's a live album with bass and drums, but with a few solo tracks also. Amongst other gems, there are great versions of 'Bluesette' 'No Greater Love' and 'Taste of Honey' - wonderful inventive playing. It's a good place to start if you haven't heard much of his playing because it covers a wide range of different styles and repertoire and gives a glimpse of the sheer breadth of the musical spectrum he could handle.
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..and i wish to god wes would have done more unaccompanied stuff, because his solo playing is pretty much better than anybody, IMHO.[/quote]
I don't want to hijack this thread, but where would one find recordings of Wes unaccompanied?
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My guess is that steel players probably were doing it before anyone. Hawaiin music was all the rage in the early 1900's. Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
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Old school solo guitar/CM guys like Joe Pass didn't use artificial harmonics (mebbe beyond the final note/chord). Who introduced them to solo guitar/CM? Lenny Breau or perhaps someone earlier? I like AH as long as they're not overdone; then they become akin to those passages shredders do with fret tapping that sound like a nightmare JS Bach once had
=-) PJ
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fernando sor describes it in detail in his method for the spanish guitar, first published in 1830.
francisco tarrega wrote pieces with extensive use of the technique in the late 19th C.
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Originally Posted by derek
Just another vote for "Living Room Tapes". Tal Farlow was using artificial harmonics back in the 50s but I think Johnny Smith was doing it around then so I don't know who came first.
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Django played a partial chorus of Nuages in harmonics circa 1946.
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Originally Posted by randalljazz
Right. Just because jazz guys get credit for it, doesn't mean they came up with it. We often forget how long classical guitar has been around compared to other styles of guitar playing.
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I didn't mean to imply that some jazz guitarist invented them. My question was who introduced them to jazz. Originally Posted by derek
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And I didn't mean to imply that was your implication. I was just stating a generalization that players from one genre will borrow ideas from another, which often results in implicit credit given to the borrower. Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
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If you meant to imply that BDLH was implying that the implication was implicit in his comment, then the implied implication of that is implicit in its meaning!!!
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Let's go with that! Originally Posted by Zip
If you meant to imply that BDLH was implying that the implication was implicit in his comment, then the implied implication of that is implicit in its meaning!!!
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What bkdavidson said in #8...recommended unaccompanied Wes recordings...anybody?
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...seems to be the tricky part of the question. I first heard this style outside of classical playing on Larry Coryell's recordings, and he remains one of the few players using AH tastefully (imho). Larry freely admits copping it from old Lenny Breau albums, specifically his first official album produced by Chet: "Guitar Sounds from Lenny Breau", which is still my favorite.
In fact there is an interesting documentary up on the 'tube which was done during the recording of that disc:
FYI
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I'm reviving this ghost thread because the info was incomplete. As a steel guitar player, I know that natural and artificial harmonics have been a huge part of lap steel guitar playing for more than 100 years. Here's a virtuoso example ...
Chet Atkins wrote:
I first played the arpeggiated harmonics on an arrangement of “White Christmas” and another tune I recorded on a Christmas album in 1961 [Christmas with Chet Atkins]. I’m sure that’s where Lenny got and developed the idea, because I didn’t meet him until 1967. He said he started getting into harmonics from hearing me play “Chinatown, My Chinatown.” The first harmonics I heard were on a Django Reinhardt record in about 1949 or 1950, and I learned to do that—just play single-string harmonics. But then I got to thinking about the steel players I had worked with who would pluck one harmonic and pluck the next string with their thumbpick, and it would invert the usual harmony that you would get if you plucked two strings.
I did that for quite a while, and then I got so I thought I could play a harmonic on the third string and then pluck the first string with my third finger, and I could play harmony. I did that a lot in the early ‘60s, and the arpeggios came soon afterward.
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Tal Farlow was the first to play bop solos with harmonics, usually over ballads in the 50s.
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One of the live jazz listening highlights of my life was hearing Tal Farlow live in the early 80s. He played about four amazing choruses on Body and Soul - all in harmonics.
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This out of print book by the late David Winters is probably the most definitive book on the subject.
Books by David Winters
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I also saw Tal Farlow live around 5 times in the 80s. One time was a re-grouping of the 50s Red Norvo trio, but with Monty Budwick on bass (instead of Mingus). Originally Posted by AndyV
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Tal liked to use the bridge pickup for harmonics. Sorry I know I’ve said it before but he didn’t for care the TF model Gibson made (in their infinite wisdom, them being far more knowledgeable than the master himself))) stuck the pickup switch down under by the knobs. Can’t do a fast no eye switch-over with it down there. Last I saw him performing in around 95/6 he was still using harmonics aplenty in his duo gigs with Gary Mazzaroppi.
There were a couple of prototypes made under HenryJ that were more an ES 350 with a little scrolling and the banjo markers, and a properly positioned switch. I did see them on Rudy’s website after Tal passed. Those were sweet but the necks were baseball bats.
Anybody here buy one?
Theres a guy on Reverb that had a custom copy made of Tal’s performance guitar ‘prototype #2’. Very pretty:
Gibson Custom Shop Prototype Tal Farlow guitar 2003 blonde | Reverb
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