The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    I'm new to the forum (first post); here's my issue: I play jazz and Bossa standards on nylon string guitar. After many years of developing my solo repertoire, I'm now interested in developing chops to play G/B/D trio format--what I consider the most demanding context for a guitar player as he must carry both the harmonic and improvisational loads. Kenny Burrell is one of the best at this in a straight-ahead steel stringed jazz box mode, but as I'm interested in doing it finger style on nylon string, the traditional example would be the Charlie Byrd trio, although I'm actually much more taken with Earl Klugh when he's playing trad jazz rather than his smooth jazz norm (check out "The Earl Klugh Trio, Volume 1"). At this stage in my development, I'm playing my rep against BIAB with just bass and drums turned on, but my problem is the BIAB bass (real tracks upright bass BIAB 2010.5 for Mac) is way too close in sonic register to the sound of my guitar. On Klugh's recordings (and live performance--see this video:
    , as well as the many old recordings of the Charlie Byrd trio, the bass is well separated from the sound/tonal register of the guitar. So for those of you who are much more experienced at tweaking BIAB, is there a way for me to achieve this? So far what I've done is max out the volume of the bass and turn down the volume of the drums, but it's still not satisfactory. Some sort of EQ solution? Or hardware, such as sending the bass track to a powered subwoofer (which I don't yet own)?

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  3. #2

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    Hey Nylonstrung, welcome to the forum.. All you can do in BiaB is alter the tone of the Bass, if you take the BiaB file to RealBand you can play around with the eq to your hearts content, then render to mp3 and play along with that..Hope this helps..

    Tom

  4. #3

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    Have you checked for the actual notes being played by the bass. Most of those notes should below the lowest note on the guitar.

    But that is the fundamental note there are a lot of overtones also. My first thought is to work on the eq, but the thing is I don't have the problem you mentioned on my system and I don't have to use an eq.

    Perhaps you're listening through speakers that don't give you a good representation of the lower frequencies. I have my computer hooked up to decent studio monitors.

  5. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by fep
    Have you checked for the actual notes being played by the bass. Most of those notes should below the lowest note on the guitar.

    But that is the fundamental note there are a lot of overtones also. My first thought is to work on the eq, but the thing is I don't have the problem you mentioned on my system and I don't have to use an eq.

    Perhaps you're listening through speakers that don't give you a good representation of the lower frequencies. I have my computer hooked up to decent studio monitors.
    Thanks for the quick response. I have some pretty good speakers, but I also have an exceptional bass tone coming from my guitar, plus I have my guitar EQ'd to a mellow cedar-top sound rather than a bright spruce classical sound such as Charlie Byrd played. I have exported the bass and drum tracks to Garage Band for one tune as an experiment to better control the volume, and did get somewhat better results. But at this stage in the game, it helps me to have the chart up on the screen and be able to follow where the chord changes are since I don't have the piano to help me hear the changes and stay on track with the tune. I'm starting to think that either a bass amp or a powered subwoofer may be my solution.

  6. #5

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    I use BIAB and you will be amazed at the differance in Timbre achieved when a Powered Sub Woofer is used. I think (and I am no expert) that the normal speakers tend to highlight the overtones as the real lower register responce is generally just not there.

  7. #6

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    Nylonstring, watching the changes is not the best long term idea. Why don't you use a simple bass track that gets BiaB to drop the root on the beat each change.That way you will learn faster, as the sound and feel will get in your ears..Music is an ear art. painting is for eyes..This does come from personal experience of doing just what you now do..It is not easy to get away from BiaB if you get too used to it..

    Tom

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by oilywrag
    Nylonstring, watching the changes is not the best long term idea. Why don't you use a simple bass track that gets BiaB to drop the root on the beat each change.That way you will learn faster, as the sound and feel will get in your ears..Music is an ear art. painting is for eyes..This does come from personal experience of doing just what you now do..It is not easy to get away from BiaB if you get too used to it..

    Tom
    You may be right--in the long term--but for now there are additional elements to the process for which I find it essential at this stage (too long to go into now). Plus, I'm not so sure that having a chart in front of one is a bad thing. But, just to clarify things, what simple bass track are you speaking of? Isn't the bass track written by the parameters of the jazz style? Is there some sort of super simple jazz style that writes the bass line as you describe?

  9. #8

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    Don it all depends on how many realtracks and styles you have. As a general rule you can change the bass part to a simple variation. You could always try a Midi Bass part, and play it on the soloist track, use the custom soloist feature and edit the part to give you what you want.
    Long winded but it would be a starting point, until your ear gets used to more complex bass parts, You could also print off the chord chart and just have that in front of you..
    Just because you have one style playing does not mean you can't mix and match the real tracks that are in the style..If you have any more questions feel free to ask..

    Tom

  10. #9

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    Tom, I have the 2010.5 UltraMegaPakPlus (or whateverthehell it's called), so I've got *plenty* of realtracks--but that doesn't help me know which style/track would do what you're suggesting. Got any idea?

  11. #10

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    Don, When you launch the RT menu, from the bass icon. You should see all your realtracks. When you scroll down to the Bass, you will see all the bass styles you have.

    Once there find the styles you want Jazz etc, then from those tracks you should find a simple version of what you are looking for.

    Tracks 1391,1392,1393,1385,1386 and 483 are all simple variations..Like I said before, perhaps a custom midi track of your own may work for you..

