Ric Emmet - for the love of the guitar Book 3

DEDICATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ To my wife, Jeannette, and my family, who tolerate, sustain, support, humor, humor, inspire, counsel, and best of all, most amazingly  and wonderfully, love me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~

DEDICATION ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~ To my wife, Jeannette, and my family, who tolerate, sustain, support, humor, humor, inspire, counsel, and best of all, most amazingly  and wonderfully, love me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~

FOR THE LO LOVE VE OF GUIT GUITAR AR by

Rik Emmett

 O n e  B o o k  O

 o o k   B  s    c c  i  s  a  T h e B  T  w o  B o o k  T  c  s i c  a  B  e  h  T  o o k   B  s  k   c    o o  B l  g  B    n n  i    d d    l l  i  u  B  T h r e e  o o k     B B  B o o k  T  g     n n  i  m  s t o r    n n  i  a  r  B  c  s i c  F o u r  T h e B a  o k   B o o k  F  o  B  s    c c  i  s  d B a  n  o  y  e  B  T h e

FOREWORD If you’ve already chewed your way through the first two FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR books to get here - congratulations, bless you, and I’m happy to see you again. At the end of Book Two, I talked about our paths crossing - people coming from different approaches and headed in different directions. Good, bad, or indifferent, I’ve committed something here, left something of  myself revealed, open and vulnerable. As a reader,  you still enjoy the freedom of coming or going, taking or leaving it. Writing a book is only an invitation to a meeting of minds, without guarantees. Still, I’m hoping that when you read this book, you’ll feel that the tables have been turned somewhat - that the challenge to reveal yourself and commit something has drawn you in, and drawn you out. What will you find here in these pages? Well, what are you prepared to bring to the dance? All four books in this series grew out of the Back to Basics columns that I wrote over the course of twelve years for Guitar Player magazine, so, naturally, they’re all focused on fundamental techniques, theories, and concepts. But right along with all the primary physical techniques, FOR THE LOVE OF GUITAR is basically about imagination, and spirit, and creativity, so many open-ended, infinite kinds of things that it’s virtually impossible to separate the hands from the head and the heart. This book in the series is about MOTIVATION, building some connections, setting up a network in the anatomy: getting you to touch, to feel and to know the beginnings of a little forever in your music. What do you think about your LOVE OF GUITAR? How do you think about it? C’mon, let’s do a little brainstorming…

I

THE BASICS BRAINSTORMING BOOK

BOOK THREE

CONTENTS Page Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .I Key to Notational Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .IV Eight Basic Secrets to Great Guitar Playing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Jimi Hendrix: The Art of Rhythm Playing, Part One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Rhythm - The Ghost Who Oils the Cog in the Machine . . . . . . . . . .5 The Subtle Art of Rhythm Playing, Part Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Playing and Singing at the Same Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Django and One-Finger Chords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14 Open Tunings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 The Case of the Hammer-On and Pull-Off Arpeggios . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 Improvisation - Goin’ For It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 Soloing Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25 Soloing And Form, Part Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 Creativity and Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .29 Developing Left-Hand Independence: A Fingering Exercise . . . . . . . . .32 The Six Laws of Tone, Taste and Feel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Cross Pickin’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Vibrato . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Shifty Moves: Two String Snakes and Ladders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Rhythm Changes, Part One . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 Rhythm Changes, Part Two . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Working Through Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 Economy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 Less Is More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 Copland’s Long Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52

II

• • • • • • TABLE OF CONTENTS (Cont’d)

Learning Self-Help: Thirsty Horses Climbing Ladders . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 Musician, Help Thyself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53 Observation and Emulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54 The Big Three - Necessity, Willpower, and Focus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55 Setting Goals - Building Ladders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56

III

KEY TO NOTATIONAL SYMBOLS

T HE FOLLOWING SYMBOLS are used to indicate fingerings, techniques, and 

2

3

effects commonly used in the guitar music notation in this series of books.

1

4 4

T





ras

Left-hand fingering is designated by  small Arabic numerals near note heads (1 = 1st finger, 2 = 2nd finger, 3 = 3rd finger, 4 = pinky, T = thumb).

////

In some music examples, the fingerings appear in the space between the standard notation staff and the tablature staff. i 

m

5





 CV

CV

3

Right-hand fingering is designated by letters (p = thumb, i = index, m = middle, a = ring, l = pinky).

a 

 p 

D

Pick upstroke.

1

R

(7) 5 H

5 7

2

1 2

3

3

The C indicates a first finger half-barre covering either the first three or four strings, depending on what is called for in the notation.

Chord Diagrams  In chord diagrams, vertical lines represent the strings, and horizontal lines represent the frets. The following symbols are used:

Left-hand finger vibrato. 5 (7)

2

D9

IV

The C indicates a full barre; the Roman numeral designates the proper fret.

Partial barre with the designated finger. B

E B T G A D B A E

The horizontal lines represent 0 the guitar’s strings, the top line represents the high E. The numbers designate the frets to be played. For instance, a 2 positioned on the first line would mean to play the 2nd fret on the first string (0 indicates an open string). Time values are indicated on the coinciding lines of standard notation seen directly above the tablature. Read the music from left to right in the conventional manner.

A circled number (1-6) indicates the string on which a particular note is to be played. Pick downstroke.

Indicates desired rhythm for chordal accompaniment (the choice of voicings is up to the player).

How Tablature Works  l 

 p 

Rasgueado.

Bend; play the first note and bend to the required pitch (bent note is in parentheses). See tab explanation.

Nut; indicates 1st position.

A reverse bend; strike an already bent note, then allow it to return to its unbent pitch (bent note is in parentheses).

x

Muted string or string not played.

o

Open string.

Hammer-on (lower note to higher).

Barre (partial or full).

P

7 5 T

Pull-off (higher note to lower).

•

Placement of left-hand fingers.

Indicates right-hand tapping technique.

V

Roman numerals indicate the fret at which a chord is located.

1

Arabic numerals indicate left-hand fingering (e.g., 1=index, etc.)

S

5 7

Slide; play first note and slide to the next pitch (in tab, an upward slide is indicated with an upwardly slanting line, while a downward side is indicated with a downwardly slanting line).

Note: For more info on understanding chord symbols, check out  the chapter entitled “Outlining The Numbers Game” on page 29  of “For The Love of Guitar, Book One - The Basics Book”.

Strum (an arrowhead is often used to indicate direction). IV

EIGHT BASIC SECRETS TO GREAT GUITAR PLAYING Ex. 1B 

Makes a great title, doesn’t it? Of course, this

Am

kind of “tabloid”-esque subject is fraught with the inconsistencies, omissions, oversights, and prejudices of a subjective viewpoint; next week we just might go and change our minds (again). Still, it’s food for thought and can serve as a starting point for discussion and self-examination (“Well, Rik’s list is bad because he forgot to add…”). At least you’ve now  identified something that you value highly and should be pursuing in your own playing.

4 4

B

5

8

79

R

7

5

7

The most important step comes next, where you inject  yourself into the lick. Hopefully, you can see the growth and difference between these two examples: the lick should evolve at least as much again when you interpret it. Attitude, desire, intellectual hunger, persistence, dedication. (Note: see the final chapter of Book One, entitled “On Success,” Book  Two’s “Hungry Heart, Open Mind,” and pretty much all of Book Four, which concerns itself with the intellectual, the philosophical, and personal aesthetics.)

2

~

Emotion, soul, feeling, personality, interpretation. All of these things lead to an individual style that will be unique - revealing your character, which will help towards a public recognition factor and give your playing an identity. There must be honesty in your playing; you have to be involved and make personal statements with whatever music you play.

1

~

Andres Segovia was interviewed at 93 years of age and was asked what kept him going. “The mind and the will to work,” says the master. He is the all-time champion, and when he talks, we all should listen. I quote from a 1986 Reuter wire-service interview by David Zimmerman -

Am

4 4

“ 

A  very wise philosopher once told me  5

T A B

8

B

muted

So, human nature being what it is, pure objectivity is an unrealizable ideal. But let’s face it, these kinds of things aren’t really National Enquirerstyle secrets, either. (You don’t think I’d go pokin’ around in Steve Morse’s trash now, do you?) No: something tells me common sense dictates content here, so without further preamble, here’s the list:

Ex. 1A 

8 10

T A B

P

8

5

8

5

7

5

how to work,” said the maestro. “He told me to remember Jacob’s Ladder  because the angel went up and came  down step by step, even though he had  wings. And this is how I work - step by  step and very hard, with full attention. Otherwise, you cannot progress.” 

7

Ex. 1A is a case of a lick with no character, no personality. It’s just notes. But if you play essentially  the same notes as they’re rendered in Ex. 1B, you’ll find some personality and style coming to life there. 1

Continued • • • • • • 

• • • • ••

EIGHT BASIC SECRETS TO GREAT GUITAR PLAYING (Cont’d) Timing , “feel,” being able to get “into the groove,” to play “in the pocket” or “behind the beat.” Especially in modern pop music (rock, fusion, R & B, etc.), this is a crucial element in great playing. To be sympathetic to other musicians, to swing, to rock - it’s the essence of communicating musically. A hot solo’s one thing, but a hot solo over a killer rhythm track  is another thing again.

3

~

Ex. 2A  Melodic sense can Am D ~ give you an accessi4 bility and a memorability  4 that are prerequisites of  greatness. “The right note at the right time” does not 87 5 necessarily mean simplicity, 87 5 T 7 5 A but an awareness of what is B 7 going on around and under the melody. You could play the notes of Ex. 2A and you wouldn’t Ex. 2B  Am D be “wrong,” but the melodic 4 sense illustrated in Ex. 2B has 4 more value and impact, even 3 though it is more economical.

Am

4

F

3

H

5

5 7

H

5 7

5

7

 7 5

Am

7 5 7

F

3

Harmonic sense - the 8 7 8 7 T color, the landscape behind A B the subject. Demonstrating a highly developed harmonic sense is a sign of great musical maturity, and in a way it is linked very  strongly to secret #4. Harmony is atmosphere, and it’s the glue that holds everything else together. Let’s just look at Ex. 2B again, but this time we’ll re-harmonize the melody (Ex. 3) to show how different, and how much more interesting, your playing can become by exploiting the potentials of harmony.

5

~

5

5

4

5

3

Ex. 3 Am7

Gsus

D9

V

1 IV

1

G

Fmaj7

1

2

1 2

3

3

3

4

3

2 4

3 4

4

Am7

D9

Gsus G

Fmaj7

4 4 3

3

Continued • • • • • •  2

• • • • ••

EIGHT BASIC SECRETS TO GREAT GUITAR PLAYING (Cont’d) Physical technique - perhaps the most obvious, attractive, and compelling aspect of great playing, but also the most dangerous and abused. On the positive side, it is necessary to have your chops in shape, to have the endurance and wherewithal to handle the limits of your imagination. But it can have a negative impact when it manifests itself in a “gunslinger” mentality (who’s-the-fastest arguments), which is immature and wasteful. The reality of the successes of the Eddie Van Halens, Stanley Jordans, Paganinis, and Liszts is that they did not sacrifice secrets 1 through 5 at the altar of #6.

6

~

Mental approach - this ties into #2 but is deserving of its own category because it covers a lot of ground. Great playing requires great preparation: you must be organized, warmed-up, confident. You need to be focussed and in the right headspace, concentrated on the job at hand. Then your actual performance presentation should have pacing, versatility, and flexibility: it should feel like a living, breathing thing of its own. Exhibit taste and discretion to imbue the proceedings with a sense of occasion and style.

7

~

Last, but not necessarily least, is your sound, the golden tones you produce. You need the right equipment to make it happen - although I’ve found that this can be as evolutionary and elusive as the music itself - and you may  want to have a sound that is as distinctive as your style. I don’t want to mislead you here: your sound will come more from how  you play than from what you’re playing through.

8

~

M ore often than not, it’s the amazing combinations of the elements on the list that make a guitarist a virtuoso or legend. And, of course, after all this intellectual analysis, it might behoove us to recall other kinds of attitudes and philosophical approaches. For example, this quote from Tom and Mary Anne Evans’ book, Guitars (Paddington Press):

“I don’t have a love affair with a guitar,”  said one Pete Townshend, “I don’t polish it after every performance, I play the ****ing thing.” 

3

JIMI HENDRIX: THE ART OF RHYTHM PLAYING, PART ONE Everyone pays lip service to the legend and legacy of Jimi Hendrix, but the hyperbole, apocrypha and exploitation that have shrouded his very real artistic accomplishments could serve to discourage many younger guitarists from really taking the time and energy to examine Jimi’s contribution to the art form of guitar playing in the depths that it deserves. There really is a lot to talk about, and to hear, far beyond attention-getting dental work, behind-theback passes, and lighter fluid pyrotechnics, and so much that can be learned. For this chapter, I’ll focus on just one of Jimi’s many talents, rhythm playing.



“This is a world of lead guitar players, but the most essential thing to learn is the time, the rhythm.”  Jimi Hendrix 

“That’s why he liked rhythm guitar playing so  much - the rhythm guitar could lay out the  structure for the whole song.”  Mike Bloomfield, talking about Jimi. (Both quotes are from “The Life of Jimi Hendrix: ‘Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky,” by David Henderson, Doubleday)

                                                 There’s the whole lesson, wrapped up neatly in two quotes. Lead guitar playing starts out as a world of riffs, scales, and patterns. Those caught up in the pursuit often become self-absorbed with fancy  techniques, and dedicate all their focus and energy on something that is, after all, only a small part of the picture. Think about it for a second; how long does a

solo last in a song? Even your most favorite solo of all time, no matter how brilliant, more than likely resides as a small part riding along on top of a musical structure of verses, and choruses, probably a bridge, intros, re-intros, extros; an architecture composed of  the three basic, fundamental musical ingredients: melody, harmony, and rhythm. 4

JIMI HENDRIX: THE ART OF RHYTHM PLAYING, PART ONE (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

In the context of a song, a solo functions primarily as a melodic element, and quite often the solo section itself performs a secondary function of  providing harmonic and/or rhythmic contrast from the rest of the song in which it resides. A great rhythm guitar part, however, primarily performs integral harmonic AND rhythmic functions in a song. Sadly, many guitarists, drawn like moths to a warm flame, have devoted their energies to the licks, tricks, fills and thrills of soloing, ignoring two thirds of the musical vitality, and have become Fancy Dans looking for an excuse to blow. But, happily, one of the greatest, most legendary Fancy Dan guitar players that ever touched down on this Third Stone From The Sun was a very complete musician. Jimi was a great lead guitarist, but, unquestionably what made him even greater was that he was a brilliant rhythm guitar player, a man who understood what the word RHYTHM meant in the phrase rhythm and blues, somebody who understood that ROCK and ROLL referred to musical interpretations of body movement.

