Experimenting with jazz standards

So when I was in Chicago I took a music lesson from my dad's composer friend Frank Abbinanti, a really great pianist, composer, musician working in the avant-garde classical (we call it new music) scene. He's worked a lot with this really great clarinet player named Guillermo Gregorio, and they've both played a lot in Europe. Anyways, since he taught me some stuff I've been thinking about music in a different way and I'd like to jot down some of these new ideas mainly for fun and so I don't forget them.

So one of the things that's new when I look at standards when I play the chords is that if there's too many changes in one measure I'll default to just using one chord for that measure. Instead of just playing a root position voicngs I'll also play first and second inversion of that chord but with some extra melody notes on top (adding a melody that isn't there in the sheet music). This gives the music a much more original and modern sound than what I was doing before, which was more basic.

For example in the past if a measure was 4/4 with Gmin7 I would just play Gmin7 with maybe first inversion but it would always just be stock Gmin7 notes rather than adding a melody on top.

Another thing I've been doing is playing triads when comping through a standard. For example if it says Gmin7 for a 4/4 measure I would just play Gmin and first and second inversions in a jazz rhythm more akin to piano. This simplifies things and makes it a lot easier to focus on the changes of the song. However, this is also really limiting because there's no melodies or voice leading happening on the top, just bass notes and important notes of the chord. Its a simple way of thinking about jazz guitar comping. Good for practice.

Yet another thing I've been working on is bebop phrasing and improvising through changes. I've realized that as long as I always hit the important notes of the chord and you always come back to it you can go as far out as you want-to a point. For example if its 4/4 and measure 1 is Cmaj7 and measure 2 is G7 I can start on a c note and play lots of chromatic legato stuff and as long as I hit a g when measure 2 comes around it will always sound "right". For this example my old method was always to play something like Cmaj scale through Cmaj7 and then when measure 2 comes around I would play G7 dorian or something like that. Pretty basic and standard way of thinking about it. However, now I've realized that as long as I hit one or two important tones in the chords, even if they're just passing tones, I can fake my way through it and it will still sound right. I can't just play anything but there's a lot of open possibilities to the way I'm thinking about it now which is still based on the harmony given but I can go out and then come back much more easily. Before I was a lot more buttoned down when it came to soloing through changes.

Lastly, I'm also working on improving my tone, particularly jazz guitar tone. Typically this would mean more of a Wes Montgomery, Jim Hall kind of modern jazz guitar sound but I play on solid body guitars (not a hollow or semi-hollow body guitar) its harder to achieve this. But I try to make do by turning my bass sound higher, medium treble, and medium mids. I also roll down the tone knob on my 7-string Jackson to produce a more round richer and dark tone. I also use a chorus pedal too that gives me quite a bit of sustain without a distorted effect. It sounds nice but I think I can get a closer traditional jazz sound if I just played a semi or hollow-body guitar. They ain't cheap though so I'll have to make do with what I  have. You don't have to play on a hollow-body to play jazz. After all I'm playing on a 7-string Jackson most of the time but I can get a really traditional jazz sound out of my Hagstrom Les Paul because of the Jazz/Blues pickup in the neck on that thing. Now that one can get really close to say Jim Hall.

These are all things I'm thinking about. Good to share with other musicians.