Why is jazz guitar so harmonically under developed?

So it's been a very long time since I've done a blog post. I let it slip my mind and now it's almost been a year since I posted anything. The opinions I expressed last year still hold today and I will get back into those issues later on, but for this post I thought I'd blog about something that I have been thinking about for over 2 years now as well as something that I have been trying to address through my playing over the last year or so. This something is the apparent lack of harmonic development of the jazz guitar since it's emergence as a solo instrument in the late 30s.

So what do I mean by harmonic development? If we look at the jazz guitar from the bebop era, the lines and vocabulary that guitarists such as Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, Tal Farlow etc. were using were pretty much in line with the vocabulary of the saxophonists and pianists of the era. However, as jazz developed through the 50s and 60s, the harmonic landscape of jazz really started to open up. Innovators such as Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock changed the harmonic language of jazz forever and for me, it really seems as if the guitar never really caught up with the piano and saxophone when all these great changes were being made.

I think one of the main reason why jazz guitar never really made the switch to chromatic harmony was because we never really had a John Coltrane, a Herbie Hancock or a McCoy Tyner to pave the way for us. We were - and for the most part still are - completely spellbound by Wes Montgomery and rightly so as he was one of the leading exponents of the guitar being a solo instrument. One could argue that Jim Hall lead the way for chromatic substitution, and while this is true to an extent, his innovations were mostly chordal in nature as opposed to single note lines. I am not saying that people like Hall, Wes, and Tal Farlow can't play - obviously they can- I am saying that the guitarists vocabulary never really delved into the harmonic worlds opened up by Coltrane et al.

So what about the modern players like Kurt Rosenwinkel, Jonathan Kreisberg and Lage Lund? They are innovative but in a different way. I think the way we see the fretboard is being changed by Rosenwinkel especially, the use of non traditional positions and "technically wrong" leaps around the strings has widened the intervallic structures of improvisational lines on the guitar. The lines are getting more saxophonistic/pianistic in intervallic note choice, but these lines still remain pretty much inside the chord scale of the moment - to use some Berklee terminology.
There are a few guitarists who are managing to expand the harmonic vocabulary of the guitar and personally I think these are two of the most interesting guitar players in jazz right now. Firstly we have Nelson Veras, a Brazillian born guitar player who has been living in Paris for a number of years now. The first thing I noticed about Nelson's playing - long before I became interested in chromatic harmony- was his almost flawless left hand technique it was only later on I realised how developed he was harmonically. His harmonic application is very advanced and he uses some Messiaenic modes in his improvisation which is demonstrated here. The video posted below is with dutch pianist Harmen Fraanje's group. This really demonstrates his use of chromatic harmony over a relatively simple chord progression (I love this tune though!)

The other guitarist is Lionel Loueke. Lionel has been part of Herbie Hancock's band since 2006 and it is obvious he has been hugely influenced by's Herbie's harmonic approach. Also he is just such an original voice on the instrument fusing chromatic jazz language with traditional African music.

I am a firm believer in learning the tradition, I don't think you can jump into chromatic harmony without studying the bebop language but I think as guitarists we need to look beyond the vocabulary of Wes, Tal Farlow, Jimmy Raney and Pat Martino and look at players like Coltrane, McCoy, David Liebman, Woody Shaw, Herbie Hancock and Steve Coleman. These harmonic innovators should not be ignored on our instrument, we should embrace this language and apply it to the techniques that Kurt Rosenwinkel, Lage Lund and all the other modern jazz guitarists are pioneering. I think that would make an interesting change in the direction of the guitar in jazz.

Jazz, DIY, punk and me.

It's very rare to see the words jazz, DIY and punk all in the same sentence but I think that they're all closely related and have all played a very important part in my life. The majority of music I play these days is jazz and it's been at least 3 years since I've played a punk gig, but it is from my experience of being in both of those scenes that I have come to realise that there are a lot of similarities in the approach of both jazz and punk music.

For those of you who don't know, when I was 15 I was part of a punk band called The Spungos. We played west coast American style punk influenced by bands like NOFX and Strung Out. The band lasted for roughly 4 years and during that time we became heavily involved in the DIY aspect of punk music. All of us were part of a collective called the Basta! Youth Collective which was made up of about 25 people aged between 15-18. The collective put on gigs, organised tours, released compilation cd's and zines as well as taking over an abandoned parish hall in Greystones, Co.Wicklow. When I think about it now, it was amazing how we managed to be so organised and determined to do something different at such a young age and it is definitely something I'm extremely proud of being a part of. It is also something that inspired me to help start the PRIME collective.

Having been part of the Dublin Jazz scene for the last 2 years now, I haven't felt that far removed from the punk scene I used to be part of. Sure the music is totally different but there are a lot of aspects that are the same, namely that both jazz and punk are minority music. I'd even go as far to say that in general punk and hardcore gigs are better attended than most jazz gigs in Dublin, although maybe I'll keep the reasons why that is for another blog post. The majority of jazz musicians organise their own gigs and tours like most other punk/hardcore bands, fund their own records and some start there own labels. Door prices for gigs are extremely reasonable and currently a lot of jazz gigs are starting to adopt a policy of suggested donations rather than a fixed door price. This is something you don't see a lot of in the punk/harcore scene. Wheres the proof? Well lets start with Dublin first. ReDiviDeR, a band led by drummer Matt Jacobson are going to be releasing an album in November. The majority of the cost of recording, mixing, mastering and duplication is coming straight out of his pocket. The album is going to be released on Irish label Diatribe. Diatribe is a label  run by two musicians, Nick Roth and Daniel Jacobson, and music-enthusiast John Cosgrove. Singer Edel Meade runs The Jazz Kitchen, a weekly gig on Tuesday nights at The Grand Social. There is no cover charge for the gig and it is done in a totally not for profit way.  Bottlenote, another Dublin based collective have been organising a not for profit festival every year for the past number of years. These are just small examples of what's happening here in Dublin.


The DIY aesthetic also exists outside of Ireland. In London you have the Loop Collective and the F-ire Collective, in America you have collectives such as Search and Restore and not for  profit performance spaces like IBeam and The Stone. Some artists have also created their own labels such as Dave Binney's Mythology Records and Dave Douglas's Greenleaf Music. Once again these are only a handfull of examples.

It's hard to get rid of the elitist stigma that is applied to jazz musicians from other musical scenes. It's even harder when jazz music is virtually non existent in the media so this post is to show that the majority of jazz musicians have the same drive and passion for playing music as any other musicians in any other scene be it indie rock, punk, hardcore or metal. Jazz musicians will play gigs for little to no money because they love the music and enjoy playing. I think that if the jazz scene didn't have a DIY ethic I wouldn't be that attracted to the music at all. And now for some Kneebody to play us out.