How Similar was Freddie Green's Comping to Bach Chorales Harmonically?

[Tal_175]

I have studied some Bach but not the Chorales specifically. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the horizontal realization of harmony in Freddie Green's comping seems very similar to the four part Bach Chorales. What do you think?

Harmonic Techniques to Create Moving Chord Progressions using Three Note Voicings
Part 2 - Harmonic Techniques to Create Moving Chord Progressions using Three Note Voicings
Harmonic Techniques to Create Moving Chord Progressions using Three Note Voicings - Pert 3

[mr. beaumont]

He considered the guitar part a "tenor line."

[Tal_175]

He considered the guitar part a "tenor line."

It seems like people who studied Freddie Green's comping fall into two categories: people who believe he played 3 or 4 note voices (some very reputable people too) and people who believe he actually played only one note at a time and muted the others (also some very reputable people).

This question will probably makes sense only to people who are in the first camp.

[Jimmy blue note]

There is some horizontal consistency in Freddie Green's playing, granted but the entire approach is very different. Hey Christian, I'm going to beat you to the historical punch here by pointing out that in Bach's time, probably cleanly up until Debussy, the compositional approach was with a strongly designed lyrical horizontal 4 part lines converging at points of cadences. Within those, what we now call the development or, I suppose really extended phrases are individual independent voices centred by a bass line (evolution of the cantus firmus).

Jazz, for a huge part, is based on a ground up harmonic movement that is tied to, if not restricted by song form which is also based on a strong popular length dictates (16, 32 bars...) The whole harmonic rhythm of early jazz is pulsed in 2-4 measure cadences and turnarounds. Bach was thinking cadences but he was NOT shedding his II V I licks as his primary motivating thought.
Independent jazz voice leading is limited by a stock set of chord voicings (guitar grabs) that can be altered or suspended or given some kind of inter chordal movement, but by design and by execution, these voices didn't really lead outside of a stock set of movements, even if the did take a stroll between chord tones.

Classical, romantic, post romantic and even up to Schoenberg had freedom of voices and voicings so the root could appear in the SATB arrangement with equality. I once asked Tal Farlow (a well qualified spokesman for jazz guitar harmony accompaniament) if he ever considered voicings with ...say 7 in the bass or root movement within the inner voices. He said he admitted it's an interesting sound but it was way outside of the application of harmony he could even imagine.
Sure Freddie could throw in an inversion, as an alternative to root in bass, but no, not in any way that could be considered even rudimentary harmonic movement by Bach.

Freddie had a good ear. He could connect. So do cowboy chords within a small space of the fingerboard. Bach also had a good ear and in analysis, as in the articles of the OP, a coincident thread can be found, but I think these connections of convenience are a far cry from the nuance of individual vocal lines, voices of convergence and divergence, resolutions, deceptive cadences and the amount of melodic/harmonic nuance that went into Bach's overall approach; the proof is in the listening.
You can get an academic poetry professor to give a thesis on Dr. Seuss, but that doesn't make it Shakespeare to the listener.

My opinion anyway.

[Christian Miller]

There is some horizontal consistency in Freddie Green's playing, granted but the entire approach is very different. Hey Christian, I'm going to beat you to the historical punch here by pointing out that in Bach's time, probably cleanly up until Debussy, the compositional approach was with a strongly designed lyrical horizontal 4 part lines converging at points of cadences. Within those, what we now call phrases are individual independent voices centred by a bass line (evolution of the cantus firmus).

This is my understanding of Bach’s approach (actually 4 voices plus for chorale harmonisation iirc) from what Derek Remes has said about it from his research. It wasn’t everyone’s approach to teaching harmony at the time tho.

I get the feeling SATB was standardised in music theory due to the German influence in c19, but not 100% sure. Maybe the French did it differently…

What I’ve studied myself has been more in the Italian tradition (Corelli, Scarlatti etc) which instead starts with three voices that I find works really well on guitar and is just a bit easier to get to grips with to be quite honest haha

(Bach comes up way more than any of his contemporaries when jazz musicians talk about the music of the past, but obviously there’s such a thing as a wider baroque style. Bachs uniquely progressive style actually makes him quite a bad model for study in some ways.

There’s that old joke isn’t there, about how Bach would fail a Bach harmony exam….)

What I would say is western harmony - suspension chains, fourthwise progressions, cadences and so on -forms the backbone of western music (ya don’t say?) Jazz is NOT the same thing, and yet includes that material while layering new stuff on it. It’s no surprise that FG’s chording might remind the OP of Bach. We all swimming in the same sea.

