Month: October 2016

Howls From The Woodshed #2: It Takes Time. It Just Takes Time

Posted on by abassford

I’ve been studying jazz off and on for decades. My parents loved it, so I’ve been hearing it since the day I got home from the hospital. Over the course of my musical life, I’ve devoted extensive periods of time to studying it, then gone on to other things, usually work-related skills. Around five years ago I decided to really devote myself to mastering the idiom. I began taking jazz guitar lessons with Peter Prisco, a world-class player who has devoted his life to teaching rather than playing. (He plays me under the table every week in spite of this.)

Shortly thereafter, I started playing with Monty Alexander, one of the greatest living jazz musicians, in his Harlem-Kingston Express reggae/jazz fusion project. This unusual group features two complete rhythm sections: upright bass and a small jazz drum kit and electric bass and a larger reggae drum kit. I’m in the reggae section on guitar and stationed right behind Monty’s piano, the best seat in the house. The music alternates between rhythm sections and sometimes both sections play together.

Since I’m often listening, not playing, while Monty is playing with the jazz section, I decided to make the most of the experience by imagining that I am playing with them. This means keeping track of the song, where they are in the form, and also trying to hear what the chords and substitutions Monty and Hassan Shakur, the upright player, do as the song evolves. Not only is this a lot of fun, it’s been tremendously educational. Both Monty and Hassan have perfect pitch, which allows them to make remarkably adventurous substitions together. The gig is a wonderful lesson in the art of the possible, as no matter how wild they get, they always swing and sound like they are playing the tune correctly. Monty doesn’t often ask me to solo in the jazz sections, but it does happen, so I have to be ready if it does.

Of course, I’ve also been studying on my own, and I’ve also been playing electric bass with Robert Silverman, a fine NYC-based jazz composer/trumpeter/singer/pianist for the last ten years. I’ve also started playing bass with Earl Appleton, a wonderful keyboard player on the reggae circuit who also plays with Monty on occasion. In Earl’s group, we do a wide variety of music: straight-ahead jazz, soca, R&B, and reggae. I haven’t played much soca bass so I’ve been practicing that instrument as well as guitar. So I’ve been attacking the subject of jazz from a wide variety of angles recently, on and off the bandstand.

I love playing bass for a variety of reasons. It’s a lot more powerful than the guitar in the sense that you can instantly reharmonize the entire band. If the rest of the band is playing a C chord and you play a D, well, it’s now C/D and a very different sound than if you add a D to your C chord on the guitar while the bass is playing C. Your interaction with the drums is very powerful, and you also get to hear the music from the bottom up, which makes you hear the chordal instruments very differently. Instead of trying to find your place among the chordal instruments, you’re trying to find your place under them, another problem entirely.

Last week I went to a Guitar Center and tried out guitars. This is one of my favorite recreational activities. I just love playing unfamilar instruments, and occasionally I find one that makes sense for me to buy. They had a cheap jazz hollowbody that looked interesting. I took it off the rack and didn’t even bother to plug it into an amp, I just started playing it. All of a sudden, all the work I’ve been doing on jazz over the last ten years came together. I found that Monty-esque ideas were flying out of the instrument. I was swinging hard, and it felt like I had a whole band backing me. I must have played for an hour without realizing it.

The next time I listened to a jazz record, I concentrated on the piano player for a minute. All of a sudden, I could hear the inversions and extensions he was using, rather than just the basic chord. When he put in a substitution, I could hear what it was. This was exciting. But when I started my regular practicing I realized that other changes had taken place as well.

I’ve been working on a Lee Konitz tune based on “What Is This Thing Called Love.” It’s called “Sub-Conscious-Lee” (beboppers, like me, love puns) and I’ve been able to play it, but I never felt I understood it. I was just learning a sequence of notes and playing them correctly. I couldn’t hear it emotionally and I couldn’t memorize it. This time I played it and realized that I now understand it, the same way that I understand tunes like “Donnalee” that I already play well. Even better, I can actually remember it mentally, though my fingers don’t totally have it down yet.

So why the breakthroughs? I think I can identify several things. First, in learning any style of music, long periods of listening are essential. Listening isn’t a substitute for practicing. You can listen to Charlie Parker all day and you won’t be able to play any of it without practice unless you are already very, very accomplished. But listening helps you internalize the sound and feeling of the music you want to play.

Second, working on seemingly unrelated musical issues pays off in unexpected ways. There is very little musical relationship between soca bass and jazz guitar. But for some reason, practicing soca bass made me a harder-swinging guitarist.

Third, if something really interests you, don’t stop working on it. You will get somewhere eventually. One of the things I love most about music (though not the music business) is that it’s one of the few areas of life where you are guaranteed to get out of it what you put into it.

