Continued from last post. I’m quoting almost entirely from Dave Wood’s post here.

Once you can feel the weight of the arm as the force holding down the string, and the thumb is just lightly touching the back of the neck, you can sense your body in relation to gravity, Your left hand is no longer a vise, and you can dance. every finger you put down on a note feels balanced. The other fingers waiting to play feel relaxed and free, and can dart to any other note that you hear.

Place each finger on the first string, one at a time, one behind each fret. As you place the 2nd finger, and transfer the weight to it, release the weight on the 1st finger but leave it relaxed and laying on the string. Lightly swing the tip of your elbow, and sense your shoulder and arm till you feel the weight of the arm on each individual finger as you go.

Here is the reason for this. When you’re still holding down a note that has just been played, while another finger is playing a different note on that same string, the finger that’s working for nothing has to release it’s tension before it can go for the next note you hear. This makes your fingers fly up in the air as you play, and it’s un necessary tension and waste motion that just gets in your way. This also clouds up the melodic idea you’re hearing and trying to play

Starting with the first finger, move to the 2nd string. Relax the 1st finger, leaving it on the string as you place the 2nd finger, and repeat this same process with the 3rd,and 4th fingers one at a time as you place them. keep the same process up as you put each finger down. Move across the fretboard to the 3rd string, the 4th string, the 5th string, and the 6th string repeating this same process. Do this slowly and concentrate on your body and the way it feels, sense your breathing.

Imagine that your fingers are crawling string by string up the side of a wall, and as you do this you’re lifting up the weight of the arm with your fingers. Relax each finger and leave it laying on the string after you place it. When you reach the top of the wall, go back down string by string. Now you feel like you’re lowering the weight of the arm back down the wall finger by finger.
The weight of the arm is automatically re adjusting the necessary length of your fingers so that the length is just right to reach each string. This kind of practicing is like slow motion Karate moves. Sense yourself within your body every second.

Unnecessary tensions and physical glitches not only make getting to what you hear difficult, they also screw up what you’re hearing in the moment. This is why it’s so important to practice slowly, and to be aware of your body from the inside out. Sincere players aflicted with these problems can practice everyday, unaware of what’s holding them back.

I asked the Yahoo Jazz Guitar Group on how to swing on the guitar and got some very interesting and useful tips that I would like to share in this post.

Dave Woods is the author of the following tips, which comes in three installments.

The first installment is found below and is extracted almost entirely from the original post here.

On my website www.jazzguitarstartingright.com there’s a PDF article called “Life and Music”. A lot of what I’ve struggled to learn over the years by trial and error, and from my philosophical association with some great natural players is worth reading.

All successful guitar playing depends on the coordination between the two hands. One hand out of coordination with the other can throw both of them off. so it’s best to study each of them one at a time. This can’t be done in one post. When you truly achieve anything in music it becomes a feeling,and you know it by that feeling. Feelings are the hardest thing in the world to convey in words.

The Left Hand

The Thumb and Fingers are not opposing jaws of a vise. The Thumb is a sensor that touches the back of the neck to sense the balance of the arm, and it only presses when it’s absolutely necessary. When the necessity is over, it goes right back to it’s function of being a sensor again.

The weight of the arm is what holds a string down. Make a hook with your first finger, place it on any fret, keep your thumb off the back of the neck. a little tension in the finger alone, just enough to hold the shape of the “hook” is all you should need.

Next, sense the tip of your elbow, and let it gently swing back and forth like the pendelum on a clock. This should enable you to feel the weight of your arm on the tip of your 1st finger. If it dosen’t, then you’re holding your arm up in the air with muscular tension. Relax your shoulder and your arm until you feel the full weight of the arm on the end of the 1st finger.

Once you do, try curling your first finger like you’re doing chin ups with the finger, and sense that you’re lifting the weight of your arm with it. This will put you in touch with the right feeling. Next, do the same thing with the 2nd finger, the 3rd, and the 4th finger. Do this slowly, and sense yourself from the inside out as you do. This is how you become inwardly aware of the right feelings.

While you’re on any finger you should be able to wiggle the other fingers that aren’t holding down a string freely in the air. If their still tied up, it means you still have no balance. When you have balance, the rest of your body is always relaxed and ready for the next move. Without a sense of gravity there can be no balance.

What happens when you’re walking a balance bar, and you’re fighting to keep your balance. Your whole body spasms up, right? How can any graceful movement be generated when the body is in this condition. And yet, players practice for hours, trying to achieve a functional result while they shoot themselves in the head at the same time.

Last night I met an old friend, a musician. He plays the classical guitar.

We live in different countries and meet every few years. The last time we met was 2005/2006 in Amsterdam, where I spent Christmas and New Year’s with him, his wife and a few other friends. I still remember that winter and brown jacket he always wore in Amsterdam.

