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My Solo Jazz Guitar Dilemma
I more or less started playing jazz guitar gigs in Detroit with Ceaser Peña on guitar. He was an incredible musician from Southwest Detroit who played in Albert King’s band in the 80s. Throughout the 90 until his untimely passing in June of 2022, Peña played great jazz and was a blues master to say the least. He was a great mentor to me, and encouraged me to explore my interests in folkloric music, and jazz. I owe a great deal of my musical development to him.
He taught me how to focus on playing with good timing while accompanying him.
One thing that gig taught me was that it easier to sound good when someone else is accompanying you. Peña provided me the bass, and the harmony on our duo gigs. I discovered I would be on my own during my solo when I played gigs with a saxophonist, vocalist, or a trumpet player. It was real nerve recking, but I knew I had to work through a long, and arduous process of not really being that good.
The first thing that would happen when I would solo is that all the momentum would wear out quickly as soon as it was my turn to do “something.” Those kind of instincts aren’t really taught, they are learned. When you think you can confidently play over changes, then standalone jamtracks, and other musicians you find that is the start of the journey. At least for me it was, because I was not 100% aware of my weakness.
I turned to the recordings I had of Joe Pass. I always loved his Virtuoso volumes with my favorite being, “I Remember Charlie Parker.” I spent a whole summer teaching myself his version of, “Just Friends.” It seemed to have everything in it from changing keys, walking bass lines, chord ideas, and melodic ideas that just grabbed me into a sense of urgency to learn the whole thing. I decided not write any notes down, and commit it all to memory so that it wouldn’t slow me down having to write each note. I admit this might have been due to some degree my laziness, but writing it out took away from the momentum of Joe’s playing. I decided I would do it after I was completed for future reference.
The beginning of Just Friends is somewhat free of strict time. Which ebbs, and flows between the melody, chords, and linear structures that are repeated throughout the whole solo. What I learned is that Joe is having a conversation with the song. He states the melody, and then fills in the space between like Charlie Parker did. In my opinion Joe is playing as close to Parker’s ideas as he possibly can on a guitar using chromatic passing tones, arpeggiations, and pivots points that are a part of the jazz vernacular of that era. One thing I aprreciated is his use of dominant 9th suspensions in place of ii V I for a more diatonic modern sound.
The biggest take away for me is his use of broken chord arpeggios that I classify as one note per string. This technique makes the best sense when playing finger style guitar. The most legato you can use is to pile and slur many notes on one string, or to arpeggiate from high low, or low to high. He uses these throughout his solo between the melodies. One thing that always caught my ear is how he throws in some mixed blues licks that sound somewhat country as filler right before he does an episode of back-pedaling dominants to throw the listener off. He uses the blues right before introducing a new key. This is one of my favorite principles I discovered in his playing! Here is a link to my remake of Just Friends.
