on phrasing [part1]

Have you ever wondered why you do not sound like the musician of your choice, despite playing the exact same notes over the same chord progression?

isn't that mysterious? how can you not sound like someone else if you play the same musical lines, that doesn't make any sense, does it?
I'll show you why in this article.
The problem is that you didn't play the same notes as the musician you transcribed - not even close, although you might think you did.
you don't sound like him, because you didn't phrase the notes like he did.
the process of phrasing is so complex that you'll never actually sound like the jazz guitarist of your choice - there are anatomic reasons for this.

now is that a reason for resignation? not at all

the good news is that you can firstly get very close to the sound of your ideal, and secondly that you can develop your own unique sound and phrasing.
Good jazz phrasing is one of those skills you need to internalize in order to eventually sound like a jazz musician. if you fail to learn how to phrase in jazz music, you are never gonna sound like one of your idols, period. no matter how much you work on scales, sequential improvisation, transcribing, technique and other areas, you will fail - in other words there is no way around this area.

once you've learned how to phrase properly this skill will become the pathway to a seemingly inexhaustible set of new musical ideas. you will be able to burst your musical boundaries so to speak. if that is what you want, you should dedicate a fair amount of your time to getting this skill handled.
I am stunned by the fact that this area of phrasing is so rarely included into so called "jazz guitar methods". to me this is really one of the most obvious weak points of these methods and schools.

with that in mind, what are the steps you need to take in order to learn how to phrase? there are a lot of concepts on how to learn to phrase properly.
today i am going to share with you one of the most effective concepts, probably the most effective concept overall.
this concept is again counter-intuitive. and here it is:

"Learn how to phrase in swing music"

There's so many important sub-concepts in the area of phrasing that need to be learned and you can absorb them all at once if you learn how to properly phrase your lines in swing music. i know it doesn't sound like a musical epiphany, but stick with me here.

if you learn "swing phrasing", your awareness concerning phrasing in different styles of music will be magnified. your intuition will just make you feel what the right way to phrase in other styles is, be it latin, fusion, neo-bop, funk, pop or whatever.
let me stress here that i am not particularly fond of swing as a music style. when at first i was confronted with this concepts i did everything i could think of to avoid practicing this. but when i finally put my preconceptions aside and dived into this, i was amazed by the whole new world of musical possibilities that opened up for me.

i think it's vital to understand why some area (in this case phrasing) is so immensely important before you dedicate your precious time to it, that's why i've been very accurate in describing the importance of phrasing.

let's get started.
pick three jazz standards in swing. for example pieces like autumn leaves, stella by starlight, whisper not etc. will do. pick something you like to play.

next play the theme, try to play all the notes _legato_ and try to accent the offbeats (the 1+, 2,+, etc). do it very slowly first and when you're sure where the offbeats are increase the tempo a bit. you have to do this religiously, be sure you really hit the offbeats. and do not forget to play legato (with playing legato i mean still use alternate picking, but make sure there's no breaks between individual notes.)

next listen to a version of a jazz guitar master in swing, people like benson, martino, herb ellis or barney kessel. pay attention to their phrasing when playing the theme. you'll realize they will accent offbeats almost all the time. sometimes they will put the accent on the beat.
try to imitate their phrasing. be accurate.
if you keep doing this for a few weeks, you'll notice that you will listen to music differently. you'll pay attention to the particular phrasing of your favourite jazz guitarist a lot more, automatically.

this is the first step on your way into a whole new world of musical possibilities.
part 2 to follow.

for information on how to practice phrasing efficiently read my article
"90 minutes of efficient practice".

on counter-intuitve concepts / on transcribing

on the process of mastering jazz guitar you're gonna notice that many of the stuff you have to practice isn't exactly what came to your mind at first. it's counter-intuitive.
One example for this is that in order to gain speed at picking what you're gonna have to do a lot of the time is playing slowly. isn't that interesting?
i had always thought that in order for me to play fast i would have to practice fast.
i had no idea how wrong i was. when at first someone explained to me that i'd have to practice slow movements i thought: "what the heck are you talking about? doesn't sound logical to me."

but you'll see for yourself, the closer you get to mastery the more often counter-intuitive concepts are going to show up.

alright with that in mind let's look at a counter-intuitive concept.
how do you master the art of jazz improvisation on the guitar?

Clark Terry - one of the few mentors of Miles Davis has a saying.
Clark says, if you want to learn how to play, use IAI.

IAI is short for:

Imitate. Assimilate. Innovate.

