-
Am I wrong when I say that alot of hard bop and fusion playing kinda lost the art of melodic phrasing? At times, it can seem like a bebop guitar solo (like Martino) sounds more like one big, puzzling math equation, rather than a melodic line. I mean it's lick after lick after lick
-
04-23-2009 02:33 AM
-
Actually hard bop and fusion brought back more melodic phrasing after bebop. So I would say the exact opposite.
-
Well, I was a bit ignorant not to specify, but guys like Conti and Bruno, don't get me wrong, they don't play with alot of "singing" catchy melodic phrases the same way Herb and Barney used to. It's like hearing them burn "that's great, but can it play a tune?"
-
And that's where Wes was so great: so many solos you can sing in your head, they "go somewhere". It wasn't all about his superhuman technical abilities, although he very much possesed them.
Much more than that, and it strikes jazz listeners and instrumentalists who are not guitar players, Wes was all about phrasing, melody, rhythm. Many a Lester Young fan will find Wes, excl. cheesy stuff of course, most approachable of all (hard) bop music.
-
I think they play to suit the tune. I've heard Bruno, Tal and Jimmy Raney play some very nice ballads, but when it's bop time, devil take the hindmost!
-
What also ticks me off, is that once I had my arpeggios and some scales down, it seemed like to be great was to fire away asap all these-bop, chromatuc lines. For example, on Pat Martino's solo for "Days/Wine" he starts firing away 16th note runs. There maybe two or three lines in the entire solo that strike me as melodic and memorable. The rest is gobblety gook. Don't get me wrong, I love Pat, but part of studying players like him, is to study all those licks, which it seems like he is, A LICK PLAYER. Bop has too many pre-meditated lines as opposed to melody. Pass even said it was getting to be geometry on the guitar
-
Have you ever seen Martino's website - it looks like a journey into theoretical physics or something. I've read some of his forum posts before and he posts up diagrams of all sorts of geometic visualizations of music and all that. It's really weird stuff.
Originally Posted by Jazzyteach65
Meh, I just want to play music. I like melody content. I play beboppy lines, but they are usually fused to a melody that is going somewhere.
-
Yeh, that's why I like to listen to Western Swing now and then!
-
And then there's Charlie Parker. To me there is a lot of great melody in his bebop playing.
But it is refreshing to hear simple melodic playing. Just short melodic motifs and variations with lots of silence in the cracks. And you don't need incredible technique to do it.
-
Pat Martino is an outstanding jazz musician. Same with Art Tatum, Oscar Peterson and other technical monsters who occasionally like to play long lines at fast tempos. Period. I also like Miles Davis and Jim Hall on the other hand.. I do NOT see the problem. There's more than enough room for different styles and approaches.
-
I think the key to the 'great' bop players and any player in any genre of Jazz is that, for all their technique and harmonic knowledge, they always thought of melody first. Think about the start of Jazz, the phrasing and improvisations were built around the melody of the tune. In my opinion as soon as one deviates from that it usually sounds academic to me.
-
I don't agree. The whole development of bebop was about moving AWAY from the simple melody-based lines of the swing era. As even Dizzy Gillespie put it, "the music was already there, what Bird did was add the pyrotechnics" by playing those infinitely lone and complex lines that included substitutions, chord extensions and so on. Also, the tempos went up exponentially in that first part of the bebop era.
At any rate, it was all about experimenting with harmonic complexity and outlining the newer harmonies with arpeggiation, etc... Bird was trying to elevate jazz into an art form and get is respected by the classical musicians. Note that even the tunes (Ornithology, etc) were often designed to be so difficult that most players would not be able to stay on the bandstand.
Later, people like Miles got a bit tired of the complex harmonies and dazzling technique and developed the "Cool" jazz style. Then he recorded the hyperspeed "Four and More" and the fast stuff came back in. I think these things go back and forth.
But surely Pat Martino, for example, is a great bebop player, no? Many, many people seem to have that impression.
-
my point is that, the better bop players, or the ones that reach me more, like Bird or Monk, had all the pyrotechnics and harmonic knowledge, but still thought melodically, i.e. they didn't sound like they were playing exercises, to me, anyway. I'm not saying that all bop based players were like this though, on the contrary, there are many players that to me, sound as if they are burning through changes scientifically rather than playing music, and therefore they do not reach me. All, I'm saying is that the players from the bop era that tend to reach me more are the ones that hit me musically first, and then later with some analysis you can maybe admire what they are doing harmonically etc.
-
what did joe pass mean by "geometry on the guitar?"
-
Pat Martino and Jimmy Bruno have both recorded chord melody ballad types of tunes, play plenty of slow to moderate tempo material, but can dial it up. They seem to prefer uptempo stuff, but can play it all with equal aplomb. Matter of taste to me.
I like all of it. Have seen them both live, and they have created a niche for themselves, and the fans that come see them typically want to hear them burn mostly. Just an example of good customer service imo.
