Gilad Hekselman playing counterpoint. Tone and technique

[Hippias_Major]

Hi!

Im new here although i've been checking this forum for years now. Hopefully this can be the start of a great thing.

What is the deal with this sound? how come no one is nearly as clean?
I've seen similar renditions by many people online and everyone just seems to be miles away. What is it?

[RJVB]

To get your references straight...

And that Invention #4 ... (not just) any 10yo can do it

[SandChannel]

[wolflen]

[QUOTE=RJVB;1226405]To get your references straight...

ahhh..she is the music...it flows through her..the expanding universe indeed..

would anyone here like to tune this instrument ?

[RJVB]

would anyone here like to tune this instrument ?

If that means someone gifts it to me plus the abilities to play it then sure, I wouldn't mind learning to tune it!
(Which would typically include tweaking the frets to adjust the intonation to the key of the piece - l'art de préluder )

[Hippias_Major]

Thanks for sharing that,

the question is really refering to jazz guitar technique and tone (and specially when playing this sort of pieces or this piece)

Ill leave the question/ thread just in case anyone wants to contribute.

[RJVB]

Well, this sort of piece isn't jazz so the question is whether the instrument is being played with "jazz guitar technique" (j guitar-technique or j-guitar techique?!)

I hoped that my reply would have made you realise that you're (most likely) hearing the instrument's acoustic voice. Which sounds very nice for a thin-body instrument with at least one (seemingly) set pickup, but I suppose that with proper miking even the thinnest-voice instrument can sound rich & full.

[Hippias_Major]

Great, yes. Let me just say that the guitar is also plugged into an amp.

So other than the size of the body?

The pick angle and such?

[wolflen]

Well, this sort of piece isn't jazz so the question is whether the instrument is being played with "jazz guitar technique" (j guitar-technique or j-guitar techique?!)

I hoped that my reply would have made you realise that you're (most likely) hearing the instrument's acoustic voice. Which sounds very nice for a thin-body instrument with at least one (seemingly) set pickup, but I suppose that with proper miking even the thinnest-voice instrument can sound rich & full.

perhaps "flat wound" strings would eliminate the dreaded string scraping...its nice for coffee house folk music..adds a rustic quality..but not so for JSB..

to say the piece isn't jazz..(Miles didn't like the term..nor do I)

In its day if jazz were a term used in music..it may qualify with stars..now many jazz players have used Bach lines to great effect..and in harmony/melody studies Bach is used as
a model of intervallic exploration..

[RJVB]

I did *not* say that I think the size (depth) of the body comes into play here.

I fail to see the point in making an electric guitar sound like an acoustic and (thus) can't tell how that's done. (The former is actually not entirely true so I might keep peeking )

I can't see any proof of the connection to an amp you claim, but what I can see is that the player appears to use hybrid picking. That will change the sound (but it will not by itself make an e-guitar sound like a real guitar).

[SOLR]

perhaps "flat wound" strings would eliminate the dreaded string scraping....

.

Interesting in that it illustrates Gilad 's strings of choice which I think are the T-I bebop .013-053 on his "first?" VB ..Always wondered how he would sound without FX. 'cause usually I can't hear his string swooshing....I concur on the hybrid picking technique....

P.S.I can't play like that and definitely not like the other 2 instrumentalists But would not mind taking care of that VB guitar.....

S

[Christian Miller]

Thanks for sharing that,

the question is really refering to jazz guitar technique and tone (and specially when playing this sort of pieces or this piece)

Ill leave the question/ thread just in case anyone wants to contribute.

I’ve studied the vid carefully preparing for my own work on this invention, and I notice that Gilad tends to mostly play the top line along the string. By which I mean, if there’s one bass note to two treble notes (so bass moving in eights, top line in sixteenths) he will fret the two treble notes on the same string rather than across the string as a classical player might (if this makes sense). Imo this makes the top line sound more cleanly melodic if that makes any sense. It also simplifies the right hand challenges a little.

This means that most of his fingerings end up with the the first finger playing the bass and other fingers taking the melody (and not a few stretches). Not 100%, but a lot. In this sense the piece ends up becoming a series of embellished interval shapes on the guitar, mostly tenths and thirteenths. This kind of concept lends itself to adaptation for jazz guitar imo.

Tbh he doesn’t do as good a job as articualting the passages in pure parallel tenths and thirteenths which is where the string squeak is noticeable. In terms of technique I would tend to differ with him there, by alternating the high note finger rather than sliding the shape (which is what he seems to be doing) should result in a more precisely articulated result. Pasquale Grasso is a master of utilising this type of fingering for very pianistic sounding rapid interval work. But it’s basically a classical guitar technique (see also Van Eps.)

