For the curious on what pick to use, James replies: "I don't use a heavy pick for playing the electric; a lot of great players do, and it certainly doesn't seem to hang them up at all. I studied with Remo Palmier and he got me into using a lighter pick for playing electric as the amp really does the work of getting your sound out into the room - not your pick or guitar. I could never consistently articulate a bebop head like Confirmation or Hot House until I studied with Remo. For me, it's easier with the thinner pick on the electric to keep my hand relaxed and play with a light touch. For me, acoustic and electric are totally different beasts."
With tube amps, you almost always get best results if you push the gain as high as possible on the amp, then cut your input signal way down using the guitar's volume knob or another gate/compressor/EQ in the signal chain. The reason for this is that old analog vacuum tubes emphasize even-order harmonics that sound pleasing to the ear (in contrast to solid state devices, which de-emphasize these in relation to odd-order harmonics). The only issue with this practice is that any noise in the signal chain will also be amplified if you crank the amp all the way up. You can eliminate a lot of this noise by using quality transformers (i.e. TrueTone or Voodoo Labs power supplies for effects, quality isolation transformers like those available from Lundahl or Torus for the amplifier itself) and line-level isolators like the Radial Engineering StageBug. Mind you that this doesn't generally apply equally to heavy metal guys already using tons of distortion (i.e. noise); noise is an even more important consideration for jazz guitarists who need a clean signal.
@@lashlarue7924 hi can you refer to any studies/demonstrations on the even and odd numbered harmonics thing on tube vs ss amps? Also do you count the fundamental, or 1st harmonic 2nd harmonic etc
I've always felt that this is a good idea when doing a sound check but for a rock vibe, you need the guitar volume up. Just not gonna get the same sound with the guitar volume at half.
for clean tones, yeah, but for other styles of music, if you’re playing rhythm guitar at half volume you’re sacrificing some of the tone that the amp is giving you… for overdriven guitar, etc
I’ve been cranking my tube amp now for a year and half, and am now just starting to listen to how I sound as I play more. I always have a tough time finding the right sound, but I feel I’m starting to somewhat get the hang of it. Rolling off is something I’ve been working with for the past half year really making sure my guitar sounds right, not just loud.
Pick weight and thickness isn't critical, use whatever works for you to help in getting that sound. Many players stow the pick between their thumb and forefinger - or elsewhere - and play rhythm passages with their thumb to get the improved dynamics and tone that flesh on strings gets you.
@ Dylan Maurits - Jazz is not a guitar-centric music, unlike rock, blues and country. So it forces you to think in terms not usual for a guitar guy. Gets you out of your comfort zone, makes you grow. It's no exaggeration to say that you pretty much have to be a virtuoso - or darned near it - on the instrument to get taken seriously in jazz. I won't lie to you, either: Playing jazz at a high level on guitar is a real b*tch. Wes Montgomery - my choice for the finest jazz guitarist ever to have lived - got asked once about practicing, and he gave a great answer which was sort of a joke, sort of not. He said, "I just open up the guitar case and throw a piece of meat in there..." Meaning that the guitar is a beast which must be fed. If you aren't willing to pay the price you'd best find another style of music!
@@GeorgiaBoy1961 The best way to think about Big Band guitar is as a pitched drum. Most of the time you're not Django, you're a drummer laying the beat for dance music.
This is the wisdom of the wise. Anything by James Chirillo on the RU-vid is gold (and the time I had face-to-face with him was platinum). He is the current holder of the keys of the grand tradition of big band rhythm guitar. Note the last phrase: "be an asset to the rhythm section". Thank you James!
Probably most of you see the importance of playing downstrokes here, but I mention it because some of my guitar pals unconsciously but inevitably drift into upstrokes. It's fatal to this rhythm, and to a lot of other styles besides jazz. But I mostly want to point out the percussive, chunky, atonal sound on the offbeats. There's the punch from the downstroke and the smooth tonality of the fretted notes. But that snap on the offbeats is such a fundamental part of the style. I think it comes naturally to most players, but is it an emphasis in the right hand? Is it muting in the left hand? Is it just feel? Thanks for these great lessons.
@@paolospadaro It is an L5 (Perhaps a late 60´s model) but maybe an acoustic factory model that has the electronics later added, hence 1 master volume 1 master tone, when factory electric models come with 2 volume 2 tone controls.
James is a really good teacher...much better for jazz than anyone I have ever seen on RU-vid. This is THE gold standard to start playing jazz rhythm guitar, or to start playing PERIOD.
Musicians! This lesson is rather helpful for anyone interested in learning to play Jazz. Horn section or not a lower volume helps the player listen to the other players and that just sounds better!!
I’m just finding this video , really good information here...your guitar is interesting, I noticed it only has one volume and one tone..is it an old custom order job or a converted L5c?
Ed, my L-5 is a 1968 and when I bought this around 1974, I was told it was a custom order job. Recently, Norio Imai told me due to the bracing of the top, it was a converted acoustic. That's why only the two knobs. You nailed it.
The construction of an electric guitar has pretty much nothing to do with tone in any way. It’s a myth that’s been passed down for decades. Not even for sustain. Even the strings make very little difference, unless they’re old and worn out. It’s ENTIRELY in the pickups and electronics. You can make a piece of plywood sound like any guitar in existence. Half acoustic constructions don’t make a lick of difference. Also, the difference between tube and solid state amps is basically nothing these days. The whole “tube is better do you gotta she’ll out for a ‘real’ amp” this is an absolute myth. You can sound *exactly* like this guy with a solid plywood guitar and a solid state modeling amp. Check of Jim Lil if you don’t believe me.
To make my Acoustic Guitar work w/ super thin nickel wound strings, I had to sand the top down extra thin. I unglued the top from the guitar, ran it through a 150000 grit sand paper belt, reglued it back onto the guitar, & put super lights on.