TL;DR four part harmony is above my pay grade m8

[Christian Miller]

Also bear in mind what we call ‘Freddie green’ grips are more correctly ‘George Van Eps’ grips. Afaik people had no idea what FG was doing for years (he wasn’t about to tell anyone) and assumed it was these standard chords which come to us through the GVE tradition.

Again, I notice these chords are three voices. Three part harmony for the win!!!

This is what’s in your links anyway, haven’t played through the examples yet.

[Tal_175]

Also bear in mind what we call ‘Freddie green’ grips are more correctly ‘George Van Eps’ grips. Afaik people had no idea what FG was doing for years (he wasn’t about to tell anyone) and assumed it was these standard chords which come to us through the GVE tradition.

Again, I notice these chords are three voices. Three part harmony for the win!!!

This is what’s in your links anyway, haven’t played through the examples yet.

I've been working on quarter note chord walking in the last few weeks. I'm not doing it to learn FG style comping per se but more for discovering different voicings, chord connections, voice movements, passing chords etc along the fretboard in an improvisational context. I use three and four part chords but you might be right that FG's voices have three parts or less (as you said the link shows three note voices). Randy Vincent's three note voicing book has some nice examples as well but I'd say the links in the first post covers pretty much covers the examples in the book with regards to chord walking.

[Bach5G]

There’s that old joke isn’t there, about how Bach would fail a Bach harmony exam….)



I like it.

[hotpepper01]

Interesting topic. There is tons of information to be discovered and to be studied at the The Freddie Green Web Site People are still not in agreement about what Freddie actually did. What I see and hear is that Freddie mostly played two notes on the D and G strings, sometimes three note shell chords and sometime one single note on the G string. Just to be clear: there is no such thing as a one note chord in my book. A chord takes three notes at least. So the "one note chord" really was playing a single note instead of a three note chord. Most people say Freddie played the tenor line to the bass player's bassline. Many vids about that topic are out there on YT. From my perspective Freddie above all was superior in providing the rythm for the band. IMHO, the band could not slow down or speed up when Freddie played rythm. And that is something different from keeping time. Time is just time. Rythm in a bigband is all about keeping the swing and the feel going and guitar in a bigband is a rythm instrument in the rythm section and not so much a tonal/melody instrument. Playing out of synch is far worse than playing the wrong chord. So, the harmony in bigband guitar playing is way less important as in the Bach chorales. If I would dampen all my strings and keep good rythm, very few people in the band would notice and perhaps only one or two in the audiance.
There is this soundclip at the Freddie Green website under the "listen" header, scroll down to "what a difference Freddie makes". That perfectly illustrates the role a guitar in a bigband has, ie keeping the rythm with the others in the rythm section.

[Jimmy blue note]

There’s that old joke isn’t there, about how Bach would fail a Bach harmony exam….)



I like it.

Then there's the other joke: Why did Bach have 20 children? His organ had no stops.

[Jimmy blue note]

(Bach comes up way more than any of his contemporaries when jazz musicians talk about the music of the past, but obviously there’s such a thing as a wider baroque style. Bachs uniquely progressive style actually makes him quite a bad model for study in some ways.

There’s that old joke isn’t there, about how Bach would fail a Bach harmony exam….)

My assessment of Bach changed when I took on a serious immersion into Sylvius Leopold Weiss's lute music. I became convinced that Bach himself was humbled, and even intimidated by the sheer beautiful lyricism and contrapuntal density of Weiss's works (they were Leipzig contemporaries). This argument was made even more convincingly when you consider that Bach didn't play lute or anything like a guitar but he did write 4 lute suites, one actually written for a lute sounding keyboard, and one that was a recycle of a Cello Suite and one a reworking of a violin suite.
Anyway, if you haven't, check out Sylvius Leopold Weiss and check out HIS take on harmony. For me, he's the Lester Young of the Baroque to Bach's Coleman Hawkins. Lyric horizontal lines vs the Vertical density of the harmony.
Rob McC, what's your take on Weiss?

[Christian Miller]

Then there's the other joke: Why did Bach have 20 children? His organ had no stops.

Bach’s organ works

etc

[Christian Miller]

[QUOTE=Jimmy blue note;1295842]My assessment of Bach changed when I took on a serious immersion into Sylvius Leopold Weiss's lute music. I became convinced that Bach himself was humbled, and even intimidated by the sheer beautiful lyricism and contrapuntal density of Weiss's works (they were Leipzig contemporaries).

I don’t think Weiss was working Leipzig at any point? Wikipedia says he was in Breslau, Rome and Dresden

The lutenist in Leipzig was David Kellner. I also like his music very much. Kellner was also an influential theorist (according to Wikipedia he invented the circle of fifths diagram), Iirc Brahms being a devotee of the musical past had a copy of his treatise.

