Very nice Derek, just had a few listens and the stresses of the working day seem to be going away already. In fact as it's looping I'll keep it on while I'm working! It's a very nice piece of music, it's nice to hear a tune rather that a series of licks. I'm sure even Joe Pass would approve of that!
I'm not sure what difference a magnet change would bring, I like the articulation I hear as it is so hopefully you would not lose too much of that. AII Stormy Mondays are as sweet a pickup as you can get, I loved them when I had them and now I have my semi I'm debating which magnet to go for when I change out the Gotohs.
My thoughs are further complicated as I'm wondering whether I should get a Jazz box and not try to compromise too much with my 335, so have a real blues machine and something with no centre block to crack on with some Jazz stuff. I played a peerless Renaissance yesterday in Sounds Great. Although still a thinline it is totally acoustic and had a really nice mellow tone to it....
How do you approach your Jazz playing? I'm currently trying to learn scales and arpeggios all over the fretboard so I can pick out chord and colour tones and know what to play over what chord as it passes. Or if I'm playing solo, play a chord then hit the right melodic passages prior to the next chord. I can play a few nice Jazz progressions but really I have just learned those without understanding what I'm playing. I'm finding the jump from Blues Rock pentatonic playing to Jazz beginner pretty difficult!
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Thank you for that Tom, :) Do be careful though, as you might be afflicted with 'Post melodic stress disorder' .
The Peerless Renaissance seems ideal for your purposes - as you would get that characteristic woodiness and breath of the fully hollow, but with ( I presume ) a modest attenuation of the tendency to feedback quickly. The other great thing about the Renaissance, is that 'Lyre' tailpiece set right back , which enables you to put much heavier strings on the guitar, and they still feel easy to play - once the set up is perfected.
As for my own approach, being a fellow novice to all this ; was largely inspired ( as was this melody ) by various comments made by the late Joe Pass - and the DVD " An Evening With Joe Pass " which is in fact a relaxed interview, a guitar 'clinic' and eventually a few numbers from the night's show ( Including a far better version of the tune you were just listening to ). The interview part reminded me that he was originally limited to hearing stuff at the record store, then racing home to try and do something
similar. Prior to that epipany I too was put off ( for about ten years ) by thinking I had to learn lots of ( rather dry and academic ) stuff in parallel, then one day someone would tell me how the h**l to put it all together.
The penny eventually dropped, that if I just concentrated on finding the melody line, then finding chords to hang on every few notes, any lack of chord vocabulary, would be enjoyably addressed by needing to find a chord voicing for that
one note - in
that one place in the song. Was the note / sentiment of that note wanting to suggest a further development ? or was it at the end of a verse / chorus, so could be less 'coloured' . I quickly realised , that ( for me ) instead following the chord charts slavishly, OR working out what were the technically correct substitutions, It was best to play the chord sheet in a simplified form a couple of times to
hear the basic cadences and overall movement - then , with that in the back of my mind, just go back to finding chords as required.
The next step was finding that out of the many voicings I could use, only about 40-50 % sounded nice to my ear - and so learning other 'sour' voicings became redundant. If I
wanted to create a suspenseful passing chord, I would instead 'morph' the current chord one note at a time , till I
heard a decent link to the next one. The slender but comprehensive 'Joe Pass chord book' really helped - as he shows the notes in each chord, but does not name the chord. After all - change the root and it migrates into a different 'family' altogether. Instead he has pages divided into Major sounds, minor sounds - e.t.c.
Also , I considered that Joe Pass always recommended ditching any chord "grip" that you found hard to reach, or be unable to flow into. He ( Like Jimmy Bruno) Is / was a pragmatist, and in being so became a very efficient and adaptable session player. Just hitting two notes in succession , often alludes to a chord in the listener's ear. So, by following my heart and ears in choosing a chord, I would often find that I had accidentally used a 'proper' substitution. After all, the reason that substitutions work - is that they were suppose to sound good, not impress a scientist : to add new colours to the current chord. On top of which, a well placed 'ordinary' chord is often the nicest one for that moment. I found that listeners want to hear a melody with embellishments -
not me playing through 'The bumper book of 1,00 chords' to stun them with sonic quantity instead of quality. Yes, there is a precise underlying science behind this stuff, but ultimately it is ART, an expression of how YOU want it to sound, YOUR sonic signature that is being developed.
I want to spend a good year or two concentrating on the Chord melodies - and how to throw surprises in ;
then return to the single note soloing on a sound foundation. After all ( I was surprised to find ) - when you spend your time linking ideas , the single note runs and phrases almost suggest themselves.
The DVD 'No Nonsense Jazz Guitar' by Jimmy Bruno seems like a great way to study that side of the game.
Meanwhile, I remember a great piece of advice given to me in a pub by local player Jez Franks - that was to avoid any pentatonic 'shapes' and string bending for at least two years ( hitting the same notes for different reasons is of course 'allowed' ) . This is a style that seems to need demolishing of old ideas, cleanly building new ones, then eventually using both.
All the very best your journey Tom ! :D