RHYTHM - THE GHOST WHO OILS THE COG IN THE MACHINE

Rhythm guitar playing is not an egotistical pursuit. It’s a marriage to the structure, a complete union to the piece of music. It sublimates itself to vitally serve the WHOLE PICTURE. If a soloist can be described as someone who is searching for self-expression by riding on the vehicle of a song, then a rhythm player could be said to be seeking to become the perfect cog - or maybe the lubricating oil, perhaps even the ghost - in the machine.

Continued • • • • • •  5

JIMI HENDRIX: THE ART OF RHYTHM PLAYING, PART ONE (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

Ex. 1

E

D/F

A 3

3 H

T A B

9 9 7 0

H

H

9 9 9 9 9 11 9 9 11 11

9 9

P

9 9119

H

7 7

12

E

7 7 9

9

H

7 7 9

2 2 0

S

X12 14 X12 14

S

S

12 12

12 14 11 13

S

P

12 11

12 12 12 11 13 11

H

14

0

9 9 11 0

H

7 7 9

P

7 7

9

7 9 7

D

E

H

10 10 9 9 9 11 11

Some of Jimi’s finest moments came in the R & B style ballads, like “Wind Cries Mary,” “Little Wing,” and “Angel,” using little chord fills ornamented with country pentatonicish melodic noodling. I’ve tried to illustrate the gist of the style in Ex.1 . Notice how the 3rd often hammers on, up from the 2nd to become the bottom of a chord, a structure that’s called first inversion, and a chording accompaniment lick that has widely become known as something of a Hendrix  trademark. In “Wind Cries Mary,” Hendrix even employed the 5th at the bottom of his chords (Ex.2 ), a stacking order referred to as second inversion. Another thing to watch out for in Ex. 1 is the simultaneous down stroke combined with a pulloff inside the 16th note riff on beat 4 of bar 3. This gives the G# a slightly delayed kick action down to the F#, and helps expose it a little more against the repeating high B above it. Generally, you should try to play Ex.1 with a really  laid back, loosey-goosey feel, where the grace note lead-ins would almost lead you to believe they should be notated with a sixteenth note value. If you normally use a heavy kind of  pick, try experimenting with a medium or even a soft one on this style of playing, and consciously think about playing on the back side of the beat. 6

H

7 7 7

A

X X

T A B

H

7 7 7 5

7 7 7 5

0

8 8 8 6

8 8 8 6

8 8 8 6

8 8 8 6

JIMI HENDRIX: THE ART OF RHYTHM PLAYING, PART ONE (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

Ex. 2 

G

Fadd9

C

G

Fadd9

C

1

S

1 1 0 3 3

T A B

H

3 3 5 5

3 3

3 3 0 5 5

P

3 3 5 3 3

G

P

3

5 0

H

3

3 1 0 3

3 1 0 3

S

1 0 0 2 3

H

3 3 0 5

0 0

3

D

3 3 0

P

P

3 3 3 3 3 3 5 3 3 4

1 1 0 3

0

1 1 0 3

0 1 0 2 3

5

C

3 0 2 3

1 0 2 3

D 3

3

3

H

T A B

10 10 12 0

H

H

H

10 10 10 10 5 12 12 10 12 10 5 7 0 12 7 0

Em

5 7 7

5 7 7

55 75 7 7

H

5 5

5 5 5 5 7

7

Bm7

H

P

S

5 5 7 5

Am11

7

5 5

H

8 8

8 8

7 9

P

8 8 10 8

S

H

10 10 10 12 10 10 10 10 10 11 9 11

C

D

5

S

T A B

12 12 12 12 14 12 12 12 12 14 9 9 9 9 10 0

S

H

12 10 12 7 7 7 9 7

10 10 10 10 7 3 7 7 7 7 10 3 7 7 7 7 5 5 0

5 5 3

5

H

7

5 5

7

5 5

S

7 7

7 7 5

In the 7th bar of the intro to “Little Wing,” there’s a chord move that’s a perfect example of pure Jimi magic. He had big hands, huge long fingers, and often used his thumb to wrap around over the top of the neck to grab bass notes. A natural genius is at work, with the employment of the open G string on the inside, while another of Jimi’s fave tricks, the add 9 on the top, extends the harmonic color. A lot going on for just one little bar, isn’t there? You should be able to spot more than a few “Little Wing”-isms in Ex. 2.

Continued • • • • • •  7

JIMI HENDRIX: THE ART OF RHYTHM PLAYING, PART ONE (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

Perhaps the most well-known Hendrix solo (it was the only one that ever charted on the Billboard top 40) occurs in his classic cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” The second solo is divided into 4 eight bar sections, and Jimi uses regular lead guitar, 12 string slide guitar with a heavy echo and compression sound effect, wah-wah with echo, and then, to culminate this mini extravaganza… you guessed it (well, you’ve probably only heard it a million times) a rhythm solo! It’s not that it blows you away with a lot of amazing notes or a display of awesome technique, but that it grabs you, and physically moves you, because it grooves so well and possesses the quality that all great rhythm playing does, whether it’s Freddie Green, or Keith Richards, or Melissa Etheridge, or Phil Upchurch, or Jimi Hendrix: let’s call it propulsion. You want to hear what I mean? Listen to Purple Haze. Once you get past the intro, when the band kicks into the groove of the tune, listen to what Hendrix does as a rhythm guitar player to propel the music. There are, of  course, a thousand other moments in his recordings that I could point to in order to illustrate the value of propulsion over flash to make the music work, but I suggest that you just get a hold of Jimi’s first four albums and try to get in to the musical Experience. In the interim, work on Example 3 to bone up on some of these techniques I’ve been talking about. Ex. 3 etc.

one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a

First, set your metronome around 60 bpm (slower, if necessary). Then get your strumming hand brushing up and down strokes across the strings in a 16ths groove, and begin by accenting the downbeats ONE ee and uh TWO ee and uh THREE ee and uh  FOUR ee and uh . After you’ve got that steady as a rock, you’re ready to try for the first hallmark of great rhythm playing: the placement of accents, putting em-PHA-sis in inter-EST-ing places. Check out how  stressing one different accent in a bar can completely alter the feel.

8

THE SUBTLE ART OF RHYTHM PLAYING, PART TWO One of the perceived dangers of total immersion

Let’s look at some wide-ranging examples:

into modern technology’s role in music (computers, MIDI, drum machine programming, etc.) is that it could have a detrimental effect on a musician’s perception of time. Couldn’t one end up thinking of  time (the rhythm of the piece of music) as some sort of simplistic, digitally metronomic, mathematically  sub-divided, rock solid permanent foundation?

1. JULIAN BREAM PLAYS GRANADOS and ALBENIZ (Music of Spain vol. 5) RCA RCD 14378

Consider this metaphor:

Probably any recording by any world class classical guitarist would serve to illustrate the point, but this recording is one of my particular favorites because the playing is so expressive. A solo guitarist does not need to worry about a lack of tightness with other players, and so the playing with time can become even more exaggerated: tempo can shift up and down like a heart rate affected by emotions, and this recording is liberally sprinkled with the performer’s personal fermatas, ritards, and occasional metric stretches to accommodate technical challenges (i.e. a quick shift that tries to avoid string squeaks…) Maestro Bream proves that a great performance of  great music need not be completely governed by a metronome.

TIME is like an

elastic band. It is flexible, it has give and take, not to be stretched too thin, nor left floppy and limp, but kept at a comfortably appropriate tension, to be stretched, or relaxed, whenever necessary. Your “feel” for a piece of  music, your interpretation of its rhythmic essence(s), can be every bit as idiosyncratic and complex as the colors and textures of other principal musical dynamics, like melody and harmony. Oh, there are lots of killer songs where that drum machine provides an unwavering number of  Beats Per Minute, and yes, you’re supposed to lock  into the groove. But if you’re thinking of each beat as a perfectly machined pinpoint in time, you’re discounting the work of some of the greatest rhythm guitarists of all time, and their rhythm sections. (Not to mention updated drum machine programs with “human feel” options, to escape quantized sterility.) You aren’t limited to a precise, clinical mathematical interpretation. A beat in a bar has some width to it:  you can drive a tempo by chugging on the front side, lending a sense of urgency and excitement to the proceedings, or you can sit on the backside of the beat, and make it feel heavy and sexy and as comfortable as an old pair of broken-in jeans.

2. THE POLICE (ANDY SUMMERS) EVERY BREATH YOU TAKE (from SYNCHRONICITY A&M SP-3735) Here’s an example of a highly popular rhythm guitar part that must sit in with the drums and bass rhythm section, and by the very nature of its arpeggiated construction would seem to have to be, well, metronomic. But listen closely: the guitar, in fact, sits a little farther behind the beat than the bass does, aided in this feeling by a hint of a delay/repeat Continued • • • • • •  9

• • • • ••

THE SUBTLE ART OF RHYTHM PLAYING, PART TWO (Cont’d)

sound effect. This gives the whole basic bed track a nice, slightly wider “pocket” than you might have previously been aware of. Then, check out what happens when the bridge hits (“Since you’ve gone I’ve been lost,…” etc.) The big power chord comes slicing in, way in front of the downbeat at the bar line, “pushing” the section, and, by contrast, (both tonally  and time-wise) adding a new sense of urgency and intensity to the moment.

Mongan goes on to quote Kenny Burrell from down beat magazine;

“…there’s quite a big involvement   playing rhythm guitar. …you have to  coordinate your thing with the rest of the cats. …You have lines, moving voices that blend in  with what the bass is doing. And Freddie  Greene is a master of this. The middle strings, the G and B, set up a sort of interval with the  bass and you get a thing going.” 

Good rhythm guitar parts often have a natural, fluid flow to them, like the current of a river. It’s not the boats, or the boaters, waving as they pass by and garnering all the attention. It’s not the riverbed that defines the shape and size of the river, not even the water itself, but gravity , the invisible propelling force that reveals itself through its actions on all the other elements. Andy Summers has an instinctive (and quite possibly consciously cultivated) rhythmic gift that is shown to great advantage on Synchronicity.

“ Greene sets a very high standard for the art of rhythm guitar playing in ANY style. He is sympathetic to the music and the players that surround him. He willingly becomes a role player, working the inside of the music, functioning as a catalyst, sacrificing his own ego and chops for the greater good of the musical and artistic whole. Again, I’ll bow to Mongan’s excellent research, as he quotes the critic, Raymond Horricks:

3. FREDDIE GREENE :



COUNT BASIE AND HIS ORCHESTRA (ALL-AMERICAN RHYTHM SECTION) The Best of Count Basie MCA MCAD 4050

“(Greene was) reliable without being obtrusive, a  sound component part of the rhythm, yet with a   personal sense of rhythm which is virile and spirited, technically well-versed; …He has given the band both  individuality of sound and rhythmic stamina. His  inherent sense of tempo and his durability when   performing a regular beat have set standards well above  those of the average band guitarist. …evidencing  throughout that essential relaxation which is part of the   familiar Kansas City beat. …his touch has been  definitive though still delicate, …emphatic without ever  becoming ponderous.” 

I quote from “The History of the Guitar In Jazz,” a wonderful labor-of-love book by Norman Mongan (Oak Publications, dist. by Music Sales Corp. 24 East 22 Street, NY NY 10010): he All American Rhythm Section became T   

“ 

Count Basie’s visiting card; it was the first section with an immediately recognizable sound. The leader’s  economical piano playing left plenty of room for the   pulse of the Greene guitar. The band’s unmistakable  characteristic beat depended to a large degree on the steady, accurate, cutting sound of  Freddie’s acoustic guitar.” 

                                                 For lessons on great rhythm guitar playing, you could do a lot worse than beginning and ending with Freddie Greene. 10

• • • • ••

THE SUBTLE ART OF RHYTHM PLAYING, PART TWO (Cont’d) 5. KEITH RICHARDS How can one discuss the vagaries of time  interpretation in guitar music without mentioning The Rolling Stones and, in particular, Keith? Here’s how Tom Wheeler described their records in the Dec. ’89 Guitar Player magazine:

4. MELISSA ETHERIDGE (LIKE THE WAY I DO, BRING ME SOME WATER) ISLAND ISLC-1143 There are, of course, an infinity of ways to skin a musical cat, and even though there’s a complete musicality present in the work of Bream, or Summers, or Greene, it is one of personal expression within the stylistic boundaries of their choosing. From a very  different area comes no less of an artistic rhythm guitar player; indeed, anyone who’s ever heard Ms. Etheridge perform, knows how powerful and invaluable her guitar accompaniment is to her music. Her right hand is the engine that drives her band, functioning like the main terminal that generates the click track and sync code for all the other instrumentalists to lock into. The two songs mentioned above provide an example of a 16ths groove (Like) and 8ths (Bring). Melissa gets her right hand strumming a steady up and down stroke, and then, like a percussionist on a conga drum, creates patterns by  omitting strokes, and accenting others, sometimes on the downbeat, sometimes on the up. It is exciting, and emotionally charged, and she is rock-solid steady as she goes, which makes it that much more appealing a ride for the listener to want to take with her.

“…blurred by ambiguity at every stage… hybrid rhythms bumping and grinding up  against each other. …in the spaces between the  beats, shrouded mysteries lurk and rumble, keeping the records ultimately impenetrable.”  …bold, blotchy guitar strokes. …a guitar in  Keith Richard’s hands is a lethal rhythm device  that skewers the listener and has him wriggling like a speared fish.” 

Keith plays so far behind the beat sometimes he’s almost on the front end of the one comin’ up. “Start Me Up,” and “Honky Tonk Women,” and so many other classic guitar riff heads, feel so funkily  good partly because he’s stretching the elastic of time. At other times he slashes and jabs and punctuates with notes and chords and licks that are quite intentionally jammed on the front side - hell, in front of the front side. In a way, it’s like time is an important element to Keith’s guitar playing because he’s totally unafraid to screw around with it. It’s not like complete anarchy; there is a conscientious thread. But it is a true Rock and Roll guitar spirit at work.

Ah ha! I can hear you saying; now you’re contradicting yourself, because you previously said that the key to great rhythm playing was NOT to be metronomic and rock-solid steady. Well, no, I didn’t. I asked you to consider that Time was elastic, and flexible. That doesn’t mean that it can’t be a meticulously consistent groove crafted over a perfectly  steady beat. Sometimes that kind of tightness is exactly the ingredient that makes the music happen: think of the music of James Brown, or Tower of  Power, or from a completely different perspective (but with this dedication to the solid groove ethic in common), think of AC/DC, or Judas Priest. There’s  no contradiction in admiring divergent approaches.

I hope the range of examples in this chapter effectively illustrates a central theme. Styles can be worlds away from each other, and yet there can be a remarkable link between them all - an artistic, musical search, digging down into the rhythmic structure, surrendering themselves to what the music seems to be asking them to try and do there. That secret heart, inside the music, is where the subtle art of rhythm guitar playing starts. The challenge is to keep looking for it, to keep finding it, and to make it come alive in  your work.

