20th century jazz guitar forum?

**kris** · 12-20-2021, 04:09 AM

Originally Posted by Peter C

^ That's a given as far as I'm concerned.

I'd like to hear you play guitar in the style of a 21st century jazz musician.
Will it be heard in the 21st century?

Good Luck...It is a lot,a lot,a lot of work.

**Christian Miller** · 12-20-2021, 05:04 AM

Originally Posted by kris

I'd like to hear you play guitar in the style of a 21st century jazz musician.
Will it be heard in the 21st century?

Good Luck...It is a lot,a lot,a lot of work.

Obviously Peter C can play very much in the style of a 21st Century Schizoid Man amirite?

**Christian Miller** · 12-20-2021, 05:06 AM

Anyway the cutting edge of jazz guitar is to sound like an early 1950s bebop pianist only on the guitar. That’s what the kids are into.

Kreisberg etc are kind of more the millennial generation.

**kris** · 12-20-2021, 05:57 AM

Originally Posted by Christian Miller

Anyway the cutting edge of jazz guitar is to sound like an early 1950s bebop pianist only on the guitar. That’s what the kids are into.

Kreisberg etc are kind of more the millennial generation.

A very correct point.

**Peter C** · 12-20-2021, 06:11 AM

Originally Posted by kris

I'm not sure if I understand it correctly?

I tend to agree with this.

**Peter C** · 12-20-2021, 06:12 AM

Personally, I defo have prog roots but hang out in a jazz forum in an attempt to pick up what I can. I'm a working Joe, so I also play what I can. Often not much.

**Christian Miller** · 12-20-2021, 06:30 AM

Originally Posted by Peter C

Personally, I defo have prog roots but hang out in a jazz forum in an attempt to pick up what I can. I'm a working Joe, so I also play what I can. Often not much.

Aside from the fellas in suits, a lot of current jazz is basically prog without the tunes anyway.

(Unless it’s instrumental hip hop of course.)

Hip hop without the lyrics! Rock without hooks!

These jazz musicians are geniuses!!

**kris** · 12-20-2021, 06:51 AM

I think it is easy to write about young guitarists and be passionate about their music recordings.
Playing in their style can just be pure fantasy.
Young guitarists who have recently appeared on the music market are outstanding talents and already have many recordings.
But who knows...?

**Cunamara** · 12-20-2021, 11:15 AM

Jazz- on any instrument- can and does change to reflect the times. The repertoire and the approach shifts (away from TPA/GAS tunes and away from the swing groove, for example). Instrument styles shift (fewer archtops, more semi-hollow and solidbodies), effects become more prevalent, tone changes (from dry flatwound thunky bebop sounds to roundwounds and wet tones), etc.

We can keep up or not. If we don't want to go there, there is about a century of jazz guitar to listen to. It's still great, always will be. If we do want to go there, plenty of opportunity on YouTube, Bandcamp, iTunes, etc. Personally I've heard some great "new" stuff and some I didn't dig, but then that holds true looking back at the last 75 years too.

I don't think it's helpful to judge people for liking what they like. There is no independent arbiter of what is or is not good and jazz guitar.

**kris** · 12-20-2021, 11:32 AM

Originally Posted by Cunamara

Jazz- on any instrument- can and does change to reflect the times. The repertoire and the approach shifts (away from TPA/GAS tunes and away from the swing groove, for example). Instrument styles shift (fewer archtops, more semi-hollow and solidbodies), effects become more prevalent, tone changes (from dry flatwound thunky bebop sounds to roundwounds and wet tones), etc.

We can keep up or not. If we don't want to go there, there is about a century of jazz guitar to listen to. It's still great, always will be. If we do want to go there, plenty of opportunity on YouTube, Bandcamp, iTunes, etc. Personally I've heard some great "new" stuff and some I didn't dig, but then that holds true looking back at the last 75 years too.

I don't think it's helpful to judge people for liking what they like. There is no independent arbiter of what is or is not good and jazz guitar.

There are so many great old videos on youtube that I don't even have time to listen to and analyze the emerging young musical talents.

**fep** · 12-20-2021, 12:54 PM

Matteo Mancusco is who I've been listening to lately. Plays mostly fusion and sometimes more traditional jazz. I love his playing and his right hand technique is mesmerizing.

**Peter C** · 12-20-2021, 06:57 PM

"current jazz is basically prog without the tunes". Well, there you go - a bit of an over-generalization as I hear a lot of tunes, but cool, I get your point. I'm a bit of a prog refugee, never having been a fan of HM guitar - I don't know why that had to become a feature of prog. Probably that bloke Trevor Rabin's fault. Jazz takes it ("prog jazz") in a much more interesting direction, with its subtlety, harmonic complexity and overall dynamics. Musicianship is what I'm talking about.

Cunamara, I can enjoy dry flatwound thunky bebop sounds to roundwounds and wet tones and everything in between, as long as the dry sounds are accompanied by precise fretting technique and wet as against drenched. So maybe damp, LOL. You're right in what you say, of course, from a Zen perspective.

I need to listen more to Mancusco, especially to his original music, which is what really interests me. Amazing technique.

I missed the above invite to join the modern jazz guitar forum. Thanks, but I barely have time to post here.

**kris** · 12-21-2021, 03:43 AM

For me, this thread makes no sense.
Peter C do you already know everything about older jazz guitarists?
This is so much knowledge that young jazz musicians use it with joy.

