"Everything Is Hard On Guitar"--Matteo Mancuso

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

I like Al's comparison of Matteo and Jaco. I could imagine a similar thread appearing when Jaco appeared.

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

Apart from the simplistic misconception of something that origins from Africa way before slavery days there is a fine difference between the words "to come from sth." and "to be about sth.".

Brilliant! But then Africans came from Africa, so...

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

Well before we become mortal musical enemies, lol, let me say that I appreciate your counterpoint though I completely disagree.

1. I don't know what you're referencing here

2. I was describing me, not him, on how asinine it would be if I put blues bending and pentatonic slurring on DL and called it jazz. It would be insulting and I would look very ignorant to others on the forum who are heavily invested into actual jazz music. No doubt you will tell me I am ignorant anyways, but that's ok. You are an expert on your own opinion the same way everyone else is with theirs.

3. Blues-rock is rock formatted music with heavy use of blues licks and tricks. Rocking blues is blues with a heavier, more aggressive electric feel and a driving band. If you don't know the difference then it's just your ignorance of the genre(s) showing. There are few people left who understand the difference but they are out there. Blues is neither diatonic nor pentatonic. You can't boil it down to scale. White scholars assigned regional labels to black music which aren't particularly accurate but are just a basic reference point for a generalized sound. So your "has to be delta blues" comments are off in outer space.

4. Yes, what jazz "was". Post 1960's it became everyone trying to make a buck by incorporating popular rock music techniques and mostly discarding the swinging rhythm, which is the core that lies at the center of jazz music and made it accessible to the average listener. We discussed this ad nauseum in the hotly contested Wynton thread where Wynton himself suggested jazz return to swing which was relevant to listeners i.e danceable. Fusion is more rock and less jazz the way blues rock is more rock and less blues.

5. I don't really care what mashup people mix with jazz because I don't pay bills with jazz music. I'm not invested in that. If I was I would use good material selection to make my act relevant and interesting, not hire a rapper as the frontman.

1. Charlie Christian bent strings. Django. So have many followers. "You can't play jazz if you can't play the blues", etc. The guitar is not a trumpet, but then trumpets did shouts, doits, shakes, etc. Round and round we go. Anybody who thinks we guitarists can't bend strings in jazz can, well, suck it. (sorry).
2. I hope you're not saying that what MM did was just pentatonics, because if so that's disingenuous and not worth further discusison.
3. Blues/Rock was played on the blues form in many cases, as was rock and roll. Depends on the song. When one plays on the blues form, it's blues first.
4. If; (1) you're a gigging rocker, and (2) are indifferent to people fusing styles with jazz, what's the rumpus Tom? Why do you have your knickers in a knot with your "straight ahead only" jazz police hat on? I suspect it's jealousy.

[DawgBone]

1. Charlie Christian bent strings. Django. So have many followers. "You can't play jazz if you can't play the blues", etc. The guitar is not a trumpet, but then trumpets did shouts, doits, shakes, etc. Round and round we go. Anybody who thinks we guitarists can't bend strings in jazz can, well, suck it. (sorry).
2. I hope you're not saying that what MM did was just pentatonics, because if so that's disingenuous and not worth further discusison.
3. Blues/Rock was played on the blues form in many cases, as was rock and roll. Depends on the song. When one plays on the blues form, it's blues first.
4. If; (1) you're a gigging rocker, and (2) are indifferent to people fusing styles with jazz, what's the rumpus Tom? Why do you have your knickers in a knot with your "straight ahead only" jazz police hat on? I suspect it's jealousy.

1. Show me your jazz player doing 2 step bends and beyond, repeatedly, on heavy strings. Heavy use of string bending is not really found in jazz but I'm all ears.

2. I wasn't saying that. You were asking if blues is pentatonic or diatonic. I said that blues isn't scales.

3. Cyndi Lauper released a blues album. Anyone can cut a "blues" song. It doesn't make them a blues player. Guys like Clapton, Hendrix, and Eric Gales can play blues amazingly well, but they aren't blues artists. Some people could be, but they choose to play other styles instead for whatever reasons they may have.

4. I think Matteo is a good guitarist but that "blues" was not something blues audiences would want to hear. It would make you "that guy" at every blues jam. He'd likely be generally welcome for his skill level as a musician, but no blues act would hire him as their guitarist if he was seeking out a gig because that wasn't blues playing. It's way outside anything accepted as such. Just like if I played Albert King bends over Cherokee at your local jazz jam and said "I am a jazz guitarist". You know that isn't the way it works. Or maybe you don't.

