A question for Andreas Oberg

saulekas

Hi, Andreas,
first, I would like to say that i really love your playing. When I first saw you playing a minor blues on an archtop a few weeks ago in the videoclip I was very inspired. I have never seen any jazz guitarist with such an INCREDIBLE technique and i've seen quite a lot of them. I got very inspired, because one of my goals is also to have such a great technique. I need it in order to be able to handle fast tempos, when I play with other musicians. There are countless discussions in jazz guitar forums about this topic, but I would really appreciate to read some thoughts from YOU about technique and what do you think is important for a guitarist to do to develop his technique. I have never seen Pat Metheny or Pat Martino playing so fast and clean like you do. I know, that the most important thing is to make music, but I would really love to improve my technique(my tool) to make better(?) music:)

Best wishes,
Saulius, Lithuania

AndreasOberg

Hi Saulekas
Thanks for your kind words about my playing, I guess you're refering to this video clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zI2pv9My ... as%20oberg

The most important thing (if your going to play fast and clean) is to be just as relaxed as when you play something slow. When I started to focus on jazz, I mostly played along with cd's that I liked and tried to create long musical sentences over the chord changes and still keep a relaxed feeling both in my head and in my hands.

So, I would recommend you to play melodies instead of patterns, because practicing too much of patterns might make your playing a bit stiff.
My favourite players Benson and Lagrene, both play a lot of fast stuff but they do it in a relaxed way with swing, good technique, feeling and melody.

All the best
Andreas