Excellent and good history lesson, even if it just makes young musicians go find recordings of Freddie Green! Thanks for mentioning Mr. Green in your lecture, and the description.
The Archtop Electric Guitar was originally meant to replace the Acoustic Guitar cause it could be played louder & is perfect for if you have a Jazz Band w/ more musicians.
1:35: yep, exactly. There’s no point in getting a carved top if the electronics are mounted in that top. Save your money; get a laminated top instrument. Only get a carved top if you’re doing unamplified, or doing floating pickup (electronics mounted under the pickguard).
My only electric guitar is my Fender Strat, and I love how it sounds, but do you think the same principles apply about backing off on the volume and everything you're saying about the semi hollow body?
For jazz, absolutely. The best thing to do is play around with the volume and tone knobs while you're rehearsing and listen to how it changes the tone (which frequencies are accentuated? which frequencies disappear? how do these changes affect how you blend with the band? How does it respond on a different pickup?). You will find that you can get a myriad of different tones out of a Strat (or just about any electric guitar) without ever touching the amp or pedals just by rolling the knobs, changing pickups, using fingers vs using a pick, and picking hard vs soft. Even with a Strat, you will probably find that the most traditional jazz sound is on the neck pickup with the volume (and maybe tone) rolled back a bit. If you want to experiment even deeper, string it up with some flat wound or half-round wound strings and see what you think. Once you know what your setup is capable of, then you can choose the sounds you want for the music you want to play!
@@creamwobbly Clapton, who arguably invented rock (as distinct from rock and roll) guitar, never used a treble booster. He also had a famously wooly sound-although he also got nice bright guitar sounds during the same period depending on the song. Hendrix used Marshalls and Fuzz Faces specifically to thicken up the sound and get a woolier sustain. He didn't use fuzzes to add brightness. When he wanted bright tones in the studio, he played straight through Fenders or Marshalls turned down. Live, he turned down his volume for brighter tones. Jeff Beck didn't use treble boosters in the early days, although he now has way more pedals. He sometimes used a Supa-Fuzz, but most of Truth was a dark, wooly LP-into-Marshall sound with the tone rolled down-and of course a wah for a lot of it, which he always used in a very dark and throaty wah unlike the bright funk style wah. Leslie West played almost exclusively with the tone on 1. He's famous for a dark, throaty sound. Again, no pedals-which means no treble booster. Jimmy Page abandoned the fuzz, which he used for sustain like Hendrix did and not for brightness, very shortly after switching from his Tele to his LP. He did that because the LP was giving him the sustain he wanted. He didn't feel the need to use treble boosters to recoup the brightness he lost when switching away from the Tele. Even before that, he got an extremely dark, thick, wooly sound from a Flying V on You Shook Me. He later said he loved the tone but couldn't afford the guitar, so sticking with the Tele wasn't a sonic decision but a financial one. Duane Allman's famous slide tone was pretty dark, too. Neck pickup of a Les Paul, no treble booster, straight into a Marshall. He preferred the sound of glass slides, which are darker. He picked with the rounded edge of the pick for a darker sound. He definitely wasn't going for brightness. There are also plenty of older blues players who had very dark and wooly sounds from amps pushed to the max, and none of them were using treble boosters. They would often, though not always, roll down the tone. Plenty of Hubert Sumlin's tones are nice and dark. Willie Johnson's guitar is about as smooth and dark as you can get on Who's Been Talking. Rock and blues after the '60s and '70s had plenty of dark tones, too. Black Moon Creeping by the Black Crowes has a very thick, dark rhythm tone. Dark guitar tones don't dominate other forms of music like they do jazz, but they definitely aren't absent, either. There's no universal rule for a tone that sounds good with everything or even everything in a single genre, and we shouldn't expect there to be. That means you shouldn't always have your volume and tone rolled down, but it also means that it's just as wrong to say that rock or blues or pop demand a bright tone.
@@creamwobbly The difference, at least to me, is that rock players generally use simple chord voicings that respond well to a bright sound. Jazz players use dense close voicings that generate a lot of harmonics from the dissonance of the chords, which means you want to start with a darker sound on the guitar.
For some reason, my teacher always made me play clean, with guitar volume and tone at 10. Grateful as I am for his instruction, I really wish someone had taught me how to shape my guitar and amp tone as well.
The guitar confuses me. It seems to be a vintage late 1960s Gibson Byrdland but the volume and tone control seem to be too close to each other and normally there would be two volumes and two tones but don’t see any modifications for removing those two. Was this a custom order or something like that?
James Chirillo responded to another comment on this video with the following: "Ed, my L-5 is a 1968 and when I bought this around 1974, I was told it was a custom order job. Recently, Norio Imai told me due to the bracing of the top, it was a converted acoustic. That's why only the two knobs."
It's in the rhythm section, with the goal of reinforcing the groove and filling out the harmony being laid down by the bass and piano. Guitar solos are fairly rare.
To get buried underneath the whole band. For some reason, guitars in big bands always get completely buried in the mix. I don't know why a guitar player would ever want to sign up for that
It's all thirds and sevenths, no root, so yeah... they sound weird on their own. I can hear the structure but it's never really laid out because the root is never there. Put them in context, though, and those note work perfectly.
@@crimfan Most guys make the mistake of playing "inside" too much. One of the things that separates the proverbial men from the boys, musically-speaking, is knowing when to play some dissonance. Of course, the trick is knowing when to do it, and how much, and not everyone knows how to do that properly, not even pros. And it is largely a matter of taste, so people are going to differ there also.
the pickup coils capture magnetic vibrations created by the strings, the body of the guitar has nothing to do with the sound the pickups capture, great advice tho about sound in gENEral