I find that quite interesting because we normally think of pianists being the real theory gurus in the wider musical world.

This argument was made even more convincingly when you consider that Bach didn't play lute or anything like a guitar but he did write 4 lute suites, one actually written for a lute sounding keyboard, and one that was a recycle of a Cello Suite and one a reworking of a violin suite.

im not sure if there’s any evidence the lute suites were actually written for lute (afaik scholars seem to think they were written for Lautenwerk, a keyboard instrument) but I have to say I find that odd given the lute suites are simple for keyboard music? Perhaps he wanted those pieces to imitate aspects of lute music?

Otoh i gather Weiss is much easier to play on baroque lute than guitar. It’s easy to see some of that from the way the bass notes work on his music, I can see how having a few extra bass strings would simplify the fingerings haha.

[Jimmy blue note]

im not sure if there’s any evidence the lute suites were actually written for lute (afaik scholars seem to think they were written for Lautenwerk, a keyboard instrument) but I have to say I find that odd given the lute suites are simple for keyboard music? Perhaps he wanted those pieces to imitate aspects of lute music?
.

The lute suites were written on double staff, like keyboard music. Unless he was the baroque precursor to Johnny Smith, I'd say that's pretty strong evidence he was not actually a lute player. There are editions of the lute suites that have copies of the original manuscripts and that solidly points to that conclusion. Honestly, these revered and oft performed "lute" suites are in fact keyboard pieces 'in the style' of lute. I believe this. But the music is there so it's all that matters. Albaniz is some of the most essential and guitaristic music in the canon and all of that is piano music transcribed for guitar.
So that kind of points to the harmonic and practical underlying point of this thread, that the distinction between individual instruments isn't so clearly defined when it'd seen from the perspective of the counterpoint of the composer, but it IS seen as an accomplishment worth noting only for guitarists because thinking in a voice leading way is SO inherently foreign or novel to the tradition with which guitarists are taught to play.

Think about it. How many lutenists and guitarists have voice leading proficiency in their fundamental training? Or even just awareness of voice movement within SATB? Now how many pianists have this awareness? You can't help it.

I'd be truly curious to know what the training a baroque era lutenist had and what role improvisation played in the life of a Weiss contemporary.

Otoh i gather Weiss is much easier to play on baroque lute than guitar. It’s easy to see some of that from the way the bass notes work on his music, I can see how having a few extra bass strings would simplify the fingerings haha.

That's why I play a 7 string guitar and that's why I play the low string tuned to a B. It's not so I can double the 5th string like a 5th string octave pedal when comping, but so I can actually have the ability to follow the bass line function below the sixth string without the need to shift. As is the fingerboard of the lute, more range, less shifting, wider available range when holding down a voice.

[Christian Miller]

The lute suites were written on double staff, like keyboard music. Unless he was the baroque precursor to Johnny Smith, I'd say that's pretty strong evidence he was not actually a lute player. There are editions of the lute suites that have copies of the original manuscripts and that solidly points to that conclusion. Honestly, these revered and oft performed "lute" suites are in fact keyboard pieces 'in the style' of lute. I believe this. But the music is there so it's all that matters. Albaniz is some of the most essential and guitaristic music in the canon and all of that is piano music transcribed for guitar.

So that kind of points to the harmonic and practical underlying point of this thread, that the distinction between individual instruments isn't so clearly defined when it'd seen from the perspective of the counterpoint of the composer, but it IS seen as an accomplishment worth noting only for guitarists because thinking in a voice leading way is SO inherently foreign or novel to the tradition with which guitarists are taught to play.

I feel I should point out that Palestrina played the lute... so clearly it wasn't THAT foreign at that point.

While counterpoint is counterpoint some things are very natural to the lute/guitar - parallel 10ths and so on - and others less so - suspended ninths for example (but I like working on these haha).

So while I don't find counterpoint alien to the guitar I do think that the counterpoint is not necessarily expressed the same way as for keyboards. In fact that's something I've had to work with with baroque/classical improvisation. I think Rob would be the first to tell you keyboard improvisation practices are a poor match for the instrument... Mostly I've found it hard to achieve the sort of two voice independence that comes very naturally to the keys and is baked into a lot of the famous keyboard Partimenti like Fenaroli's. Obviously playing a Bach two part invention is relatively easy a pianist, but quite a big deal for a guitarist haha.

A lot of classical guitarists interested in improvisation have based their style on Guiliani. It might seem odd to think Guiliani as a contrapuntalist, but actually he was highly accomplished in this area - he wrote a quite rigorous three-part fugue for guitar that is also highly playable. Props! I've heard a few scholars talk about Guliani's talent for making contrapuntal combinations very natural for the guitar in all his music. (TBF he didn't use lot of different keys like Sor did.)