11

PLAYING AND SINGING AT THE SAME TIME Contrary to popular belief, some things

When accompanying yourself, try to minimize awkward chord forms and long positional shifts. This requires a thorough knowledge of inversions of chords in different forms and positions all over the neck. Then, by employing a technique I call “blind guide finger” changing (alluded to in the chapter “Shifting and Strumming” in Ex. 1 Ex. 2  Book Two), you can G Am make all your left-hand 1 chord fingerings without 2 2 3 looking or thinking 3 about them, and concentrate on the vocal.

are a little tougher and more complex than walking and chewing gum simultaneously. Just as learning to play the guitar requires the development of coordination between independent tasks - those of each hand and, ultimately, each finger of each hand - so does accompanying  your own singing. You have added another element to your performing process, and must come to terms with the fact that it compromises the sublimity of the two disciplines. For myself, it is usually a case of learning the guitar part until it’s stone-cold, embedded as an unconscious, autonomic function. Let’s call this “Blind Memorization” - no peeking! Even then, I usually have to tap my foot, pump my leg, and shake my booty, as it were. (In the same way, a drummer might maintain one “steady time” limb, while his other three go polyrhythmic: his body language keeps it all together, while he consciously concentrates on the thickest, “top” element of the layering process.) Then I must concentrate completely on the vocal line’s rhythms and accents. Helpful hint: For your foot taps, figure out which subdivision of the “count” makes it easier for you to sing your melody line eights, quarters, or half-notes.

4

The “blind guide finger” technique goes something like this. You’re playing an Am in the first position (Ex. 1), and you’ve got to go to a G (Ex. 2), but it seems an insurmountable problem because you can’t look at it. And you can’t take your yapper away  from the microphone because you’re singing an emotional, flowing legato line. What will you do? Ex. 3 1 2

2

3 3

Am

3

G

3

G

G

4 4

On the extremely rare occasion (hack, cough) that I cannot manage a guitar part under a vocal, I give priority to the vocal melody and try to keep phrasing as close to the original as possible, and rearrange the accompanying guitar part. I try, at least, to keep the changes in the right places. Using techniques of muting, resting, and stroking fewer strings to make a part more sparse (and manageable), I sometimes am forced to employ that time-worn musical practice: faking.

Solution: Isolate the 3rd-finger move from the 2nd fret of the G string to the 3rd fret of the big E string. Make that move one of pure “blind memorization” and alter your strumming to pick that low G note on the change. On the next beat of the bar, you could strum just the open strings. Then on the third beat of the bar, you could fold the 2nd and 4th fingers in and upstroke through all of the strings (Ex. 3).

Continued • • • • • •  12

4

• • • • • • PLAYING AND SINGING AT THE SAME TIME (Cont’d)

Here’s an example of how inversions and forms in one position can make life easier. Let’s say you’re in the key of G, and you have to play an E to F to G progression (Ex. 4). Your barre never moves: It allows  you, through some practice and blind guide finger manipulation, to make the changes without looking for different neck positions.

Ex. 5  3

F/A

III

1

4 4

1

4

or

III

1

2 3

Right Hand

G

III

4

C

Ex. 4  E

1 2

or

 p  m  p  m a   p  m i  a   p  i   p  i 

etc. etc. etc.

2 2

3

3

4

shows a simple, standard broken-arpeggio fingerpicking style pattern for vocal accompaniment. Option A shows how you could play with a flatpick  and one, two, or three right-hand fingers. Option B is the standard, “by the book” thumb-and-three-fingers, approach, while option C, I’m slightly abashed to admit, is the most natural way I seem to be able to get the job done. (Hey - Doc Watson worked miracles with a banjo style thumb and index, with the occasional middle finger thrown in.) Ex. 5

4

If a chord or form is presenting an awkward problem, you might also alter the right-hand strumming or picking to allow you to strike an open string or an easy-to-grab first-position chord form. Another way to ensure that you’ll be able to handle playing and singing at the same time is to compose the song that way. It sounds simple enough, but a lot of writing and song construction takes place away from the guitar; in your head, on the written page, or at a keyboard. Nowadays, more and more songs are written and recorded in a multi-track  piecemeal fashion, and a performer doesn’t find out whether he can handle all his overdubbed parts at once until he goes into tour rehearsals.

Even though simultaneous playing and singing puts its restrictions on both pursuits, it can also provide a unique and sympathetic interpretation of a song, as the two disciplines emanate from one source. And unless you’re an unrehearsed schizo, what could be tighter?

There is an extremely high level of guitar skills sublimated in the work of “traditional” singer/ songwriters such as Paul Simon, Bruce Cockburn, and James Taylor (some of my personal favorites). You could do a lot worse than trying to emulate their fingerstyle accompaniment chops.

13

DJANGO AND ONE-FINGER CHORDS Ex. 1

Five Functions 

V

1

Am

D9 root 5

F#m7  5

Fmaj7 5 9

3

7

root

root

C6

3 7

3 7

6 3

5

5

root

root

root

root

Consider the legendary Django Reinhardt (1910-1953), the unique Gypsy Jazz guitarist, who, at the age of 18, had his left hand accidentally mutilated by fire. Damage to the back of his hand left his third and fourth fingers paralyzed, permanently  bent back at the knuckle of the proximal phalange, and severely  hooked over and in at the knuckle of the middle phalange. Despite, indeed, perhaps because of this disability, Django reinvented his musicianship, his technique, and his style, and went on to become one of the greatest guitarists in history. Obviously, his physical ability to execute complicated chordal fingerings was limited, but his musical imagination was not. Harmonically, his music remained relatively sophisticated - and here, in part, is how. A couple of one-finger, three-string chord forms (Ex. 1 and Ex.2 ) actually function as several very different chords - it’s the right bass note at the right time that defines the many different chords that a one-finger voicing can be. Django developed a technique of using his left thumb to wrap up and around the neck, providing bass notes for five, and even six string voicings.

Ex. 2 V

Two Functions  1

C

Am7 3 root

5

5 3

7

root

root

Continued • • • • • •  14

• • • • ••

DJANGO AND ONE-FINGER CHORDS

Ex. 3 V

V

1

V

1

Am

V

1

Am7

D9

1

Fmaj7

4 4 X

1

Bm7  5

VII

1

E9

IX

1

E

X

II

1

F

1

G

In Ex. 3, notice how the bass notes give the definition to the chord voicing. Ex. 4 is a chart that shows you some of the positions of the fingerboard where these particular one-finger, three-string chord forms exist with their different functions. With a little logical ingenuity, you should be able to find almost any chord, somewhere on the neck. So whenever you’re feeling limited, remember Django, use your imagination, and the possibilities may once again become infinite.

Ex. 4 

Strings

Em7 5 B maj6 Gm A C9 F m7 E maj7 II

III

Am D9 Fmaj7 F m7 5 C6

D Bm7

V

VII

1 2 3 4 5 6

15

Cm F9 Dm G maj7 G9 E E 6 Bm7 5 Am7 5 C m7 F6 VIII

IX

X

(Cont’d)

• • • • • • OPEN TUNINGS (Cont’d)

and used D A D F# B D, a D6 tuning, when he recorded “The Very Thing That Makes You Rich” on Bop Till You Drop (Warner Bros. BSK-3358). Perhaps the most exploited alternate tuning, beyond the major open ones, is Dadgad, which is, quite obviously, a D A D G A D arrangement. It is modal, neither major nor minor, and offers a drone-like quality with its fourths and fifths. I first encountered it on Jimmy Page’s “Black Mountain Side” Led Zeppelin, Atlantic, 19126), but its versatility becomes apparent when one realizes that it’s the preferred “standard” tuning of modern European acoustic artists such as Pierre Bensunan, Bert Jansch, and John Renbourn. As we move farther afield, we enter areas where tunings develop out of  personal experimentation, eclecticism, and conceptualism. Stanley Jordan has helped establish a whole new guitar vocabulary on an E A D G C F parallelfourths tuning system. Narciso Yepes added four extra bass strings to a standard 6-string classical guitar, tuning them to C B  A  G  (low to high), not just to expand its range, but also to lend a natural sympathetic vibration overtone series for all the notes in the chromatic scale. Sometimes a tuning is uniquely born from a piece, and ends up being referred to by the song title. An example would be Michael Hedges’ “Hot Type” tuning from Aerial Boundaries, Windham Hill, WH-1032): A(-7!) B(+2) E(+2) F#(-1) A(-2) D(-2). (Again, numbers in   parentheses represent semitone adjustments from standard tuning.)

SO AFTER ALL OF THIS, W H AT C A N O N E S AY ?

Once, Don Menn asked Mr. Guitar, Chet Atkins, “What would you like to  see happen to the electric guitar?”  Chet replied, “I would like to see the standard tuning kept.”  Now there’s a radical school of thought.

17

THE CASE OF THE HAMMER-ON AND PULL-OFF ARPEGGIOS “Err On The B String”

Exhibit A  B

Bmaj7

6

4 1 0

6

4 1 0

B7

6

6

6

6

6

6

etc.

P P H P P H etc.

P P H P P H etc.

12 7 0 12 7 0 12 7 0 12 7 0  11 7 0  11 7 0  11 7 0  11 7 0

T A B

E

Em

B

10 7 0 10 7 0 10 7 0 10 7 0 9 5 0 9 5 0 9 5 0 9 5 0

C m

F

hold right hand  1st finger

6

4 1 0

6

4 1 0

6

6

6

P P H P P H etc.

6

6

P P H P P H etc.

8 5 0 8 5 0 8 5 0 8 5 0 7 4 0 7 4 0 7 4 0 7 4 0

T A B

6

etc.

9 5 2 9 5 2 9 5 2 9 5 2 11 7 2 11 7 2 11 7 2 11 7 2

Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, peruse if you will Exhibit A. The defendant/author/composer in question refers to this four-bar excerpt from one of his solos as “Err On the B string.”  What the plaintiff will try to demonstrate is that, for all the pyrotechnic, histrionic, sixteenth-note sextuplet noodling going on here, the defendant is actually guilty of fraud: a technical and harmonic analysis of this exhibit reveals it to be a simple, basic exercise in arpeggios, and nothing more.

Ex. 1 B major scale 

scale degree:

R

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Fingerings

4

1

3

4

2

4

1

4

9

9

9

8

7

8

6

T A B

9

Please direct your attention now  to Ex. 1, which is a B major scale. In order to construct a B major chord, one must extract the 1st, 3rd, and 5th degrees of this particular scale (Ex.2). The defendant tries to mislead us in the very first sextuplet Continued • • • • • •  18

• • • • ••

THE CASE OF THE HAMMER-ON AND PULL-OFF ARPEGGIOS (Cont’d) 5th

Ex. 2  B major chord 

And if the chord is “broken,” as it were, so that the notes that make it up are played in an up-and/ordown, running, consecutive fashion, then we have what is called an arpeggio. As illustrated earlier, the root, major 3rd, and perfect 5th of the B major scale (the 1st, 3rd and 5th degrees of Ex.1) form a B major chord (Ex. 2). Those same notes, played as they  appear in Ex. 3A, become a B major arpeggio. (Keeneyed observers that you are, you will note the singular addition of another B note, played an octave above. This only serves to flesh out the arpeggio and make it a more “traditional” playable exercise.)

3rd root

VII

1 2 3

7 8 9

T A B

of the exhibit by omitting the major 3rd scale-degree note (D#) from his arpeggio, but he exposes his chicanery somewhat in the second half of the first bar, when his top note descends from a B to an A#, and we have what is very clearly the suggestion of a Bmaj7 arpeggio. As you can see from Ex. 1, the A# is the 7th degree of the B major scale, and along with the root note, B, and the perfect 5th, F#, we have 3 of the 4 specific ingredients of a Bmaj7 arpeggio (Ex. 3B).

Ex. 4  E major scale 

But what is an arpeggio?… you may well ask, purely for clarification. As you know, the most basic element of harmony requires two notes, played simultaneously, which is called an interval. Three or more notes played simultaneously is called a chord.

Fingerings

T A B

T A B

3

9

2

8

1

7

1

7

1

7

2

8

3

9

Ex. 3B  B major 7th arpeggio 

Fingerings

T A B

4

9

3

8

2

7

1

6

2

7

3

8

2

4

4

1

2

4

1

2

4

1

3

2

4

4

5

The culpability of the defendant becomes even more evident as we move to the second bar of the exhibit. Notice how the top note of the arpeggio descends another half-step to an A natural, and the chord symbol is B7 (B dominant 7th). What is the trick? There is no A natural in the B major of Ex. 1; the Major 7th is an A#. What does this mean? It means that the sneaky fraud is changing the key  sense, that’s what! Cast your eyes a halfbar ahead, and you’ll see an E major arpeggio coming up. Ex. 4 is an E major scale: (above).

Ex. 3A  B major arpeggio 

Fingerings

2

4

9

Continued • • • • • • 

19

• • • • ••

THE CASE OF THE HAMMER-ON AND PULL-OFF ARPEGGIOS (Cont’d)

Ex. 5  E major chord 

5th

root

If we extract the 1, 3, and 5, we get the notes B, D#, and F# - a B major chord - and when we add the 7th degree, which is an A, it gives us the B dominant 7th chord (Ex. 8). Compare that to the notes of the sextuplet beginning at bar 2 of Exhibit A, (A, F#, and B), and we have categorically defined a B7 arpeggio.

3rd

1 2 0 1 2

T A B

Ex. 8  B7 

The 1st, 3rd, and 5th degrees of that scale form an E major chord, (Ex. 5), and played separately but consecutively, provide an E major arpeggio (Ex. 6). Notice how the notes of Ex. 6 correspond exactly to the third sextuplet of Exhibit A.

7th 5th

3rd root

1 2 4

Ex. 6  E major arpeggio 

Fingerings

T A B

4

7

3

6

1

4

2

5

1

4

3

The pattern remains the same (only the names have been changed to protect the innocent) as we proceed into bar 3 of Exhibit A. However, the key and scale have changed yet again. No matter: The root, 3rd, and 5th of Ex. 9 still give us the E, G, and B of an Em chord, and the G, E, and B of Exhibit A’s third-bar Em sextuplet arpeggio. The second half  of bar 3 is a basic, classic B major arpeggio, as we have seen before (Ex. 3).

4

6

7

And where did this B7 come from? Well, since the accused has changed the key sense to E major, (and if we continue to apply the principle of extracting 1st, 3rd, and 5th degrees of scales to build chords), let’s look at the E major scale again, except let’s start it on B, the 5th degree, which is commonly known as the dominant degree of a major scale (Ex. 7).