Although we’ve known each other for more than ten years, since our adolescent days in school and have considered each other as best friends, yesterday was the first time I explicitly (as opposed to implicitly) acknowledged to myself that I should throw away my longstanding assumption that I know the guy and be prepared to rediscover and renew my understanding and appreciation of him, somewht like a cross between how you would approach a new friend and getting to know an old friend all over again. “Keep an open mind”, I told myself, “Don’t assume anything”. He must have changed so much that even a few years back, you didn’t even realize you weren’t keeping pace with the changes anymore. We have not been around each other nor been updated of all the profound changes in our personalities and worldviews. It would have been foolish to assume that this was the exact same person I knew from years back.

After exchanging quick hugs and greetings, he played the guitar for me for more than an hour. I hope he will give me the names of the pieces he played, which included something from Dowland.

That one hour or so listening to him play in the growing darkness of the evening when dusk was falling, amidst traffic noise, was an emotional experience for me. I wish I had recorded his playing and could share the recording with whoever is reading this now. But unfortunately, this is the only record of yesterday’s private concert, a poor non-musical record.

Although his playing improved each time we met, yesterday was to me the most significant improvement I recall. I consider it a breakthrough.

His playing had become more expressive and musical. The music he played spoke to me. I was so overwhelmed at some places I could barely speak properly after he finished playing. Mistakes did not bother him as much as it used to. When he made a mistake, he did not berate himself, replay the section, sigh or curse but just continued with the music and let it speak with as much feeling as he could summon from within himself. With this shift in focus, the ego had taken a backseat to the music.

What struck me yesterday was that just as he let himself make mistakes while playing, he also let himself let go on the guitar. It was as if he shed a self-conscious and sometimes intellectual sense of propriety (on how he should play, on how the music should sound etc) that I believe used to constrain his past playing. I believe his playing is maturing. I told him I think he is on the right track and he agreed, though the question in his mind was how far the track extends. I have faith that this is only the very beginning of the track.

In short: a profound change for the better in his playing.

From which I infer a profound change in his personality.

Kinks ironed out. Balances restored. Excesses, desires and impulses moderated. Expectations lowered. Growing forgiveness, tolerance and patience. Old demons given their dues. Who knows?

I recall Tommy Emmanuel saying during a master class, “Even before I met Chet Atkins, I felt like I knew him through listening to his music”. I was skeptical when I heard that but after yesterday’s private concert, I know what Tommy Emmanuel said must be true. That one hour or so during last evening’s private concert has given me a greater insight into my friend than would have been possible if we had spent the time chatting instead.

My friend asked why I stopped writing on my blog. Well, now I have something to write about and this is it.

Post script: My wife says my friends have all matured, it’s time I keep pace.

Interestingly, over dinner, when I spoke to my friend about my wife’s suggestion on how I should approach playing the guitar (spend time listening to and feeling the music before playing it, sing and move to the music before playing it, play in a way so that me, the guitar and the sounds from the guitar is integrated and not separate entities) he said she’s spot on. Bear in mind, she’s not a musician and has only started piano lessons for a few months.

I am lucky and blessed to have perceptive and wise people around me who care for me, love me and tolerate my flaws.

My Funny Valentine

Thanks to Byron (whom I got to know at the Yahoo Jazz Guitar Group) for sharing the video with me!

Jelly Roll Blues

Aberdeen Mississippi Blues

Poor Boy Long Way from Home

Freight Train

Wilson Rag

Spanish Fandango

Check out aswas. Includes transcriptions from Grant Green and Jimmy Raney as well as some tips on how to use Transcribe!, which I found very useful and much clearer than the manual.

Since my last video post on Bill Evans, I might as well record some reactions of mine to his much vaunted Sunday at the Village Vanguard, which I always had the fear that I just didn’t get it. Perhaps I was too dense, my ears too uneducated and unaccustomed to recognising greatness when I heard it. Much like how many critics panned Thelonius Monk’s music at the beginning of his career. Or how a Decca executive failed to sign the Beatles to the label. I mean no one wants to be the person who just doesn’t get it. Terrible for self esteem.

Despite all the great reviews (starting with a review by X’Ho, if my unreliable memory serves me right this time, in Big O magazine more than 10 years ago and which prompted me to buy the album) I’ve read about the album in question and giving it a few serious listening attempts over the past ten years, I still could not honestly say to myself I like or appreciate it or recommend it.

And now I finally understand why and realised that I was not alone after reading A Non-Believer’s Appreciation of Bill Evans by Tom Djll. There was no pulse I could relate to and hook on. I could not recognise the melody and the music was “cloudy”, an adjective I wish I used first to describe the music instead of Balliett.

