To Metronome or not to Metronome?

There's been some low level controversy recently about whether or not aspiring jazz musicians should use a metronome during practice. The bone of contention seems to be in particular using the metronome as a 'hi-hat' during practice - having it click on 2 and 4.

Many great jazz players never went near a metronome - Barry Harris for example, mentioned in a masterclass that he has never practiced with one. We can conclude that he learned his swing from playing with the great players of the era. Others such as Hal Galper, Mike Longo and Gary Willis are set against metronome use.

On the other hand great players such as Victor Wooten and Emily Remler did practice with a metronome.

What seems to have happened is that the metronome drifted into common use around the time the jazz schools started to take off. It's likely the teachers were looking for a way of improving student time feel in a world that lacked the old apprenticeship systems.

Hal Galper identifies the problem of teaching jazz rhythm here - he credits Mike Longo with being one of the few jazz educators to really get involved with developing a pedagogy (based on Dizzy Gillespie's ideas) for addressing this fundamental aspect of African American music.

My own viewpoint?

Well I don't think I'm qualified to say, although the fact that there is any disagreement between the legends of jazz and jazz education mentioned above logically means that, no, a metronome is not necessary to develop a good sense of jazz time. What certainly is required is an interest in rhythm.

The question would seem to be instead is the metronome is a useful tool. Some say not - Mike Longo and Gary Willis for example.

For what it's worth I've practiced with a metronome for years and felt I didn't really 'get it'. My metronome work was very much based around 'fixing' my time, rather than seeing rhythm as a fascinating and deep subject in its own right. I became obsessed with having 'bad time' and saw rhythm as my enemy that need to be conquered, rather than a stranger that could become a friend.

I think that's not an uncommon attitude among developing players.

I now see this as a blind alley. Rather than trying to fix ones existing playing rhythmically, I feel the way to approach jazz music is to feel the rhythm first and give it melodic expression second. Dizzy Gillespie said this more or less exactly - 'find a rhythm and hang some notes on it.'

When I became interested in rhythm for its own sake, I feel I turned a corner. Jazz is polymetric music, and I am beginning to understand that these ancient polyrhythms are an infinite resource that can infuse even the simplest melodies and harmonies with a subtlety and complexity that is the hallmark of African Diaspora music throughout the world.

Even if my time hasn't improved becoming interested in rhythm and groove for its own sake has made me a much happier person with a wider appreciation of all styles of music. That's reason enough....

Six practice activities I feel have been useful

1) Rehearsing with bands. Even if you can't sort out issues on the day, it gives you a very good idea of what to practice. Most musicians I have spoken to who have studied jazz at conservatoires (I didn't) pick out playing and rehearsing as the most valuable part of the course. The more musicians you play with, the richer your understanding becomes.

2) Playing with records. A classic approach made easier and more accessible due to modern technology such as Transcribe and iTunes. I feel I do this better when I've spent some time on the exercises below.

3) Subdividing bebop heads on Djembe with two handed sticking in 12/8. This is included in Mike Longo's material - which I have found very interesting and fun to work with. I'm keen to start learning some authentic Djembe next year - this is not based on two handed sticking as you can see here. Needless to say the key rhythms of West African music are also structurally important to jazz.

4) Counting/singing subdivisions while I play - Pat Metheny suggests subdividing quarter triplets and sixteenths in this clip here. (Metheny recommends practicing with a drum machine, which is not advice you hear too often these days.) This exercise can easily be expanded to include bebop heads and other subdivisions (5 for example) once simple swung 8th and 16th notes lines are mastered. An important rhythm I working on counting against my playing is the quarter note triplet. Barry Harris identifies this as a key rhythm in jazz.

5) Using the metronome to develop consistency on off beat (upbeat) placement. You set the metronome on the and of 1 and 3 and play bebop heads taking care to synch with the click. Very hard at first. You can make the offbeat straight or swung, and I suspect it's a good plan to practice both. This exercise was suggested by Hannes Riepler - who I can highly recommend as a teacher to those in and around London.

6) The slow improvisation and meter work advocated by Warne Marsh (and Lennie Tristano.) This is covered in this book.

Roads less travelled

An element that is often overlooked by present day musicians is the pivotal importance of dance. In the 'classic era' of jazz c1920 -1960, dance was the central social activity, and an important focal point for music. Dizzy Gillespie for example, wasn't simply a good Lindy Hopper, he was a member of the Savoy 100, which was as good as it got for an amateur - he'd be allowed free access to the club, and would often dance for an hour or two before playing. Other forms of dance music followed swings popularity including the R&B of such artist as Louis Jordan and, needless to say, the Afro-Cuban craze of the late 40s, which is important to the development of bebop. All jazz musicians cut their teeth playing dance gigs. Barry Harris and Billy Higgins paint a vivid picture of the era here.

Personally I've found it hard to commit to learning dance - there's simply too little time to fit it in regular, weekly dance classes with all the other commitments of my life. Many cultures promote a connection with dance early in life - this is something sadly lacking in my culture. At least we can practice moving - stepping in time at the simplest level. I often practice polyrhythms while walking.

Another key element is drumming - playing drums is a great way to develop a physical rhythmic connection - check out Michael Brecker on drums here. I don't have room for a drum kit in my flat, but I have found playing the Djembe gives me great pleasure and challenge, and would recommend it to anyone. I can see that the physical coordination and independence required to play even a simple drum beat would be great for me too. Perhaps I can find a way.... I have to say drummers who play guitar (or vice versa) often have a great touch and feel in their playing.

In general one should play with players you can trust to take care of business and make sure that you listen to them and play with them. Ideally, one would play with best rhythm section players you can find.

Ultimately, everyone agrees that's where the real learning happens.

Keep the metronome off the bandstand

One issue I have found from my playing life is that one's playing can be adversely affected by too much metronomic obsession. A dangerous element is assessing your own playing or that of others by metronomic standards while in performance. I feel this is not uncommon.

What seems clear is that there is a qualitative difference between metronomic time and good jazz time. There are players who have great feel but chronic problems speeding up, dragging, dropping beats and so on. A good professional player will rightly eliminate these elements from their playing, and practicing with a metronome might well be helpful here.

However, close investigation of many classic recordings reveals that tempos often aren't completely stable: they edge slightly up normally, or even slow down. So a rigorous, scientific approach to tempo seems out of place, if the intention is to swing like Ray Brown, Wes Montgomery or Tony Williams.

