Jazz interviews
Many jazz players I interviewed have a general understanding of what is involved in the classical guitar, whilst not being aware of many things beyond the basics. They tend to know that the classical style focuses primarily on areas of technique and repertoire which includes physically demanding, often long pieces. Anton Hunter (2015) says “I don’t know much. I know it’s really difficult”, he later ads “I had some classical guitar lessons for a brief period. We had a lot of weeks on tone production.
That is something that I have not spent much time on at all as an electric guitarist, or as a non-classical guitarist -tone production with the fingers and with the interaction between you and the instrument”.
144 However, a number of them have had the opportunity to learn more directly and profoundly about the actual advances and reasoning behind the classical technical and ideological approach. These include John Harper, Stuart McCallum, Martin Taylor and Jim Faulkner.
Stuart McCallum is one of the most respected jazz guitarists in the North West of England and throughout the UK. He is also currently head of jazz guitar at the Leeds College of Music. His work as a guitarist with the Cinematic Orchestra, as well as under his own name incorporates a thorough understanding and command of the jazz vocabulary, whilst embracing technology and exploring soundscapes and minimalism. After many years of playing, Stuart has become interested in the
classical guitar, and is currently starting to take some lessons. Referring to how jazz pianists frequently study classical piano works as a gateway to harmonic ideas of voicing, development and composition McCallum (2015) says “I have always felt annoyed that pianists had this amazing resource to get into the instrument, and guitarists didn’t have that. But then I realised that we do, we just need to get into it” he continues “It’s a different approach but it’s all there, if you want to get into it. So I’ve started to get into it, learning some Villa Lobos pieces, etc”. Given that the
classical guitar is most often associated with technique and tone in performance, this is perhaps not one of the most obvious or predictable areas of benefit that jazz guitarists tend to expect from learning about the classical guitar. In my personal experience of many years of studying and playing jazz, I was never advised by tutors to look at classical guitar in order to improve my skills. Similarly, I never heard it from peers. I did arrive at it later by accident, however, once I had started studying the classical guitar simply because of my love for the music.
In my opinion, the principles and vision of harmony that derive from classical music are very similarly, if not equivalently, applied to classical guitar pieces as they are to classical piano pieces. It is certainly true that the piano has been a protagonist in the history and development of classical music in a way that the classical guitar has not. Nonetheless, whilst this might mean that the guitar might not have the same quantity of material available, today one can say that the classical language and its full vision
145 and approach have been successfully transferred to the guitar. This is true both for transcriptions of pieces by great piano and keyboard composers from the past, such as Bach or Albeniz; as well as repertoire specifically created for the instrument in the 19th and 20th century. Such is the case of several world renowned works by
composers like Agustin Barrios Mangore, Joaquin Rodrigo, Antonio Lauro, Leo Brouwer, Benjamin Britten, Manuel de Falla or Heitor Villa Lobos, amongst many others.
Guitarist Jim Faulkner is an unusual musician in the sense that he is a jazz player who, by chance, actually started on the instrument in the classical style; simply
because that was the kind of tutor his dad was able to find for him. “It gave me such a good foundation. I don’t know if I would be doing what I am doing now if I hadn’t had that (classical) foundation” (Faulkner, 2015). He mentions that, although he only had these early lessons for two-to-three years, (and never really mastered the right hand classical technique) he acquired what he believes aregood habits including learning to read. About his first lesson, Faulkner said “He wrote G on the treble clef and got me to do m-i-m-i-m-i, and got me started on the reading thing from day one”.
As a jazz teacher Faulkner now works at Chethams School of Music in Manchester, UK. There he has a rare opportunity - apart from his formal jazz students, he teaches jazz guitar as a second study to classical guitarists. About this experience with
guitarists from both genres, Faulkner (2015) says “I hear far more about jazz
guitarists suffering playing-related injuries than I do with classical”. He has also had a personal situation where, due to health reasons, he has gravitated towards adopting classical principles in his posture. “A few years ago I got a trapped nerve in my left arm, which was incredibly painful and quite debilitating and I kind of thought that it was going to be the end of my career. Through taking Alexander Technique lessons, getting physiotherapy, and doing a bit of reading, I had to find out about what was the most logical way to hold the instrument to cause the least distress to my arm and my injury- to not aggravate it” he continues “As a result of having to do that I had to completely change my posture and, ironically, hold the guitar more like a classical player”.
