Playin' it Loud...

nwilkins

Hi everyone,

By posting that quotation from Moreno's website I was not implying that rhythm players should play without regard to the musical context. I was simply pointing out that producing acceptable rhythm-lead dynamics is also in part the responsibility of the soloist. In the Alsatian style the rhythm is (as Moreno notes) played fairly loudly, and the soloists employ a technique which fits with this style of playing. I want to assure Dennis that I do not believe that the way Manouche/Sinti guitarists play is always right as a result of their ethnicity. However, I think it would be unwise to dismiss the Alsatian style as "wrong" and unworthy of imitation, as Dennis' post seemed to imply.

dennis

i m sorryr if it did but my reply didn't imply anything like that.. i basically said that the accompanists job is to...... accompany the soloist... and therefore , as harsh as it may sound, his/her job is to serve the soloist...

btw not all alsatians play loud either... and generally it's not that much louder, it's aggressive on the bass notes though

MichaelHorowitz

One thing that can help is playing loud but making sure you don't hold the chords very long. I think Jon mentioned this.

Anyway, you get a real hard punch on the beat and then space to hear the soloist inbetween the beat.

Also, if the soloist has good time and is placing his eighth notes in sync with the rhythm player then he'll be louder. If we have a pyshicist here he could probably explain it better, but I think if the soloist is hitting chord tones in sync with the rhythm player it reinforces his volume because the waves all line up. Maybe that's BS...but a well respected jazz pianist told me that once and it does seem that when you play in time you're louder without playing harder. So the key to volume is GET OUT THE METRONOME!

'm

guit_box

I think Djangology made an excellent point that gets missed with all the talk about right hand technique. I spent a good amount of time recording rhythm tracks for myself to solo over, and then compared the sound to the original Django tracks. What I discovered is that Django and the other rhythm guitarists in the hot club have a lot of control over how short they want a chord to be. There are times when Django just finishes his solo and comes back in on rhythm that you can hear just how short and precise his chords are-- he picks up the whole band and gives a really great sounding forward momentum to the swing.

How hard something swings, has a lot to do with the placement of the upstroke with respect to the down beats, but it also has a lot to do with how syncronized one is able to choke the chord. I really like to hear a percusive smack on the 2 and 4 beats, which imo requires a hard hit that sqaushes the strings against the frets. But if the chord is almost instantaneously choked, it doesn't clutter or overpower the sound.

Until I recorded myself, I didn't realize how short all the down-beats were in la pompe, but after close comparison, my initial recordings didn't sound anywhere near as precise. Needless to say, I find recording to be very helpful learning tool.

Archtop Eddy

Thanks all for your thoughts about Playin' Loud. As we have come to expect, the opinions expressed by our little group of enthusiasts goes the gamut here. My opinion: while solo players can (and often should) increase their volume with improved technique, I think rhythm guitarist should try to leave "head room" for the soloist to work within. The soloist should be allowed to use dynamics in both volume and tone as parts of his or her arsenal of tools. If the rhythm section is too loud, the soloist loses the use of subtle colors. The soloists is often left resorting to speed as the only recourse for expression. The resulting sound becoming an adrenaline driven boom-chuck, boom-chuck layered with a constant ratt-a-tatt lead. This is when everyone should take a breath and play Si Tu Savais...

I like to ideas expressed about the techniques involving muting and percusive rhythms. Also, the idea from the Michael Dunn session of letting the soloist play with the two adjacent players sitting out.

By the way, I have the highest regard for the rhythm players of this style. When Greg Gunter and I went to Europe for a month back in '03, we spent a good deal of our time asking about, studying, and trying to crack the code to effective Gypsy Jazz rhythm. We studied with Martin and Jan Limberger, Jan Brower, and the Rosenbergs--to name a few--and they were fantastic and enthusiastic instructors. Each of these rhythm players were highly atuned to the solo guitarists, whether it was Greg and I or Moses Rosenberg. In fact, we played for about an hour with Nous'che holding down the main part of the rhythm, and he did not overwhelm us with volume. Technique--yes! But not volume. (And as you can see from the photo next to this posting that Nous'che may have had plenty of reason to drown me out given his reaction to my serenading )

Tony Green one time said it best about the importance of the rhythm players:

"While the soloist is throwing the confetti, the rhythm section's throwing the party!"