Ex. 9  E minor scale 

Fingerings

Ex. 7  B dominant 7th - scale form of E major 

Fingerings

T A B

4

9

1

6

3

8

4

9

1

7

3

9

T A B

4

10

5 7 8 9

T A B

3

1

2

3

4

4

5

1

3

4

2

4

5

2

3

4

5

1

9

Continued • • • • • • 

20

• • • • ••

THE CASE OF THE HAMMER-ON AND PULL-OFF ARPEGGIOS (Cont’d)

There remains only the mystery of bar 4. Suddenly, the pedaling, ostinato repetition of the open B string (like every  third note in all of the previous sextuplets) becomes, of all things, - a C#! What sleight of hand is this? It is the final twist of larceny, the damning bit of proof against the defendant. He cannot alter his static, repetitive left-hand fingering (4, 1, open; 4, 1, open: etc.). In fact, he has not picked a single note through the entire exhibit; he has merely  hammered-on and pulled-off to achieve his sham! So he finally decides to make use of his right hand - not to pick, but to reach up, behind his left-hand fingering, and fret the B string at the 2nd fret (C#) with the 1st finger of this hitherto innocent bystander, drawing it into the sordid affair and making it an accessory to the crime, the party of the second part. When all is said and done, good people, we have finally  exposed the con man at his game. His impressive, fancy, machine-gun licks are displayed as nothing more than basic arpeggios, a little four-bar exercise in hammering on and pulling off.

I  t is my sincere hope that you shall now retire to your chambers,

P R A C TI C E A N D P O N D E R   this, and return with the only

verdict that you can: G U I LT Y A S C H A R G E D .

I rest my case.

21

IMPROVISATION - GOIN’ FOR IT Ex. 1 Dm 1

1

4 1

4 4

1

3

1

3

4

1

1

3

3

1

1

1

1 1

2

1

10

13 10

10 12 10

12 10

12

R

B

B

R

H

P

S

13(15)13 12(14)10(12) 10 1012 10

When you improvise, what are you consciously 

S

12

S

1 2 4

1

1

B

T A B

4 3 1

3

S

8 10 8 8 10 5 7 5 5 7

S

S

S

S

68 6 79 7 57 5 57 5

7 7 8 10

PACING

attempting and what are you unconsciously drawing upon? Usually, this kind of question gives rise to vagaries concerning subjective, random concepts of  feeling and emotion in combination with intellectual challenges. It’s hard to be articulate about something that is essentially ephemeral. Besides, music ain’t about words. Sound in motion , Eduard Hanslick said. Still, let’s try to give the question of improvising a shot. Here goes.

Every solo tells a story, doesn’t it? Will your story slowly build in intensity until it’s at a fever pitch and then end with a bang, or will it be like waves washing over you, then gently drifting you out to sea, winding down as you slowly vanish over the horizon into the sunset?

CONTEXT AFFECTS CONTENT Content and style are often conscious predeterminations. I may decide to attempt a “theme and variations” approach on a particular solo, while another time I might feel that it’s appropriate to play a “greatest hits” package of licks and tricks, using primarily pentatonic and blues scales with two handed stuff, radical whammy bar, rapid double-picking scalar runs, pick slides, etc. Another song might suggest a more jazzy approach, so I employ more octaves, double-stops, and advanced harmonic exploration. Context affects treatment. Depending on a song’s mood and style, I might play the same riff with an entirely different treatment of technique, phrasing, and physical intensity (see Ex. 1).

Appropriate Emotion - 

SPECIFIC CONCEPTUAL ELEMENTS Try to get in touch with how you feel, with what mood the song seems to be suggesting. Does the music that will surround and accompany the solo imply a lightness, cuteness and cleverness, or perhaps a dark, bluesy sadness? Sometimes, one may  intellectualize and try, for example, to combine wholetone and diminished scales into an Angus Young AC/DC-type riff thing, thinking they can marry that to the music with propriety. Hmmm. Supposedly, anything’s possible. At the outset, try to be conscious of motivation. Are you angry? Relaxed? Do you feel tasteful and introspective, or are you in a clowning kind of mood?

Continued • • • • • • 

22

• • • • ••

IMPROVISATION - GOIN’ FOR IT (Cont’d)

Q UE S ER A, S ER A

emotion and intensity at the drop of a hat. More power to you. Personally, the artist side of me consciously strives for this, but the muse tends to be elusive and transient. On the other hand, the practical musician side of me can memorize very real technical information that can reside in my brain and be at my  fingertips’ disposal. The more I know and the better I know it, the more I am able to take advantage of it in an unconscious and autonomic way, and warp and mutate it in my quest for musical insight.

Having said this, a lot of it still boils down to a question of attitude. A very persuasive case can be made that the raison d’etre of improvisation is “Lets not talk about it, let’s just do it.” Too much consciousness leads to self-consciousness, which is a curse upon the ad-lib attitude. What is, is; what will be, will be; existential philosophy and all that. However…

When I analyze my  Ex. 3 improvising, I find that I (often) A dorian ascending  tend to organize myself into positions that have little arpeggio 1 “blocks” or fingerboard shapes in III 2 them. For example, if I were 1 1 4 4 2 2 V blowing in basic A minor, I would think of the fretboard as VII 4 4 4 1 1 shown in Ex. 2. Depending on 2 2 the harmonic structure I’m 4 playing over, I would X 4 4 superimpose and add the groups 4 of arpeggio shapes from the other chord changes, as well. Like many other improvisers, I then tend to think in particular scales to carry me from one position to another (Ex. 3).

YOUR VERY OWN PERSONAL REFERENCE LIBRARY Billy Sheehan says that you can’t break the rules until you know them, which leads me into this whole unconscious business. When you improvise, you draw  upon the things that you know so well that they are autonomic functions, like breathing and heartbeating. In a way, this relates back to the previous paragraph. If you’re a very hip and together person who’s at one with the universe, you may be able to get in touch with your inner feelings and play with

Ex. 2 

II

V

VII

VIII

IX

1 2 3 4 5 6

Strings

Continued • • • • • •  23

• • • • ••

IMPROVISATION - GOIN’ FOR IT (Cont’d)

Another unconscious organizational tool is exploiting a tonal center. When I first started improvising, the easiest notes to play off of and around were the root and the fifth. The next step was to include the blue notes -  3rd,  5th and  7th, and the whole-step bends of 4th to 5th and  7th to tonic. I must admit a personal preference and tendency to exploit the 2nd or 9th as a tonal center to develop a solo around, but it’s a pretty common trick in any improviser’s bag to consciously select a particular mode and then exploit the particular altered notes that are characteristic of that mode. (Refer back to the charts in the Modes chapters, Book Two.)

W H AT A R E B A S I C S ? Northrop Frye once said,

I  very much distrust slogans like

“ 

‘Back to Basics’ because the question of what  is basic has to be perpetually redefined. But there are essential things to be taught if you are going to take your  place in modern society…” 

This is especially true when applied to musical improvisation, because everything you know, combined with how you feel, is involved in your extemporaneous and spontaneous effort to transcend the sum of the parts. Everything you learn, no matter how complex or challenging initially, will eventually become just another accumulated “bit” of your basic understanding.

Y   o u  j  u  s   g ot   ta    k e  t     g oi   n’   e p   f  o r  i t. 

24

SOLOING FORM

he young guitarist Jonathan B. Goode is at  T    his first audition, sweaty palms and all. The  singer has just finished destroying the second  chorus of the tune they’re running down, and  all eyes in the room turn to our hero for his  solo. In the first two beats of the first bar, John  decides to use the killer two-hand tapping arpeggio lick  he’d been practicing all week. However, he’s nervous, and it’s new  and tough, and he fluffs it. In the next two beats of bar 1, he decides  to redeem himself and play his trusty standby super speedball  descending blues scale run, and he whips it off with the alacrity that  adrenalin can provide - maybe a little too much, though, because he  ends up a little ahead of the first downbeat of bar 2. No problem!  He just goes for the whammy bar and does what every righteous  modern dude does in times of trouble: When In Doubt, Dump. This gives him a spectacular sound effect (as opposed to a musical  melodic or harmonic statement) and buys him a little time to think. On the final beat of bar two, he plays a Steve Vai lick he copped   from the “Crossroads” movie guitar battle, and in bar 3 he plays a  T-Bone Walker riff because he knows he’ll score big points for showing off a  knowledge of authentic roots. Uh-oh: nine bars to go, and he’s drawing a  blank! So he noodles around aimlessly on the blues pentatonic (there’s not too  many of those weird notes to worry about there), takes another shot at the  two-hander (this time around, he nails it clean, and so, buoyed by new found  confidence, repeats it 10 times), runs the old faithful blues  scale up the neck in thirty-second-notes and caps it off  with a series of high, screaming bends up  around 1,200 Hz at about 120 decibels.

Does this story sound familiar?  Continued • • • • • •  25

• • • • ••

SOLOING FORM (Cont’d)

All you poor guys who work in music stores,

I think that form is an absolute basic necessity. You need to be so familiar with it that it seems totally  natural. Indeed, you should get to the point where  you are exploiting it without being conscious of it. Then it makes some real artistic sense when you say   you feel the need to travel beyond its confines.

isn’t this the same solo you’ve all heard 10 million times from those young aspiring rock stars trying out new mega-gear? Let’s try to be honest with each other and ourselves: When we “ad lib,” just how much of  what we’re actually doing are we consciously aware of, and how much is truly and purely extemporaneous? How much is sincerely a personal artistic statement and how much is vapid bull shine?

There are plenty of standard musical forms (get out your music dictionaries): strophic song, simple binary, ternary, rondo, sonata (compound binary), sonata-rondo, air with variations. Hey, even if you compose aleatoric music, opting out of historically  structured forms has still slotted you into a category! (In the words of Rush’s Neil Peart, “If you choose not to  decide, you still have made a choice.”) 

There’s no denying that we are assembling and exploiting pieces of our previous knowledge and experience. The art of music making is really a constant state of fusion between what we know, what we feel, and how we can (physically and technically) express this. Improvisation is supposed to be on-the spot composition, and in an age where we are being increasingly rigidly structured by both our technology  and programming formats of radio and record companies, we must be making an equally conscious, concerted effort to tie our feelings, personality, and our heart and soul to those moments when we are given the chance to shine our light.

But what is basic solo form? The most basic definition that would suit my purposes here is that it’s  just a predetermined idea in your head of structure, an overall concept, or even just a sense of purpose. There was a really terrific article by Jas Obrecht in the July ’81 Guitar Player magazine issue that was a compilation of quotes from many guitarists on the topic of soloing. With all due respect to the artists involved, and to Jas, I’d like to pirate a group of  statements from that article to build (and support) a personal theory on form.

But how can you marry the wild, uncontrolled aesthetic passions of your soul to something as mundane and archaic as FORM? Well, if you are of a mind that your inner spirit should be allowed to run free, without rules or inhibiting structure, then I guess  you won’t need these humble attempts at edification. The danger you face, however, in a freeform world of  improvisation is that your work can take on an appearance of being makeshift and haphazard, even completely random, to the uninitiated and the traditionalist alike. Frankly, these qualities would not seem to have much intrinsic value, nor will this attitude get us very far in an educational forum.

“Before I even pick up a guitar, I’ll think.”  Elliott Easton

This is an excellent start. Some guys don’t even bother to think until they’re actually finished playing, and then what they’re thinking about is the lady in the micro-mini at the bar.   Ex. 1 shows two contrasting phrases: Both have the same melody, but the second phrase has been well thought-out and planned. Notice fingerings, positions, use of open strings, phrasing, smoothness, and the logic of the picking pattern.

On the other hand, if we can accept as a basic premise that a great deal of our art is enhanced by the discipline of form, then we have added a useful ally to our cause of communicating our thoughts and feelings. As a cartoonist, a writer of prose and music lyrics, and as a guitarist,

Continued • • • • • •  26

• • • • ••

SOLOING FORM (Cont’d)

Ex. 1

“There are four things about solo construction: the entrance, tone, building the solo, and how  it’s going to end. Keith Moon, who was the  drummer for the Who, used to say, ‘Remember, mate, they remember your  entrance and your exit. Everything else in the  middle don’t mean a goddamn thing.’  Try to make it so the end of the solo will help the next section along.” 

4 4

H

H

T A B 8 10

8

8

10

10

7 10

8 10

11

9

10

Leslie West

4 4

H

T A B

3 5

P

P

H

3 0

3 0

S

B

10 8 10 12

No solo is an island. It draws life from the song around it, and should pay the favor back with interest.   E x. 2 shows a little melodic riff. See how Ex. 3 exploits the riff, in the process providing another facet to the solo, and more important, to the song as a whole. Ex. 2 

Gm

F

6

5

Textbook performance form! When the Mountain man speaks, all cellar dwellers and garageband blowhards should listen. Ex. 3 takes his advice about exiting: the vocal was coming back in on a G, so by adding a lower third harmony, I gave some extra support to that re-entry.

Dm

11

10

12

“ A s ol o    s h  s om    e t hi   n  o ul  d d o   g . I     ld    h av   e s o  t s ho  u m e a i m  , t a ke   t he    t u ne    s om    e w h  e re  . ”  J e ff      B e ck   

Tommy Bolin

Pacing, like taste, is a sign of maturity and wisdom in your playing. Some guys seem to play way  beyond their years, and some cats, like Tommy or Jimi Hendrix or Charlie Christian, never did get to enjoy  the benefits of age. Part of their legacy is their example of exercising tasteful pacing as classic form, showing predeliberation and a firm sense of purpose in their playing.

C

4 4

T A B

6

7

Ex. 3

“If you blow your cookies in the first bar,  you have nowhere to go.” 

5

Gm

Gm7

F

E

4 4 3

3

B

T A B

7

8

R

6 8 10 8

3

H P

B

6 8 6

5

6

5

R

7

H P

5

S

5 7 5 3

Continued • • • • • •  27

• • • • •• Ex. 4   .   c    t   e  ,   y    t    i   s   n   e    t   n    I  ,    t   n   e   m   e    t    i    Y   c   x    G    E  ,    R    t   s    E   e   r   e    N    t   n    I    E

  s   u   r   o    h    C     e   r    P

Intro

First Verse

Chorus

SOLOING FORM (Cont’d) A Grabber Intro  

  s   u   r   o    h    C     e   r    P

  o   r    t   n    I     e    R

Second Verse

 B u i l d

Second Chorus

Climax

To Billboard #1

Set-Up and Rebuild

Solo

Bridge

Choruses Out

FORM

“Don’t go in business for yourself until you  know what the composer had in mind… The good players are giving you a message, and the message is not how many notes they  are playing; it’s the feeling they get.” 

particular form. Notice how it bears a remarkable resemblance to West’s and Travers’ outlines: l. 2. 3.