These version gets this specific thing a little cleaner imo by using this type of fingering (I think)

both versions obviously indebted to Gilads

I’ve been working on this but it’s not up to this tempo yet, so we’ll see.

[Christian Miller]

[QUOTE=wolflen;1226459]

To get your references straight...

ahhh..she is the music...it flows through her..the expanding universe indeed..

would anyone here like to tune this instrument ?

hell no

i played lute for a few months and couldn’t get on with the tuning pegs. I need my machines bro!

[Peter C]

I love Evangelina's art, and I'm sure Gilad would appreciate her. But he's doing an exercise here, albeit musical, presumably to expand his jazz (etc) horizons whereas her mission is to purify your soul. The other young guy playing Interven. Nº 4 on an archtop sounds somewhat mechanical and stretched to my ears.

[Hippias_Major]

Can we focus on the topic? There are other great places to talk about barroque instruments and talk about "purifying souls"...

Please try to add relevant information to the topic.

[pcjazz]

Can we focus on the topic? There are other great places to talk about barroque instruments and talk about "purifying souls"...

Please try to add relevant information to the topic.

Welcome to the InterWeb.

[ccroft]

That 26 stringer reminds of the old joke: "How long does it take to tune a 12 string? Nobody knows...." (sorry Hippi!)

So I think we're talking about hybrid picking technique here, not Bach. That's what these jazz guys are doing anyway. They're not trying to make a career in the classical world.

Same for the Julliard kid Rourke that Christian posted. He's just sheddin'. His left hand makes more sense to me than Gilad's pretty incredible shifting thing. But maybe he wanted to work on that for a bit as well.

Both jazz guys have very clean left hand technique with strong finger independence as well. Contributes a lot to the clarity. Also, Gilad is picking on top of the finger board which might contribute to his sound.

So the point of this endeavour, for me at least, is to have polyphony and burnin' flat picking available at the same time in some sort of jazz environment. If I can ever find one again... Hope springs eternal so I keep working at it. I think it's practice more than anything. And an understanding of what has to happen to pick a clean note no matter what's doing the picking.

[marcwhy]

@hippias,

Welcome to the Forum!

You're new, so no idea yet of your interests, skill, knowledge, etc., so hopefully you'll hang out some more and keep contributing!

That being said, and after reading your OP and subsequent posts, I'm not super sure what you're asking, in regards to Gilad's vid ... Are you asking about "clean tone;" "clean pick/finger playing;" "how is Gilad so awesome;" or what? Lots of "clean" players out there ... who else do you enjoy, just so we have an idea of your references?

In keeping with the Bach themes, this series is always fun:

Marc

[Hippias_Major]

Hi @marcwhy !

Thanks for the greeting. Cool stuff from Ted, as always.

"the question is really referring to jazz guitar technique and tone (and specially when playing this sort of pieces or this piece)"

"What is the deal with this sound? how come no one is nearly as clean?
I've seen similar renditions by many people online and everyone just seems to be miles away. What is it?"

Anything that would contribute to this questions.
As to the meaning of word clean, is really not as ambiguous as some people might think. It seems like you understood.


I think the examples that are shedding some light are those that were referring to: Fingerings, Type of string, Position of picking hand, Guitar body size etc

[Gabor]

Imagine a classical musician, who is professional, and plays classical music since 25 years. Now imagine how this musician would play jazz, say after a few month parctice of a particular jazz "piece".

Non sense. This musician may or may not be capable to perform the "piece", but one thing is for sure, there would be two different world that result and jazz. Any jazzer will hear that is "fake", weak, imitation without the essence of jazz music after the first few seconds, Of course a classical musician listener would say it is pretty cool jazz :-)

Now why anyone think, that a jazz musician could play classical music?
Nonsense. ...(any classical musician listener instantly would say it is terrrible, without the essence of the piece, etc) Of course a jazzer listener would be satisfied... :-), I hope it is clear what I mean :-)

It is pretty pretentious to think on the jazzer side, that there is some assimetry, I mean taking as obvious that a classical musician can not play jazz in authentic way and the same time think a jazz musician can play classical music in any meaningful way.

I listened many examples jazz musician playin classical music and causes me literally pain how without essence is that. Even not Keith Jarrett... and of course not Kreisberg and not Hekselman

Just for the record, I did not say there are no exceptions. For example Chick Corea and Mehldau are authentic both in jazz and classical performance.

...and also just for the record, majority of my heroes are jazz musicians.

