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The discussion of cliches in jazz spawned this thought in my head...maybe you guys can help me round out missing elements of my rambling here.
If I would like to play a specific style of guitar, at least to familiarize myself with the elements that create the sound or feel of that playing, what would I need to learn to get there and what techniques should I not concern myself with (techniques not typical of the style or the time)? Say, if I were to authenticate the sound of a 1930s swing player vs creating 1950-1960s playing style?
I might be partially answering this by saying I should listen to Eddie Lang, George Van Eps, Charlie Christian, Django, Freddie Green, don't forget Lester Young and Ben Webster and other horn players when it comes to ideas, etc. Learn the blues, learn arpeggios, learn 4-to-the-bar comps and VOILA! Swing guitar!
Now bebop playing I should be familiar with the above, plus, advanced chords (extensions, inversions) faster tempos, latin tempos, odd tempos, more spaces between rhythm instead of straight 4/4, even more scales based on advanced chord, then modes...then listen to Wes Montgomery, Barney Kessel, Grant Green, Kenny Burrell, Charlie Parker, Dizzy, Coltrane, Miles, Monk, Rollins on and on and on...
I'm not suggesting playing like a swing era guitarist is that simple. I WISH I can get there and sound like that. I would like to play like the bebop and beyond era guitarist, but that sounds daunting and then some, so maybe I should just get comfortable playing swing first. Am I making bop sound way more complicated than it is?
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03-20-2013 05:23 PM
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Given that time tends to be short it might be worthwhile thinking about and being clear about what it is you want to play - insofar as if you invest time in learning to play in a swing style, at the end of that process you will be able to play in that style & whilst it would help you to learn to play in a bop style - you still wont be playing bop!
It might be worth taking the transcription approach - I've just started working on transcribing Jim Hall's solo on Festive Minor from Gerry Mulligan's album Night Lights - I've choosen the that solo for a number of reasons - I love the tune and I love Hall's solos (plus he is not playing too fast & only against drum & bass so it is easier to hear what is going on) - plus it speaks to the style I want to learn - (check out Dave Liebman's advice on transcibing from his website (see David Liebman: Educational Articles )
In terms of cliches - one of the things I want to get from this process is a sense of Hall's time feel - which is key in terms of his style - plus I would guess that it will give me some insight into how he played and shaped this solo based on his own study of the musicians that came before him.
Either way the learning can be complicated, frustrating and time consuming at times - so maybe it makes sense to start with the end in mind - so if you want to play bop - learn bop!
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Learn the Bird tunes. The good ones and the bad ones.
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Edward, your OP sounds like you've got a good insight into the whole thing
My 2 cents, learning to play swing or at least being familiar with it, is an excellent foundation for learning bebop, after all that's what the original bop guys grew up playing.
If you want to get authentic with swing guitar soloing, doing downstrokes every time you change strings is a good idea, but if it's something you're just checking out as you progress to more modern styles, alternate or economy picking is fine.
I don't think there's a huge difference between swing and 40's/50's bop - to generalize, with swing your phrases will be more broken (riffing) whereas bop you'll be playing more eighth notes, and occasionally riffing to break it up a bit. More to it than that obviously, but essentially they're very closely related.
My background is as a bop player - when I started out my teacher got me into swing to lay the foundation for learning bop, and we would play together, one comping four to the bar while the other would solo. I dig swing, been getting more and more into it again lately.Last edited by 3625; 03-20-2013 at 07:41 PM.
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I'd agree with everything except the business of playing down-strokes. There's a lot of discussion about this among gypsy guitarists and they want to do Django like Django. Rumor has it Charlie Christian was a down-stroker. If you play good rhythm and swing hard at all times almost noone will notice whether you're picking technique is authentic or not. I wouldn't try to learn the down-stroke technique on my own. Some people seem to have a gift for the all down-stroke but it's better to do what comes naturally.
Originally Posted by 3625
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Yeah Steve, if you're in the pocket whatever is most natural will work fine IMO. I mainly economy pick, but I've experimented with the downstroke method - for getting loud acoustic volume and if you want that authentic 30's tone it's the go. What I found interesting when I tried it, was that you start to phrase and come up with melodic ideas more like those 30's guys automatically.
With CC, I'd hadn't heard that anywhere, but I concluded that he most likely was doing downstrokes from the way it sounds.
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Somewhat on a tangent to ask this, but if a guitarist sits in with a swing era faithful group (scenerio: small combo that allows for a lot of jamming), do you simply dial-down the bop chops or do you sneak in licks just to make it interesting for yourself? Use a down stroke method, too? Or do you keep to the style/cliches. Again, it's understood that the cliches of certain music create the taste for why you listen to it and that's not a bad thing.