Conversely, while there are some metronomic players who can also groove like crazy, an over studied metronomic approach to rhythm can result in stiff, square time. For me, a good rhythm section is one that respects and trusts one another and plays in a common pocket. This pocket can vary from player to player. There will be natural flexibility of tempo but these shouldn't feel jarring or out of place - a flux in the tempo is less desirable or tolerated in jazz than classical music, obviously.

I think we can make a distinction between clock time (mechanical) and pulse (human.) While we want to avoid getting over excited (rushing) or too relaxed or bored (dragging) good time is everyone's hearts beating together - the audience and musicians both. It has nothing to do with physical measurements. Anyone who's ever sat through their least favourite class at school, realises the difference between physical and human time.

For a long time, because of my tortuous metronome practice I could be inflexible and headstrong about where I thought the time was. In fact, while 'laying it down' is not itself a bad thing when the band needs it, to do this all the time is a mistake - time feel is based around what everyone feels together. You can't and shouldn't force your concept of time on the other players (unless something is really wrong, in which case you are kind of screwed anyway.)

So based on that trying to place metronomic standards on a live performance is pretty misguided. I suspect it has come from the modern rhythmic aesthetics of click tracks and sequencing. While these are facts of modern musical life, they are in opposition to the rhythmic aesthetic of jazz. We might practice with a metronome, but ultimately it should be kept where it belongs - in the practice room.

The difference between Bebop and Swing

This has been an issue that's concerned me a fair bit over the past couple of years.

It's my feeling that the fundamental difference is the way phrases are put together rhythmically. Charlie Parker introduced a new rhythmic language which he expressed melodically. However, this language is often mistakenly understood from a vertical standpoint - Parker plays x scale or chord arpeggio over y chord.

In fact Parker's harmonic language is almost entirely drawn from blues phrases, simple triads, 6th, m6, dim7 and dom7 arpeggios, diatonic scales and chromatic embellishments - all very much 'off the shelf' swing era material familiar from Coleman Hawkins, say. Don't believe me? Look at a page or two of the Omnibook and analyse Parker's lines without thinking of the background harmony.

It is Bird's phrasing and rhythmic understanding which is truly revolutionary and marks his music out from swing in the same way as Louis Armstrong was the rhythmic revolutionary who created the rhythmic landscape of the swing era.

This seems poorly understood from academic viewpoint, perhaps because, as Mike Longo points out, the Western education system is ill equipped to teach the African elements of the music - rhythm in particular. Bird's rhythmic concept is as fresh and powerful in music as ever it was. We can see its influences in music far outside the 'jazz' umbrella.

What bebop certainly isn't is fomulaic chains of 8th notes over ii-V progressions - at least if by referring to bebop, we mean what Charlie Parker did. That stuff gives bop a bad name. (And I say that as a formulaic 8th note player of many years standing :-))

Steve Coleman wrote the best article I have ever read on the technique of bebop (Parker in particular.) While he doesn't tell what to practice per se, he does provide a persuasive 'musician's eye' perspective on what Bird is doing and why. Here it is.

Evolving playing

Hiya! Without wanting to be too inward looking, I've just watched an old video of me playing from 2006. This is without doubt my biggest success on youtube - over 50,000 hits haha... (Give us an endorsment Ibanez!)

Here's a more recent one

These are my thoughts (apart from the change in style, feel etc)

The years have not been kind :-) Where did it all go wrong? :-)

It's interesting how my playing has changed. I've done a lot of self assessment of this kind and it's not always clear how much of an improvement has been made in a matter of a year, over 8 years it's good to see that there has been a real change.

I feel in terms of time feel my playing has improved beyond recognition. In 2006 I simply did not play in time.

I think it was about this time when I had my first jazz guitar lesson in around 8 years, and had a bit of a shock when it was made clear to me just how bad my time was and how important it was to fix it. This has become a running theme in lessons and in musical life in general. I've consistently practiced rhythm for the intervening years in various ways, no end in sight yet! I can hear a few slips here and there in the 2014 video, but overall, there's no comparison.

In any case, my sense of time is something I sweat blood over. I think it's the central concern for everyone who is interested in playing jazz seriously.

So, yes the improvement is a relief!

I've also done a lot of work on transcription - I feel that's great work for starting to hear musical phrases rather than simply rattle through scales and arpeggios.

However - I like the energy of the performance in all its on top of the beat frenzy. I could really get around the guitar back then. Since then I've completely changed my technique to deal with acoustic instruments, I was a stone cold alternate picker back then. Now I play gypsy style - there's some things I can roast on the guitar, but some of the flexibility is gone, which I've traded for acoustic tone. Could always go back though ;-)

So it's reassuring to know things are in flux, and in general for the better. Watching this old video does make me want to get back on jazz-funk-fusion horse again. Is that a good thing? ;-)

Has anyone else done a similar comparison?

What is the point of jazz theory?

Short answer:
None

Long answer:
As the nights close in and winter looms, I find myself pondering the meaning of it all. As anyone who knows me will tell you, quite a lot of my brain is taken up with thinking about jazz. Unfortunately, this does not appear to translate in my ability to play the correct chords in the bridge of Take the A Train. ;-)

Which is basically what it comes down to. My favourite guitar players ever in the world are Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Jimi Hendrix. What all of these guys had in common apart from being, like, AWESOME was little or no technical 'book' music theory - I don't think any of them could even read chord symbols. What they did have was incredible musicality and well.. genius for want of a better word. Genius. There, I said it.

That's not to say that many of the greats - Eddie Lang, George Van Eps, Joe Pass, and so on - weren't great readers, but the immediate thing it calls attention to is that the ability to play like AWESOME music AWESOMELY has little to do with the 'knowledge' about music. Simply put, the path of academic and musician are different. Some players I know manage to be both highly knowledgeable about who played what when and how and play brilliantly. Others seem to know nothing about music history and theory and tear it up every night (fewer these days it seems thanks to colleges that teach you how to be a jazz or pop musician via the Western education model.)

There are also those who seem to 'know' everything about music but are unable to play.

If your path is performance, you need to be a musician, not a thinker.

(Aside: as always with these types of essays, in a way this is addressed to myself. If anyone else takes anything away from it, that's a nice bonus.)

So why all the theory then?

For me, I have a curiosity about music in general - e.g. what is Charlie Parker doing on bars 5-6 of a Rhythm tune, when did jazzers start using upper extensions, what the real difference between bebop and swing and so on. This is nothing to do with being a musician.

On the other hand, you might listen early on to your favourite musician and learn to sing every single solo, and be able to play them on your instrument. (Not the only path, but true of Wes, for one.) That's a different type of study.

Don't get 'book' learning confused with engine of real musicianship.