Introduction Body (argument) Conclusion

Herb Ellis

An introduction should have a strong lead, or hook, to get the reader (listener) interested, and should clearly state the thesis, the main proposition, theme, or argument of the piece. The main body of  the essay contains a convincing elaboration, illustration, and defense of the thesis. And the textbook definition of a proper conclusion should have three things: a restatement of the main thesis, a summation of the points raised in the main body, and your closing remark (having the last word in an argument, if you will, and making it a real zinger).

What’s the attitude of a song? What is the emotion? How well are you capturing it and interpreting it?

“A solo should be a statement, like a good  novel. It should start someplace, grab your  interest, work up to a climax, and then go  down and lead into… whatever comes next. And it should follow a theme.”  Pat Travers

Solos that are a constant stream of climaxes end up having no climax at all. A (slightly tongue-incheck) line-graph illustration of a “standard” song concept based on the Barry Manilow ballad formula  arrangement, containing such a solo form, might look  something like Ex. 4.

My use of essay form is only an illustrative example. You may personally and quite rightly find it inappropriate, in that you can easily envision one solo constructed along the lines of, say, climbing Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven,” and another song’s solo being nothing more than a driving one-note wonder. (Remember Crazy Horse’s “Cinnamon Girl”? Now, it’s not what I would have chosen to do, but it leaves an undeniably effective impression.) All I am suggesting is that concept breeds form, and some forms are more universal than others.

“It’s like trying to describe something to  someone; it’s a conversation where you say  something a certain way.”  B.B. King

And we all know what a succinctly eloquent lady  Lucille is.

And without negating any of the above, be mindful that in some contexts, form can simply be pure emotion: “I get the blues, and I just let go in the middle of it,” said Muddy Waters.

I particularly like the analogies to speech, or writing stories. The most basic writing structure is the essay, and I think it behooves us to take a look at that 28

SOLOING AND FORM, PART TWO Creativity and Interpretation  Ex. 1 Chet Atkins style 

Form is shape: just a solid, personal concept of  structure, a sort of general outline. Earlier, we broke solo content down into a few components. To review:

EMOTION Feeling, motivation, soul, heart, feel. H

PACING T A B

Taste, intensity.

CONTEXT Being appropriate, maintaining stylistic integrity.

7

5

3

P

3

5

5

H

3

3

5

5

 jazz 

In this chapter, let’s focus on another concept thinking creatively and discovering your interpretive voice. S

T A B

“The point of music is to tell stories with a melody.” 

67

S

5

S HP

7 89

8

S

8 9797 5

89

10

bluesy 

Carlos Santana

Once you get past the physically technical point of being able to pick out the notes and get from one to the next, how do you express your personality  through them? Ex. 1 shows the same melodic riff  played from four different stylistic sensibilities, which gives us four different stories. This illustrates the technical interpretations inherent in any given musical statement. What it doesn’t show are the personal emotional interpretations that are possible: dynamics, phrasing, and stylistic variations can occur on, between, or inside any given note in any of the four examples (not to mention the amount of vibrato you employ, or where you’re moving the picking position around on the string, or how slowly or quickly you reach your destination on bends or slurs, etc.).

S

T A B

7

B

5 7(9)

R

8

B

P

9(7) 5 7(9)

5 8 5 8(10)

two hand tapping 

T

T

H

T A B

Continued • • • • • •  29

57

B

P R

5 7(9) 10 (9) 7

P

B

B

5 7(9) 12

5

• • • • ••

SOLOING AND FORM, PART TWO (Cont’d)

Should you be conscious of these kinds of things when you solo? When you’re practicing, absolutely. Get out the microscope and the fine-tooth comb. But when you’re performing, if it’s going to get in the way of the flow, forget about it.

“To truly improvise requires you  not to know anything, in a sense. In this state of mind you see  everything before you, every possibility. All avenues  suddenly open to you.” 

Historically, by nature, the sound of acoustic guitars was front-end loaded with percussive attack  and a relatively swift decay, without much sustain to speak of (see Ex.2). Blues players such as Tampa Red and Robert Johnson changed all that by popularizing

Ex. 2  classical 

Em

B7

3 4

John McLaughlin T A B

0 0 0 2 2 0

0

You sense bad actors or politica n  u o  y , cians because the  k  no w  ne  “ Yo u  he n so meo  m speeches that come out of their  te l l w s peec h f  ro t mouths are unnatural and s sa  ma k e ea r t;  i t ’s j u rehearsed-sounding. But a  h is h  ta neo us .” truly great acting job isn’t really  s po n  o s  C a r l acting at all, because the actor  a n a  S a n t has become the character, and there is a symbiotic flow between the role and the person playing it. And therein lies their true art. But is a soloing musician acting?  No and yes - no, a musician does not “pretend”, but strives to be honest, to be him or herself: but also yes, because the musician surrenders the ego and self-consciousness to the service of the music. The musician becomes a conduit for the music: this is the act of a true artist.

0

0 2 1 2

0

1

0

2

0

4

2 2 0

slide guitar, which could give the guitar the necessary  sustain for sliding, bending, and legato effects of a human voice (Ex.3 ). In the ’30s, George Barnes and Eddie Durham pioneered the use of the electric guitar in jazz - more power, more volume, more sustain. By  the late ’30s, clarinetist Benny Goodman’s guitarist Charlie Christian popularized the instrument, playing amplified guitar lines that were heavily inspired by the tenor sax work of Lester Young (refer to Ex. 4). The phrasing and concepts of horn players are very vocally  oriented, as well, since they also run on lung power.

“My goal is to get the fluidity and hip line of horn players on the guitar.” 

How can I teach you to get in touch with  yourself? How can I describe the process of opening up and letting the music flow through  you? That’s something you’ll have to work out on your own. Still, there are some concepts that can get you away from the guitaristic technical traps and move you towards the discovery of your “inner voice.”

Mike Stern

Ex. 3 slide  8va 

3

“Make your solo as vocally oriented as possible,  just as if someone were singing it, so the sound  grows more human and natural.” 

S

T A B

Ronnie Montrose

30

12

S

 

12

10

S

10 12 10

S

0

S

5 8 5

• • • • ••

SOLOING AND FORM, PART TWO (Cont’d)

Ex. 4  sax inspired  Gmaj7

HP

T A B

9 79 7

Am7

D11

G6

S

10

S

9

7

8 7

8 10

8

7

10 9

B

11

9 10

12

12 (14)

In the late ’50s, James Burton put slinky banjo strings on his guitar to ease his string-bending leads on Ricky Nelson’s “Believe What You Say.” Now guitarists could imitate the sliding and bending of a voice or another instrument quite easily ( Ex.5). Ex. 5  bluesy 

B

T A B

5(7)

B R

3 6 3

B R

6(8) 6 3

6 (8) 6 3

Check out Ex. 6 for an arpeggio in the Yngwie style of Paganini. Volume, distortion, and sustain (not to mention whammy bars) have all increased the range of a guitar’s interpretive and expressive solo potential. We can see how the fusion of such diverse elements as creative personality and technical advance can lead to a higher ground, always offering new, exciting options for the brave artistic soul. Yet it will always come back to this: It won’t amount to a hill of beans unless it is your voice, your personality in the solo.

B R

5

(7) 5 3 5 3

5

“If you want extreme guitar playing, you should  listen to Paganini. His way of playing the violin  was kind of the way I wanted to play guitar.”  Yngwie Malmsteen

Ex. 6  Paganini-like arpeggio  Am

How do you feel?  What do you think?  What do you know? For all of the infinite possibilities that lie outside the physical and technical borders that exist, there is an equally infinite potential that dwells inside each and every artist.

T A B 5 8

31

E7

7

7

5

5

5 8 7 4

5

7 4

6

7

7

DEVELOPING LEFT-HAND INDEPENDENCE: A FINGERING EXERCISE Sitting down, or in, with different musicians as

Here’s how it goes: start off with Ex. 5  all four fingers fretting at consecutive 1 2 frets along an inside string (the A, D, 3 G, or B). In Ex. 5, I use the G string 4 in the first position, but you really  should try it on all the inside strings and in all positions all over the neck. Next, move  your 1st finger up across the fingerboard to the adjacent string and your 2nd finger down to the string below, while leaving your 3rd and 4th fingers firmly  planted right where they are (refer to the first chord diagram in Ex. 6). Play the interval you’ve created, and then switch the fingers around, with the 1st finger going from the D# at the 1st fret on the D string, down across the fretboard to the C at the 1st fret on the B string, while your 2nd finger goes from the D  across and up to the E, 2nd fret of the D string, still without moving the 3rd and 4th fingers at all. Play  the new interval.

often as possible offers some of the greatest potential for your ongoing, lifelong artistic education (open ears, open mind, no pride, no pretension, hungry and humble, and so on). Ex. 1

Ex. 2 

G7

G7 5

III

1

II

1

2

2

3 4

Ex. 3

Ex. 4 

Gmaj7 II

1

G6 2

3 4

II

1 2

3 4

Ex. 6  1

1 2

A friend complained about a physical/mental block that he had about making the change from a particular G7 to G7  5 voicing (Ex. 1 and Ex. 2). I could relate, recalling how years ago it had taken me months to get used to the change of  Gmaj7 to G6 ( Ex. 3 and Ex. 4) that appears in Lesson One of the great classic, Mickey Baker Complete Course of Jazz Guitar, Book 1 (Lewis Music Pub., 263 Veterans Blvd., Carlstadt, NJ 07072). We got to talking about how these problems stem from a lack of independence, equal strength, and flexibility between the left-hand fingers. Later, another friend, Sil Simone, showed me an exercise that he’d learned from Matt Clark at Eli Kassner’s Toronto Guitar Academy (see what I mean about musical networking?).

2

3 4

3 4

2

1

1

T A B

2

2

1

1

2

Now go back and forth until you’ve got it smooth and accurate, in time with a metronome at a comfortable tempo. Make sure the static 3rd and 4th fingers aren’t muting the adjacent strings. Got it? Good! That’s the technical procedure. Now let’s learn the form of the complete exercise. 32

• • • • • • DEVELOPING LEFT-HAND INDEPENDENCE:

A FINGERING EXERCISE  (Cont’d) Ex. 7 

And that’s only the first part of the exercise; the full program looks like this:

1

~

2 3~ 4~ 5~ 6~ ~

The 1st and 2nd fingers are the “switching” digits, while the 3rd and 4th remain static (as in our examples). The 1st and 3rd fingers switch, while the 2nd and 4th remain static. The 1st and 4th fingers switch, while the 2nd and 3rd remain static. The 2nd and 3rd fingers switch, and the 1st and 4th remain static. The 2nd and 4th switch, while the 1st and 3rd remain static. The 3rd and 4th switch, while the 1st and 2nd remain static.

That gives you a grand total of 120 combinations of little switches of different fingers on different strings, and that’s exactly 240 different intervals, which at first glance seems to threaten great, tedious boredom. But once you’ve tried this exercise, you’ll find that every switch serves as a challenging and painful reminder of what an uncoordinated, physically  bankrupt specimen of a guitar hero you are. Feeling cocky, eh? Walk through all the way and tell me you’re not burning from the elbow on down, pilgrim.

shows the four interval switches possible using the A string as home base for the “static” fingers. Ex. 8 illustrates two out of six possible switches from the D string. Likewise, there are another six from the G string, and four from the B, which aren’t shown here. Ex. 7

Ex. 8 

33

THE SIX LAWS OF TONE, TASTE AND FEEL Ex. 1 4 4

T A B

0

5 4

9

14

10

14

19

19

Law #1: 

At risk of dating myself, I recall high school

Be in the right place at the right time.

discussions weighing the relative merits of Alvin Lee’s speed, Carlos Santana’s soulful tone, Jimi Hendrix’ flash, and Eric Clapton’s tasty feel. While rankled by  the stupidity of either/or arguments, I’ve always leaned towards the tone/taste/feel side of the debate, because I feel that if you apply yourself to fundamental musical disciplines, the speed and flash of  good chops are an inevitable result.

Play the notes in Ex.1 , and listen to how different the notes sound in each position. Warm and dark? Brittle and thin? Now try picking close to the bridge, soft, then hard. Try free strokes (Fig. 1) for tone and rest strokes (Fig. 2) for power. Now try the same variations, but picking over the end of the fingerboard. How and where you pick drastically 

Oh, there’s no mistaking the exhilarating impact of blinding speed and physical prowess; I’m often guilty of going to that popular well. But in my best “do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do” voice, I urge you to beware the empty sugar rush of a Twinkie and a cola! There’s no getting around it: it takes a developed, discerning palate to appreciate a vintage wine.

Fig. 1  free stroke 

Plane of  strings 

Since those late ’60’s high school days, there have been a few new generations of chops-literate guitarists taking advantage of increasingly accessible educational materials. Technique has risen across the board. Indeed, we passed through a “techno-shredder” phase and into a “retro” movement backlash. Throughout the cycles of fashion, we are still left with the thorny  problem of teaching tone, taste, and feel, areas of  playing that are often regarded as “natural,” or “God-given” gifts that supposedly “can’t be taught” because “you either have it or you don’t.” So how do  you teach the “unteachable”? Let’s start with some real basic basics.

Fig. 2  rest stroke 

Plane of  strings 

affects your tone. The biggest downfall of musical performance is when the player becomes consumed by  thinking about notes instead of listening to the sound of the music, getting inside the music and becoming one with the momentum of the transportation. Somehow, this position lends itself much more readily  to an almost unconscious exploitation of the expressive, tonal palette.

34

• • • • ••

THE SIX LAWS OF TONE, TASTE AND FEEL (Cont’d)

Ex. 2  4 4

H

5

T A B

8

8

5

5

P

8

8

P

5

3

5

3

H

0

P

0

3

3

0

Law #2: Pick a style that’s picking you. Ex.2 shows four ways to pick a simple phrase. Can you play  them with consistent tone, volume, and rhythm? Each variation has unique characteristics. Your own physical capabilities will lead you to favor one alternative over another in a given

situation. This is the basis of personality in your playing.

Ex. 3 3

3

3

3

3

4 4 3

3

H P

T A B

23 2

H

5

H

2 3 5

H

H

2 4 5

H

H

2 4 5

H P

454

H

7

H

4 5 7

H

3

H

5 7 8

H

3

H

5 7 8

P

3

P

3

P

10 8 7 8 7

10

Law #3: If it doesn’t sound good when you play it quiet, it’ll never sound good when you play it loud. Play your favorite speedball run. (For those without one, Ex. 3 is conveniently provided.) Okay, Roadrunner, now  put your amp on a clean setting and turn the volume  4    3 down to 1. When you can execute fast runs with       2 this setup, getting a decent, cleanly articulated tone, then go ahead and crank the amp. Never use       0 volume and distortion to compensate for a weak  physical performance.            1

5

6   7     8       9  

  1

  0

Continued • • • • • •  35

7

8

9

10

• • • • ••

THE SIX LAWS OF TONE, TASTE AND FEEL (Cont’d)

Law #4: If you can’t play it good and slow,  yo u’ll ne ve r pl ay it good and fa st. If you can’t play Ex. 3 at the suggested tempo of 192 beats-per-minute, cut the tempo in half. If you can play it solidly at 96 beats-per-minute, I guarantee that it’s  just a matter of time and practice before  you can speed it up. But remember…

Law #5: Never play two where one will do. Just because you can jack up the speedometer, or get fancy, doesn’t mean you have to.

