Many great players, still a doubt

Bob Holo

sketch wrote:

... (Django great because he played) ...as if evry note had the same importance. As i said most of us common earthlings run through the notes, whitout caring most of the time. Sometimes playing thinking about a melody could make the difference.... am i wrong?

And now here's the question for those of you with more experience: Is the ability of playing melodies instead of lines of notes something that you develop with the experience?

What do you think?

I think it goes far beyond notes, haha. Most people run through the minutes of their life without thinking much about it...

But anyway - music is a form of communication that is pretty hard to fake. Emotion without skill is maudlin and brilliance without passion is forgettable, IMHO. Two things come to mind thinking about "playing melodies". Patrick Saussois once told me that I should play like Frank Sinatra sang (phrase like a vocalist and think melody) and my brother - a jazz trumpeter - told me a very similar thing. He said that the longer he plays, the more he finds himself returning to the melody. The songwriter had something to say, and you're trying to understand the meaning and put it in your own words to say something hopefully new and meaningful to the audience without destroying the writer's intent; and if you're playing with another musician you can have a conversation with them about that melody - and that's where the jazz happens.

So, I'm not a good musician but Dave & Patrick are... and both have played from 5-table pubs to 5-tier opera-houses. You know, come to think of it, I've had this same conversation with both Neil Andersson & Troy Chapman - another two very tasty and experienced players who are both strongly melodic and conversational in their playing.

klaatu

Michael Bauer wrote:

There are some famous players that I am not that fond of because, no matter how fast they play, I am still hearing licks. I appreciate the skill level (and wish I could do it), but frequently find the solo a bit sterile.

Michael, as we were driving home from Django in June last year, we were listening to a recording by a highly regarded modern guitar master . At the end, one of my companions, a newbie, exclaimed that he was relieved that THAT was over - it sounded to him like an endless barrage of eighth notes (which it was), kind of like listening to a very good typist go at it for a long, long time. Pretty perceptive, I thought.

Lango-Django

Great thread! Hope chiming in my two cents worth won't spoil it!

One of Django's companions in my personal pantheon of gods and goddesses is the late physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) who won the Nobel prize for physics in 1965. If you ever see his hilarious book "Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman!" at a used book store, be sure to pick it up.

Anyway, there is a famous quote about Feynman by another physicist, Mark Kac, that reminds me a lot of Django:

[i]"There are two kinds of geniuses: the "ordinary" and the "magicians." An ordinary genius is a fellow whom you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they've done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians. Even after we understand what they have done it is completely dark. Richard Feynman is a magician of the highest calibre."[/i]

And of course, Django, too, was a magician of the highest calibre: he could weave the straw of arpeggios into golden phrases that still echo around the world, and probably always will.

While us ordinary mortals can understand what Django did, to a certain degree, we can't really understand how his mind worked.

But that is not to say we shouldn't keep on trying, because we can always learn something from studying Django's music. And here's what I think I'm going to try to learn next---

Django did play those "escalier" runs up and down the fingerboard, but the majority of his solos that I've managed to learn so far are comprised of phrases that come straight out of those little "boxes"--- the common "put-down" name for one-position arps.

Now when Django plays his phrases, he will very rarely just rocket through the chord tones in that relentless up-and-down fashion that Benito Vassolini so aptly compared to "musical typing".

Instead. he can effortlessly choose notes out of the arp out of their normal order, or add non-chord tone notes, in a way that seems completely un-premeditated. And from what we know about his ability to play half-hour solos without repeating himself, we can be sure that these were not just an endless series of pre-planned licks... now don't misunderstand me, Django DID have a lot of pre-planned licks in his back pocket, and they were awfully damned clever!

But intuition tells me that at some point Django must have sat down and worked through each "box" so thoroughly that he could probably have soloed for an hour on each box, without ever changing chords!

OK, go ahead and tell me if you think this is crazy... but my newest plan is to sit down and limit myself to just one "box" at a time and see if i can extract every single phrase out of that box that i can possibly imagine....

If you think this is worth trying, I encourage you to do the same thing and we can compare notes in a week or so?

Lets say we'll work on the chords of a 12-bar blues in G major, and we can only use this "box", moving it to different positions on the fretboard as needed:

-----------3--------------(7)-
-----------3------------------
--------------4---------------
------------------5-----------
------------------5-----------
-----------3------------------

I added the little (7) on top because I've noticed that when Django uses this particular box (I'm thinking of tunes like Honeysuckle Rose, J'Attendrai, Swing 42) he usually does include this note.