Needless to say that's harder to get a grip on. Listening to and 'transcribing' favourite musicians is really just the very beginning. It seems clear that the very best musicians had:

1) Great time/feel and rhythm
2) A great ear
3) Mountains of live experience with legends of music at an early point

Many say that 3) is the clincher. You become a great player by playing with great players, being in the right place at the right time and having the right qualities. Never easy, and harder now these days with the death of the apprenticeship system in jazz and the decline of live music performance in general. So go easy on yourself. If you don't become a world class player, it's not your fault. It's not necessarily that you aren't working hard enough.

Maybe if it feels like work that's part of the problem. We are brought up to feel there is a narrative to our lives, that we are putting effort x into working towards goal y. That's what they teach us at school. That's what the rags to riches narratives of Hollywood biopics say. It's a good structure for a story, nothing more. The happiest musicians I know - people in general, now I think about it - are those who ignore this useless construct.

Don't buy into the work ethic myth. Don't buy into the 10,000 hours theory. Relax and enjoy playing, practicing and above all, listening. Much easier.

In any case, I digress. Theory?

Well here's the theory I've been thinking about over the years. I want to make things simpler. Perhaps it's my training as a scientist. I see a sea of chords and what I want to do is boil it down to simple laws, to make it easier to solo. But what could be simpler than just trusting your ears and playing what you hear? If you hear nothing, listen to some music and let it inspire you.

SO: music theory does not exist. There is only music practice.

There are some really interesting thinkers on music education out there. Here are some of the ones I've enjoyed recently:

• Lennie Tristano/Warne Marsh
• Hal Galper
• Mike Longo

Bassline oriented harmony in standards

As a student of jazz you see a lot of information on ii-V-I's. While it's useful to learn to play over ii-V-I's as they are very common in standards repertoire, you are going to come across a lot of progressions that don't fit neatly into this category. Experienced jazz players with a lot of repertoire come to understand these progressions as a matter of course but the lack of terminology or discussion of them compared to ii-V-I's I find a bit puzzling.

In fact, many of the composers who wrote jazz repertoire had classical composition training. Here's the original version of Stella by Starlight (by Victor Young) - until we get into the dance band section around 1:40 with the harmonica and rhythm guitar, it sounds like Rachmaninoff to me!

ii-V-I's are baby stuff to trained composers: lots of attention in classical harmony classes is paid to the bassline - the 'second melody' as Arnold Schoenberg had it. As such there are many beautiful progressions in the jazz repertoire which resist the ii-V-I analysis. In fact, ii-V-I's and backcycling harmony lead to boring basslines. Here's a standard modern jazz version of Rhythm Changes. The bass leaps around without much structure:

Bb Gm | Cm F7 | Dm A7 | Cm G7 | Fm Bb7 | Eb G7 | Cm F7 |

A traditional bass-line oriented version might do this:

Bb Bo7 | Cm7 C#o7 | Dm7 D7 | Eb Ebm | Dm G7 | Cm F7 |

Notice how the bassline has a pleasing balance between movement in chromatic steps and larger intervals towards the end.

In fact, arpeggios of these changes form the basis of the bebop melody the Serpents Tooth as well as commonly played changes to quite a few tunes - Mean to Me, Ain't Misbehaving, Bewitched Bothered and Bewildered and many more.

I'm not going to talk about what to play over these progression - I'll just identify a few progressions of this type. Hopefully you'll start to see that there are recognisable patterns that can be factored into your practice, just like ii-V-I's.

Swing/blues progressions

Swing, trad jazz and blues have a number of basic progressions which are based on very strong, cliche basslines. Here are a couple of classic ones used as endings in blues music, and turnaround progressions in jazz:

Bb Bb7/D (or D7) | Eb Eo7 | Bb/F
Bb Bb/Ab | Eb/G Ebm/Gb | Bb/F

First thing to notice is that these chords are inverted - hence the busy looking notation of slash chords.They may be more familiar in root position:

Bb Bb7 | Eb Eo7 | Bb
Bb Bb7 | Eb Ebm | Bb

The progressions both do the same job - that is go to IV from I and get back again. Both basslines start on Bb and end up on F: in fact it's common in jazz to hear one progression played against the other.

These types of progression are commonly used as riffs in swing music. Christopher Columbus is an example of a Rhythm Changes tune where a blues turnaround is used instead of a ii-VI-ii-V type progression.

In the simplest analysis the progression is this:

Bb7 | Eb7 | Bb

Which is how Charlie Parker and Lester Young often used to play them.

Another progression which shares a very similar function (here going from I to ii, a close relative of IV, and back again)

Bb Bo7 | Cm Ebo7 |

And a sort of reversed version is also very common:

Bb/D Dbo7 | Cm7 F7 |

It might surprise you to notice that this progression features heavily in Tom Jobim's music. I used to find this progression from Corcovado very puzzling, until I realised it's just an old school swing turnaround in F stretched out to 4 bars:

Am | Abo7 | Gm | C7 etc

Cole Porter

Cole Porter has some great examples. Here's one of my favourites form Just One of Those Things. I've moved the key to Bb from the original, F.

Bb7/F | Em7b5 | Ebm | Dm7 | Db7 | Cm F7

There's quite a few chromatic chords here - try to appreciate the tight chromatic voice leading as you play through the example.

Django Reinhardt

Django loved progressions of this type. Djangology is largely similar to the Cole Porter example. I'll give it in Bb, although the song is normally played in G:

C7/E (or Em7b5) | Ebm | Dm7 | Dbo7 | Cm7 | F7 | Bb

Notice the difference between Dbo7 and Db7 in this and the Cole Porter example. In general the rule is when deciding to put a chord on the bass note ensure that the melody note is included in the chord.

A personal favourite is the progression from his gorgeous ballad Tears. This is sometimes given incorrectly. These are the right changes for bar 9 on:

Dbo7 | Fm/C | Bo7 | Cm/Bb | Ao7 | Ab7 G7 etc

Tom Jobim

Jobim wrote many beautiful chord progressions. Inutil Paisagem is rare jazz example of chromatic contrary motion between melody and bass:

C B13 Bbmaj7
(G-Ab-A in the melody against C-B-Bb in the bass)

The song Aguas De Marco (transposed here to Bb) is a lovely embellishment of a blues turnaround Bb | Bb7 | Eb | Ebm. Jobim uses the hypnotic continually descending bassline to help paint the landscape and mood of the song.