Law #6: When in doubt, lay out. Listen. Trying to play your way out of confusion usually  only makes the music go from bad to worse. Just relax and listen. Then, get back to basics. A baseball slugger on a hot streak is described as “on automatic” or “in a groove.” On the other hand, the batting coach of a hitter in a slump will take him back to the fundamentals to help him “rediscover” his swing and regain his confidence. The quickest route to confidence is through the fundamental things you know and love so well that they are almost autonomic functions. If you’re having trouble finding your “voice,” it may be because you’ve gotten outside  your limitations.

The

is l a  w # 6 o t   y r c o r o l l a 

 S . .  S .  I . .  K ,  s t u p i d

 p l e  m  i  s  t  i  K e e p

Continued • • • • • •  36

• • • • ••

THE SIX LAWS OF TONE, TASTE AND FEEL (Cont’d)

Ex. 4  * 4 4

10 8

7

T A B

10

8

7

10 8

7

10 8

10

* 10 8

10 9

8

10 9

7 10 9

7

10 9

7 10 9

7

10

9

7

9

7

10 9

7

10 9

7

Ex. 5 

4 4

T A B

15 13 12

14

13 12

14 12

12 10

12 10

10 8

10 9

8

Heed Spencer Tracy’s advice on acting:

“Just know your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.” Let’s say you’re learning your line ( Ex. 4), but you keep bumping into the furniture at the asterisk, because it feels awkward to cross to the third string to play the F with your 4th finger, then cross back to the second string to play the A with the same finger at the same fret. Positioning is not written in stone. You might “rearrange the furniture” to make it easier for yourself. (Remember Law #2.) Ex. 5 shows a refingering of  the same phrase that will probably feel more natural. Search for ways to make personal adjustments in order to gain interpretive control and improve your confidence. The true test of your musicianship is to play out while searching for the sounds and emotions that you have inside. If you can do that, there isn’t another person on the face of the earth who can sound like you.

37

10

CROSS PICKIN’ Problems of stagnation and frustration are just as likely to be mental as physical. We start out by learning to recognize certain patterns and shapes, memorizing them and locking them in. But in order to advance, we must sometimes learn to unlearn, as it were, and overcome old habits. Ex. 1

A 

T A B

4

12

4

1

4

9 11 12

0

B 

T A B

3

3

4

1

3

9 11

0

3

H

0

0 12

11 12

11

1

2

9 10

1

2

2

1

10 9

2

1

H

P

9 10

10 9

3

1

11 9

3

0

4

3

1

12 11 9

4

3

0

4

12

4

P

0 11

0 12 11

12

Ex. 1A shows a

nice, simple, “linear” approach to the A major scale. But consider how Ex. 1B deals with the same animal: It uses a device called cross picking. Such an approach challenges all the tidy preconceptions contained in Ex. 1A. It forces us to think in seemingly contrary and illogical ways (i.e., going backwards across more than one string for a consecutive scale degree, or going all the way down the fingerboard to an open string in order to move to a higher note, and vice versa). Ex. 2 

T A B

Another interesting thing about this technique: You can leave your fingers in place after you’ve plucked the 0 2 0 1 3 0 1 4 4 2 0 4 1 0 3 0 note, sustaining it across the following H H P P notes for a banjo or Ex. 3 0 0 0 0 pedal-steel effect. Two 11 12 12 11 0 0 10 12 12 10 more cross-picked scale 12 12 voicings are shown in Ex. 2 (G major) and Ex. 3 (D major), but you should be catching 0 1 3 0 3 0 2 4 the drift here - any scale with notes that can be sounded on the H H open strings is fair game for this approach. Try E major (hint: 0 T use the open E and B strings), F major (E and G), B  major 0 A 0 11 12 B 7 9 12 (G and D), and so on.

38

CROSS PICKIN’  (Cont’d)

• • • • ••

Ex. 4 

0

1

2

0

1

3

H

T A B

0

7

2

0

3

H

8

1

0

2

P

0

0

0

1

0

P

0

0

12 12

12 14

1

13 12

8

7

0

Ex. 5 

0

1

0

2

0

1

0

2

0

3

0

H

T A B 0

0

0

3

8

7

7

7

7

0

0

0

4

Ex. 6 

4

2

T A B

0

0 12

9

1

0

4

0

0

0 7

1

11

7

0

1

4

0 7

0

1

0 10

7

0

4

0

And don’t forget those minor scales! How about A Dorian and A Aeolian ( Ex. 4)? Try the E minor pentatonic, or blues, scale in Ex. 5. And just for laughs (or Holdsworthian stretching agonies), there’s Ex. 6, which ascends Dorian and descends Aeolian. It’s only  slightly less tortuous to accomplish on a 24 3/4" scale neck than on today’s ever-popular 25 1/2". (How about on a Gibson Byrdland, at 23 1/2"?)

39

2

9

12

VIBRATO One of the things that separates the maestri from the sophomores is finger vibrato, an important technique for creating a distinctive sound. Because vibrato is such a highly personalized technique, there is really no “right” or “wrong,” no universal method. The how, when, where, and why of its application speaks directly to your artistic heart and soul. Nevertheless, here’s some entirely  subjective thoughts on the topic.

Ex. 2   faster vibrato  4 4

4 4

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

What do I mean by “musical”? Slow finger vibrato usually moves at the rate of an eighth-note (or eighth-note triplet) against the beat, as shown in Ex. 1. If you want a faster vibrato, try the sixteenth-note and sixteenth-note triplet rhythms shown in Ex. 2. This is all unconscious stuff. When you’re experienced and in the groove, you won’t even think about it - it will just feel right. Listen to guys like Edward Van Halen, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Carlos Santana, and Mark Knopfler, and concentrate on the tone and feeling that their vibrato gives to the notes.

There are two general types of guitar vibrato that which is generated from a wiggling of the finger that’s depressing the string on the fretboard, and a second style that comes from shaking the whole hand at the wrist. Again, generally speaking, the finger vibrato tends to be used for a smaller, quicker effect, where the pitch range of the “vibrating” note isn’t too wide. A vibrato that starts back at the wrist tends to be stronger and more dramatic, with a wider pitch variation. Beginners tend to overuse vibrato, often in such a way as to make notes “flutter.” Learn to be judicious with vibrato. Many notes don’t require it, so don’t vibrate them to death. When you do settle on the right notes, use vibrato with the correct “time.” For example, try to make long notes at slower tempos warmer and rounder, or make short notes “laugh,” oscillating and resonating in a musical way.

Ex. 3

B

T A B

Ex. 1 slow vibrato 

7

  5

7

7

9

Don’t rush vibrato. Check out Ex. 3: The bent note might go smoothly up to pitch, then a little vibrato might warm it up nicely on the fourth beat of  the bar. On the other hand, if you were “stinging” a single note without a bend - as B.B. King does so often and so well - you might want it “laughing” (or “crying,” as the case may be, depending on the song’s harmonic mood and lyrical content) right from the get-go.

picked note value

4 4

4 4

3

3

3

40

• • • • ••

VIBRATO (Cont’d)

Be mindful of the fact that vibrato makes an unbent note go sharp, but that a bent note can travel both above and below the standard pitch. My personal taste is to be conservative with the former and more aggressive with the latter. (Of course, floating whammy bars give you mechanical options on everything, including open strings.) Fig. 1 shows a common method for producing a rock or blues-style

Fig. 1

vibrato. But there is still another method that bears our attention (Fig.2), one that is commonly employed by classical players (I have fond memories of it from my high school violin lessons.) Here, the string is not “vibratoed” vertically across the neck. Instead,  you use a rapid motion, parallel to the neck, of the entire forearm, right back to the elbow. Even though the fingertip never moves the string vertically, the horizontal shaking motion changes the pressure of the fingertips, which act as a pivot point, and make the string vibrate in an almost imperceptible fashion. More often than not, the thumb comes right off the back of the neck to help exaggerate the motion. Vibrato is the most commonly used expressive tool, and is strongly related to bending (back in Book One). It animates a note, makes it more human, and more dramatic. So, on occasion, when the feeling is irresistible, you go ahead and pick yourself some real nice notes, and shake ’em up real good.

Pivot point where  vibrato takes place  Elbow moves back and   forth in opposite direction   from back of hand.

Fig. 2 

Finger, hand  and wrist shake  back and forth  Keep a strong, locked line   from fingertip through   finger, back of hand, wrist, and forearm

41

RHYTHM CHANGES, PART ONE Ex. 1

B B maj7 [B 6]

A

Gm Bdim7

F7 C dim7

Am

D7 [D9]

Cm Cm7

F7 C dim7

B Dm7

Gm G7 9 [G7 9]

Cm Cm7

F F7 9

Dm7

G7 [G13]

C7 C7 [C9]

Cm Cm7

F F7 9

B Fm7

B Fm7 [Fm9]

B Cm F Gm Dm7 E maj7 Edim7 B 7 [B 13] [E 6add9] [G, B , or [Dm9] C dim7]

F G7 [G13]

B (F) Cm7 F7 [Cm9] [F13]

1

4 4

D7 D7

B

Cm Cm7

G7 G7

Gm7

C7 [C9]

F7 F7

Cm7

F7

B B maj7

(F7)

17

B B maj7

Gm Bdim7

B Dm7

Gm G7 9

Gm B 7

Cm

F

E maj7

Edim7

F Cm7

B Dm7 G7

A

F7

25

In the 1920’s George Gershwin wrote a popular

In modern practice, however, the harmonies are fleshed out into something like those shown in the second line of  Ex. 1. Notice the chromatic ascent of  the bass line in bars 1 and 2 and the frequent use of  altered, extended, and substitute chords. (Ex. 2 shows some chord voicings you can use to play these progressions.)

tune called “I Got Rhythm.” It was based on the common AABA song form and a chord progression that has since evolved into a standard jazz performance instruction vehicle. Playing through the sequence of  chords that has become known as “rhythm changes” exposes a musician to several basic concepts - such as II-V7 changes, chord substitution, and harmonized bass lines - in one comprehensive package.

Don’t be fooled by the term standard ; it doesn’t mean that the harmonic content is etched in stone and shouldn’t be experimented with. For example, Jamey Aebersold’s Turnarounds, Cycles, and II-V7s (Aebersold Pub., 1211 Aebersold Dr., New Albany, IN 47150) offers seven substitute progressions for just the first eight bars.

Begin with the relatively humble harmonies shown on the top line of  Ex.1 . The first “A” section was a simple I-VI-II-V7 turnaround figure, repeated three times, and then tagged with a I-V-I. This section was repeated, and then followed by an eight bar bridge based on a common harmonic structure of the day, a cycle of four dominant 7th chords played for two bars each, with each chord functioning as the dominant of  the following harmony. The “A” section is then repeated in bars 25 through 32.

But while there’s no such thing as “wrong” in music, some chords make more logical-sounding substitutions than others. The bracketed chords on the third line of  Ex. 1 show some common chordal alternatives. In bars 1 and 6, maj6 and maj6 (add 9)

44

RHYTHM CHANGES, PART ONE (Cont’d)

• • • • •• Ex. 2 

B maj7 VI

B 6 2

1

V

Bdim7 VI

1 2

3 4

III

1 2

3

C dim7

Cm7 2

III

3

X

1 2

3

Dm7 2

3

3

4

G7 9

G7 9 IX

IX

1 2

1 2

3

Fm7

F7 9 II

VI

1

3

2

Fm9 VI

1

B 7 VI

1

1 2

3

4

2

4

2

3

3

3 4

4

4

Edim7 E maj7

B 13 VI

VI

2

1

E 6(add9) V

1 3

4

1

V

2

1

2

3

VI

Edim7, Gdim7 B dim7, C dim7

2

3

4

3

4

3

Dm9 1

III

III

1

1

2

3 3

4

Cm7

F7

Cm9

2

1

1

1

3 4

2 2

4

2

3

3 4

F13 1

D7 1

3

Gm7 2

V

2

3

IV

3

3

C7

4

C9 1

1 2

2

3 3

1 4

chords replace maj7 chords, and a 7  9 chord replaces the 7#9 in bar 3. In fact, some chart writers simply “flag” these kinds of situations with a “7 alt” (dominant 7th altered) symbol, leaving the player free to choose his or her own substitution. In bars 5, 7, and 8, I’ve proposed minor 9th and dominant 13th chords for the II-V7 turnaround, a fairly common substitution. The diminished 7th chord (bar 6) is a crafty customer, since each note of the chord is equidistant from its neighbor, and can therefore function as the root - the correct labelling depends on the context. For us guitarists, this means that a three-fret slide in either direction gives us a new voicing of the same harmony. 45

3 4

4

D9

2 4

III

Am7

III

2

4

G13 3

2

3

2

4 2

1 3

III

1

1 2

G7

V

2

1

Dm7

2

3

RHYTHM CHANGES, PART TWO Here’s a relatively complex chord-melody composition based on the same “rhythm changes.” Work your way slowly through the 32 bars of these variations, and see what they say to you about chord substitution, chord melody, voice leading, bass lines, and so forth.