[James W]

Imagine a classical musician, who is professional, and plays classical music since 25 years. Now imagine how this musician would play jazz, say after a few month parctice of a particular jazz "piece".

Non sense. This musician may or may not be capable to perform the "piece", but one thing is for sure, there would be two different world that result and jazz. Any jazzer will hear that is "fake", weak, imitation without the essence of jazz music after the first few seconds, Of course a classical musician listener would say it is pretty cool jazz :-)

Now why anyone think, that a jazz musician could play classical music?
Nonsense. ...(any classical musician listener instantly would say it is terrrible, without the essence of the piece, etc) Of course a jazzer listener would be satisfied... :-), I hope it is clear what I mean :-)

It is pretty pretentious to think on the jazzer side, that there is some assimetry, I mean taking as obvious that a classical musician can not play jazz in authentic way and the same time think a jazz musician can play classical music in any meaningful way.

I listened many examples jazz musician playin classical music and causes me literally pain how without essence is that. Even not Keith Jarrett... and of course not Kreisberg and not Hekselman

Just for the record, I did not say there are no exceptions. For example Chick Corea and Mehldau are authentic both in jazz and classical performance.

...and also just for the record, majority of my heroes are jazz musicians.

I have a classical music degree and have spent years immersing myself in study of jazz guitar, and I can tell you that Antoine Boyer is fantastic at both! I am jealous of people who have mad fingerstyle as well as plectrum chops...

[Christian Miller]

@Gabor it’s hard to know sometimes what context to take this stuff in.

I think you are right of course regarding performance but I’m not sure that’s what Gilad or David is doing here. It’s just shedding really. So why share it?

You could ask the same thing about people performing solo transcriptions with the record. This is very popular on YouTube. I’ve come to the conclusion that other players find it interesting and inspiring. There is some interest in how the sausage is made. David’s videos are interesting to me as a window into the learning process for someone at an elite music school. Gilad also teaches a lot and this video to me had an aspect of demonstration to it.

I don’t see myself performing classical works in public but I can see how it could advance my playing and musicianship and I might also end up doing a YouTube video about it.

otoh this is… hmmm. How do we take this?

Despite how bad it is as an example of classical guitar playing, I kind of enjoy how Kurt it is

I think there’s a space that could open up for jazz musicians playing classical works in the context of their aesthetic. If anything I would tend to say jazz players should put more of themselves into these works and see where that gets them.

Otoh simply playing the notes of a two part invention on guitar is a real technical accomplishment that I suppose this is the main thing.

[James W]

I think in many or at least some respects Bach is performer-proof. You don't necessarily need the full technique with many of his pieces to make a listenable job it. (Although some of my own efforts might be proof on the contrary! lol - it depends on the piece of course...)

I liked the Rosenwinkel rendition.

[Christian Miller]

I think in many or at least some respects Bach is performer-proof. You don't necessarily need the full technique with many of his pieces to make a listenable job it. (Although some of my own efforts might be proof on the contrary! lol - it depends on the piece of course...)

I liked the Rosenwinkel rendition.

yeah. I don’t know if people expect Kurt to pick up a classical guitar and morph into John Williams let alone a baroque lutenist.

in fact such a thing would be for me simply a display of virtuosity. I find it more interesting to hear how Bach is filtered through a strong musical personality than some exercise in ‘look I can do classical guitar too!’

Of course that is antithetical to the Urtext ‘respect the composers intentions above all’ ideologues, and I’m comfortable with that. There’s room for many different approaches. Some of the old romantic versions of Bach have their charm for instance, as much as I love modern HIPP recordings. (I love the fact that Elam from Early Music Sources is open minded about this for instance.)

[RJVB]

I kind of enjoy how Kurt it is

Yeah, 2:37 so it could have been a lot worse

I think there’s a space that could open up for jazz musicians playing classical works in the context of their aesthetic. If anything I would tend to say jazz players should put more of themselves into these works and see where that gets them.

I have a recording somewhere of Christophe Rousset playing a number of JSB's harpsichord works, and remember noticing how jazzy some parts sound, and how it would be interesting to hear how a jazz player would interpret them (on a harpsichord). Not in the sense of making jazz out of the music (Grapelli said a few words about that, though he did make a recording that's probably among his worst).

Otoh simply playing the notes of a two part invention on guitar is a real technical accomplishment that I suppose this is the main thing.

They also make for very rewarding duos.

I think in many or at least some respects Bach is performer-proof.

Yep. Of the sort where you can give friendly-but-tongue-well-hidden-in-cheek compliments like "such beautiful music, really indestructible"