 |
|
| Q and A | |||
| Ask a question | |||
| Q. What's the one thing to work on that will improve your playing the most? Submitted by Moxie | |||
A. Time. Having good time is the difference between being able to play a whole lot of guitar and being a great player. Of course it's important to have a vocabulary of things to play, but if your time is inconsistent, what you play won't feel good to your fellow players or the listeners. Time is one of the least discussed things in Jazz education, but when you play with experienced players, it's the first thing you'll learn about on the bandstand. Playing with a metronome will help your time immensely. The metronome won't help you swing more, but it will tell you if you are speeding up during ideas that you can execute comfortably, or slowing down during passages that are challenging. It boils down to this: A player with good time will work more than a player with inconsistent time. |
|||
| Q. How is playing Jazz different from playing Rock? Submitted by Bevan | |||
A. First off when soloing, most of the time in Jazz you will use different scales for the various chord changes in a tune, as opposed to playing mostly based on the blues scale for the entire solo (no value judgment implied). Next, there are some notes that are often heard against chords in Jazz that happen less often in Rock. Flat 9 on a Dominant (7th) chord being one example. Another difference is that the prototypical Jazz sound involves chords that always have at least the 7th contained in them and often the 9th, #11, 13 etc. — rarely triads (certain modern styles do use triads though, but over different bass notes). Third, when play background parts to the melody or soloist, known as comping, players typically fulfill a function rather than have a particular part to play that is constant from performance to performance. The bass part is determined by the bass player from within the parameters of the style of the group. The same is true of the drummer and guitar or piano. The Intro to Jazz page has some more discussion on this subject and links to pages with scales and chords that are fundamental to playing Jazz. |
|||
Q. How do you find good notes to play when the tempo is very fast. Or when the tempo is medium how do you find good notes to play fast on, e.g., George Benson, Lee Ritenour? Submited by H. Swarn. |
|||
| A. Playing over fast tempos or double timing medium tempos involves three
things: 1) Having enough to play. This means that you know the basic building blocks (scales, arpeggios, etc.) without having to think about them. Also, knowing the points of resolution between chord types is essential. One way to stretch out the amount of harmonic material to use in an improvised line is to play something with the chord sound then play something that resolves to the chord sound. For instance, over the progression C-7 | F7 | BbMa7|, you could play a line that implied C-7 D-7b5 G7 | C-7 F7 F7alt | BbMa7 |. This is especially useful when double timing medium and slow tempos. 2) Listen to players whose playing you like and learn their solos. Then analyze their solos so you know how they arrived at their ideas (what they were thinking about when they were practicing). This is the quickest way to unlock harmonic knowledge. Also, you see and hear how they construct an improvised line. 3) Practicing with a metronome is essential. Put it at half the tempo you want to play at. Practice one or two ideas at that tempo for a long time, then double it up to the desired tempo. Then play for a while at the faster tempo without worrying about whether or not everything is coming out like you wish. Repeating the process is what will allow you to play at whatever tempo you want. |
|||
| Q. How do you play "out" over chord changes? Submitted by CSpot. | |||
| A. Most of
the time, what sounds "out" is really just a reharmonization that
produces melodies with notes that are outside the basic harmonic structure
of the changes, but still functional in terms of eventually resolving
to a key center. Truly "out" or "free" playing over chord changes (actually disregarding the changes) is not that common, and might involve playing with intervallic structures. Increasing your ability to hear different structures and reharmonizations through transcribing and analyzing solos will allow you to discern functional ideas that might sound "out" today. |
|||
| Q. What's your take on the "correct" position of the picking hand? a) motion from the elbow b) .... wrist c) open hand d) three finger grip on the pick... e) all the above Submitted by Stavaros. | |||
| A. Picking is done mostly by the wrist and the two fingers holding the
pick. The other fingers give a little support on the pickguard. The
elbow comes in to play only as necessary (when playing lines that
move across four to six strings). I go for the smallest motion possible, which allows for quicker attacks. For me, using a lot of elbow is too much work. Although someone like Pat Martino for instance, uses motion from the elbow a lot, and he's one of the great guitarists of all time. For this reason, you couldn't say that his approach is "wrong." If you can find the way to pick that is most comfortable (that allows you to be relaxed at all tempos) that's really the best definition of "correct." |
|||
| Q. How do I work on getting a better swing feel? Submitted by McNeil. | |||
| A. To get a better swing feel, there are two important things to do: 1) Put on a CD of a player who has a feel you would like to emulate (preferably a tune which you know the changes to), and play along with them and copy their feel. 2) Practice with a metronome playing even eighths. Although some folks say that jazz phrasing uses triplet-inspired (uneven) eighth notes, since the Bebop era it is really more like even eighths with accents mostly on the off beats. | |||
| Q. How you can improve and play scales faster. Is there any kind of practice that one can do? Submitted by Nick | |||
| A. The key to getting facility with scales or anything else is to play them slowly, with a metronome. What this does is build control, which is the ability to put your fingers where you want them when you want them to go there. Everybody has a natural tendency to speed up when playing something that is easy and slow down for something more difficult. Using a metronome tells you when to play a note, and in effect creates an expectation that your hands will gradually fall in line with. In addition to playing scales, I also suggest practicing arpeggios. They require a very different picking motion that needs to be practiced to become natural. | |||