For The Love Of Guitar -

WORKING THROUGH CHANGES A little philosophical pastiche, courtesy of Billy  Joel and Ricky Nelson: Don’t go changin’ to try to please  me, because you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself. Ex. 1 B 6 1

Bdim7

C7

C dim7

Dm7

G7 9

A 4

3 4

1 3 3

3 1

1 2

2

2

3

4

4

3

Cm9

1

3 1

3 3

2

2

3

3

3

F7 9( 9)

4

3 2 1

3 1

1 2

2 1

E maj7

Edim7

4

1 4 3

3

1 2

B 7 5

1

4

1 1

Fm9

1 4 2 3

1 3

1

2

4

1

P

T A B

8 7 6

6

7 5 6

8

10 9 8

8

10 11 10 10 10 10 9 10 10

8

9

G7 D 7 Cm7 5

F7 B7

1

1

4

4 2 3

2

10

8

1

4 3 2

9 10 10

1

8 10 10 9 9 10 9

1

4

4 2 3

3

3 4

4 2

4 4

4

1

1

3

4 2 3 1

1

9 8 7 8

8

B 6 B maj7 Ddim7 E Bdim7 Cm7 A

1 4 3

T A B

8 8

7

Dm7 5

7

6

10 8 11 8

7

2 2 3 1

4

1 1 1

2 2 1

2 3 1

2 2 3

1

1

1 1 1

4

4

3

3

1 2

1 2

2 2

7 8 8 8

6

6 8 7 8

8

4 1 1 1

4 3 1 2

8 7

7 5

7

6

10 9 10 9

13 12 13 12

46

11 11 12 10

11 8 8 8

11 8 8 7

15 14 15 14

13 13 14 12

8

4 3

1

2

10 10 10 8

6 8 7

A 7 G7 9 Cm9 B7 B 7 G 7

Dm7

4

6 8 7 8 6

8

6

F9 Edim7 4

6 7 7 6

8

8 8 6 8

10 10 13 11 10 11 10 10 10 9 11 10

2 1

10 8 11 8 9 8 8 9 8

7 8 7

6 7 6

7

6

ECONOMY The different different meanings meanings of “ec “economy onomy”” in the

In Example 1, fro from m the poin pointt of vie view w of  positional   positional  shifting up shifting  up and down the neck, the first option is shiftless, shiftl ess, clim climbing bing vertically vertically in one position, and therefore logically the superior economic choice. But the second option only uses one string and therefore has its own unique economic advantage. Anyone who’s who’s ever broken a string, or had to avoid a badly out of tune string or two during a performance, knows how valuable it can be to be able to instantly  rearrange a vertical economy to a horizontal one.

dictionary talk about the “management “management of expense, expense,”” “thrifty “thrif ty and efficient efficient use of resou resources rces,,” and the “concise arrangement, organization and structure” of th thin ings gs.. Henry James James once wrote that, “In art, econo economy my is always alwa ys beauty beauty..” Certai Certainly nly,, in guitar guitar techniq technique, ue, an economy of motion should be a basic consideration. consideration. (Back in Book One, FOR THE LOVE LOVE OF GUITAR  GUITAR   postulated that Technique Technique should be Action Action for a Reason, not Unreasonable Action.)

As with with so many many aspects aspects of of musi music, c, and in particular guitar playing, there is no absolute, universally correct method. You must consider your circumstan circ umstance, ce, your cont context. ext. Wher Wheree are are you you at, at, and where are you headed? Which alternative alternative is the most appropriate? Try to realize the maximum return on  the physical and intellectual investment. (Economic pun, there there.) .) Consi Consider der the the tone tone product production ion of of the notes on the strings in the positions positions involv involved. ed. Try to make fingerings fingerings logical and memorable, designing them to minimize errors er rors and maximize musicality.

Naturally,, as in most things in life, there are Naturally always options and choices, and there are usually  usually  different economic economic viewpoints. Like Star Trek’ rek’ss halfVulcan ulcan,, Mr Mr.. Spock, we try to apply apply logic logic to our our processes, proc esses, but sometimes, sometimes, we can’t can’t help being all human (and not fictional) so we just have to go with a gut feeling of what strikes us as appropriate at the time. Ex . 1

T A B 0

2

0

4

2

1

4

2 0

2

4

5

7

9

11

12

Ex. 2 

option A

T A B

option B

3

2

0

3

2

0

3

2

0

0

2

1

0

3

H

H

1 3

48

2

0

3

2

0

3

2

0

0

2

1

0

3

1

• • • • ••

ECONOMY (Cont’d)

Example 2 contrasts different economic approaches approaches from a picking picking point point of view. view. The first first option provides a consistent down/up alternate picking picking pattern. pattern. It has an obvious obvious,, logical logical economica economicall

 you’re going to have to shift up the neck a couple of   you’re positions, and your 4th finger is going from one fingerboard extreme (E - 6th) to another (E - 1st).

appeal. appeal. The second second option, option, however however,, offers an equally  equally  valid logic logic and economy economy.. The down strokes strokes that carry  carry  across into adjacent strings begin to suggest the beautiful, beautiful, full-blown full-blown economy economy of motion motion that sweep picking offers (see Ex. The incl inclus usio ion n of two two Ex. 3). The hammer-ons, in combination with the rhythmic pulse provided by down-picking down-picking five sub-groups of two eighth notes across two two adjacent strings, gives the line a lyricism that option A lacks. (That ends up sounding more complicated complicated than it really is. Just play play the two two options and you’ll hear and feel the difference.)

A common basic mistake that guitarists make is losing flow  losing physical cal contin continuity uity.. The meter meter goes,  flow , the physi and the musi musicc is gone. gone. Insid Insidee the music, music, the chords chords are usually connected (that’s why they call them progressions) and are not separate little block diagram entities entit ies that exist exist in isolation. isolation. The beginnings beginnings of  flow   flow  lie in “visualizi “visualizing” ng” the next destination, destination, and taking the shortest distance to get get there, with no extravagance or wasted waste d motion. You don’t don’t usually usually release release a chord, and drop your your hand off the fingerboard fingerboard,, then commence commence a whole new approach to to the next one. You don’t don’t select a performance tempo at which you’re incapable of  getting from A to B to to C. While you’re you’re successfully  successfully  grasping a chord, your mind must advance to the next chord form, form, locat locating ing it and “visualiz “visualizing” ing” it on the fingerboard finge rboard.. This is is more of a mental mental exerci exercise se than a physical one, but it’s it’s often very helpful (although not entirely necessary) to use your eyes to fix upon the destination desti nation.. When you you make the the move, move, Ex. 5  take the the shortest shortest distance. distance. The arrows arrows in III Ex.5 illustrate the “outside parameters” of the chord chord change, change, the longest longest moves moves V involved involv ed and the direction to take. You’ll notice the 4th finger is making the biggest move, mov e, and so the the visual destin destination ation of the VIII eighth fret on the 1st string is a logical choice. choic e. As a bonus, bonus, the 2nd 2nd finger finger will will be moving moving into the fret space and string that the 4th vacates. With Wit h these two moves moves acting as guides, guides, the rest of the chord change should follow. follow. After you’v you’vee become acquainted with the chord forms, when practicing, begin working at nice, slow tempos that allow allow you to make the changes in time.

Ex . 3 1

2

4

3

6 8

4

1 2

4

1

H

H

0 T A B 5

3

2

2

5

14

13

12 17

The three octave A minor arpeggio sweep picking   Ex. 3 sounds extravagant, of  Ex. sounds extravagant, but is offered as a model of logic, and economy economy.. The first hammer-on hammer-on (A to C) allows time to drop the pick down to catch the upstroke upstroke on the open open E; that open open E string upstrok upstrokee allows time for the one long position shift up to the twelfth position, as well as bringing the pick back up across the strings to bite back into the sweep of the second bar. Ex. 4 

The two chord   Ex. 4 are forms of  Ex. included to make an 1 V 1 economy-related 2 2 3 3 point about mental  4 visualization and visualization and destin destinati ations. ons. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. You’ll notice that to go from the E  /B  to the E  13/B  ,

E /B

III

4

E 13/B

Thrifty Thrif ty.. Ef Effi ficie cient nt.. Co Conci ncise se.. Common sense tells us that an economy based on many complexities has more things things that can go go wrong. A strong strong economy  economy  relies on a few simple, basic fundamentals remaining healthy and vital, to fuel the artistic and creative creative growth of the culture culture that depends upon it.

49

2

4

LESS IS MORE Ex. 5  A

D/A

E/A

IV 1

2

1 2

Anecdote # 1:

3

3

R ecently I was in doing studio sessions for a

was an OSTINATO figure, where, for example, a little rhythmic figure would be arpeggiated using that A-D-G triad found on the treble strings of all four chords in Ex. 6, and hypnotically repeated over each chord change. Another thing that they loved was the harmonic duplicity introduced whenever I substituted the “magic” chord of  Ex. 7. (That’s Frank  Gambale’s very apt terminology, by the way.)

band whose music would probably be considered “alternative,” or unconventional. It was interesting to me that in their search for “unconventional” and “fresh” sounds and ideas, their tastes and preferences in many instances pushed them towards some harmonic and melodic ideas that have always been, to varying degrees, popular in a lot of different styles of  “conventional” modern music (jazz fusion, new age, rock, top 40), and are historically common devices found throughout the evolution of “classical” music. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Ex. 1

1

Ex. 6  What all of these Gadd9 Em11 things have in common is, essentially, the “suspense” created by  1 2 1 the suspension of a 2 3 4 3 4 single note, or a group of notes, to accomplish different things in C6add9 Dsus4 different contexts. I pondered the contrast of this approach to the 1 1 2 3 4 3 4 harmony found in popular music from the 1930’s to the 50’s, when prevailing tastes and preferences were for colorful extended and altered voicings with clever voice leading, catchy melodies with sophisticated harmonies and solos. It struck me that the ebb and flow of  fashion and style (which, Ex. 7  admittedly, but exceptionally, has Am7 5 resurrected the Big Band sound of  Harry Connick Jr., and gave Tony  1 Bennett a new MTV hipness) has 3 brought a lot of current taste around to the concept of 

Ex. 2 

For example, they  liked chords that Gadd9 B add9 eliminated 3rds, but 1 added, or suspended 1 2nds, (Ex. 1 and 2), 2 3 4 3 4 or kept the 3rd but added 9ths (Ex. 3 and 4). They liked to Ex. 3 Ex. 4  employ pedal tones Cadd9 Fadd9 (sometimes called a pedal-point) where 1 bass notes stayed the 1 2 2 4 same while triad 3 4 3 chords changed above them (the three chords of  Ex. 5), or inverted pedals , where bass notes would move while chords above remained much the same, as in the four chord progression of Ex. 6. Notice how the open D string rings out, suspended across the entire progression, as do the D and G notes on the 3rd fret B and E strings, respectively. Another compositional device that they employed effectively 

“ L E S S I S M O R E .” 50

• • • • • • LESS IS MORE (Cont’d)

Anecdote # 2: I was flipping through the “Steely Dan -

with mother’s heartbeat in the womb. And Roger Sessions has said that “an adequate definition of  rhythm comes close to defining music itself.”

Complete” songbook, checking out the sophisticated changes in songs like “Deacon Blues” and the clever melodic and harmonic twists in “Peg” and “Hey, Nineteen,” when I came across the chart for “Show Biz Kids,” and realized with a little surprise that it had but one dominant 7 chord vamping throughout the whole song. This got me to thinking about how, despite the obviously intentional lack of harmonic inventiveness, the song still worked admirably, because of groove, and attitude, and other attributes. I started thinking about the modern popular success of stylistic forms like rap, and hip hop, and thrash, and heavy metal, where melody and harmony are secondary, often inconsequential, sometimes completely eschewed, because these styles are really all about rhythm, serving as a vehicle for social attitude, emotion, fashion and sex. Again, this reinforces the proposition that, musically, anyway,

Mick Goodrick, in his excellent, highly acclaimed and recommended book, “The Advancing Guitarist” (Third Earth Productions, dist. by Hal Leonard Books), had this to say on the basic, fundamental importance of rhythm: 

“Not all musicians play chords. Not all musicians play melodies. But ALL musicians play rhythms. Drummers specialize in rhythms and time. Talk to them. Listen to what they play. …If you were to play the guitar in such a way as to eliminate harmony, melody, and  even pitch, you’d be left with muffled strings. Suddenly, you’re a drummer!” 

“Less is MorE.” In one of the scenes from Milos Forman’s movie about “Mozart,” Wolfgang is portrayed as a composer of brilliant, recognizable and memorable melodies, ditties that could make all of his countrymen sing along. A catchy tune is definitely infectious, translatable into commercial popularity. Nowadays, however, it’s just as likely that the world could be shown dancing to Hammer Time one month, New  Boys on the Block the next, Backstreet Lads the next, followed by Spice Grrrillas after that (at least in soft drink commercials). At the time this is being written, pop music is dominated by dance tracks and rap. So, arguably, rhythm could be described as the most essential and basic element in popular music, the one thing that your music cannot do without. After all, as 19th century conductor/pianist Hans Von Bulow said, “In the beginning was rhythm,” starting

I N C O N C LU S I O N (and for starters…)

he exercise of taste, and the  T    eloquence of one note, or a thousand well-chosen, properly considered, and strategically located begins and ends with rhythm. It is the “Least” that gives you the “Most.” 

51

COPLAND’S ___________ LONG LINE Another “Less Is More” concept that deserves your constant awareness first came to my attention through Aaron Copland’s classic text, “What to Listen For In Music” (McGrawHill), and I quote from it:

Not necessarily 

SIMPLE, but, simply 

NECESSARY.

B ut whatever the form the composer chooses 

“ 

to adopt, there is always one great desideratum: The form must have what in my student days we used to call LA GRANDE LIGNE (the long line). It is difficult adequately to explain the meaning of that phrase to the layman. To be properly understood in relation to a piece  of music, it must be felt. In mere words, it  simply means that every good piece of music  must give us a sense of flow - a sense of  continuity from first note to last. Every elementary music student knows the   principle, but to put it into practice has  challenged the greatest minds in music!” 

How does this concept fit in to a “Less is More” philosophy? Because it stresses the need for one, single, connecting thread, or ribbon, or, to borrow one of Maestro Copland’s symbols, “a man-made Mississippi,” to flow through your piece of music and give it unity: not necessarily simple, but the things that are simply necessary. If you go off in all directions at once, you’ll spread yourself  too thin, and everyone will be too preoccupied with looking through you to be able to see, or care, where you’re headed. The economy of one long line can mean profoundly more to your work. For some conclusive, final words, and for a whole other approach to the topic of “Less is More,” I bow once again to the wisdom of Mick Goodrick, from “The Advancing Guitarist”:

he prime consideration in all form is the  T   

“ 

creation of a sense of the LONG LINE which… must give us a sense of direction, and we must  be made to feel that that direction is the  inevitable one. Whatever the means employed, the net result must produce in the listener a  satisfying feeling of coherence born out of the   psychological necessity of the musical ideas with  which the composer began.” 

“Notes are clever ways of  getting from one silence to an other.”  Mick went on to say, “Nothing is easier to play on the guitar than silence. …But knowing when, how, why, and for what length of time we should play, silence is not so easy.”

52

LEARNING SELF-HELP: THIRSTY HORSES CLIMBING LADDERS

“Musician, help thyself.” 

open-ended, philosophical, even spiritual (like Goodrick’s “Advancing Guitarist”). No single method could ever be a complete education. A conscientious student seeks exposure to many  different methods and approaches.

Not quite the old Biblical proverb, but appropriate enough in our modern era of multiformat instruction methods, all professing to help  you teach yourself more information, better and faster than ever before.