    Tom

  12. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by oilywrag
    Don, When you launch the RT menu, from the bass icon. You should see all your realtracks. When you scroll down to the Bass, you will see all the bass styles you have.

    Once there find the styles you want Jazz etc, then from those tracks you should find a simple version of what you are looking for.

    Tracks 1391,1392,1393,1385,1386 and 483 are all simple variations..Like I said before, perhaps a custom midi track of your own may work for you..

    Tom
    Thanks, Tom, I'll check it out.

  13. #12

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    Don, I have been leading my own trio for years, just what you're looking to do, and I can suggest that you may want to get into a brighter sound if you want to cut through bass and drums. I ask my drummers to lay off the heavy ride cymbals and play more like percussionists so that the guitar's highs don't get lost in the cymbals, and lately I've been using more hand percussionists than drummers. You'll also need to find a bassist who isn't averse to playing in the lower registers when accompanying you.

  14. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by ronjazz
    Don, I have been leading my own trio for years, just what you're looking to do, and I can suggest that you may want to get into a brighter sound if you want to cut through bass and drums. I ask my drummers to lay off the heavy ride cymbals and play more like percussionists so that the guitar's highs don't get lost in the cymbals, and lately I've been using more hand percussionists than drummers. You'll also need to find a bassist who isn't averse to playing in the lower registers when accompanying you.
    You may be right, Ron, but I think your last comment is the most cogent. That's what I hear in both the Byrd and Klugh recordings. And I finally did solve the problem in BIAB for practice (thanks to everyone who had suggestions). It turned out that the speakers I was using, which I had acquired from my son, were, while very good high end units, the middle channel speakers for a surround sound system and were designed to exclude that lower register and work in conjunction with a powered subwoofer. As soon as I added some full range speakers, I had all the thunder bass I needed. It's made a big difference in my practice.

    Ron, do you have any straight ahead trio records? I haven't been able to find anything out there in this vein except the Byrd recordings and Earl's one trio album (he actually made one more, vol. 2, but it was mixed with heavy-handed orchestration that pretty much completely drowns out the trio--probably by demand from Warner Bros.--and I find it unlistenable). I watched some of your youtube videos and very much enjoyed your playing.

  15. #14

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    Thanks, Don. Un fortunately, there's not much straight-ahead available on the nylon, neither the instrument nor the technique lends itself to bop-style playing all that much. Bassist Dominique DiPiazza has a trio CD called Princess Sita that features Nelson Veras on nylon, that's quite good. My own Romanza on Whaling City Sound has some as well, but Latin is more common on the nylon. Of course, Charlie Byrd made lots of straight-ahead trio recordings for Riverside before he went to Columbia. I just don't see much after Byrd, and I'm not going to pursue that style since the audience for it is almost non-existent. Check out and really dig for the Lennie Breau trio stuff: Live At Donte's and Swingin' on a 7-string are two that might give you some inspiration. Even on electric he played with a classical touch, much to be learned there.

  16. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by ronjazz
    Thanks, Don. Un fortunately, there's not much straight-ahead available on the nylon, neither the instrument nor the technique lends itself to bop-style playing all that much. Bassist Dominique DiPiazza has a trio CD called Princess Sita that features Nelson Veras on nylon, that's quite good. My own Romanza on Whaling City Sound has some as well, but Latin is more common on the nylon. Of course, Charlie Byrd made lots of straight-ahead trio recordings for Riverside before he went to Columbia. I just don't see much after Byrd, and I'm not going to pursue that style since the audience for it is almost non-existent. Check out and really dig for the Lennie Breau trio stuff: Live At Donte's and Swingin' on a 7-string are two that might give you some inspiration. Even on electric he played with a classical touch, much to be learned there.
    Actually, I've been moving away from be-bop for some time now. Perhaps I should just say American songbook (standards). But that's really what Byrd was doing, as well. I do quite a bit of Brazillian, and will continue. I find it's been easier to play the Jobim tunes in trio format right off the bat than other tunes. And I've aspired to do what you're doing, singing those songs in Portuguese (as I'm a better vocalist than guitarist), but it's hard to work that stuff out without a teacher. I've gotten the Portuguese lyrics to a lot of the tunes, but the pronounciation is so different from the way it's written, it's tough to figure out how it should really be pronounced even after listening countless times to someone else sing them in Portuguese (Karrin Allison has about the easiest to understand versions for me).

    I've been listening to Lenny for many years now. His live at Bourbon St. with Thompson on bass is one of my top 10 favorites. His whole solo self comping with 3rds and 7ths is something on my list to get a handle on once I get past the basics of this whole bag.

    Thanks again for the tips.

  17. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by ronjazz
    Thanks, Don. Un fortunately, there's not much straight-ahead available on the nylon, neither the instrument nor the technique lends itself to bop-style playing all that much. Bassist Dominique DiPiazza has a trio CD called Princess Sita that features Nelson Veras on nylon, that's quite good. My own Romanza on Whaling City Sound has some as well, but Latin is more common on the nylon. Of course, Charlie Byrd made lots of straight-ahead trio recordings for Riverside before he went to Columbia. I just don't see much after Byrd, and I'm not going to pursue that style since the audience for it is almost non-existent. Check out and really dig for the Lennie Breau trio stuff: Live At Donte's and Swingin' on a 7-string are two that might give you some inspiration. Even on electric he played with a classical touch, much to be learned there.
    Ron, speaking of bop on a nylon--fingerstyle--check out this guy: the exception to the rule!