Lemme boil it down for you:

I am incubating some chicken eggs today since the weather is making it an appropriate time. I also have a garden. That doesn't make me a farmer. I have a framing hammer, it doesn't make me a carpenter. I am building my own motorcycle. It doesn't make me a biker. I shot 3 deer last season, but I am not a hunter. I would, and have, rejected these labels because while I can raise chickens and corn, frame a basic box structure, and fabricate basic metal bracketry, and squeeze the trigger on a deer from my porch, I lack the rest of the skill set and qualifications that go along with those labels. So too Matteo lacks the rest of the skill set to be a blues player. If you can't see that then I would call that cluelessness.

[James W]

First of all I could not resist a really daft play of words. And if you read my post above I never denied you could shred on a blues but it matters to me how you shred on a blues. First of all Coltrane as a tenor player is naturally connected to his breath. And he had a real background in blues.

OK, Coltrane played tenor and had a background in blues. But neither of these things are prerequisites to playing a great blues. Just listen to Bill Evans from that same Newport recording I posted. But this is a bit silly - if something isn't your cup of tea that's OK, but throwing about sexual metaphors wondering why people like a particular guitar player is just a little bit provocative. I don't get why people come on these threads to dump on a player. Same with the thread about Josh Meader - I mean I defended him even though, like Matteo, I haven't heard something of his own music that I would buy yet, but that's OK, they're young and have incredible skills and obviously fantastic musicianship. They're great players.

[CliffR]

1 Wait - not only do the bends have to have a minimum interval to be valid, but they have to be performed on a particular gauge of strings!?

He's certainly not a *true* bluesman

No true Scotsman - Wikipedia

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

1 Wait - not only do the bends have to have a minimum interval to be valid, but they have to be performed on a particular gauge of strings!?

He's certainly not a *true* bluesman

No true Scotsman - Wikipedia

Blues? Scotsman? Is the secret phrase "Rufus Harley"?

[CliffR]

Lol!

[kris]

There's probably some blues-rock guitarist playing thick strings...Stevie Ray Vaughan?

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

1. Show me your jazz player doing 2 step bends and beyond, repeatedly, on heavy strings. Heavy use of string bending is not really found in jazz but I'm all ears.

2. I wasn't saying that. You were asking if blues is pentatonic or diatonic. I said that blues isn't scales.

3. Cyndi Lauper released a blues album. Anyone can cut a "blues" song. It doesn't make them a blues player. Guys like Clapton, Hendrix, and Eric Gales can play blues amazingly well, but they aren't blues artists. Some people could be, but they choose to play other styles instead for whatever reasons they may have.

4. I think Matteo is a good guitarist but that "blues" was not something blues audiences would want to hear. It would make you "that guy" at every blues jam. He'd likely be generally welcome for his skill level as a musician, but no blues act would hire him as their guitarist if he was seeking out a gig because that wasn't blues playing. It's way outside anything accepted as such. Just like if I played Albert King bends over Cherokee at your local jazz jam and said "I am a jazz guitarist". You know that isn't the way it works. Or maybe you don't.

Lemme boil it down for you:

I am incubating some chicken eggs today since the weather is making it an appropriate time. I also have a garden. That doesn't make me a farmer. I have a framing hammer, it doesn't make me a carpenter. I am building my own motorcycle. It doesn't make me a biker. I shot 3 deer last season, but I am not a hunter. I would, and have, rejected these labels because while I can raise chickens and corn, frame a basic box structure, and fabricate basic metal bracketry, and squeeze the trigger on a deer from my porch, I lack the rest of the skill set and qualifications that go along with those labels. So too Matteo lacks the rest of the skill set to be a blues player. If you can't see that then I would call that cluelessness.

Lol.

No, Matteo is not a "blues guitarist".
Yes, he could be - IF - he divided his talent, skill, and taste by 20.

[DawgBone]

No, Matteo is not a "blues guitarist".

Damn right son.

Have a great weekend.

[wintermoon]

Blues? Scotsman? Is the secret phrase "Rufus Harley"?

Hey, leave Rufus out of this, I knew him!