Howls From The Woodshed #1: The Left Hand and The Right Hand Should Be Friends!

Posted on by abassford

There are a blessed few musicians who don’t have to practice much. I work for one: the great Jamaican jazz pianist Monty Alexander. He never warms up. On the few occasions when a piano is available for him backstage, he looks at it and laughs but doesn’t touch it. His wife, a fine musician herself, claims he doesn’t practice much at home either. I don’t know how he manages this, but he does. (Monty’s explanation is that he played long gigs practically every night for decades, so he doesn’t need to practice much. He just has to get his fingers moving once he’s on stage.) For the rest of us, practice is the iceberg of which performance is the tip.

Recently I’ve increased the amount of private teaching I do. I’ve also started playing bass in a group that performs a lot of soca tunes, requiring me to go back into the shed myself. For both these reasons, I’ve started thinking about the practicing process more, and I thought that some of you might enjoy reading about some of the things I’ve discovered recently.

The Left Hand And The Right Hand Should Be Friends

One of the wisest insights I’ve ever read about the guitar is the following (I’m sorry that I can’t give credit where it’s due, I just don’t remember who said it): “Your left hand is what you know. Your right hand is who you are.” It follows that developing as a guitarist requires both increasing your knowledge of music and your understanding of what kind of person you are. Unlike the piano, where both hands are doing different things most of the time, playing the guitar well requires the fretting hand (the left hand if you’re a righty) and the picking hand (the right hand if you’re a righty) to be perfectly synchronized. Most guitarists have more facility with one hand than the other. In my case, my left hand has always been ahead of my right hand even though I’m right-handed. This makes sense on some level because as a person my level of knowledge about music is far ahead of my personal development in some areas. So musically, I spend a lot of time on developing my right hand to try to help it catch up. As to personal development—it’s a secret!

Recently I’ve been working on two separate projects, one for each hand. For the right hand, I’m practicing the chromatic scale, A to A over two octaves, four fingers per string, one finger per fret. I’m using alternate picking and working not on speed, but on making as little extraneous noise with my left hand as possible when shifting. I’ve discovered that for some reason the work I do on minimizing noise, while useful in itself, also seems to increase my speed and facility. My two hands get along better after some time playing chromatic scales. I don’t know why yet. I just know that it works for me.

For my left hand, I’m doing exercises to expand my reach. I start high up on the neck at the twelfth fret, playing a root position major seventh chord on the top four strings. (From bottom to top, I’m playing F A C E, with the E on the twelfth fret). Then I move each finger in turn down a fret, leaving the other fingers where they are. So I play F A C Eb (F7) next. Then I play F A B Eb (F7b5). Then I play F Ab B Eb (F-7b5). Finally I move the F down to E, which gives me E major 7th (E G# B D#), the same chord I started with a fret lower. I continue this down the neck as far as possible. Then I go back to the top and try the same thing, this time moving each finger down two frets, one at a time, while keeping the other fingers in place.

A word of warning: If you haven’t tried anything like this before, go slowly! Unless you have huge hands (mine are of average size), this will hurt a bit. A bit of discomfort is normal, but if it really hurts, stop! Wait until the pain goes away and then try again.

If It Hurts, Why Bother?

I’m glad you asked! The first reason is simple: these chords sound good. I first realized this when I saw a picture of the great guitarist Johnny Smith fingering a major 6th chord in root position. The six fret stretch looked impossible. Why would anyone even try it? There are plenty of ways to play 6th chords on the guitar. But I figured if Johnny could do it, I could do it. So I tried. It took a few minutes and I had to go way up the neck to do it, but I was able to play it. As soon as I heard it, the answer was obvious. It’s beautiful! I was an instant convert.

So the next step was to try the other seventh chords in root position. I got similar results. Hard to play, but worth the effort. But I really got serious about this when I encountered the Barry Harris method of improvisation, which is based on sixth chords of various types and diminished chords. I found that being able to play a sixth chord in root position put diminished chords close at hand, and that I was able to harmonize an entire diatonic scale with sixth and diminished chords. Now I was off. What other chords lay close at hand?

As you may know, lowering any note of a diminished seventh chord one step gives you an inversion of a dominant seventh chord. So when I started lovering notes of diminished seventh chords in root position. I started uncovering piano-like four note chords, along with a system with which to organize them. I love making the guitar as piano-like as possible when I can, so this was a big step toward the goal of harmonic mastery.

All this was very exciting. However, there was a bonus. When I went back to playing single string phrases, all of a sudden I was faster, clearer, and more articulate. How could learning new chords improve my facility with single notes? I don’t know! But I’m going to find out. Perhaps the increased left hand strength I was developing had something to do with it. But my right hand seemed more controlled also. Why? I don’t know, but what I do know is that I’m onto something very useful.

More to come…