Think about it. How many lutenists and guitarists have voice leading proficiency in their fundamental training? Or even just awareness of voice movement within SATB? Now how many pianists have this awareness? You can't help it.

I'd be truly curious to know what the training a baroque era lutenist had and what role improvisation played in the life of a Weiss contemporary.

Well that's Rob's ballpark really of course, but my slightly educated guess would be - a lot. Preludes and variations of grounds, as well as free fantasias lend themselves well to the improvisation and are a good fit for both guitar and lute. (Ground bass variations perhaps even more so for baroque lute because of the layout of the instrument, which means you can play a step wise bass on the unstopped bass strings and improvise on it in open position with simple fingerings?)

I understand Weiss was also able to improvise fugues?

Actually this is where it's actually quite helpful to not think about Bach in relation to this.

We think Bach = the very model of a fugue, but actually according to John Mortensen in his 'how to improvise fugue' book, they are unusually technical and rigorous. Bach lute suite fugues and Weiss's own extant fugue are more relaxed in style and change texture - after entries sometimes going into more of a prelude like arpeggiated texture, or with a dominant melody with a slower moving bass both of which are easier on lute/guitar. Or they simply drop a voice for several bars.... It was a fairly free form in some ways. Actually I think the fugue can actually be a very improvisational form, albeit one that needs to be undertaken with some preparation of subjects and counter subjects. I'm not sure there was always a lot of stylistic distinction between fugues and other pieces aside from the format of the voice entries coming in one by one.

That's why I play a 7 string guitar and that's why I play the low string tuned to a B. It's not so I can double the 5th string like a 5th string octave pedal when comping, but so I can actually have the ability to follow the bass line function below the sixth string without the need to shift. As is the fingerboard of the lute, more range, less shifting, wider available range when holding down a voice.

There's Rob's new guitar as well of course... and this thing

TBH listening to this, and bearing in mind Rob's instrument, I'd be interested on Rob's thoughts regarding the sustain of this instrument. Would this be too texturally mushy?

[dot75]

Freddie above all was superior in providing the rythm for the band. IMHO, the band could not slow down or speed up when Freddie played rythm. And that is something different from keeping time. Time is just time. Rythm in a bigband is all about keeping the swing and the feel going and guitar in a bigband is a rythm instrument in the rythm section and not so much a tonal/melody instrument. Playing out of synch is far worse than playing the wrong chord. So, the harmony in bigband guitar playing is way less important as in the Bach chorales. If I would dampen all my strings and keep good rythm, very few people in the band would notice and perhaps only one or two in the audiance.
There is this soundclip at the Freddie Green website under the "listen" header, scroll down to "what a difference Freddie makes". That perfectly illustrates the role a guitar in a bigband has, ie keeping the rythm with the others in the rythm section.

Basie said (I think his autobiography's called 'The Boy from Red Bank' ?) that he found out early on that when FG took a solo the band lost the groove,

Also read somewhere that Basie pushed FG to get an amp like all the other BB guitar players, FG resisted & Basie finally presented him with one & took the money out of his pay, FG compromised by plugging in but not turning the amp on

[Christian Miller]

Actually I think there's a big overlap with baroque continuo sections and old school big band rhythm sections - often you can't really hear the plucked strings. But you CAN feel them.

[grahambop]

A lot of classical guitarists interested in improvisation have based their style on Guiliani. It might seem odd to think Guiliani as a contrapuntalist, but actually he was highly accomplished in this area - he wrote a quite rigorous three-part fugue for guitar that is also highly playable. Props! I've heard a few scholars talk about Guliani's talent for making contrapuntal combinations very natural for the guitar in all his music.

I recently got a book ‘7 Romantic Fugues for guitar' which has the Guiliani and some other 19th-C fugues (a couple of them are arrangements by Mertz and Tarrega). Really interesting stuff and nice to play.

[Tal_175]

Classical, romantic, post romantic and even up to Schoenberg had freedom of voices and voicings so the root could appear in the SATB arrangement with equality. I once asked Tal Farlow (a well qualified spokesman for jazz guitar harmony accompaniament) if he ever considered voicings with ...say 7 in the bass or root movement within the inner voices. He said he admitted it's an interesting sound but it was way outside of the application of harmony he could even imagine.
Sure Freddie could throw in an inversion, as an alternative to root in bass, but no, not in any way that could be considered even rudimentary harmonic movement by Bach.