First progression
Bb | Bbmaj7/Ab | Emaj7/G | Emmaj7/Gb | Bb6/9/F | E7#11 | Ebmaj7 | Ab7sus4

Notice more complex chord qualities compared to the earlier examples - this generally creates richer voice leadning, though the basic principle remains the same. Jobim uses a tritone substitute of Bb7, E7#11 to keep the bass descending.

Second progression
Bbmaj7 | Bb9sus4 Bb9 | C/E | Ebm9 | 

The C/E chord is a close relation of the Em7b5 used by Cole Porter and Django.

Stella by Starlight

A classic example of how ii-V-I thinking has come to dominate the teaching jazz harmony to the point of actually mucking up the tunes comes from the Real Book version of the changes to this song. This site covers the harmonic butchery in depth.

Extended minor ii-V-I

Very common progression which includes both ii-V's and basslines:

Dm Dm/C | Bm7b5 E7 | Am

Basically dresses up this progression (bear in mind that you can think of the Bm7b5 as Dm/B or a third inversion minor 6th chord.)

Bm7b5 | E7 | Am

This crops up in many settings:

Gm Gm/F | Em7b5 A7 | Dm G7 | Gm | C7 |
(Days of Wine and Roses)
Which is really just (Gm | A7 | Dm G7 | C7)

Dm Dm/C | Bm7b5 E7 | Am Am/G | F#m7b5 B7 | Em7 A7 | Dm7 G7 | C
(Green Dolphin Street)
This progression is basically Bm7b5 | E7 | Am |  F#o7 | C A7 | Dm7 G7 - a twist on the swing turnaround above.

And so on...

Summary/Rant

None of this info will be any news to those who play a lot of standards gigs. The repertoire I have chosen is the most commonly played, and the changes I've given are pretty much the Real Book ones. All of them might pose a challenge to an improviser if they don't spend some time running these progressions.

In general, there seems a lack of info about any progressions aside from ii-V-I's. This is perplexing, as just studying ii-V-I's and ii-V won't prepare you for playing standards. In fact, the tendency to introduce them retroactively into standards actually results in some pretty ugly harmony! The real book and iRealB app is full of this sort of thing - Stella is merely the most egregious and best known example. Take an old swing tune - Coquette. This is how I understand the A section of Coquette (in fiddle key, D):

D | % | A7 | % | 
A7 | % | D | A7 | 

With any extra ii-V's, passing chords or turnarounds added to taste.

The (admittedly public sourced) iRealB forum gives these changes:

| D6/9 | % | Em7 | A13b9 |
| Em7 | A13b9 | F#-7 B13b9 | Em7 B13b9 |

Why??? Why????? Whyyyyyyyyyyyy???????

The A13b9 chord is especially odd. Perhaps the author meant A13/Bb, a common gypsy jazz style substitute for A7 - not that most gypsy jazz players would think of referring to it that way. However, call this song on a gig with musicians who don't know it, and that's the chart they will most likely be playing from these days. It's daft.

While there's nothing more boring than playing with a changes nazi (obsession with the 'right changes' seems to me to miss the point of what jazz is and how it functions), obscuring the underlying simplicity of song's harmony and worse, writing clunky, pedestrian and cluttered versions of straightforward progressions does nothing to help us understand the repertoire.

Good standards players learn lots of variations of a songs harmony for this very reason, and will make aesthetic choices and decisions based on their knowledge and taste.

In any case, I hope I've helpfully identified some areas that might trip up aspiring jazz players (as they did me).

Swing Rhythm Guitar Pointers

Swing rhythm guitar, or straight fours, is one of the most basic skills of a jazz guitar player - styles such as big band jazz, Gypsy jazz and swing/dixieland also have the guitar playing some variant of this rhythm.

In theory it's an easy task - play the chords of the song, strumming on every beat. However, getting it to authentically swing and 'sit' just right with the drums and bass is a real art form - and even here there's plenty of room for different styles.

Much of my professional life is spent playing this type of part, and I feel I've found out a lot over the years about what to do and what not do, often by trial and error, listening to recordings or myself, teaching, and getting useful feedback from fellow musicians.

So - on to the dos and don'ts. My bandmates will probably laugh when they see some of this, but at least I'm aware of the pitfalls even if I don't always manage to avoid them....

Don't overdo the 2 and 4

This is the number one error made by most of my students and even experienced players who are unused to the style. There is a misconception that the 2 and 4 beats in jazz are all important, to the point where musicians feel it will help them swing to tap their foot on 2 and 4. In fact, 1 and 3 are equally important.

The confusion comes from the fact that 2 and 4 have a different function to 1 and 3. In Hal Galper's words, 2 and 4 are 'tension beats' while 1 and 3 are 'rest beats.' James Chirillo, rhythm guitarist with the Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra says the same thing in a different way in this video:

We have a choice whether to make this distinction in our playing - we could just play even 4's without accents. This is my preferred style at medium and slow tempos these days.

If you want to differentiate the 2 and 4, as is common in music with a two feel, such as gypsy jazz or dixieland, you can do so by changing the speed of your pick stroke. A common gypsy jazz technique is to lift the hand slightly higher on 2 and 4 which means you have to move your hand faster to play the chord in time. Another way is to think 'rake slap rake slap' - which is the way Kevin Nolan describes it. Either way creates a subtle, appropriate accent which you can enhance by cutting the chord shorter on 2 and 4.

Another way, favoured by American style swing players is to accent the 2 and 4 by strumming nearer the bridge on these beats.

The result is that you have a different articulation on 2 and 4 but not a loud/soft accent - everything is at the same dynamic, it's just that 2 and 4 now sound tenser and snappier - just as they should. In situations where the band is playing in two this can make the guitar sound like it's only playing on 2 and 4 - don't be fooled! Big band rhythm is always straight fours unless you are playing stabs or stops - if a big band arranger indicates the guitar to play on 2 and 4, try cutting the 2 and 4 short and leave 1 and 3 long instead - this will create the desired effect in the correct way.

A more 'backbeaty' style has come into vogue with some gypsy jazz groups, probably under the inevitable influence of later forms of pop music such as rock, funk and hip hop - this is a contemporary feel, entirely different from the original 1930's Manouche swing, but you can't say it sounds bad! Gonzalo Bergara plays in this style here.

Don't play upbeats

Another common error is playing some sort of strum on the upstroke - like a the type of ghost strum you get in pop/rock acoustic playing. Sometimes it can go further and you have some sort of syncopated fill, often towards the end of the bar. Listening to my own playing, I can hear this unconsciously coming in embarrassingly often - it's a real nervous tick!

I'll leave aside the gypsy jazz 'la pompe' upstroke which is specific and hard to master (here's a good lesson). As a general rule play no upstrokes at all - focus on getting clean downstrokes on the beat without anything extra.