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Classical interviews
The general answer from classical players has been that they have a basic understanding of the main skills that are needed for jazz. However (as with jazz guitarists) beyond this, their knowledge tends to be very limited. For example, almost nobody mentioned anything related to ii V I - based chord progressions, arpeggios, chromaticism, intervals, modes, different kinds of chords or jazz repertoire, etc.
Emma Smith, for example, mentions taking a jazz module during one term at the start of her college studies. However, she admits that she now doesn’t remember most of the information provided, but she wishes she had tried to absorb more of it as she thinks it would be useful now.
One particularly interesting answer was that of Craig Ogden, who mentioned that he finds that classical music makes use of tempo changes in order to convey musical expression, whilst most other musical styles have a rather continuous metronomic- oriented approach to time.
About jazz, Ogden (2014) said “I enjoy it. The only thing for me is that, some of the jazz that I’ve heard, I find twenty minutes of it awesome and entertaining. But after that – I suspect it’s my own lack of understanding- I get a bit bored. In classical music, there is always contrasting tempos, articulations, dynamics, rubato, textures. In pop music and some jazz there is less variety of texture”. This is something that I personally also found very appealing once I started to study classical guitar in depth. Even though I already knew about classical music and listened to a fair amount of it, as a player I realised that there were more opportunities to enhance musical
expression in the classical style, whist jazz and other styles of music had not made me aware of it, at least not to the same extent. Ogden continues “You know, a lot of jazz doesn’t slow down and speed up, and in classical phrasing you always move forwards and backwards. Even Bach, it’s about holding back and moving forwards – you are telling a story using those tools”.
As previously mentioned, David Bainbridge is a Royal Northern College of Music classical guitar graduate. He did jazz guitar as a second study during his pre-college
147 studies at Chethams School of Music in Manchester. He also later played in the Royal Northern College of Music Jazz Big Band. Based on his experience of both genres, Bainbridge (2014) mentioned that chord chart reading through chord symbols would represent a problem for many classical guitarists, since they are not used in that style.
David Oakes is a jazz and classical guitarist whose experience ranges from learning and jamming with Joe Pass in the jazz style, to attending Andres Segovia master classes in the classical style and leading guitar departments at different advanced music institutions in the United States. During my interview with him, he mentioned something which is relevant both to this and other questions on this list. Oakes (2014) said “At USC (University of South Carolina) they once were having a big fund raiser and a lot of the students were performing. This guitar player got up and played a Scarlatti Sonata. It was absolutely beautiful, breath taking” Oakes continues “Later on, a singer was going to sing and their accompanist couldn’t make it, and she had a simple chord chart, which just said Cmaj7, Dm7, Em7. So they asked the guitar player to accompany her, and he couldn’t do it!”. Later on, Oakes mentions that the Dean of the music department was so disappointed in their current guitar teachers after the event, that the occasion turned out to be one of the reasons why Oakes eventually got hired to teach guitar at the University.
As the reader may have noticed so far in these chapters analysing the interview- based research, as well as most of my research (including the content of the vast majority of texts for classical guitar tuition), there is a major reappearing thread, which is that huge numbers of highly trained classical guitarists don’t have the ability to understand the harmonic and compositional elements of the music that they play. Their connection with the music is limited to successfully reproducing notes on the instrument as specified by the score, with great expressive skill at times, but without any understanding of the deep reasoning behind those notes and their dramatic purpose, from a technical compositional perspective.
According to the research, however, this seems to be the consequence of the
148 made by students to learn in this way. More information regarding this phenomenon and its consequences is included in the remaining paragraphs of this section (as well as the rest of the research).
Question 4- Between the Jazz and Classical styles, which of the two do you