See excerpts of the article by Djll below:

“A piano teacher at the Berklee School of Music made me hate Bill Evans. I presented a singular problem to him: my overriding desire was to learn to play like Jelly Roll Morton and Fats Waller. I landed at the celebrated jazz school in 1974 from the hinterlands of northern New Mexico (where jazz piano teachers were as rare as Boston baked beans), seventeen and cringingly naïve, scared of (and attracted to) the giant-afro’d hookers on Boylston and perplexed by my Canadian roommate’s re-enactments of Monty Python routines. And I was a serious moldy fig. My gospel that summer was Alan Lomax’s Mr. Jelly Roll. I was laboriously working out the harmonies and fingerings to “Wolverine Blues”, which I was teaching myself by ear off a battery-driven cassette player I perched amid the cigarette burns and coffee stains on the practice pianos, the tape speed a bit fast so that my “Wolverine” howled in F#.

This teacher was a nice enough guy, but his cancer stick fell from his lips when I played him my stuff. Whatever words he used to hip me to what the Berklee staff was putting down in terms of keyboard, they had little effect. “This is jazz, too, isn’t it?” I asked, pumping out some left hand oompah. “You wanna live out your life playing intermissions at pie-eating contests?” he snarled.

So, to the listening library I was dispatched. It felt like a punishment even before I clamped on those thumbscrews-for-the-ears they called “headphones” and popped in a tape of Sunday at The Village Vanguard. (Isn’t there a part in all of us that rebels at unsolicited recommendations? Don’t you hate it when somebody gushes, “This is the awesomest, ever. You’ll love it.”) Village Vanguard, I thought, what’s that, some medieval theatre-in-the-round? The way my teacher described it, the experience I was about to receive would be pianistic heaven on earth, Mount Olympus on the 88’s, and god himself would vibe me from those solid grooves. Bill Evans was at that time the summation of everything that was ever worthwhile doing with a piano or a piano trio. Forget Monk – not really a piano player; didn’t he write some quirky tunes? – forget Hines and Tatum – hopelessly old-fashioned, heavy-handed stuff – who? Cecil Taylor? Get out of my sight, infidel.

For some, the lofty pedestal Bill Evans occupies hasn’t budged an inch. For instance, the 2005 Riverside box release of (yet another “complete”) “Bill Evans: The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings 1961” reads on the back, in part: “This is it. The breakthrough. The pinnacle of spontaneous musical communication. Three men breathing as one on a tiny bandstand… The intimate, contrapuntal dialogues between Evans’ poetic piano and Lafaro’s bass, as swift as the wind. Motian’s sustained riveted ride cymbal providing a carpet of stars… the crowning glory of these performances, the last ever by this singular trio. This is it… The night of nights. No more rehearsing, and nursing of parts, they know every part by heart.”

...Evans’s art has always had its doubters. Whitney Balliett of The New Yorker wrote in 1963: “When Evans formed a trio, late in 1959, with Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums, a peculiar thing happened: The burden of being the soloist instead of a soloist appeared too much for him, and he became increasingly ruminative and withdrawn. He experimented endlessly with slow, cloudy numbers, and the singing climaxes all but vanished.” Balliett goes on to praise Evans’s then-new trio, again with Motian and Gary Peacock on bass, extolling the virtues writ often in the canonical Evans texts: the contrapuntal interplay, the lack of a clearly demarcated soloist/support structure, the sensitivity and freedom. By the late sixties, the critical clamor over Evans was such that Cecil Taylor was given to protest that, while Evans was “a competent cat,” surely were there a few other piano players on the scene who deserved some column inches too? John Litweiler looked back at Evans from the distance of the unromantic 1980s, and found his art wanting: “By far the most influential pianist of the 1960s was Bill Evans… Some of the spirit left his music by the 1960s, as he adopted a most distinctive touch, delicate as butterfly wings. This unique delicacy was excellent camouflage for Evans’s unremarkable melodic conception; his ingenious artifice extended to creating illusions of activity out of a limited dynamic range… the summary of all these qualities is an art of understatement and an emotionality that ranges from hip to pretty to wistful: modest good manners raised to a world view.” (from The Freedom Principle) Litweiler goes on to enumerate the manifold ways Evans’s closest disciples – Hancock, Corea, and Jarrett (he throws in vibist Gary Burton, too) – spread the Evansesque Romantic principle across the jazz sphere, laying waste via the scorched-earth firepower of jazz fusion.

...When I strapped on those primitive Berklee headphones and started the tape of Sunday at the Village Vanguard, I panicked: Where’s the music? “Cloudy” would have been a word I would have proposed, too, like Balliett. Certainly, all the subtlety of the music slipped right past my young, stride-ent ears (the most modern jazz piano I’d heard up to then was Erroll Garner). As I listened, I found myself unable to locate anything to hold onto, not a single recognizable musical signpost (what, no dominant 7ths? No four-to-the-bar?). A piece would begin, float along for a while – lots of little birdies twittering in the bushes, but no great flocks bursting out – and then end. Then a new one would start. I wasn’t thrilled, as my teacher had hoped. (I got my thrill the next day, when I found some Donald Lambert recordings in a tiny downtown record shop.) “

My Foolish Heart

Waltz for Debby with Monica Zetterlund on vocals

Waltz For Debby (instrumental)

Another Thelonius Monk video. See last one here.

Solitude