The reason is similar I think to the 2 and 4 problem. Many musicians associated swing with offbeats, because we are taught that it is the inequality of the length of the downbeats and offbeats that is swing. In fact it's perfectly possible to swing only on downbeats - Paul Chambers walking in 4 springs to mind. The same is true of drummers playing ride cymbal. While some drummers use a skip note and others don't, it should be obvious right away that the skip note (or up beat) is not the thing that makes the ride cymbal swing. If only it were that simple!

The swing comes more from the feeling and this will inform nuances like the length that you play the chords for, and what sort of attack you use on the chords. I don't want to intellectualise this - a good way to practice is to play with records.

Don't whack it too hard

Again this is a pitfall I've fallen into - and I know exactly why. The guitar is a quiet instrument, and even a loud box such as an acoustic archtop or a Selmer Maccaferri is easily buried by a drummer and a horn front line. However, if you get used to pounding the living bejeezus out of your guitar you will run into a couple of problems - your lead playing will not be able to match the rhythm playing in volume and you all also tend to play this way even on quiet gigs which tends to piss off other guitar players at the very least. Musically I don't think it works either - listening back to my old, loud, playing I notice a tense, forced quality to the playing.

Remember you are supporting the soloing players - you should be quieter than them, at around the same volume as the bass, perhaps a little quieter.

Unamplified acoustic guitar works great in a listening situation with a quiet drummer and acoustic bass, adding a crisp yet warm presence to the rhythm section. However the dynamic range of the guitar is tiny compared to that of drums, so when the drums pick up you will be lost, it doesn't matter what you do. It's actually fine - in the last chorus of a swing number, for example, no one is terribly interested in hearing you anyway. If you are asked to take a solo, the band should drop right down, as they would for bass.

In general when you use an amp, ask the other musicians to tell you how loud they want it, and when set the volume make sure you are never strumming at more than 60-70% full volume. This seems to work well.

Don't play fills

I often do this on gigs thinking 'hey, it's a bit bare here' and whenever I listen back to the gig, I hate myself. Fills come from the ego, and the ego has no place in rhythm guitar (or music.) Fills often detract from the time/feel as well unless they are absolutely 'locked in.'

Less is more

I've found that the smaller voicings - root, 3rd and 7th say - work best. No extensions (although +5's are a good idea where indicated.) Many prewar styles of music don't use a major 7th chord, so get used to playing major 6ths. Also a minor 7th chord is hardly ever used on degree vi - use a minor 6 here instead, or a minor triad.

Often simple triads, especially open voicings (such as 1 5 3 or 3 1 5), sound best.

See here for James Chirillo's explanation of Freddie Green's super minimalist 'one note chord' style (as well as some great advice generally.) You can really hear Freddie doing the one note thing here - also check out his BRUTAL guitar action in the film footage.

Play an acoustic guitar

Jazz rhythm guitar sounds best on an acoustic - the quick decay and lack of dominating bass is perfect for creating the feel. What you absolutely don't want is a mellow electric jazz guitar tone - you want a lot of percussiveness and midrange - very nasal mid range and treble for a drums, bass and horns type band (listen to the James Chirillo and Freddie Green examples) and maybe a bit warmer for a band without drums such as a gypsy jazz group.

However in the real world it is often necessary to play straight fours on an electric - say you have one swing tune in a set of rock and roll and blues tunes, for example. If you are playing an archtop, on a quiet gig you can turn the volume down a bit and use some of the acoustic sound. However this might not work so well on a louder gig. I have a bridge piezo pickup in one of my archtops which helps.

If you must play electric, your main enemies here are muddiness (because of the electric guitar's exaggerated bass) and sustain. You may need to clip the chords a bit shorter on electric. Avoid the 5th and 6th strings like the plague. I've found an EQ pedal, or an 'acoustic simulator' can help with this as well. 

Listen to the band

The best way to stop yourself from getting bored, and playing fills, looking at pretty girls or boys and thinking about what you are going to have for dinner is to focus your awareness on all the other musicians. This is key advice for playing music in general, but is particularly acute for rhythm guitar as you don't really have that much 'to do.' The pay back is that you can feel part of the overall picture, and will groove more to boot.

Furthermore, the 'pocket' of different bands will feel in different places - you will need to learn to feel this pocket and find out how to sit in it. This is the kind of thing that you can only develop 'on the gig.'

Listen to great rhythm players

Some of my favourites include: Freddie Green, Allan Reuss, Carmen Mastren, Eddie Condon, Joseph Reinhardt & Roger Chaput, Jim Hall, Bucky Pizzarelli, John Pizzarelli, Tal Farlow, Russell Mallone and James Chirillo. The continuing gypsy jazz tradition also has a fine tradition of rhythm guitar - check out these players too!

Amplification

Amplification is a fact of life for 75-100% of gigs, depending on what type of music you play. However, as most performing musicians learn early on, live sound is a minefield. The following is what I have found from playing various gigs over the years, for what it's worth.

Why Amplify at all?

People who work with me know that I'm a massive old fogey when it comes to volume. I like it to be as low as possible.

In a folk or jazz club or other listening environment, it's possible to pay very quiet, and is often the most powerful thing you can do. With a drummer it becomes trickier, but with a sensitive drummer it is perfectly possible to play very soft.

Amplification affects the sound of the instrument. for electric guitar this is desirable. For acoustic guitar it is only ever a necessary evil.

I often play at 30-40 seater venues used to acoustic styles of music and they usually provide a sound engineer. There is still a perceived need for amplification even here - my feeling is that it's perfectly possible to play these venues with a purely acoustic line up - if you play electric you could use a small amp. A lot depends on the drummer, but most of the drummers I work with have a great sense of dynamics. An acoustic guitar solo might struggle to be heard in this situation, but you can always add a touch of volume with a small amp - an AER say - if required, without changing the sound too much. In these situations my little AER alpha spends its time around '1' on the master volume.

Actual acoustic music sounds very 'small' and 'light' compared to amplified but it has many more shades of nuance and complexity. There is a magic to acoustic sound which is completely lost even in the most hi-fi of mics and PAs and it's shame people don't have more confidence in the audience to enjoy a purely acoustic performance in venues. There's a great intimacy there, and volume does not mean more energy....

Furthermore, a good sound engineer who understands acoustic music and jazz is worth their weight in gold.

Noisy punters

Playing quieter styles of music - folk, jazz etc - for a party crowd or a noisy audience obviously raises some real problems. There's no doubt in my mind that audience level is the biggest 'game-changer' when it comes to sound. You can sound check as much as you like, but when there's a crowd in the room, all bets are off.