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One things for certain, leave your Mahavishnu-style fusion blowing at home. Originally Posted by edward74
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That depends on your band-mates. If they are a "swing era faithful group", they might be purists who don't want to hear bop lines mixed in as they're going for the pre-bop sound. On the other hand, if they're flexible, more adventurous, have ears for it, and seem to dig it when you slip some bop-chops in, then keep doin' it to make it more interesting and challenging for yourself. Originally Posted by edward74
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I think taking these projects on one at a time is a great way to learn jazz and develop skills. Originally Posted by jasaco
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At this point why would anyone what to be a swing era purist? Can't they at least let people know bop exists in a subtle way? If they're real musicians they should be able to. They could throw in 'Straight no Chaser' or 'Epistrophy'. Maybe use a Bird lick in a solo now and then. Originally Posted by jasaco
Last edited by Stevebol; 03-21-2013 at 12:44 PM.
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This thread is funny to me.
Bebop and Swing aren't arch enemies, although, maybe they seemed so at the time...but Charlie Christian, everybody's favorite "swing" player was at the jam sessions that were eventually known as the "birth of bop." Thelonious Monk was as cerebral a player as any--certainly not a speed demon, aside from those little descending whole tone bits...and he was very much a part of what made bop, well, bop.
Bop was a state of mind...it was music for the musician and the people who wanted to hear the musicians challenging themselves...it wasn't dance music, like swing...jazz lost some fans with bop, but the ones who stayed became more rabid...it turned jazz into a "fringe" music, where it's pretty much stayed since. Bop is responsible for modern jazz as we know it.
Now, can you play a "bop" (and before you really think you know what that means, go back and listen to those Christian/Goodman sides again) solo on a big band date? The answer lies in the intent of the band, not the blanket subgenre...if it's a nostalgia fest, no. Hell, you might not be getting a solo. If it's a progressive big band, then sure. Hey, you might be called on to play more modern than that, or over a latin groove, or what have you.
I'm also interested to hear that so many folks think people are still playing "bop" today. Even bop is nostalgic now. Things change. Jazz is a curatorial artform now, the current jazz didn't drop from space...everything that came before it informed everything.
I play in a gypsy jazz duo, and occasionally I feel some pushback from some cats I meet in that genre who are on a total nostalgia trip. That's fine and all, but music didn't end in 1939...you know who knew that? Django! Listen to his sides from the fifties, playing an amplified Selmer...bebop language for sure. I don't consider myself a "swing" player or a "bebop" player...I play jazz, which means I'm aware of all of it...I have my preferences...
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Jeff, you know, of course, that you are the smartest guy here?
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No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
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FWIW, I see the rhythmic differences between bebop and swing enough to affect the choices you make when soloing, and in the end, so many of the same tunes are in both style's repertoire. Swing really seems to rely on that quarter note, four on the floor style comping, while bebop is a bit more sparse, with more rhythmic freedom. Swing is more locked in and related to dance, the rhythm section is the groove, while bebop asks the improviser to add to the groove, and the bebop rhythm section is responding to the soloist more than swing style.
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To my mind, "Bebop" isn't everything else that isn't "swing." Originally Posted by edward74
I think of "swing" and "bebop" more as eras in time rather than styles. To really play what bird & diz did in the 40s, you kind of have to be a virtuoso.....not an easy task!
Wes, Grant Green, & Burrell would be in the hard bop vein....if we had to use labels....
Raney & Farlow were boppers. Kessel too to a limited extent (Swedish Pastry!)
Modern boppers might be Mark Elf & Jimmy Bruno.
I really love the guys that take a little from everyone. I hear the whole history of JAZZ when I listen to Russell Malone, for example.
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This is a track of me doing "I Got Rhythm" from a jam last year - I'm the soloist and the other guitarist is doing a four to the bar comp.
The last year I've been getting more into that area that exists between swing and bop and this take is good example of where I'm currently at with it. The first head I sound a little bit unsure of myself, not being that familiar with playing the melody, but I'm fairly happy with the solo in regards to combining certain elements of both styles.
I'm using economy picking, not the downstroke style. Cheers
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This is the single most lucid statement about jazz I have seen posted on the forum in a long time. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
K
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Curatorial, had to look it up. You're right. If you can get used to the idea it makes it easier to accept that it's lifeless, soulless. Originally Posted by nosoyninja
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It may be worth noting that Charlie Parker, considered by many to be the prime architect of bebop, had deep roots going back to his native Kansas City, which was considered by many to be the most important town in the development of swing. Many other places also, since swing bands traveled a lot, but KC was wide open, decadent and swinging all through prohibition.
Some have suggested that Parker seems to have developed out of KC swing and blues plus European music like Stravinsky, Hindemith, etc. So perhaps bebop is KC meets Europe?
But whatever. I think the labels have some usefulness, but it's pretty limited. Probably easier to just talk about specific individual styles. If someone says "bebop" or "swing", maybe I have to think. If someone just says "Lester Young" or "Charlie Parker", more likely I just hear music.
Which brings it back to the original post. Perhaps the best thing to do is simply clarify your "favorite" players, solos and lines. I took a lesson a while back with a bass player friend of mine and we were talking about transcribing. Back when I learned to play blues, my friends and I just called it "copping licks." Now I understand a little more about the context and what to do with a transcribed line. But I've usually tended to be pretty scattered with what I cop/transcribe-you know, a lick here, and lick there, almost at random. My friend/teacher talked about carefully choosing who and what you transcribe, because that could be the basis of your own voice. He suggested making transcription a long term project, but focusing on a limited number of artists and solos. Just the process of thinking about which players has been a continuing eye and ear opener for me.