[Christian Miller]

OK, Coltrane played tenor and had a background in blues. But neither of these things are prerequisites to playing a great blues. Just listen to Bill Evans from that same Newport recording I posted. But this is a bit silly - if something isn't your cup of tea that's OK, but throwing about sexual metaphors wondering why people like a particular guitar player is just a little bit provocative. I don't get why people come on these threads to dump on a player. Same with the thread about Josh Meader - I mean I defended him even though, like Matteo, I haven't heard something of his own music that I would buy yet, but that's OK, they're young and have incredible skills and obviously fantastic musicianship. They're great players.

Some people regard their taste as objective I suppose? don’t invite them to dinner parties maybe?

I mean Josh Meader is more to my taste than Mancuso, in that I feel he’s doing his own thing more, but they both play brilliantly. And you can discuss what it is they are doing with their skills and how they play with some objectivity - it is true for example that Matteo is fantastic at pastiching great players of the past, and some will really like that about him. Other people will be inspired by his unusual and highly evolved technique and so on.

I suppose beyond the personal taste thing, what it boils down to is that the live sphere is still where it’s at for me - it’s actually essential for jazz, the records are nice, but the live band thing is where it’s at for me. Instagram is like looking at photoshopped images of a person or landscape which doesn’t really actually exist. Some like that.

Personally I find all these backing track shred spectaculars a bit sterile.

But I can go and see someone like Pedro Martins play the crap out of a guitar in a real band.

but no one can overlook the impact of the web and social media - and to be honest that is why we are talking about Mancuso as far as I can see? The web has allowed him to build a following outside of gigs and this is true of quite a few younger players. And then there’s the whole parallel universe of clinics, where players make a living shredding over prerecorded tracks and saying that this is fusion - or even jazz. I would find that depressing for myself (even if I had the chops for it), but this has been going on for a long while and transferred over to the web very naturally.

Unlike some, like Tom Quayle, Mancuso does play gigs.

[Christian Miller]

I like Al's comparison of Matteo and Jaco. I could imagine a similar thread appearing when Jaco appeared.

For me one interesting, perhaps defining aspect of Jaco is that a lot of people did not seem to want to play with him early on. They found him weird.

For example, Jaco did not pass the audition for Tony Williams New Lifetime according to Holdsworth. He wasn’t the kind of bass player Tony wanted to play with at that time.

Chester Thompson also iirc found Jaco hard to play with - in this case Weather Report went with Jaco and Chester got the boot haha (off to Genesis).

I think John MacLaughlin may have found him a bit much too…

He just wasn’t the sort of classic ‘lock’ Motown/Soul/funk players like Tony Newton or Mike Henderson or the jazz upright players who had gone over to the dark side that had grounded jazz/rock rhythm sections up to that point. Bands like weather report sort of engineered their approach to accommodate him to my ears.

Joni said of her first finding out about Jaco - ‘someone said, there’s this bass player in Florida, he plays a bit weird, but you will probably like him.’ The rest as they say is history. Listening to Shadows and Light the thing that knocks me out is how to my ears he pushes Mike Brecker (!) and Pat Metheny to the absolute margins. It’s about him and Joni and everyone else is peripheral. Quite a thing. Not everyone wants that sort of bass player in their band lol.

I can’t help but notice that Pat went for very different bass players in his later stuff (Bright Size is my favourite Pat though.)

He was a Revolution. And he had absolutely no option to not be Jaco… in sad ways as well as positive ways.

[ragman1]

To be fair, Mancuso himself said it wasn't his thing. I think that was under one of the videos. He never claimed to be a blues player, far from it. So this arguing that 'he's not a proper blues player' is silly. He never said he was.

I found it. His own words from under the Blues shuffle in G vid.

Hi guys! I had some doubts recording this shuffle since I'm not a pure blues guy, but I enjoyed it a lot! Some Robben Ford- Bonamassa inspired phrasing here! Hope you enjoy it!

[DawgBone]

To be fair, Mancuso himself said it wasn't his thing. I think that was under one of the videos. He never claimed to be a blues player, far from it. So this arguing that 'he's not a proper blues player' is silly. He never said he was.

I found it. His own words from under the Blues shuffle in G vid.

He said "I'm not a pure blues guy". No, he just ain't a blues guy. Can he stick a blues tune? I hope so, you play rock guitar. So can Slash and most other rock guitarists. Having a basic grasp of it is pretty much a requirement. Bust out the 12/8 if you want the true tale of the tape or let me hear your Texas or Chicago shuffle rhythm work. Heck you will watch most modern "blues" guys fall on their faces.