One thing I've noticed is that many musicians are worried about projection and performance energy. A common way to try to inject more projection and energy into a performance is to simply turn up. Needless to say it doesn't work. If you need to do this, then the battle for the audience's attention is already lost.

It's a massive temptation and I think we all do it from time to time. Often, this is led by the drums. Drums are capable of a huge dynamic range and I think most drummers are trained to 'play the room' - that is, they will play to the level of the audience. Also, on most small gigs drummers are often the only instrument not amplified through the PA, so they often need to be louder so that they balance front of house.

However this also happens with drummer less groups as well. Often you get into an arms race, and for reasons given below, what happens is usually bad sound. The audience will always win....

When it comes to functions, I think unless you are booked as a party/dance band, most clients actually don't want the band to be heard - hence the classic request for the band to turn down. Best thing to do (I think) is play unamplified as much as possible. I work with several groups who play 1920s/30s type background music purely acoustically to often quite noisy punters, and it still works. You can actually hear what you play (depending on the room's acoustic) better than you think and punters always comment on how nice it was. What's going on here I think is that clients are interested in the overall sound and the effect it creates rather than being able to hear what you play. An acoustic group creates a certain ambience even if you can't really hear it, and if punters really want to hear it they can go closer to the band.

It's an ego-bruiser, but it's what the average function client really wants, I think, 9 times out of 10.

Leaving aside the specific problems of playing acoustic swing guitar in a group (let's not go there :-)) what kind of factors do we have to deal with when we do play with a fair bit of amplification?

Welcome to a world of mud

Amplification is an important part of the sound for louder bands and styles of music.

It's particularly hard to get right when using an acoustic guitar and amp. In fact, it's basically impossible to accurately amplify the sound of an acoustic guitar for all but the quietest gigs. Anything that increases the fidelity of the sound increases the instrument's susceptibility to feedback.

For this reason most people have got used to sparkly sound of a piezo pickup through a PA (or acoustic amp.) If you actually listen, it doesn't actually really sound like an acoustic guitar, but it is an attractive sound, acceptably close and easy for overworked, underpaid sound engineers to deal with. Some players, such as Lionel Loueke, have made this artificial not-really-acoustic sound into their own. From a personal point of view, a piezo under the bridge is uber practical, and as much as I'd like the sound of my acoustic, but louder, I'd take consistency and reliability over 'perfect tone' any day.

This realisation has resulted in a hilarious device called a Godin Multiac - a professional quality, electric-only guitar that imitates the sound of a piezo doing a not particularly good job of amplifying an acoustic guitar. It's very popular and widely used by guitarists. In a way, it's the guitar equivalent of those french fries that don't actually contain any potato.

Even when playing the most practical rig for a loud gig - electric guitar into a reasonable sized amp - some complicating factors come into play. One thing that I notice is that you get a lot of low range mud when you are louder. This is not actually because of the amp - but because of your hearing. Here's a graph, just what you've always wanted:

This is a plot of how loud a sound at a certain frequency (or pitch) needs to be to sound the same volume for the listener. So for a the low A on the guitar (110Hz) needs to be at around 40db to sound at the same volume as the A on the 1st string (440Hz) at 0 dB. For those who don't know the dB sale that's a HUGE difference. As we get louder the curve flattens out, so 100 dBs is about the same for everything (much louder than this and you will hit the threshold of pain, Slayer fans.)

For those not conversant with graphs or numbers, what it says is that when the sound is quiet, it's harder to hear bass, and as sound gets louder, the ears become more and more aware of it. So your amp could be totally flat in response, and you still hear a lot more low end coming in as you turn up. This will also tend to aggravate the bass player as well, BTW. So it's generally don't be inflexible about amp settings - what works for quiet recording or practise will be different to what works on a gig - room acoustics will also effect EQ. Most experienced guitarists I have met know this well. I believe some amp makes are factoring this into their designs, although this does not appear to be the case with, for example, a Fender Twin :-) It's also a good reason to do a Brian May and use a treble booster if you want to really crank it.

This graph raises all sorts of interesting issues regarding live sound generally.

A second issue is the way in which EQ'ing works within a band. While a sound with lots of bass and treble sounds great for solo guitar, in a band these frequencies are occupied by the bass and by the drummer's cymbals. It's often said by experienced players that what you need in most bands is more midrange.

Incidentally, one reason why macceferri and archtop guitars were developed in the 1920s and 30s was to increase midrange output in particular. As a result they can sound a bit much on their own, but in a band, they cut through much better than a flat-top acoustic. It also makes them a bit troublesome to amplify, unfortunately.

Obviously with smaller amps there are often issues with 'boxiness' and too much mid range. There's not a huge amount you can do about this, apart from get a bigger amp.... You can also use a bigger cab - the 6" speaker ZT lunchbox, for example, sounds absolutely gigantic through a 4 X 12 cab. (Though if you have to move a 4X12" to the gig, you might not want to use a ZT Lunchbox, it's true)

There's also issues regarding the direction of the speaker. Place an amp behind you and at your feet (standard practice for many guitarists playing with a combo) and you will hear the amp rather more quietly than it sounds from the front. You will also hear less treble - as high frequencies diffract (go around corners) less easily than low frequencies.

You could tilt the amp towards you (some amps are wedge shaped for this reason) or put it on a table or chair if it is small enough. However, this is an issue for acoustic instruments as it can raise the likelihood of feedback. Some acoustic amps, such as the AER Alpha, seem very directional, which helps feedback if not on stage sound....

Finally, distortion is a very interesting and difficult one. I find that the louder you are, the less is required. For me any sort of heavy distortion above a certain volume becomes almost impossible to hear with a band. I'm sure there are many who have spent years working out the perfect combination of pedals and amp to get a great live overdriven sound, but I have to say for my own uses, a bluesy, slightly driven sound is great for most situations I play in. Specialists playing heavy rock guitar and shred styles I'm sure would have a lot more to say in this area.

I have to say though, perhaps the best live sound I have ever heard in this context is actually Eric Clapton's. It's almost clean.

Flexibility

I've been thinking a lot about ways to streamline my practice. This is something I think is fundamental in learning to play an instrument - at least after a certain point, there is so much to study and master, and only a certain number of days to do it in. A typical list of requirements for a musician might be the following:

1) Learn scales thoroughly
2) Learn all the chords
3) Learn to sightread
4) Learn to play in time, and develop a sense of groove
5) Develop the ability to play what you hear and hear music in detail (improvisation & transcription)

And so on. Look familiar? I think we all work on these 5 points to some extent. In our practice we tend to break down these goals into exercises and grind them over and over. For example - we might break down 1) into the following:

- Learn C Major scale
- Learn C Minor Harmonic scale
- Learn C Melodic Minor scale

And so on.