Just to be clear, don't limit yourself to ONLY playing the notes in the above "box"... it's finding those unexpected non-chord tones that are hiding inside the box that makes Django's playing so wonderful!

Will
Niagara-On-The-Lake, ON

Michael Bauer

Great post and great idea, Will! And Feynman is always worth reading. The Meaning of It All is a great book as well. What a brilliant thinker and writer!

I am going to try your idea and will see how it goes.

bbwood_98

Michael and will,
I'll have to pick up those books by Mr. Feynmen someday. In response to will's idea I will suggest several little things to spice it up- though in concept the idea is right on the money.
1. Try steph's 3 position arp (the top four strings of that one, connected to the G magor at the 7th fret area - 9th fret on the d, 7th fret on the g, 8th fret on the b, and 7th fret on the high e strings; followed by the one at the 10th fret area- 12th fret on the d, 12th fret on the g, 12th fret on the b, and 10th fret on the high e). These are great once you get them, to play a blues- instead of moving the same shape around, you can change shapes (ie. when the IV chord arrives, play a C arp at the 3rd fret- 5th fret on the d, 5th fret on the g, 5th fret on the b, and 3rd fret on the high e) to accomadate the change. If you visualize this, when you go outside of it you have a place to come back to.
2. Play the rhythm and sing solos using only the chord tones and a few other notes- record the solo you sung and learn it on the guitar- a way to improvise using your own voice; works really well for finding ideas that are your own, and for ear training.
3. Listen to soulful players, magicians or not; technique is nothing without something brilliant to say behind it . . Django, Bird, Monk, and so on. . .
Cheers,
B.

Jim Kaznosky

As I've been coming into contact with better and better players and try to learn something from them, the idea of singing solos has been coming up time and time again. I've started doing this at home for easier tunes, such as minor swing, and find that I do not "hear" arpeggio runs. I'm finding out a bit more of what I hear in terms of melody over other persons and it is quite surprising.

I think the technical aspect of this music is great and it is well worth working on the arpeggio runs and fast phrases. But it does sound a bit like an exercise if there is no underlying melodic theme...at least to me. In addition to the other stuff I'm doing (learning solos, practicing etudes), the singing solo thing is going to be incorporated.

Elliot

bbwood_98 wrote:

3. Listen to soulful players, magicians or not; technique is nothing without something brilliant to say behind it . . Django, Bird, Monk, and so on. . .
Cheers,
B.

Ahh...the secret of the 'magicians'. The ability to construct beautiful melodies is part of the technique of expression, so I would say that those people draw from a wider palette than the rest, and that is why they seem to be magical. What appears to be a hoop levitating the assistant is actually a 750hp hydraulic engine just behind the curtain. Grad students used to be afraid to hand their work in to Feynman, because he'd reach into a drawer and show them the general theory from which their research was derived.

Shawn

I guess this solves it, the secret to becoming a great musician in four easy steps...

Step 1. Practice Arpeggios

Step 2. Learn Magic (Example: D&D rather than Harry Potter)

Step 3. One-up Feynman (Example: Quantum Electordynamics...yeah...but can you play a D Major Arp. in the 2nd position?)

Step 4. Become Awesome!

8)

redblues

because he'd reach into a drawer and show them the general theory from which their research was derived.

There is so much wrong in this anecdote, i cannot let it pass. Every word, (drawer, general theory, derived) is wrong. Basically you are describing Encyclopedia Britannica, or more recently ,Wikipedia.

I found 'Surely your wanking Mr. Feynman' to be mostly ego filled ramblings with a dollop of extra ego. However, The Feynman Lectures series IS brilliant, and worthy of said ego, and worth reading. His work as a physicist is also worthy of said ego.

Back to Django, anyone remember that spaghetti western called Django, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060315/ a trilogy if i remember, apparently Tarantino is remaking it....Minor Death for all

Elliot

redblues wrote:

because he'd reach into a drawer and show them the general theory from which their research was derived.

There is so much wrong in this anecdote, i cannot let it pass. Every word, (drawer, general theory, derived) is wrong. Basically you are describing Encyclopedia Britannica, or more recently ,Wikipedia.

I don't read Wikipedia, I read books. It is from Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick.

Also, I see nothing in this thread concerning Feynman's ego, his lectures, value as a physicist, or anything else you've mentioned, and I really have no idea what you are talking about, actually, so climb down!