Reliable Source
Published: Fri, 03/31/23
I may have transcribed one Joe Pass solo in four years of undergraduate music studies, and that was my idea, so my college jazz education was not exactly "text-bound." I learned scales off the blackboard, tunes out of the Real Book and ii-V-I patterns from class handouts, but while I listened to jazz more often than not in those four years, it wasn't until I was out of school that I began to really turn my attention to learning from records. Once I got my hands on the Charlie Christian anthology Genius of the Electric Guitar, I set about learning every eight-, twelve and sixteen-bar solo on it, first memorizing what I could figure out by ear and only writing down each complete solo once I had it completely under my fingers.
I was particularly enamored of swing-era sounds in general and Charlie Christian in particular because they seemed to form a kind of bridge between the blues, which I could both appreciate viscerally and play more or less intuitively, and most kinds of bebop, which still tended to elude me both aesthetically and technically. So I collected guitarists from that era, especially those who leaned towards blues forms and grooves, like Oscar Moore, Tiny Grimes and Mary Osborne.
And then, I had the great good fortune to host Duke Robillard's guest appearances at the National Guitar Workshop for two summers in a row. My job was ostensibly to fade into the background while Duke held forth, so for two days I sat off to the side, quietly taking my own notes, while Duke regaled the dozen or so students present with detailed insights into the playing of everyone from Tampa Red and Guitar Slim to T-Bone Walker and Freddie King. At least, that was the plan, which I followed until we took our first break the morning of the first day and a couple of students sidled up to me to ask, "uh, hey man...what are you going to do with those notes, anyway?"
Well, I was just taking them for my own benefit, but it somehow quickly got decided that I would officially take notes for the class and make copies for everyone along the way. Since I was going to write stuff down anyway, I was cool with that, and plus, it now meant that as Duke was playing this lick or that chord, I could legitimately ask him to pause and explain exactly what he was doing at the moment. You know – for the guys in class, right? Fortunately, Duke is both a natural teacher and one of those musicians who, having acquired and categorized so much of his knowledge by listening to records himself, is completely capable of clarifying exactly what he's doing: "oh, this is that chord so-and-so uses on such-and-such record, you know, he tends to do XYZ, as opposed to that other musician we were talking about, who typically is much more ABC about that kind of thing – he played it more like this, on that record he made with what's-her-name, which came out two years later."
Talk about text-bound. Being in the room with Duke and a guitar was like stepping inside an interactive roots music encyclopedia. Lightbulbs went off all over the place as things I had only heard on records were suddenly happening right in front of me on the fretboard. And never more so than when Duke began laying out how to comp on the blues like Freddie Green. For all that I'd relentlessly spun Count Basie Sings, Joe Williams Sings, those rhythm guitar parts remained so seamlessly integrated with the bass and drums and so carefully positioned behind the surge of reeds and brass that I had no idea at all what was really going on. I brought this up to Duke, asking "so how did you actually figure out what he was doing?" And of course, the answer was "I just listened really carefully."
There's a profound give-and-take between learning and listening, and once I'd seen Duke applying the Freddie Green chords in action, I found them easier to hear on records than before. And with a few specific choruses under my fingers, I could start to actually understand the logic of how one voicing connects to the next, building a vocabulary of not just voicings but actual moves, whole chord phrases, so to speak, which I could start rearranging to get from one line of the blues to the next. Just as importantly, those swing comping lessons provided a surprising degree of insight into the swing soloing I'd been listening to. Blues, swing and bebop soloing all have this in common: they are all done in the context of the rhythm section, the soloist creating his or her melodies and licks in relation to a specific chord progression, over the specific groove with which those chords are being played.
I've spent the past several years, as both a performer and a teacher, zeroed in on fingerstyle blues guitar, in particular what it takes to maintain a groove and improvise over that groove as a self-contained, solo musician. But nearly everything I know about groove and improvisation I learned from listening to and learning about my favorite ensemble musicians, be they blues-, swing- or bebop-oriented. Whether I was doing my own listening and transcribing, or learning from other musicians like Duke who'd done even more of that themselves, learning how jazz musicians play the blues has allowed me to both to improvise better with other musicians and to begin incorporating new licks, voicings and ideas into my solo fingerstyle arrangements.
While the Fingerstyle Five membership is of course all about how to play better fingerstyle guitar, including how to improvise as a solo blues guitarist, this spring I'm pleased to announce Reliable Source, a new three-part series of workshops for anyone interested in blues and jazz improvisation. Each of these workshops will cover one essential aspect of how jazz musicians play the blues:
- Blues Chord Substitutions: using Freddie Green chords to comp on the blues
- Swing For The Blues Guitarist: adding swing scales and phrasing to the blues form
- Twelve-Bar Bebop: how to play the changes on the blues
The first Reliable Source workshop, on Freddie Green chords, will take place Saturday, April 22. More details and registration information will be available soon.
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In the meantime, speaking of blues...
After my recent Youtube lesson about making your picking patterns more bluesy, I heard from more than one viewer who felt that the alternating thumb style could never truly sound like anything but folk music. I respectfully disagree, so that's what I talk about in this week's video. You can find it at the link below.
Not The Blues?
More soon,
David
Develop your groove, build your repertoire and begin improvising with the Fingerstyle Five membership's organized, ongoing lessons. Learn more and sign up at fretboardconfidential.com