For a beginner this is a reasonable approach. However, we get to a certain point in our learning where the possibilities explode -can we play C major in 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 7th chords, triads, quartals, up to the 7th down to the 3rd, with added notes and so on.

At this point, I think it's important to develop a flexibility mindset. Rather than grind through the same patterns every day, we need to learn the ability to randomly access different patterns and ideas at tempo. The good news is that it is possible to develop this ability just as much as it is possible to learn one scale by repeating it.

I was reminded of this when Barry Harris came to town last week. Attending his Improvisation class is always a challenge, especially if you haven't been to one for a few years. It's very rapid fire - Barry shows students how to put together idiomatic bebop lines from scalic material - he might say:

- Play the Bb major to the 5th
- Play the Bb major to the 5th up and down
- Play it up to the seventh and down to the third
- Start on the offbeat, go from 7 to 1 and add in a note between
- Play 1 3 5 7
- Play it in thirds going up
- Add a half step before each note in each third

It's all very fast, and not repeated. What Barry is teaching (I think) is the ability to not only master scales but the ability to master the process of accessing scalic material. This reminds me of some of the techniques used by Warne Marsh - the material is a bit different in some ways, but the idea is the same. The aim is to develop flexibility rather than trying to learn 'everything' one item at a time.

The aim is to move progressively towards more flexibility, so you can play things you haven't practiced before quickly and accurately.

By practicing the process you don't need to simply practice the material.

I'll give you some more examples. Someone asks you to improvise on a difficult set of changes. What's the best preparation you could do for having to solo on some strange set of chords in a sight reading situation?

1. Practice one set of changes a week?
2. Practice a different set of random triads or a different (unusual) progression every day for 5 minutes?

I'd say the latter! One is deep learning - nothing wrong with it - great if you want to learn a tune really thoroughly, but the flexibility training in the second example will help you more in this situation.

Another example might be, you want to be able to play on a bandstand and busk tunes that you half know. What's your strategy?

1. Aim to learn every tune
2. Develop the ability to recognise chord progressions and key changes by ear, and busk melodies with needing a chart.

In the second case it might be a more on practicing busking lots of tunes on a very basic level rather than focussing on learning one tune really well. Again, it's not wrong to really get inside one thing, but the flexibility training is important too.

It's something that I've noticed about experienced musicians - partly it comes from playing a lot of gigs, but you can practice it too! It might be hard at first, but slowly you'll find you can bend in all sorts of ways....

New Cracking the Code/Picking Biomechanics revisited

Picking part 2

Episode 1 of series 2 of Cracking the Code has appeared - well worth the wait because the info is I think right on the money, quite new, and throws a light on the last blog entry I made.

http://troygrady.com/code-s2/

I think I can guess what the next few episodes will talk about - I look forward to seeing whether I am right!

In his own inimitable style I think Troy is pushing the pedagogy of right hand plectrum technique into a mature state. By this, I mean the level we see in classical tuition. Plectrum guitarists have been left largely out in the cold due to the absence of classical plectrum guitar tradition (gypsy jazz technique has only really become mainstream among guitarists fairly recently.)

In any case - as soon as I saw the close up of Tory playing the Yngwie stuff I though - ah yes that is the Gypsy Jazz right hand, minus the rest strokes. That's not the only thing Yngwie has in common technically with Django - check out the videos for more info. There's also a short burst of Troy playing some very tasty Django style picking on a nylon string using - yes, rest strokes.

In any case there's much more to come....

Rest Stroke picking

I've started looking at some Bluegrass and country basics for a dep that I do for a friend's band. This isn't a sort of music I have much experience with but I have fallen in love with it. One of my favourite players is the wonderful Tony Rice - flat-picking wizard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE992CZQJmM

Just gorgeous music IMO, and deceptively hard guitar playing. I'd be interested to see what Troy would say about the way he seems to adjusting the pick angle into the string.

While bluegrass players don't really shred in the way that gypsy jazzers or hair metal dudes do, the flatpicking targets more or less continuously what is a big weak area for most players - cross string picking. Skilled flatpickers are able to play the sort of stuff easiest executed fingerstyle with a pick, often for more projection in ensembles.

I was pleased to discover that I could basically adapt my existing technique for this style, Tony Rice and many other players use a variant of rest stroke picking - bluegrass players seem split between rest stroke pickers and alternate pickers (happy to corrected if this is wrong info.)

My belief is that mastering the basics of rest stroke picking is an excellent way to naturally cultivate the the pick angle Troy talks about in the episode.

So we can add Bluegrass guitar and mandolin to Oud technique and Gypsy jazz guitar playing as style which uses essentially the same technique. I believe Sarod players use a similar technique - need to find out more. Watch this space...

Widdly Widdly Widdly Widdly Part II - Biomechanics

Widdly Widdly Widdly Widdly Part 2

So, after the last blog I thought I’d post some of my thoughts about actually playing fast – Troy Grady of Cracking the Code was kind enough to read the last post and offer his thoughts – one of which was that loud fast rock guitar is back in vogue again in the US – at least to the extent that Avenged Sevenfold are selling heaps of albums. We had Dragonforce in the UK a few years back….

So, what advice for guitarists working on speed? Well, bearing in mind that I am not Rusty Cooley or Stochelo Rosenberg, here are my thoughts. For my part, speed is a very real consideration for a guitar player wishing to develop their playing as a gypsy jazz lead guitarist. This is a virtuosic style, and not just because of the improvisation. Here’s an example of what an accomplished gypsy jazz guitar player might reasonably expected to cope with (as opposed to the extreme end of the envelope technically.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlxTJewuW0c

I am on my way to executing this piece at this tempo, and will post a video when I am happy with it. Working on this and other fast and fancy material has led me to this conclusion:

Speed/‘Technique’  = Good Biomechanics + Accurate Subdivision

OK into the specifics - this will get super nerdy very quick, but if you are the kind of person who wants to play super fast on the guitar I doubt this will put you off.

Good Biomechanics

Biomechanics is a fancy word to refer to the way you play the instrument – I’ll adopt it from Troys’s website as I think it is specific and clear as a term. We could use the term technique, but technique often gets confused with the result – fast, fluid playing, something I call ‘technique’ in quotes.