It’s interesting to note that actors who pursue the study of “The Method,” (a system based on the theory and practice of Stanislavsky as developed and popularized by Lee Strasberg at the Actor’s Studio in N.Y.) find themselves in “a system… which bases a performance upon inner emotional  experience discovered largely through the medium of  improvisation rather than upon the teaching or  transmission of technical expertise.” (Harper’s Dictionary of Modern Thought) In the case of this “method,” it would seem to be “organic,” personally  and uniquely tailored to each individual, and certainly not a customary, traditional, systematic “method” at all.

How do you learn to help yourself? Is any one method universal, any single system of study  complete for any student? For that matter, at the other end of the spectrum, would any master claim that their mastery is complete? I doubt it. Masters are masters because, among so many other things, they practice the art of self-help. The elevated status and recognition of “Masters” is likely due in part to an unquenchable spiritual ambition that is, for them, only momentarily fulfilled, but never entirely realized.

Is there a

Any method, traditional or not, has its limitations. Sometimes, Zen-like maxims of  wisdom seem a little too transcendent in the face of  back to basic, practical, nitty gritty realities. Maybe one can learn far more from their own mistakes through experimentation than from dutiful memorization of information by rote, …but can everyone always recognize when they’re mistaken?

METHOD in this 

MADNESS? Don’t let the word “method” mislead you, even though it implies something systematic, a discipline undertaken towards a complete realization of  necessary skills, technique, and musicianship. There are a multitude of educational “methods” now  available to aspiring guitarists and musicians, but for the most part they are one writer’s point of view, and usually they focus on one specific area of  musical competence. Some educational materials are very practical, conservatively austere in their presentation style, with a heavy emphasis on some particular fundamental technical or theoretical aspects, (William Leavitt’s “Berklee” series, for example, good for fingerboard, positional stuff) while other educational approaches are more

How could any average 12 year old beginner ever find his or her way clear to sight reading two octave modal scale exercises in position through “improvisation rather than the …transmission of  technical expertise?”  You’ve got to ask yourself, how  do I go about learning the things I need to learn in order to improve, to get to where I want to be? If   you’re going to be self-taught, this self-analysis is  your constant responsibility, and it’s not easy, or even necessarily the most practical and efficient way to go. Continued • • • • • •  53

• • • • • • LEARNING SELF-HELP:

THIRSTY HORSES CLIMBING LADDERS (Cont’d) Here lies the great value of a teacher (if you can afford one), a collaborator, or a friend who’s as guitar crazy as you are. If you can place a measure of trust and confidence in someone of this nature, you might be able to benefit from their different perspective and that time-tested second opinion. The wisdom of their perceptions of your needs can maybe save you from a great deal of  mistaken experimentation, trips up blind alleys, etc. A lot of teachers might maintain, however, that even with their involvement, education is still somewhat of a self-help kind of process. I guess the right cliché would be, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make ’em drink.” Which is true enough, but it leaves me wondering - if you’re smart enough to lead ’em to the water, maybe you should also be clever enough to run ’em around a little first, just to let ’em build up a decent thirst. For those intent on self-help, please step up to the trough, er, bar, and at least allow me to recommend…

Observation  and Emulation  You need to recognize and try to capture the



essential values of the music of your heroes, role models, and teachers. It’s not enough to listen to a Mike Stern solo and say, “man, I love that.” Appreciation only makes you a good audience. Get specific. Listen hard, smart, and critically, searching for clues. Why do you love it? What is that harmonic concept behind that line? How did he pick that particular passage that makes the hair on your arms stand straight up? Transcribe the solo. If you don’t know  how, get someone who does to teach you how, and then, get down to it and do it.

Mike Stern, Mar. ’87 Guitar Player Magazine;

“You should also transcribe, which is something  that Charlie Banacos (Mike’s teacher)especially  got me into. I’d figure out things by horn players, such as Trane and Mike Brecker, and pianists, such as McCoy Tyner.” 

                                                

54

• • • • • • LEARNING SELF-HELP:

THIRSTY HORSES CLIMBING LADDERS (Cont’d) Listen to it over and over until you’ve absorbed it and can whistle it in your dreams. Now comes the hard work. You’ve recognized and delineated the goods, so start loading them into  your unconscious reflex and your motor memory, with a steady, recurring pattern of practice and application. Of course, you’re never finished. It’s not enough to be able to imitate and regurgitate Mike’s ideas, you’ve got to take the essence of what turned you on so much, and find your own applications, evolving or transmuting them stylistically into something that you can comfortably say are your own personal artistic statements. It’s another level in the self-help process that takes, well, a lifetime.

THE BIG THREE-

Necessity, Willpower, and Focus  Most successful artists that I’ve observed have a combination of at least three fundamental qualities that make them great at learning.

1

~

NECESSITY - Despite the inimitable Frank 

Zappa, necessity is the original Mother of Invention. Call it a need, a burning hunger, ambition, whatever it is, it’s something inside them that motivates and inspires them to take on a task. Stern, again, from that Mar. ’87 GP mag, quoting bassist Steve Swallow:

“If you want to be a professional musician, don’t do it, because it’s a hard life. But if you have to be a musician, it’s the greatest job in the world.” 

2 3

~ WILLPOWER  - self-discipline, persistence, dedication, a tenacity to keep at the Work until the task  is accomplished.

~ FOCUS - the ability to focus the initial thrust of  the inspiration into the willpower needed to complete the task, which is easy to say, but really hard to do. This organizational skill is really like executive decision-making, a bigpicture-overseer kind of quality, that starts with your own personal time management capabilities. It includes being able to set goals in a realistic way, overcome distractions, eliminate unnecessary sidetracks, and generally to make considered choices and decisions along the way that maintain your satisfaction with the progress towards your goals. 55

SETTING GOALS - BUILDING LADDERS How do you go about setting realistic goals?

You can have lots of goals and lots of ladders, if you want, but remember that you’re only human and there’s only so many hours in a day. Abandoning or modifying a goal is no mortal sin, as long as you always have others that you’re going for. The pleasure shouldn’t lie only in achieving the ultimate dream goal, but more importantly, in the process of winning all the little battles that move you up the ladder rung by rung.

Here’s one way, which I’m copping from a motivational seminar tape by Mark Scharenbroich. Get out your practise journal. (Haven’t got one? Start one.) Write down a goal, a fantasy dream, a real beauty, say, “I want to play better than Hendrix.” That’s a long-term goal. (Very long-term.) Okay, now let’s get a little more realistic and shorter-term, say, playing as good as Jimi. Write that down, too, and now that you’ve started, just keep on coming back down to earth. Maybe you should try to study all of Jimi’s solos first; maybe you should get a hold of all the recordings that he liked to listen to and learn the songs that he learned; maybe  you should try to learn to play just one solo first; maybe you should read a book written about him, maybe you need to get a hold of a tape player and a guitar first; I hope you’ve grasped the concept here.

KEEP AN OPEN MIND All the pettiness of our own limited intellectual resources, and all the demographically-targeted-testgroup-marketed bombardment of our daily lives may  lead us to narrow our focus and think that early  specialization is the key to success. Remember that music is a liberal art, and to be powerful and meaningful it must communicate to others. A student that “specializes” through a type of discriminating taste built on prejudice, ignorance, or disrespect for other vital forms of artistic expression, has narrowed the scope of their own communication skills, and therefore limits and devalues their own work  considerably.

You’re building a ladder, and each rung leads to the next. Write down all the goals, long term and short term, and then rearrange them in an order that seems logical and sequential. Make the first step an easy one, say, learning one solo in however long it takes. Pick an easy solo, and don’t beat yourself up by setting an unreasonably  short amount of practice time. Once you’ve accomplished the first step, you’ll have an idea of  how quick a study you are, and whether or not  you’re still interested in heading up this par ticular ladder. This is just a private and personal exercise, so don’t be shy. Go ahead and write down your biggest, wildest fantasies and dreams as long term goals, and, on the other hand, break  them down to the most trifling and seemingly  insignificant short-term ones. You may end up surprising yourself at how the long-term stuff  isn’t as big and wild as you originally thought, while the short-term little donkey work goals have a way of getting ornery and troublesome.

Think about it this way: Eric Clapton is fundamentally a blues guitarist. But the music that he makes is very rarely (if ever) about playing blues scales on a guitar. It’s about emotion, spirituality, human interest stories, whatever he chooses to interpret from the universe around him, and within him. If Clapton was a painter, the blues would be the paint on the palette and the guitar would be a brush, but he certainly wouldn’t keep painting the same picture of a brush and palette, over and over again. Fundamental tools don’t make music. Brains and hearts and souls of musicians do. 56

• • • • ••

SETTING GOALS - BUILDING LADDERS (Cont’d)

GET TO KNOW YOURSELF

JUST DO IT There aren’t any secret shortcuts.

The late great dancer/choreographer Bob Fosse thanked God for not being born perfect, because his admitted physical limitations (a hunched shoulder physique, a balding head that made him into a hatwearing kind of guy, and a pigeon-toed anti-ballet kind of footwork) forced him into creating his own unique style that became part of his success formula.

People keep asking for that “sound bite,” 25 words or less, advice for young, aspiring musicians. I guess it’s just human nature: people suspect, (quite rightly) that a teacher’s wisdom and guidance can save them from a great deal of unnecessary mistakes. Unfortunately, they also think (quite wrongly) that there are special, insider tricks and secrets that can save them from all of that really hard work that it seems to take.

Nobody’s perfect. We’re all human, warts and all. Somehow, successful people achieve their goals, in spite of, or even because of limitations that ordinarily  would frustrate and discourage others, making them give up and move on. They modify their goals and the ladder climbs towards them in order to take advantage of their personal strengths and to eliminate or de-emphasize their weaknesses. If, for example,  you love the blues, but you just can’t relate to twohand tapping post-thrash gonzo shredding, then don’t beat yourself up by forcing yourself into unnatural acts in order to try and satisfy  some warped interpretation of the openmindedness referred to before. Seek a balance that personally feels right between open-mindedness and personal instincts. Open-mindedness doesn’t mean trying to go off in all directions at once. Life’s too short. Go for the things that provide a natural inspiration for that ladder climb. Now, if you’ll occasionally   just stop and take a look  around to enjoy the view as  you climb, you’ll help to keep  yourself centered, and well balanced. (Hope you’re not  acrophobic, ’cause that’d  really shoot down the  central metaphor, wouldn’t it?)

Oh, the reluctance to do The Donkey Work (first alluded to in Book Two): the resistance, the avoidance, the procrastination. The world is full of  mediocre musicians, not because they lack the talent, or the creativity, but because they lack the dedication, discipline and persistence to focus on goals, set the agenda to accomplish them, and get down to the application of that creative talent, little by little, step by step, and  just keep on DOING IT. There’s no substitute for DOING. You can read someone’s brainstorming advice, you can read self-help books, you can sit around and discuss the philosophy of time management with your teacher or fellow musician, but that’s only a very small fraction of a percentile of what it’s going to take. I remember succumbing to the sweet lure of the coffee circle procrastinators in my short-lived college days. We could hang out in the lounge for hours engaged in heavy, animated conversation, debate, discussion, gossip, ANYTHING to avoid facing that homework, that sight-reading practice, that theory assignment, etc. Talk can be helpful and instructive, but it’s relatively  cheap compared to the blood, sweat and tears of The Work Itself. This may be one of the reasons why  Continued • • • • • •  57

• • • • ••

SETTING GOALS - BUILDING LADDERS (Cont’d)

conscientious artists generally have such little use for critics. … In my own defense, I’d like to point out that I went on to become a graduate of the School of  Hard Knocks, Road Warrior Performance Division, Class of Seventysomething, Continuing Education Alumni Correspondence Extension Course. It’s another kind of dues-paying that’s not everybody’s cup of tea, either. I think it’s safe to say that, whatever ladders you choose to try and climb, what you get out of it has a lot to do with what you put in to it.

In conclusion THE GUILT FACTOR  Hey, I’m not here to bum you all out and lay  some big heavy duty guilt trip on you (or myself). Heaven knows there’s enough guilt reminders already  out there to go around, what with the availability of so many educational magazines and books and videos, the proliferation of techno-chops graduates from post-secondary music schools and colleges, the highly  competitive nature of the music business itself, and the impressive talents of the players who are already  established with high profiles in the record and concert business. Are you discouraged yet? If not, congratulations, you’ve got the necessary ego, but that’s only one of the many qualifications necessary to build a lifelong career.

Donkey Work resistance is not the sole domain of  beginners, either. Think of all the guitarists out there that know some chords, but don’t have any kind of  performance repertoire for them; who know plenty of  fancy scales and copped licks and tricks and fills but can’t seem to place them in a musically appropriate spot anywhere. Think of all the solos that people can play 4 bars or so from, but then couldn’t be bothered to nail the whole thing. Think about half-finished songs whose writers got a bit of a decent chorus written, only to have it die on the vine when the REAL work had to kick in because the inspiration faded. Think of the legions of us whose sight-reading contributes to the fact that a favorite old joke for musicians is…

Nope, there ain’t no shortcuts. If you’re going to help yourself, you’ve got to put in the hours that turn into weeks that eventually become years of capital W Work. And please don’t think of me as some fingerwagging, holier-than-thou pedantic, full of do’s and don’ts. I’m struggling along just like anybody else, trying to help myself by taking my own best advice. It’s not easy, and there’s never enough hours in the day, so a lot of stuff ends up being from the “do as I say, don’t do as I do” category. Still, in the end it’s all  just a labor of love for us thirsty horses climbing  ladders…

Q . “How do you get the guitar   player to shut up?” 

A . “Put a chart in front of him.”  Ouch. Truth hurts, don’t it?

58

H  ere ends the text of Book Three, but hopefully it’s only the beginning of a lot more

BRAINSTORMING that feeds your L O V E O F G U I TA R . And if I may be so bold to suggest, here’s a thought: Book Four, The Beyond Basics Book, concerns itself with things philosophical, psychological, metaphysical and metaphorical, aesthetical and instinctive. Could be just the right prescription for a storming brain… Thanks for taking the time and making the effort to work  your way through this book. Only you, dear reader, can truly realize the value to be gained from the exercise. Pick and grin.

59

YOU CAN CONTACT:

at P.O. Box 97522 Highland Creek, Ontario M1C 4Z1 Canada www. rikemmett.com

Book One

The Basics Book  Book Two

The Basic Building Blocks Book  Book Three

The Basic Brainstorming Book  Book Four

The Beyond Basics Book 

Design:

Jeanine Leech & Mr. E.

Editorial Assistance:

Nancy Wood

Technical Assistance:

Lee Olsen

Cartoons and Illustrations:

Rik Emmett

Figures and Illustrations:

Jeanine Leech

Music Examples written by:

Rik Emmett

Photography:

Jeannette Emmett Jeanine Leech

OHB-FTLOGB3 Copyright ©1998 Open House Books Rockit Sounds Publishing [SOCAN]. A Division of Rockit Sounds, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.