Can he stick a blues all night? I dunno. He's adept enough as a guitarist but that would still remain to be seen. The real dumb shit is the guys who think pentatonic soloing equals blues therefore lemme insert my favorite blues rock guitarist into the blues category and scream Jimmy Page/Duane Allman/Jimi Hendrix whoever IS BLUES. Because a fanboi can't deal with his favorite guitarist not being included in as many genres as possible. I have run into quite a few of these knuckleheads. The meaning of blues is lost on most people now. Hit a local blues jam and see for yourself. Enjoy Cissy Strut and a bunch of rock tunes over and over and over again. Last sub I hired was a better guitarist than me but he flat out told me "I'm not really a blues guy". You don't need to be just don't break out the metal zone pedal and fingertapping licks. It ain't that hard. Or maybe it is.

No shit my son is in the next room transcribing Eruption for his tenor sax for whatever reason. It's great to see him transcribing the work of an incredible jazz guitarist by ear. Good boy.

[funkentele]

First I've heard of Mancuso and he is fckn killing it. It's funny witnessing the reactionary takes of the older heads in here, especially the "one note" rebuttal blues guys. SMH

Sent from my Pixel 6a using Tapatalk

[Jazzjourney4Eva]

Some might say that by 2023 it's become a bit pretentious for anybody to be up there hollerin' and gesticulatin' the blues - especially a white person. "Oh lawdy, nobody knows da trouble I see, she done me wrong and that ain't right, baby woncha please come home" (Oh, and check out my suhweet custom Les Paul!).

I remember reading an article in DownBeat magazine - in the 1980s - mentioning how blacks had largely abandoned the blues. Perhaps they'd had enough? Perhaps they wanted to move on?

Some might say that when white dudes get up there and guitar wank while shouting and hollering, that they're really just going for the sound. All the rest of it is cultural appropriation. And perhaps that was always the case, but in the 60s and 70s it was fresh and the players were more interesting.

Some may say. Others may not.

[kris]

Playing the blues over three chords-ok.
Some people do it all their lives and don't complain.
In the beginning of my guitar playing I listened to a lot of blues and I like to play a lot but I was never a real bluesman.
I've been to a dozen or so blues jam sessions and got huge applause for my 'blues" solos.
Now I don't know if it is necessary to be a blues musician to feel and play good blues.
One young musician told me: 'You are a jazz musician and you play like BB.King.'
funny....

[ccroft]

Whatever with 'The Blues'. I wonder how many of the naysayers have ever tried to play Donna Lee. Seems like I'm hearing opinions from 'jazz critics' rather than players.

I've been working on it, among other things, for years. I wish I could fuck it up half as badly as Matteo does.

[ragman1]

I think it was Joan Baez who didn't sing blues songs. She said 'I'm not black, poor and oppressed, why should I sing the blues?'.

(Actually, I think it was simpler than that. Imagine Baez singing Crossroads. It wouldn't have suited her voice or her style and she'd have been called a pretender. That's much more like it - and quite right too).

[kris]

I think it was Joan Baez who didn't sing blues songs. She said 'I'm not black, poor and oppressed, why should I sing the blues?'.

(Actually, I think it was simpler than that. Imagine Baez singing Crossroads. It wouldn't have suited her voice or her style and she'd have been called a pretender. That's much more like it - and quite right too).

Blues is a Blues...:-)...you can't sing...:

[ragman1]

Blues is a Blues...:-)...you can't sing...:

Uh?

[ragman1]

What Miles & Co were doing isn't really blues, it's too sophisticated. Blues is a feeling, it's a soul thing. If you have so many musicians like that as a band it dissipates the real feeling and becomes a performance.

They might be playing a twelve-bar and using blues scales and blue notes but that doesn't make it blues.

I can do blues because I mean what I sing. Of course, I'm not black, poor and oppressed and I have an English accent but that doesn't mean it's not blues. Of course it is because the feeling's there. Try this!

[James W]

What Miles & Co were doing isn't really blues, it's too sophisticated. Blues is a feeling, it's a soul thing. If you have so many musicians like that as a band it dissipates the real feeling and becomes a performance.

They might be playing a twelve-bar and using blues scales and blue notes but that doesn't make it blues.

You are kidding right?