In fact it is possible to have great ‘technique’ in this sense and bad biomechanics – a classic example would by Yngwie Malmsteen in the ‘80s. He managed to give himself career threatening Carpal Tunnel syndrome. This points to something wrong with the way he played – gypsy jazz and flamenco guitarists, for example, can manage similar speed and articulation with acoustic instruments and play this way for years and years with no problems.

Biomechanics for pick technique can be broken down into two elements – the kind of stroke you are making and how you make it. The first (economy, alternate, cross picking etc) are much more discussed and understood than the latter so I won’t talk about them here: you can google them! IMHO all these picking patterns are all available (more or less) with the right biomechanics. If the second element is not mastered, however, the student will always struggle.

A great article on the second point can be found here. This was written by Tuck Andress and is required reading for anyone serious about developing their pick technique. However, it is also a little confusingly written and doesn’t include gypsy jazz technique, so I will add my own thoughts.

Rather than go too much into specifics, I will cover some schools of thought that 'do the work for you.' Setting aside the details of when you do an upstroke or a downstroke, there are to my knowledge four clear and well described schools of picking in common use (Andress covers more). 

Considerations

• Floating or anchored - is the wrist or hand touching the top of the guitar? If not, it is a floating technique, if it is, it's anchored.
• Pick grip - trad (pick wedged in fist against thumb), lazy (fore finger pad against the thumb), or something else?
• Wrist angle - straight wrist and arm, or bent ('broken'?)
• Where does the pick motion come from - arm, wrist or fingers? How does the wrist move? How does the arm move? What moves it?
• Position – where is the arm?
• Free strokes or rest strokes? Mose guitarists use free strokes. Rest strokes - where the pick comes into contact with the next string after plucking, offers power and positional awareness, which helps with accuracy. (Andress seems not to have considered this in this essay.)
• Teaching materials - how much information is there on the biomechanics?

1. Trad or BMG technique. Andress refers to this as standard style. This was a standard approach for guitarists learning in the 50s and 60s as it was the technique taught in ‘Banjo, Mandolin, Guitar’ or BMG magazine. As used by Steve Morse and Robert Fripp.
2. Electric pick technique. Standard style variation 2 according to Andress. for most electric players. Used by Al Di Meola, Steve Vai and Julian Lage.
3. George Benson technique. A common approach now in jazz land, largely thanks to Andress. Used by Benson (of course), Carlos Santana, Sheryl Bailey and Adam Rogers.
4. ‘Gypsy’ or Oud picking. Standard style variation 1, with rest strokes. Andress seems unaware of the magic ingredient - rest stroke picking - that made this style so reliable and accurate for Django and Joe Pass. Approach mostly associated with gypsy jazz players today. Used invariably by gypsy jazz players and many early jazz players such as Eddie Lang and George Van Eps.

Quick summary in a table:

School	Float or anchored?	Grip	Wrist	Motion	Position	Free or Rest?
1 Trad/BMG	Float	Trad	Straight	Forearm, muscular Rotation of wrist	Arm above strings	Always Free
2 Electric	Anchored (usually above bridge)	Trad or Lazy	Straight	Wrist (side-to-side), fingers	Arm above strings	Almost always Free
3 Benson	Float	Lazy	Bent	Anything, including characteristic oscillation of wrist	Arm usually quite low, arm rotated outward from guitar.	Either, usually Free
4 Gypsy	Float – some light contact with strings and top	Slightly lazy trad – thumb crosses forefinger in an ‘X’	45 degree bend (Joe Pass used a flatter wrist)	Rotation of wrist, Forearm weight for downstrokes	Arm comes in behind tailpiece – 'in the middle.' (Joe uses a variant here too)	Always rest on down strokes

All of these techniques have advantages and disadvantages, apart from the first, which seems to me to have only disadvantages:

	Advantages	Disadvantages
1) Trad or BMG picking	·      ? ·      Good for those who find music easy, and need a challenge.	·      Really difficult to master. ·      Not crazy about the sound it produces. ·      Everything that can be done this way can be more easily achieved using a different style. ·      Problems with tensing up? Possible tendonitis?
2) Electric picking	·      Control over distorted/loud guitar. ·      Palm muting easily available.	·      Many players have a tense right hand and struggle with fast playing. Poorly understood biomechanics. ·      String skipping of any kind is a problem (e.g. alternate picking arpeggios etc.) ·      Weakest style for acoustic volume and tone, so a poor choice for acoustic playing. Julian Lage gets away with it through witchcraft of some type.
3) Benson picking	·      Very flexible. ·      Good tone and projection. ·      Just listen to George Benson!	·      Few – less tone than Gypsy picking perhaps, but I do know at least one acoustic player, Martin Wheatley, who uses a variant of this approach, and he has no trouble projecting and playing fast.
4) ‘Gypsy’ or Oud picking	·      Absolute relaxation. ·      Unsurpassed power and projection on acoustic guitar. ·      Reliable positioning of hand – unlike 1) because we are using rest strokes and knuckles/fingers to sense where we are. ·      And – consequently, superchops! ·      Well understood and taught in recent years.	·      Not suitable for electric playing – e.g. see Birelli Lagrene, playing fusion here, where he modifies his approach to something more like style 2). Andreas Oberg uses a straight wrist variant on both acoustic and electric sometimes using (eek) style 1. His video is helpful and clear by the way.

You may need to master two or more styles.

Teaching wise, these are my thoughts on the styles:

1) Why do that to yourself?

2) Troy looks like one of the few to be thinking about this biomechanically. Website here, but little info on specifics just yet.

3) A fair bit of info - Andress is a good start. Here's a good video.

4) Loads of info - I can personally recommend these teaching videos, for example.

Your aim here is to play everything with as little effort as possible. My own belief is that Gypsy picking, with a little application, is the actually easiest to master of all the schools. There is a wealth of information on it, clear tutorials and there are dozens in London alone who play this way with aplomb. How hard can it be? :-) I learned the basic picking style in a matter of months, though I am continuing to refine it, and my teaching of it. My feeling is also that by learning the gypsy style you can relax into a fast and accurate type 2 picking without too much hassle. 

I might have a proper go at learning Benson picking, just to see how hard/easy it is. Interestingly, the picking patterns seem the same as those normally used for gypsy picking - i.e. heavy on the downstrokes and not alternate.

Bear in mind gypsy picking here is not referring to the whole 'start a string with a downstroke' thing - you can use gypsy right hand with any picking pattern. That said, it is really, really worth practicing the traditional style.

Part 3 will cover subdivision…. I will also post some self analysis of my own playing of when things don’t quite work and why I think this is so.