Expand Your Sound, Read Another Instrument’s Part
by Craig Braunschweig
In the world of today’s guitarist, reading music could be seen by some as non-essential. Given the wide variety of tablature available, they are the basis for many learning the instrument. For the beginning guitarist still familiarizing themselves with the fretboard and/or musical notation, tabs work great and in most situations, for many popular genres, tablature works fantastically. Thing is, when it comes to Jazz, most of the music isn’t written in tab because too many different instruments play it and a lot of Jazz was never written for a guitar to do anything but compliment the whole or improvise over the chord progression.
The Epiphany(-esque realization)
Recently I ran across an old Jazz critique/essay book from the early 50’s called The Book of Jazz.
In the back of the book, he transcribes solos by major artists in instrument by instrument form to demonstrate the strengths of each within Jazz. He also writes about the “Anatomy of Improvisation” in a way that, for me, was quite enlightening. Had I not been able to read the notes and then translate them to the fretboard I would have missed out on a near epiphany lesson: playing another instrument’s part helped me to rethink the “voice” of the guitar. Well, it doesn’t look like such a “Eureka!” moment when I write it out but it still makes sense. A trumpet player is going to play the notes that come naturally within the scale to a trumpeter’s fingers just like a guitarist is going to play the natural notes to their fingers. The difference is the pattern in which they are played.
A trumpet has three valves (six if you count half-valves) and a wide variety of notes based on airflow and the players lips. A guitar has 15-24 frets (depending on style of guitar), 6 or 7 strings and four fingers with an occasional thumb. Both instruments have their tonal limitations and their typified scale patterns. When I tried to recreate what Louis Armstrong and Roy Eldridge did on the trumpet, I sounded “off”. The notes didn’t fall where I’d expected them to, the patterns didn’t match what my fingers were used to playing. After a couple hours gaining fluency, I came up gasping for air with a big smile on my face and new take on the sound a guitar “should have”. All based on about 30 measures of music. I can’t wait to smile wider and wider as I get to play the music of other instruments as I find time to explore the book further.
What Mr. Feather Taught Me
The most important thing that I walked away with from that little epiphany is a further understanding of the Jazz scale. By playing a trumpet solo, I wasn’t just stepping outside the confines of tabbed out Ionian/Major scale, or adding the “blue” notes to it. The scale wasn’t numbers and finger positions written in a pattern, it was notes played by someone as they saw fit for their instruments voice. It also wasn’t just fancy guitar playing for the sake of being fancy. It was pure music, pure Jazz if you prefer.
To that important thing, I’ll add this: Trying to recreate a horn’s “Growl”, which is a slide down half-step and back up, is like trying to milk a rock if you’re playing the guitar. Without the air (the wind in wind instrument) I couldn’t get that “Bah-wah-wuh” that’s so typical of horns. While it is frustrating, it’s just another way to realize that no matter how good I ever get on the guitar, I still won’t be able to do everything. (I’m sure there’s a technology out there to model the sound I was seeking but on a plain guitar, but really, that’s sort of cheating isn’t it?)
These are good and humbling things to know. Since just because I play guitar, I am foremost a musician and not a rockstar. Meaning, I’m not always (in fact quite rarely) on center stage. That’s something that can be quite misleading due to the wide styles of music a guitar can play and it’s cultural prominence in the western world. Remembering this allows me to focus on the strengths of my chosen instrument and continue to learn how to exploit it’s unique sound, rhythms and melodic patterns within the Jazz idiom or any other music that isn’t guitar driven for that matter. Furthermore, it helps me appreciate what other instruments are doing even more.
Oh and one thing for the non-soloist/rhythm guitarist: Sight reading will allow you to choose/alter chords that will fit with the melody of the piece without fumbling for the correct voicing. By reading an accidental in a piece of music you can immediately tailor your chord selection and further enhance the piece, rather than clashing with it by playing strictly within the harmonic scale.
Take Heart, Jazz Isn’t the Stuffy Annals
Before you start hang dogging thinking you aren’t worthy of Jazz-dom without the skill of sight reading, remember this: much of the greatest music is created by breaking the rules. Not knowing the rules is a sure fire way to break at least a couple of them. As you grow in the knowledge of how it “should” be played, you can make better, or at least more acoustically pleasing, choices when breaking those rules. But learn those as you go, finding yourself along the way. After all, Jazz is more about the soul of the music than the technical perfection. Anyone who has ever heard super fast Jazz played in writhing time signatures with clashing note structures (also known as atonal jazz) knows that all that is pedantic is not necessarily “good”.
By reading music, you do yourself a big favor in learning the rules that you want to break. You also expand your knowledge base beyond the guitar and guitar elite into the musician elite. Simultaneously, you increase your ability to discuss music with them. A trumpet player will not know what you mean by saying slide from the ninth fret on the B string to the eleventh. They will however know what you mean when you say, slide from Ab to Bb. Conversely, a trumpet player leaning over to point out a note you may have flatted won’t likely be saying, hey it’s the “fifth fret not the fourth fret”.
By drawing from a diverse blend of musicians and instruments it will help you find your own unique voice, aka the ultimate goal for all but strictly cover musicians. Knowing how to read the music will open the well of musical knowledge in ways you only imagined…until now. At least, it did for me. Just enjoy the music. Hearing others enjoy the music as they played it is what drew you to Jazz (or any other music) in the first place.
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