Q&A with Christiaan van Hemert

bbwood_98 · July 2015

Christaan,
Great work man! Bohemewarbler - exactly.

Hemert · July 2015

Thanks for the positive comments everyone. The [email protected] account is getting flooded with mails with questions for me to answer right now...nice, I like it!

So, don't hesitate to send in your questions. They are excellent inspiration for future episodes!

Charles Meadows · July 2015

That was an excellent video. Tell Stochelo to give you a raise!

AmundLauritzen · July 2015

It could be a great idea to talk about how Stochelo ties his licks up to chord positions.

Categorizing, cataloging and organizing licks is the way to internalize them IMO. That's what made it click for me. I see a chord voicing and I have a whole bunch of "pathways" overlapping that voicing. Those "pathways" are all the licks I know merged together, almost like a hybrid scale, one big picture on the guitar.

That's also how one transitions from reproducing licks, to taking the musical essence of those licks and reinventing them, then adding a personal touch to them. That's where it goes from plagiarizing to being creative and developing a personal voice.

It's a huge topic, but I think it's a problem area for many people who learn solos and don't know how to turn them into practical knowledge, how to extract the information and make it useful.

That's also the reason why people always say to learn the rhythm guitar first, because then when you learn solos and licks, you can place them in a bigger context and categorize those licks and visualize the rhythm guitar chord patterns under the licks themselves.

Bob Holo · July 2015

Good point. Also - learning the head helps a lot. That might sound like an oddly obvious point, but several times in jams I've heard a person say that they find a song awkward for soloing... and come to find out that they can't play the head. (or can't play it well, or only know it in the open position etc.) The head is the darned blueprint... it's the lyrical pathway through the chords that expresses the essence of the song. That's something my brother (a jazz trumpeter) taught me years ago. I can't remember his exact words, but... something like: "The head IS the song... solos are essentially a re-expression of, or support of, or comment on, or challenge to the lyrical intent of the song - otherwise - jazz just becomes "arps on a chord progression" and as there are only so many chord progressions, jazz with no melody in mind is nothing more than half a dozen songs taken at various tempos."

My guess is that if a person practices the head of a song till he has it absolutely nailed in at least two places on the neck, he'll have a pretty good skeleton upon which to hang solo licks & etc.

I'm not a great soloist, so take my comments on soloing with a grain of salt, but my brother is darned good, so unless I've significantly misinterpreted him, it's probably a good piece of advice.

Jazzaferri · July 2015

It's right on @Bob Holo

My way of knowing when I really have a song down is when I can sing (yikes) the head and play the rhythm without thinking about it.

Buco · July 2015

While I could somewhat agree that a good rhythm player won't necessarily make the soloist sound great, a bad rhythm player can definitely make the soloist sound bad or make it's role difficult at the very least.

Jazzaferri · July 2015

@Buco that is wisdom indeed. In improvisational music if the "groove" as Vic Wooten calls it, isn't there, it really limits what can happen, for soloist, comping section or whoever has the melody line.

If a rhythm player's timing, embellishments, or chord voicing's are off, throws everything off. True of any member of a band (or jam session)