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For as long as I've been interested in jazz, I've heard (and read) that horn players have to take breaths while playing and that's what gives their playing a more natural phrasing than, say, guitar players who can just wank away.
This is what I call an 'intellectual lick,' something people pick up along the way and later repeat without reflection.
It's what I also call “false.”
Miles didn't leave lots of space because he had breathing problems, and Coltrane didn't produce those “sheets of sound” because he stopped having to breathe. (Miles lived longer than Coltrane and may have been in better health when the two played together, but it was Coltrane who blew long streams of fast notes and Miles who took the taciturn approach.)
Yes, horn players have to breathe. Some mark their scores with places to take a breath. (Some singers do this too.) But good musical phrasing is not determined by the breathing of the performer but by the form and feel of the tune.
Most jazz phrases are one to four bars long, regardless of instrument. That goes for pianists, vibe players, guitar players, and horn players too.
Learning how to phrase is not about learning how YOU breathe but about how TUNES breathe.
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08-12-2012 01:07 PM
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Hehe, "intellectual lick," I like that.
I think guitarists just have a tendency to play too much and not leave enough space, hence the repeated cliche.
There are other opinions about why horn players have more musical phrasing than guitarists besides just having to stop to breathe.
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Guitarists tend to overplay, I agree, but the problem there is not knowing what to play, it's just noodling rather than playing lines. To switch gears (and metaphors) Truman Capote once said of Jack Kerouac prose, "That's not writing; it's typing!" (A brilliant line, and Capote was a whale of a stylist.)
Originally Posted by JakeAcci
I think one reason for this is that guitar players easily misunderstand what improvisation is supposed to be like. I think it's rare to find a sax player who thinks he should be able to "play just what I feel" (-as the line goes in Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues") without having mastered a load of quality licks and knowing where they do and don't fit. This is the sorta sh*t they practice, you know?
If you notice a lot of rock / blues guitarists who are really good, they all learned solos by their heroes and learned a lot of licks and where they fit and don't fit. It's what they practice, so when they play, it's the kind of thing they play, and it sounds fine.
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I guess I just see it differently. It seems like you're making a lot of blanket statements that seem really strange to me. Originally Posted by markerhodes
For example, you can still be playing lines, but playing too busy, not leaving space. Putting together solid vocabulary and/or licks but just not leaving enough space. I really don't think learning how to use space is about learning a lot of licks. Maybe if you pay close attention to the spacing within those licks you'll learn about spacing and phrasing, but I think of leaving space as something that's central to the arc of an entire solo, having less to do with short, individual phrases.
"Guitar players easily misunderstand what improvisation is supposed to be like"
That's a pretty loaded statement. It implies that
1. Improvisation is supposed to be one thing and not other things.
2. You (markerhodes) understand what it is supposed to be and not supposed to be.
3. Most guitar players do not have this knowledge.
Am I inferring correctly here?
You also seem to be saying that most guitar players' approach is to play by feeling instead of using licks that they know work in the harmonic context. I don't really know where you're getting that, it's not a generalization I would agree with.
You say that sax players practice a load of licks and learn the context of those licks. That's a common approach to learning jazz, and I think it's shared among instruments, though there are also other approaches. Some great players (of any instrument) don't really learn a load of licks. I'd disagree that horn players learn more licks than guitar players on average, and so I'd disagree that that is what makes horn players' phrasing better than guitar players.
I'm not trying to come down hard or give you shit or anything, I just really don't see where you're coming from with a lot of these statements. I don't think the solution to leaving space and phrasing musically is learning a lot of licks. Maybe studying full solos or choruses...or listening to the phrasing of admired players...
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One can play lines and leave no space, granted. My contention is that when one learns (-or listens closely to) many jazz solos, one hears where the space tends to be left by good improvisers. One device so common we tend not to think of it as a device is to do the following over a long ii-V-I: play over the two and five and play the third of I on the first beat and leave the rest of that measure and the following (also a I chord) empty. Originally Posted by JakeAcci
Over rhythm changes, there's a lot of room for space over the first four bars, which can all be treated as I, but then make the change to measure 5. That's a crucial point in the 8 bars of Rhythm's A section. Another crucial point is the move from (say) Eb- to E diminished. It's rare for players to let that change pass in silence. It's an "active" point, a highlight, of the progression.
If I recall correctly, it was you who said guitar players tend to play too much (or overplay). I think I took it as intended, a general statement in a casual conversation.
I think of improvisation as the spontaneous re-orginazation of known material. (I think Joe Pass was the first one I read describing it that way.)
To leave space the way Miles did, and make solos hang together, requires compositional chops that he certainly had but the average player doesn't. (Heck, most first-rate players don't have Miles' compositional sense. I don't think Joe Pass did, for example, but he was a great player.)
The easiest way to leave space in solos---and this is an old device too--is to use the same rhythms as the melody but with different notes. (Not throughout but in choice spots.) And leave the same empty spots empty. Louis Armstrong was brilliant at this.
Charlie Christian did something to create space all the time: play the root twice like a period at the end of a sentence. It's one of his most common devices. He used it all the time. He often started solos that way too.
Guitar players get accused of "noodling" not because of the number of notes they play but their lack of definition. I'm sure some sax players do this too, but I can honestly say I've seen one I paid to see do it! (And yes, I have paid to see guitar players who "noodled.") Even when Coltrane played a flurry of notes, they had no "drift" in them. He knew what he was doing. The solo on "Giant Steps" is almost mathematical in conception, but man did he play it with fire!