I see a lot of (what's now) common voice leading and harmonic devices in Bach's music. Especially the cycle of 4th movements are not that out there. In fact, lot of the harmonic movements are surprisingly similar to the standards.
For example the analysis below is a free sample from BachChoraleHarmony.com | Insights Into the Harmony and Chorales of J.S. Bach

[Jimmy blue note]

There's Rob's new guitar as well of course...

TBH listening to this, and bearing in mind Rob's instrument, I'd be interested on Rob's thoughts regarding the sustain of this instrument. Would this be too texturally mushy?

Where IS Rob in this thread? I've been keeping the seat open for his contribution and presence. ROB! Stop practicing and jump in anytime.

When we were in school, I remember Wolfgang Muthspiel improvising fugues on subjects from standards and such. His counterpoint chops were considerable as were his improvising skills, even as a student. But then again, even before he ever set foot in New England Conservatory, he'd toured Europe with another classical player with whom he'd performed the complete Goldberg Variations with an arrangement he'd written for guitar duo. There's Bach you can learn something from.
On the topic of 4 voice harmony, there are some of us who are using Mick Goodrick's Almanacs in their capacity as small canonic etudes and studies in chord groupings, voice movement and fingerboard navigation proficiency. They're proving to be a potent and surprisingly elegant way to realize a mindset and hands-on means of voice leading quite different from the Freddie Green (or Van Eps) approach. For me, an invaluable addition to the library of skill sets...but only for the self motivated. He doesn't hold your hand once he throws you in the deep end of the pool.
It's surprising how much it sounds like Bach once the harmonic minor cycles are introduced.

[Christian Miller]

I see a lot of (what's now) common voice leading and harmonic devices in Bach's music. Especially the cycle of 4th movements are not that out there. In fact, lot of the harmonic movements are surprisingly similar to the standards.
For example the analysis below is a free sample from BachChoraleHarmony.com | Insights Into the Harmony and Chorales of J.S. Bach

Argghhh!!!! Reeeee!!!!!! It hurts us!!!!

[Christian Miller]

Where IS Rob in this thread? I've been keeping the seat open for his contribution and presence. ROB! Stop practicing and jump in anytime.

When we were in school, I remember Wolfgang Muthspiel improvising fugues on subjects from standards and such. His counterpoint chops were considerable as were his improvising skills, even as a student. But then again, even before he ever set foot in New England Conservatory, he'd toured Europe with another classical player with whom he'd performed the complete Goldberg Variations with an arrangement he'd written for guitar duo. There's Bach you can learn something from.
On the topic of 4 voice harmony, there are some of us who are using Mick Goodrick's Almanacs in their capacity as small canonic etudes and studies in chord groupings, voice movement and fingerboard navigation proficiency. They're proving to be a potent and surprisingly elegant way to realize a mindset and hands-on means of voice leading quite different from the Freddie Green (or Van Eps) approach. For me, an invaluable addition to the library of skill sets...but only for the self motivated. He doesn't hold your hand once he throws you in the deep end of the pool.
It's surprising how much it sounds like Bach once the harmonic minor cycles are introduced.

Have you ever had a go at learning to read figured bass?

[Jimmy blue note]

Have you ever had a go at learning to read figured bass?

Four different semesters, two different schools. Very different teachers and texts at the two schools. It was confusing and laborious all the time it was a classroom endeavour, and when I started to hear it, really use it, I actually came to like it. It helped me to see/feel/hear the placement of the root within the inversions and come to think of it, I now see in retrospect that it helped me to play with more equality of voice movement where roots are heard clearly within the inner voice structures of the chords as lines move forward.
I cursed it and then it changed me.

[Christian Miller]

BTW - here's a thing I got form Reme's Facebook group 'German Compositional theory 1600-1850' (for there is such a thing)


As I understand it this is the sort of exercise Bach prescribed to his students. First step was coming up with about a zillion different basses to a given chorale melody.

Look at the last one, it's very cool with that chromaticism.

Must try this with standards more haha

[mr. beaumont]

Back to Freddie, which I have actually studied (I'll leave the Bach to others) the answer regarding "did Freddie play 3 notes, 2 notes, or 1 note?" is "yes."

Over time, his "chords" became smaller and smaller as the band got bigger. There are definitely recordings where I can hear him playing "one note." Did I know he was playing one note until I listened for it specifically? No. Because of the way he strikes muted strings the chords tend to sound larger. From practice, I can also say that if you mute the strings in an actual chord shape it sounds different than if you mute "random" notes and only play the 4th string.

Here's a video that shows Freddie with Basie in a very small environment, you can see his hand position changing enough to infer he is at least fretting some full (3 note) chords.