Thinking Outside the Box Necessarily Leads One Back Into the Box
Studying Jazz Guitar: Thinking Outside the Box Necessarily Leads One Back Into the Box
Putting some thoughts together on jazz guitar pedagogy---So, to begin, some basic principles: (1) You only play what you truly know; (2) all music is aural, we are always playing exactly what we hear. Per Hal Galper, if our playing is not fluid, vivid or sufficiently alive, it only means that our ears are not sufficiently vivid,developed, or alive; (3) Play what you can sing and sing what you can play. The two aspects form a unitary whole--singing and playing are innately related. Playing without singing is the *Yellow Pages* approach to music--we are victim to our fingers, who seem do all the walking; (4) we build from what we know--a sufficiently complex musical problem can be broken down into the simplest and most discrete elements.
Therefore---to those who say that practicing of building blocks and patterns --scales, diatonic aprpeggi, and chords of whatever quality (triads, 7ths, 7ths with extensions and color tones) leads to lack of creativity in one's playing, a conformity in one's musical lines, I humbly respond: nonsense. I would note the exact opposite: the mastering of scales, licks, diatonic arpeggi, and chords is the very necessary sin qua non of more advanced, more creative, more improvisational, more explicitly MUSICAL paths. There is no thinking outside of the box without addressing the box itself.
Let us examine certain aspects of two outstanding and excellent internet video instructors, both highly recommended, useful and valued, both of whom are also experts of finger-style jazz guitar--Tim Lerch and Martin Taylor. Mr. Talor's approach eschews the tried and true visual patterns of chord-playing and attempts to underpin and/or build his musical architecture with more flexible fingerings based upon (i) the root note on either the 6th/5th/4th string; (ii) diatonic 10ths; (iii) and adding to these two building blocks, the fluid concept of the moving 7th, to generate moving inner voices, even as the root and 10ths remain stationary (essentially, this means either a M7/m7/M6/m6 are your available note choices). With regard to this architecture Mr. Taylor describes it (particularly the idea of the moving 7ths) nothing less than "a return to Bach". But what exactly is this underlying architecture but none other than a modified version the old drop 3, open voiced 7th chord with the following voice dispersion: 1-7-3-5? The only difference is he chooses to omit the 5th, and has a flexible fingering left-hand fingering system in which the index finger can be freed up to play the aforementioned movable 7th.
That is to say, Mr. Taylor's excellent concept of playing builds on fundamental patterns we already know. "Innovation" only builds on "fundamentals".
The same holds true with Mr. Lerch's excellent comping video on playing 3 note voicings using the guide-tones to create modified "George Shearing stripped down type of block chords" . The ideas can be expressed vis-a-vis the overall key center, or otherwise measured on a chord-by-chord basis. But the same freedom of expression and improvisation is build on a thorough knowledge of guide-tones, the 3rds or 7ths of each applicable chord, and the consequential idea that these guide tones form either P4 or P5 patterns from Minor 7th or Major 7th chords, or tritones with dominant 7th type of chords. There is no getting around really coming to terms with patterns and mastering them all over the fingerboard.
There is no substitute for mastering the fundamentals; there is "no making an end run around the box". Music is music. I think true creativity emerges from mastering the box while simultaneously developing the critical skills of singing one's lines and making more vivid and alive our aural mastery of music, hearing intervals, chord qualities, color tones, et al.
Putting some thoughts together on jazz guitar pedagogy---So, to begin, some basic principles: (1) You only play what you truly know; (2) all music is aural, we are always playing exactly what we hear. Per Hal Galper, if our playing is not fluid, vivid or sufficiently alive, it only means that our ears are not sufficiently vivid,developed, or alive; (3) Play what you can sing and sing what you can play. The two aspects form a unitary whole--singing and playing are innately related. Playing without singing is the *Yellow Pages* approach to music--we are victim to our fingers, who seem do all the walking; (4) we build from what we know--a sufficiently complex musical problem can be broken down into the simplest and most discrete elements.
Therefore---to those who say that practicing of building blocks and patterns --scales, diatonic aprpeggi, and chords of whatever quality (triads, 7ths, 7ths with extensions and color tones) leads to lack of creativity in one's playing, a conformity in one's musical lines, I humbly respond: nonsense. I would note the exact opposite: the mastering of scales, licks, diatonic arpeggi, and chords is the very necessary sin qua non of more advanced, more creative, more improvisational, more explicitly MUSICAL paths. There is no thinking outside of the box without addressing the box itself.
Let us examine certain aspects of two outstanding and excellent internet video instructors, both highly recommended, useful and valued, both of whom are also experts of finger-style jazz guitar--Tim Lerch and Martin Taylor. Mr. Talor's approach eschews the tried and true visual patterns of chord-playing and attempts to underpin and/or build his musical architecture with more flexible fingerings based upon (i) the root note on either the 6th/5th/4th string; (ii) diatonic 10ths; (iii) and adding to these two building blocks, the fluid concept of the moving 7th, to generate moving inner voices, even as the root and 10ths remain stationary (essentially, this means either a M7/m7/M6/m6 are your available note choices). With regard to this architecture Mr. Taylor describes it (particularly the idea of the moving 7ths) nothing less than "a return to Bach". But what exactly is this underlying architecture but none other than a modified version the old drop 3, open voiced 7th chord with the following voice dispersion: 1-7-3-5? The only difference is he chooses to omit the 5th, and has a flexible fingering left-hand fingering system in which the index finger can be freed up to play the aforementioned movable 7th.
That is to say, Mr. Taylor's excellent concept of playing builds on fundamental patterns we already know. "Innovation" only builds on "fundamentals".
The same holds true with Mr. Lerch's excellent comping video on playing 3 note voicings using the guide-tones to create modified "George Shearing stripped down type of block chords" . The ideas can be expressed vis-a-vis the overall key center, or otherwise measured on a chord-by-chord basis. But the same freedom of expression and improvisation is build on a thorough knowledge of guide-tones, the 3rds or 7ths of each applicable chord, and the consequential idea that these guide tones form either P4 or P5 patterns from Minor 7th or Major 7th chords, or tritones with dominant 7th type of chords. There is no getting around really coming to terms with patterns and mastering them all over the fingerboard.
There is no substitute for mastering the fundamentals; there is "no making an end run around the box". Music is music. I think true creativity emerges from mastering the box while simultaneously developing the critical skills of singing one's lines and making more vivid and alive our aural mastery of music, hearing intervals, chord qualities, color tones, et al.
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