A.E.

campfire

[ hahaa imagine the guitar player and pianist comping ata the same time , the sax player outlining the chords with arpeggios, and the trumpet player taking a solo... what a nightmare....

D[/quote]

Huh? I thought that was the way jazz jam sessions were supposed to sound!!? Sounds like all the ones I've been to lately!

Larry

stubla

i think Jam sessions can actually be really BAD for your technique--even the loudest soloist can't be heard over 5 guitarists bashing away...
Playing every week at Le Quecumbar jam sessions has taught me that often its better NOT to play rather than kill your technique
Its bad news--particularly if the rhythm players are rookies
So then what do you do--you start diggin in;tensing up;tightening the wrist!! ARRGHHH! horrible!

More and more i think its better just to jam with one or two friends at home--everybody's more relaxed--you can hear better and there isn't that nasty competitive thing going on
I DO think there's too much emphasis also on LOUD rhythm gtrs--i don't think its a priority
Ducato,my rhythm player,plays an anon gypsy guitar--lovely for rhythm--its got that nice 'dry' sound you get from Lulu and Holzmano---but it isn't a loud guitar at all
if you're playing the pompe right you shouldn't play 'thru' the sound--being relaxed makes the sound full and fat rather than loud.
Whats really funny is that when Angelo turned up once to jam at Le Que he INSISTED on plugging in--he expressed the same thoughts as alot of us here
Stu

Carter O`Brien

nice post. I'm in full agreement, I actually stopped going to as weekly jam session here in town because I found it was changing my technique for the worse, I don't know if it was as much the volume of the players as the bad layout of the room, but that combined with the competition of the pool players & jukebox in the next room got to be too much.

What I've seen work to get rhythm players to snap to attention is when the soloist simply stops, or leaves giant glaring spaces - it's kind of like the difference between being on the same train as opposed to 2 different trains running on parallel tracks. At some point the rhythm player will kind of go "hey, wasn't I playing along with something?". And of course it's not "playing along" that's the goal, it's the interplay and the dynamics.

When I started playing with a small rock/funk ensemble, the guys all wanted me to play lead guitar, which I agreed to only kicking and screaming (I originally had in mind being a percussionist accompanying a funk group), and I couldn't understand why they would play so loud I couldn't even hear myself.

So I changed the physical arrangement of the players & amps, which helped, and then started playing *less*, which really helped.

I think part of it is that rhythm players playing loud leads to soloists playing fast and loud, and rhythm players can interpret this backwards - "cool, this is going great, listen to that soloist wailing away!" - in a group you have the time to get past that point so you can make music, but in a jam session that isn't a luxury, by the time people all get on the same page dynamics and volume wise, it can be 3 in the morning and time to wrap it up!

Any other good tricks people have out there for this stuff?

Ando

The soloist is king. The rhythm player has to face him, watch him, and respond appropriately to whatever gusts of emotion pass through him.

After a while, it's not hard just to close your eyes and hear those gusts as they approach, like hearing a storm in the middle distance. A good soloist will build intensity. You can close your eyes and hear it start to happen.

So a simple rule of thumb: if you, rhythm guitarist, can't hear a soloist when he starts in low volume, pipe down until you can hear him clearly. Then apply more volume only when he applies more volume, but don't give him so much that you can't continue hear him perfectly.

My idea of a perfect gypsy rhythm guitar is a short-scale, dry-sounding f-hole with good detail in the mids and bass.

.02 (US, not Euro, so it's even less for you, Stu, sorry!)
Ando

Carter O`Brien

this is true, but it's still in a soloist's best interest to have a bag of tricks, for sanity's sake if nothing else.

I got the impression from a discussion on "the other side" that at Samois sometimes there's also a language barrier, so it's not neccessarily as easy as simply asking folks to turn down, some non-verbal cues can be really hand, and really, everyone should be listening to each other, that's kind of"ground zero" as far as I'm concerned.