1)
Imitate the true masters of jazz guitar FIRST.
Listen to Wes Montgomery. or Charlie Christian. or any great master that appeals to you. Do not transcribe entire solos. this is unlikely to help you.
Instead build a vocabulary for improvisation by transcribing your favourite passages of their solos and asking yourself:
how can i use his phrase?
over what kind of progressions can i use this?
what scale does this derive from?
more information on these questions will be shared in another article.

Try imitating your idol as closely as you can. and do not pick more than one player in the beginning. focus on just one jazz guitarist. otherwise you're going to be overwhelmed.

2)
next assimilate. Try to make subtle changes in the phrases you transcribed. try to apply different phrasing.

3)
the third and last step should be to innovate. this happens after a LONG TIME of transcribing and assimilating material, at a point where you've completely internalized the musical ideas of true masters, so that you can now make new musical phrases arise.

If you truly want to master he art of jazz guitar, use this concept.

Why do most people fail, when trying to accomplish such an incredibly hard task as mastering jazz guitar, although they're musical?

the answer is simple.

they want to innovate first.
they learn the whole palette of scales that you can find in literature.
they see a minor7 chord and play dorian, the a dom7#5 chord and play whole-tone. they see a m7b5 chird and play locrian 9.

after several months (or years!) of practice they wonder why they're still not sounding like Wes, Charlie or Jesse Van Ruller.
I mean they play the correct scales over the respective chords, so what's the problem?
if you're reading this, chances are you've been through this.

the answer is the elusive obvious. there's more to wes montgomery's lines than "dorian over minor and superlocrian over dom7#9 chords."
there is chromatic passing tones, there is bebop movements in the lines and most importantly there is sound and phrasing.
that's why you don't sound like Wes and Charlie.

So stop trying to innovate first and start imitating the masters you want to sound like. otherwise you'll waste incredible amounts of time and ultimately fail.
Listen to Clark's advice.

And remember todays masters went through the same procedure. imitating first. innovation in the end:

Pat Martino transcribed Wes Montgomery and Johnny Smith.
Bireli Lagrene transcribed Django Reinhardt.
George Benson transcribed Wes Montgomery and Tal Farlow.
Lage Lund transcribed George Benson.
Pat Metheny transcribed Jim Hall.
Kurt Rosenwinkel transcribed Pat Metheny.

transcribing is no reason for disgrace. you're not going to end up as a duplicate of your paragon of jazz guitar anyway. but it's inevitable to imitate a true master if you want to master the instrument yourself.

on technique [part 3]

what i am going to share of you is something that will completely transform your technique - when done on a regular basis.
this is the second most important exercise, right after the inside/inside and outside/outside picking exercise that i shared with you in the article "on technique [part1]".

It's a pretty basic thing, so most good players don't stress it, for it is kinda self-exlanatory to them. in fact it isn't.
i practiced technique the wrong way for a long time just because noone ever told me what to do.

well, you can - here it is:

take your metronome. if you don't have one, buy one. this isn't optional if you truly want a superiour picking technique. you cannot do it without a metronome!

next pick a scale of your choice. no not the major scale, come on - be creative. ;)
dorian for example, or mixolydian. or diminshed.

now try finding a tempo where you can comfortably play the scale up and down, without playing sleazily. remember if you play sleazily what you're gonna practice is how to play sleazily, that's it.
try finding the right tempo on the metronome - it should challenge you, yet you
should be able to play it correctly if you focus.
do this for 20 minutes with a few breaks, and instead of just playing the scale up and down use some patterns like 1234, 2345, 3456 or 1324, 2435, 3546 and so on.

after 5 days of practicing the scale this way, turn your metronome up a tiny notch and do your scale exercises again - until you can do them without any effort.
then turn your metronome up a notch again.

repeat this procedure for about 6 months and you'll have enhanced your picking technique by a vast amount.
remember to do this every single day - without fail. if you don't understand why you should do it every day please read my article "90 minutes of efficient practice".
if you stick with this for 6 months you will be staggered by the results!

a clean picking technique will be one of the foundations on your way to master the art. this is why i dedicate so many articles in the beginning phase of this blog to technique.
i am not fond of practicing technique just for the sake of having a better technique. in fact technique is one of the least interesting areas of the entire "mastering guitar program".
it is, however, important to command your instrument on a high level when it comes to technique, because you ultimately need it for your musical expressions on the guitar.
thus, go do the exercises everyday - it's worth it.
when you've mastered technique you will be one step closer on your journey to master jazz guitar!