So simply thinking about the players, solos and lines that really, really hit you in the heart and knock you out can be a useful exercise. We can't learn everything. Think about the players and lines that got you excited about jazz in the first place. Who really cares what we label them? The music certainly doesn't care.
MattLast edited by MattC; 03-22-2013 at 10:27 AM.
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Nice discussion. I think I'm learning that it's about intent whether something is trad, swing or something more contemporary especially if you have bandmates involved.
If it's a casual house jam, anything goes and your just having fun. If it's a club gig like the clip below, then the leader's intent might be to swing like your on 52nd street in the late 30s. And if your gonna sound like the freshly establish art jazz circa late 1940s on, then I guess your gonna flex your solo chops like never before while being a lot more open to rhythmic and melodic ideas. "Bebop" in the mid 20th century has fallen into that "classic" jazz category, but it established the push to get a player to stretch and keep stretching to make things more interesting in the music.
Piano player is definitely into Fats Waller rather than Monk, drummer is more on the lines of Gene Krupa (maybe more like Spike Jones) than Art Blakey and the guitarist (a local guy I know who is schooled in the history from Christian all the way up beyond Metheny) has dialed it down to playing in the feel and era that the others are going for.
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Boy, you don't seem to like jazz much. Originally Posted by Stevebol
Curatorial isn't a bad thing. It just means that what exists now is a product of what came before it. A player needs to know the history and find their niche. It kinda makes you a member of a club, which I'm sure angers people who feel they're on the outside.
But jazz players here today are here to take care of their artform. If they don't, it dies out. That's whyit's cool that swing bands still play dances and Jimmy Bruno plays hard bop with an organ player and Tomasz Stanko plays Krystof Komeda tunes and Loius Sclavis plays free but melodic and Hamid Drake sounds like a thunderstorm and Lee Konitz is still out there bringing new ideas to "The Man I love." It's all jazz. Accepting that, instead of choosing to live in a bubble and discredit other types of this great music, is a good thing. We all have a common ancestor.
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I'm not sure I agree with you that jazz is so different from any other music. What's the difference between Parker learning Lester Young solos to perfection then extending everything into his own style, and Bob Dylan learning every Woody Guthrie song in existence before creating his very individual form of expression? Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I'd argue that there's a "curatorial" element to all music. There are probably 100x (at least) as many rock cover bands trying to recreate the exact sound of Eddie Van Halen's solo on "Jump" than there are people trying to recreate early swing or Dixieland, or even bop.
IMO, artists in all forms (music, visual, dance, etc.) differ mostly in their personal aesthetic interpretation of what the valid ratio is of curatorial versus novel concepts in their creations. Some people stick pretty closely to what came before and add a little variance. Others try to create something very different or new, eschewing obvious nods to the tradition that came before.
A good example in our world for me would be Benson and Metheny. Both are top-knotch guitarists who redefined the instrument in important ways. To my ears, Benson is much more solidly grounded in the tradition of the instrument, while Metheny has tried to create a unique and somewhat idiosyncratic approach to the instrument. Both of them learned tons of Wes Montgomery solos, and both of them play the same tunes.
Which approach is better? Who knows, or cares? There are clearly benefits for either path in spending time working on the "curatorial" aspect. The extent to which you want to diverge from the tradition then becomes your personal aesthetic vision.
So, my advice for the OP would be to separate the tasks, absorb the music of your favorite guys as fully and devotedly as possible, then spend time figuring out what to do with it.
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I never said jazz was different.
But I'd say folk music also is like this, and blues too, mostly because of tradition in repertoire.
Jazz is a little different as it's tradition in repertoire to some extent (but there's a split in there too), but also, a gradual growth in what's available to the artist to improvise with and an acceptance of these new things. This doesn't make modern jazz better, but it makes the pallete bigger to draw from, for sure--a person playing jazz in 2013 has Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Michael Brecker, Dave Liebman, and Peter Brotzmann to draw on. It's also really beneficial to a jazz player to know the history and work with older styles because jazz got more complex as it went on...this is why beginners learn Autumn Leaves instead of The Peacocks, and why I see 9/10 jazzers who start with "Maiden Voyage" fail.
I don't think rock's there yet, although it's getting there...but to an extent, it's still "en vogue." I don't see the "respect" for old styles in a lot of rock (not that it's needed, but insult Charlie Parker in front of a modern jazzer or Buddy Holly in front of a modern rocker and you might get different results...might) or the need to understand The Crickets to play a Nickelback tune. I also don't see the "protectiveness," in rock...again, yet.Last edited by mr. beaumont; 03-22-2013 at 12:11 PM.
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Certainly not trying to spur on a battle of this style versus that style here. Learning from the different perspectives from everyone on the topic. Again, my initial thoughts are rambling but clearly I should just keep training and enjoy the process of jazz guitar.
There are methods that are more modern that keep this music fresh (a perpetual art form) for the wannabe like me and then there are traditions that retain a certain sound and spirit of what it might have been like back in the day to stomp your feet at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.
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