This is exactly why Herb Ellis said that guitar players who spent hours practicing scales and arpeggios sounded like guys playing scales and arpeggios when soloing on stage. They hadn't practiced jazz lines and learning how to connect them. If you spend hours a day playing Bird solos (or Charlie Christian or Wes or Sonny Rollins lines), when you take a solo onstage jazz will come out. It may be derivative but it won't be called "noodling", even if you play a lot of notes. (Diz, Sonny Stitt, and Sonny Rollins play millions of notes of "Sunny Side Up" but there's no noodling at all. It's all first-rate jazz lines.)
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I've mentioned this before but I think it bears repeating here. Paul Desmond once interviewed Charlie Parker and mentioned that a line in one of Parker's solos sounded like an exercise from a saxophone book. (This wasn't a criticism: Desmond had studied the same book and recognized the exercise.) Parker said, "Yeah, it was all done with books." Bird and Diz kept exercise books with them when playing with Earl "Fatha" Hines. He said they would refer to the books during set breaks, trying to find lines they could use in tunes the band played.
It is an irony of bebop's history that two of its leading lights did some of their harmonic experimentation in order to create space to play lines they had already mastered and needed a place to put 'em on stage. And these guys were musical geniuses!
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The space left by good improvisers has little to do with what instrument they play.
Mark, I like your term for it...my term, hip "experienced" plater bullshit, usually raises a few hairs.
At least the bullshit jazz players spout has some basis in reality...if I gotta see another Blooze player talk about "playing what you feel" some poor badtards gonna get a strat upside his head
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I remember Norman Brown saying what really turned his playing around was when he started taking voice lessons. That trying to play phrases like he would sing them took him to the next level. He was in process of getting his first recording contract at the time.
Then you hear instrumentalists and even public speakers talk about listing to Frank Sinatra because of his phrasing. Breathing is part of how we speak and hear others and I would say that transfer to how we want to hear music. So the way we get irritated by fast-talkers going on and on, we get tried of guitarist fire-hose soloing.
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I know. It comes from playing songs that don't change key and one scale can fit everything. Thing is, the really good blues players aren't mindless about it at all. Stevie Ray always played lines. Clapton too. Sure, they used licks from their heroes but they play(ed) them with conviction and shuffled them around nicely. (Also, they know a LOT of them, not just a couple dozen.) Johnny Winter too---that guy must know 200 turnarounds! Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
At least the bullshit jazz players spout has some basis in reality...if I gotta see another Blooze player talk about "playing what you feel" some poor badtards gonna get a strat upside his head
Out of time. More later
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I am still reading this thread but needed to reply. Yes, horn players do take breathes..I do not think Miles' or Coltranes' phrasing was due to their health. I do not think that "wind' players have better phrasing then string players.
I need to think about this and continue later.
One thing I do think is that chords count, and correct notes count and i don't beliive SRV has anything to do with jazz
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I concur with Mike G, in that it seems unlikely that Miles’ and Trane’s phrasing was due to their health. Although I really like the idea of approaching a solo as if you had to breathe it. It’s one valid approach among many of course. But I also appreciate the fact that we can play long phrases without a break – precisely because our note production is not reliant upon breathing. Just like a pianist. That’s not to say that a solo should sound as if you’re being paid by the note. Like anything else, lengthy flurries of notes should be just one color on your pallete.
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"Play what you feel?" Unadulterated b.s. in my book. When I was young I took piano lessons for years, right into college. Surprisingly, NONE of my teachers emphasized anything similar to rhythmic competence, so I didn't really learn simple counting out a beat. As a result I have a tough time holding even a simple 4/4 beat. In fact, one musician said rather in disgust, "Your rhythm is so bad, if you were Catholic, you'd be pregnant." Ouch....
I got Matt Warnock's Modern Time E-Book and am trying to start on it. And by the way, don't let anyone kid you - ADD is real!
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Frank had great phrasing. I love to hear him sing. Originally Posted by docbop
As for "fire-hose" soloing, few jazz guitarists can play as fast as Bird did. (On another current thread AlsoRan plays a link to a Downbeat interview with Miles Davis in which he says that when playing with Bird, he "quit every night" because the tempos were so fast, such a challenge.) Or Diz, or Sonny Rollins, or Sonny Stitt. Playing fast is not the same thing as talking fast because playing fast when the tempo is fast is playing in time and not "too fast." (Talking 'too fast' is talking a lot faster than the people you are talking to. Further, people who 'talk fast' all the time have to breathe too and it doesn't impede their rate of speech.)
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Fair enough about 'wind' players. Many people take them (-the good ones, anyway) as 'model' soloists. Originally Posted by mike g
No, SRV wasn't a jazz player. That comment was in relation to good rock / blues players, and he was certainly one of those.
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O, I don't think that's the explanation either. But it brings the point into such clear focus: Coltrane played fast and forever, while Miles seemed to NOT play more than he played. They both had to breathe. I don't think Miles' sparse lines had anything to do with needing to take in more breath. This is why I think the idea that "horn players phrase so well because they have to breathe" is false. Originally Posted by jovialspoon
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I'll throw in that the "play what you feel" cliché is useless at best. I think it's moe useful to think of it as feeling what you play, and if you can't feel what you're playing, you shouldn't be playing it. In other words, your playing should reflect, to the best of your abilities, what you like to hear. But if you don't get any kind of emotional response from what you're playing, I'm not sure how you can expect any listener to achieve the desired response.
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I like that---feel what you play. Originally Posted by amusiathread
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Great post! I love reading informative posts! Thank you for sharing
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Ah, I see, so that's the problem with guitar players! Originally Posted by markerhodes
(Really, you mustn't say things like that, you almost gave me a heart attack! And you, a mod and all.
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Seriously, though, any good wind player is going to learn to take a breathe so fast in a phrase you'll barely notice it. Jazz phrasing needs good long breaks between phrases - longer than is needed for a breath. I do think, though, that thinking a lot about breath and can inform your musicality.
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