90 minutes of efficient practice

here's another of those concepts that took me a long time to finally realize.
i didn't do it for years. i just didn't have the discipline. a pity - i could be in a completely different situation today if i'd started this a decade ago.

did you ever catch yourself thinking
"mm, i really don't feel like practicing today. But next week it'll be different.
Next week will be great - i'll be on vacation, i'll have the time to practice 6 hours a day! Yes! That's what i'm gonna do. next week i am going to practice real hard. It's going to feel great to practice again."

did you also realize that you somehow seemed to have missed out on "next week"?
oh yeah, there was vacation, but your friend john was calling. and there was this party. and the other day you went out with some friend you didn't see in a while. and all of a sudden "next week" was over.

you with me?
if you say to yourself "i'm gonna practive after ... or in a few days ... or when finally you get ... i GUARANTEE you in 98% of the time it's just not going to happen. ever.

so what's the answer to this dilemma?
it's really simple and very obvious. but it's also hard to do.

it's called practicing on a consistent basis.
every single day. for the rest of your days.
This will get you results, even if it's as little as 90 minutes per day.
(which is really not much at all when your goal is to master the instrument)
but you know what - the minutes are going to add up. even if it's as little as 90 minutes DAILY you will practice 630 minutes per week. and about 2700 minutes per month!

and now start thinking in bigger time frames. one year? three years? TEN years?
how different will your skillset as a musician be if you start with this TODAY after TEN years?
and what is it going to be like if you don't do it?
and remember time WILL pass inevitably and you're going to be ten years older no matter if you want to or not.
the question is how much better will you be as a musician when the time comes.
and believe there's no way you're going to radically improve as a musician and a jazz guitarist with the mindset of "i'll do it next week".
You will succeed on the other hand with the mindset of "90 minutes of efficient practice TODAY". and don't tell me you don't have the 90 minutes.
There is absolutely no subsitute for this. no amount of practicing REAL HARD when you're on vacation is going to match the massive amount of time you'll have spent over a bigger time frame - even if you practice as little as 90 minutes per day.

How much do you watch Television? 90 minutes per day? how much TV will you have watched ten years from now? do the math. and then tell me what you think you're going to benefit from doing that next week - or in ten years from now.

time is the most valuable resource we human beings have. far more valuable then money. use it wisely.

start using a small amount of your time on the long-time goal of mastering the instrument today, everyday and you will succeed.
plan on practicing next week, when everything is better - and you will fail.

decide which path you're going to choose.

on practicing improvisation

Improvising over chord changes is very difficult at best.
so what's a good way to approach this incredibly complex topic?
i know you want to get these lydian arpeggios handled, and practice diminished patterns as well as bebop lines and... but didn't you want to try this concept called target note improvisations? and oh wow you almost forget to transpose Autumn leaves to 9 other keys and...

enough!
Let me introduce you to one my favourite topics here.
it's called "focus on one thing at once".

center yourself, forget anything else you could possibly practice and dedicate yourself to doing one thing at a time only instead of getting lost in the universe of jazz guitar over and over again.
this is quite the opposite approach of what Mick Goodrick teaches in his book "The advancing guitarist". It's a great book, with the purpose of increasing the students perception on how many different learning fields there actually are. it's goal is to make the students inner voice say "Gee, i really got some things to do. i should start!"
The downside of this concept is that a lot of students end up being overwhelmed when trying to practice everything simultaniously.
So in fact my concept could also be called "antagonizing Mick Goodrick"

Stop in your tracks for a moment and ask yourself:
"What do I want to be able to play?"
"How do I get there?"
and most importantly "How can I downsize this exercise even more, so that I actually benefit from it."

Dedicate an hour of practice not on improvisation over changes and not on arpeggios, but rather on improvising with only four notes at a time over a specific chord type in one position.
Only when your brain is not overwhelmed with new information are you truly going to learn.

for example practice:
"Creating three new cool patterns over a Gminor7 in the first position using the notes Bb, D, E and A exclusively."

Do this straight for two hours. And don't interrupt the procedure by thinking

"Ok, cool, but what other notes would fit in?"
"And does this work on another chord?"
"How about four notes from the mixolydian #11 scale?"
"And should I or should I not transcribe Kurt Rosenwinkel's solo over this tune zhivago?"

Keep at it, and don't let anything distract you. Do it for two hours!
As soon as your mind starts asking these questions, stop!
Ask yourself "what was the plan?" and then return to it at once.

you'll be amazed what difference this is going to make if you follow through with this for a few months.
if you want to go back to doing it all at once, fine.
but in five years, do not tell me i didn't warn you ;)