**Christian Miller** · 12-21-2021, 04:35 AM

Originally Posted by kris

For me, this thread makes no sense.
Peter C do you already know everything about older jazz guitarists?
This is so much knowledge that young jazz musicians use it with joy.

Well it makes more sense than that bloody thread where people were moaning about jazz musicians only playing GASB standards.

It didn’t go down well when I pointed out to talk sensibly about this you’d actually have to listen to some jazz musicians from the past four decades… and of course if you did you’d realise immediately that that statement was horseshit. I should have left the fogeys to grumble in peace about whatever it is they like to grumble about without the intrusion of reality.

So yes I have some sympathy for Peter C

**Christian Miller** · 12-21-2021, 04:51 AM

Originally Posted by Peter C

"current jazz is basically prog without the tunes". Well, there you go - a bit of an over-generalization as I hear a lot of tunes, but cool, I get your point. I'm a bit of a prog refugee, never having been a fan of HM guitar - I don't know why that had to become a feature of prog. Probably that bloke Trevor Rabin's fault. Jazz takes it ("prog jazz") in a much more interesting direction, with its subtlety, harmonic complexity and overall dynamics. Musicianship is what I'm talking about.

Well all quite a few of the jazz clubs seem to be run by ex-hairys who like Weather Report.

tbh when I occasionally go and listen to something like Yes I’m always struck by how poppy and hooky their music is. Contemporary jazz, not so much.

I don’t mind prog jazz. Prog is the primary reference point for most electric guitar players in and out of jazz, because what else are you going to play as a teenage guitar dweeb? I mean after the Oasis tunes and if you decide you aren’t a metaller? It’s not like there’s a classical repertoire is it?

(Or turn your back on it and play bop on an archtop of course. But you can’t ignore it.)

Prog mirrors contemporary jazz in the sense that the music can become ever further abstracted from its dance roots and more of a self conscious listening art experience. That does bother me. I don’t think jazz has to swing like Ellington, but swing in the wider sense is the thing that interests me in jazz as opposed to classical…. While jazz is connected to popular music, esp Black music it has that pulse still. this doesn’t have to a dichotomy…

OTOH that tendency of wanting to play the music as it was in 1958. I suspect I have a lot more time for this than I imagine you might, and have invested a considerable amount of time working on historical approaches, but ultimately I think I’m too eclectic to spend the rest of my life playing bop or something; and I certainly don’t listen to only that music, so I stay interested in both new and old…

**kris** · 12-21-2021, 05:03 AM

I listened to Miles Davis' records from the 80's and I like it very much to this day.
Is there anything better now?

I mean a similar style.

**kris** · 12-21-2021, 05:25 AM

**kris** · 12-21-2021, 05:54 AM

Here is an interesting Trio.Dave Kikoski / 60-year-old pianist / with young musicians - the son of guitarist Mark Whitfield plays the drums.

**Peter C** · 12-21-2021, 07:00 AM

Kris, what I'm saying is pretty clear: listen to the old and the new (and the in-between). Don't get stuck in the past. That's easy to understand, correct?

By the way, the pianist in the last post looks like he's having a fit. JMO.

PS I don't give a sh*t about age (or gender) when it comes to art.

**kris** · 12-21-2021, 09:44 AM

Originally Posted by Peter C

Kris, what I'm saying is pretty clear: listen to the old and the new (and the in-between). Don't get stuck in the past. That's easy to understand, correct?

By the way, the pianist in the last post looks like he's having a fit. JMO.

PS I don't give a sh*t about age (or gender) when it comes to art.

I don't have to listen to the new ...
I only do it when I feel like it.
I think it is understandable to everyone.

**kris** · 12-21-2021, 11:52 AM

Originally Posted by Peter C

By the way, the pianist in the last post looks like he's having a fit. JMO.

I think it was a Giant Steps fit.

Nobody plays this brilliant!

**grahambop** · 12-21-2021, 11:56 AM

Yeah Dave Kikoski is kind of manic but brilliant, I have seen him a couple of times.

**John A.** · 12-21-2021, 12:32 PM

I don't think jazz can (or should) let go of its standards/GASB past, for a very basic reason: The music is primarily transmitted via jam sessions and performed by groups that come together briefly for record dates and short runs of gigs. It's primarily not made by musicians with long-term bands developing material and affinities over many years. A group gets together on Wednesday for Saturday's gig. What do they do? They warm up on standards, then the leader breaks out charts of some originals, and they work through as many as they can get to. On the gig, they build sets around the originals, filled out with standards (rehearsed or not). The crowd goes wild, they do Blue Monk for an encore.

Nearly everybody named here so far functions this way when they're making music in the real world. It's true of old farts, young lions, boomers, gen-z-ers, everybody does this. Everybody has shedded/jammed hundreds of standards in order to function in the music. All these "modern" cats we wish would get more notice here play the shit out of standards. Call any tune, they know it, love it, and kill it. Recordings full of originals are only a sample, not the genre/community as a whole.

Not that it matters to anyone but me, but in my own journey I've gone through periods of being into contemporary/edgy stuff and more traditional stuff. Over the past several years, as I've gotten more into playing out and connecting with other players after a long period of not doing much of it, this has necessitated an ongoing deeper dive into GASB and jazz standards, somewhat at the expense of keeping up with the new guys. But life is short and time is limited, so one does what one can. I can't really see the point in getting exercised over other people's tastes (stodgy, hip, or otherwise).