-
i'll agree about pat firing off a lot of notes, sometimes too many, but i wouldn't call him a "lick player"--he can improvise with the best of them. Originally Posted by Jazzyteach65
-
Joe Pass said "some jazz guitar playing was starting to become geometry," he meants that pattern and extreme cell playing became a bit too confusing to the listener, and it was a bunch of physical patterns on the fretboard, as opposed to simple, melodic "music" as Joe called it, ideas. I remember one of Basie's trombone players almost getting fired, in a film he said "I had been playing so much bebop, Count told me to make it simple. Don't play everything I know in one tune, let the listeners who don't play trombone understand what ou're trying to say on your horn, otherwise you're just playing for other horn players to dig your technique."
I guess the whole point of this thread is that it seems like alot of the so-called bebop players are playing lick after lick, although they aren't really licks (there's a study on Martino somewehere analyizing 40 of his solos, and alot of them have the same licks, just varied a bit) vs playing unrehearsed, melodic ideas (Jim Hall, Miles)
-
If a player wants to learn the jazz language, it is pretty much necessary to learn and understand Bebop lines and phrases. If you don't like them fast then play them slower and you will find an amazing amount of melodic content that can be applied in every tune.
I love fast Bebop lines. What I don't like are fast lines that have no melodic content claiming to be Bebop. The difference is immediately obvious. Learning Bebop takes time and energy but it is a great goal for anyone who wants to really learn jazz. Check out Roni Ben Hurs book called "Talk Jazz". A great book on learning this language.
BTW, Joe Pass was a great Bebop player, so I think the comments must be out of context.
-
I totally agree. Take any Charlie Parker head, it is a gold mine of licks whether played in a ballad or bop context. Good music is gonna be good, whether played at 85bpm or at a sporty 320bpm. Originally Posted by Jazzaluk
Last edited by derek; 04-26-2009 at 01:26 PM.
-
Originally Posted by derek
I totally agree. Take any Charlie Parker head, it is a goal mine of licks whether played in a ballad or bop context. Good music is gonna be good, whether played at 85bpm or at a sporty 320bpm.
I agree. In classical music, for example, no one thinks too much about whether someone is playing too many notes, too few notes, too slow, too moderate or what have you. The question is can the performer play the piece accurately and musically at the right tempo and so on. The ideal, anyway, is to be able to play musically and melodically, like Bird or Coltrane, at different speeds. Easier said than done obviously.
Coltrane is one of the best examples in my opinion. He could play creatively and originally over a tune like Countdown (light-speed for that time anyway) and then record an album of inspiring ballads, sometimes just playing the melody with the incredible sound and tone that he developed.
Anyway, it's all music and one should strive to play one's best in order to develop an original approach of one's own (or as near as possible). Don't worry much about what Pat Martino would play, or the fact that Bird was faster, Jim Hall was more melodic, Scofield is more complex and outside.
-
I like the Emily Remler video where she actually encourages people to write out their lines ahead of time (I'm going to start doing this actually) and then learn them in all keys and, in this way, develop one's own vocabulary based on guide tones and other fundamental ideas. These ideas eventually become unconscious and part of the language.
I think she's right that most of us have to have licks to fall back on. She stated that she though that someone like Wes might, perhaps, have done pure improvisation about 30% of the time at most. Everyone has plenty of licks that they modify over and over again. We try to make the process into something mystical and magical.
-
Bop is a dance. It's a driving, supple, peppery, fred astaire like dance.
It's the rhythm. It's clifford brown. Listen to the peppery phrases. Where they begin and end. Be bop is not endless streams of notes.
Now, improvising, within that idiom, is tough if you're not gonna be danced around the room by preconceived phrases. Leading the dance, and throwing be bop a curve ball is really fun.
The whole thing about impro has been my love, and in many ways my loss.
I improvise a lot in whatever music i play. Can't help it. It's an organic experience. I hear a colour from the piano, bass, or rhythm from the drums, and i respond.
It's my loss because i stopped many years ago, learning set pieces like solos or guitar chord melody solos etc. I like to improvise chord melodies, to explore possibilities, but my repertoire of tunes is dire, chord melody style.
I used to do all the Joe pass stuff from his solo albums many years ago, then i got into Keith Jarrett etc and found i had much more of a relationship to the experience of playing music, if i improvised chord melody solos on a standard or original composition.
For me, it's this experience, this dance, that spurs me on.
Learn the rhythm of bop. It's a wide grin thing when ya get it.
Mike
-
Clifford Brown is extraordinary. I love the tone, the groove, yeah!! But I'm only a white boy.
-
Anyway, it's fun to discuss this stuff with other musicians, if only "virtually". It's like being back at Berklee at 19 or 20.
-
This is very interesting. I have thought lately, why not forget learning other peoples licks, phrases, and forget learning relationships between scales and chords etc, just forget it all other than the tune on the paper and just simply play and improvise what is in my head. If you like, transcribe the music in my head rather than from recordings of other players to obtain a direct relationship between what I hear in my head to my instrument. I'm thinking that way is probably more true to the nature of improvsation than copying form other players. If the playing gets stale from lack of imagination, then pick a note that shouldn't work over a particular chord and find a way of making it work, and end up be able to use all 12 notes. Then I could do the same with chords, hear the chord in my head and work them out and play them! Maybe a way to develop a unique style? Originally Posted by mike walker
Reply With Quote
ES-175 pickup possibly modified – Suggestions for...
Today, 09:07 AM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos