Jazz guitar
Jazz guitar may refer to either a type of electric guitar or a guitar playing style in jazz, using electric amplification to increase the volume of acoustic guitars.
In the early 1930s, jazz musicians sought to amplify their sound to be heard over loud big bands. When guitarists in big bands switched from acoustic to semi-acoustic guitar and began using amplifiers, it enabled them to play solos. Jazz guitar had an important influence on jazz in the beginning of the twentieth century. Although the earliest guitars used in jazz were acoustic and acoustic guitars are still sometimes used in jazz, most jazz guitarists since the 1940s have performed on an electrically amplified guitar or electric guitar.
Traditionally, jazz electric guitarists use an archtop with a relatively broad hollow sound-box, violin-style f-holes, a "floating bridge", and a magnetic pickup. Solid body guitars, mass-produced since the early 1950s, are also used.
Jazz guitar playing styles include comping with jazz chord voicings and blowing over jazz chord progressions with jazz-style phrasing and ornaments. Comping refers to playing chords underneath a song's melody or another musician's solo improvisations.
From the 1970s onward, fusion-oriented players such as John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, and Allan Holdsworth significantly expanded the technical and harmonic vocabulary of jazz guitar.
History
1900–mid-1930s
The stringed, chord-playing rhythm can be heard in groups which included military band-style instruments such as brass, saxes, clarinets, and drums, such as early jazz groups. As the acoustic guitar became a more popular instrument in the early 20th century, guitar-makers began building louder guitars which would be useful in a wider range of settings. Nick Lucas is regarded as the grandfather of jazz guitar, with two of his guitar compositions recorded in 1922, Picking the Guitar and Teasing the Frets, being the first guitar solos ever recorded. Lucas built the foundations for jazz guitar through his development of various rhythmic, single string, and sweep picking techniques.The Gibson L5, an acoustic archtop guitar which was first produced in 1923, was an early “jazz”-style guitar which was used by early jazz guitarists such as Eddie Lang. By the 1930s, the guitar began to displace the banjo as the primary chordal rhythm instrument in jazz because the guitar could be used to voice chords of greater harmonic complexity, and it had a somewhat more muted tone that blended well with the upright bass, which, by this time, had almost completely replaced the tuba as the dominant bass instrument in jazz.
Late 1930s-1960s
During the late 1930s and through the 1940s—the heyday of big band jazz and swing music—the guitar was an important rhythm section instrument. Some guitarists, such as Freddie Green of Count Basie's band, developed a guitar-specific style of accompaniment. Few of the big bands, however, featured amplified guitar solos, which were done instead in the small combo context. The most important jazz guitar soloists of this period included Django Reinhardt, the Manouche virtuoso; Oscar Moore who was featured with Nat “King” Cole's trio and Charlie Christian of Benny Goodman's band and sextet who was a major influence despite his death early in 1942 at the age of 25. Also noteworthy was Mike Danzi who performed with the Alex Hyde Orchestra in the United States as well as with several jazz orchestras throughout Germany during the 1930s.File:Duke Ellington - Hurricane Ballroom - rhythm section.jpg|thumb|Duke Ellington's big band had a rhythm section that included a jazz guitarist, a double bass player, and a drummer.
It was not until the large-scale emergence of small combo jazz post-WWII that the guitar took off as a versatile instrument which was used both in the rhythm section and as a featured melodic instrument and solo improviser. In the hands of George Barnes, Billy Bauer, Kenny Burrell, Herb Ellis, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney, and Tal Farlow, who had absorbed the language of bebop, the guitar began to be seen as a "serious" jazz instrument. Improved electric guitars such as Gibson's ES-175, gave players a larger variety of tonal options. In the 1940s through the 1960s, players such as Wes Montgomery, Joe Pass, Al Caiola Tony Mottola and Jim Hall laid the foundation of what is now known as "jazz guitar" playing.
1970s
As a result of the ubiquity of the guitar in rock and pop bands during the 1960s, jazz guitarists began to pursue rock-based styles and genres, radically changing the face of jazz guitar and developing the style of "jazz fusion", which broke out of standard jazz idioms and explored rock, funk, and electronic music. As early as 1967, Larry Coryell and his band The Free Spirits recorded Out of Sight and Sound, a groundbreaking album that was one of the earliest examples of rock music being interpreted and played by jazz musicians. More prevalently, Miles Davis featured George Benson as a soloist on the track "Paraphernalia" off of his 1968 album Miles in the Sky, which marked the first example of his long-standing associations with guitarists. Shortly after this, he recruited John McLaughlin to play on In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew, some of the first jazz albums to be called "fusion" and the first serious jazz-rock albums. McLaughlin was a veteran of the British blues scene, and had cut his teeth playing with popular blues and rock groups, such as The Graham Bond Quartet, The Rolling Stones, and Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. McLaughlin was an avowed fan of Jimi Hendrix, and utilized phrasing closer to that of blues and funk guitarists than stereotypical bebop phrasing, and even had a track off of Bitches Brew named after him. He also played with the Tony Williams Lifetime for two years, before departing, radically altering his approach, and founding a new band. Davis would continue experimenting with guitar-based music during the 1970s, spearheaded by experimental soloist Pete Cosey, and rhythm guitarists Reggie Lucas and, for some time, Dominique Gaumont. Cosey made heavy use of effects, including a synthesizer, as well as 10 string guitars and experimental tunings. His work and influence is recognized by several avant-garde guitarists, such as Television guitarist Tom Verlaine.The Mahavishnu Orchestra, the resulting band, broke significant ground in both rock and jazz realms, and was headlined by McLaughlin's newer, more experimental style. His guitar playing began to utilize bends, sustain, and distortion common to blues rock musicians, as well as a vocabulary heavily influenced by Hindustani and Carnatic styles of Indian classical music which had become popular in psychedelic rock. His aggression and virtuosity earned him and his band fame, and he became a dominant force in jazz guitar. Inspired by him, pianist Chick Corea reorganized his Latin jazz band Return to Forever into a guitar-led rock band, first with blues-based guitarist Bill Connors, then with young virtuoso Al Di Meola. Di Meola would also accrue much respect as a soloist, and influenced numerous rock and jazz guitarists after his time.
Many rock guitarists also began to utilize jazz vocabulary and jazz-based ideas, reflective of progressive rock's convergent evolution with fusion jazz. Yes guitarists Peter Banks and Steve Howe had styles akin to that of many jazz guitarists early on, and helped define Yes's sound apart from other bands. John Goodsall, guitarist for the seminal jazz-rock band Brand X, utilized a fusion guitar style in the context of a progressive rock sound. Most notably, though, was Allan Holdsworth, who played with numerous progressive rock groups and musicians before embarking on a decades-long solo career that saw him become of the most revered soloists in the guitar world. Rather than utilizing standard picking, Holdsworth relied on legato phrasing inspired by horn players like John Coltrane and wildly unique and extremely advanced harmonic ideas. Despite being an "underground" musician and getting very little commercial success, Holdsworth inspired several guitarists over the years, most particularly, Eddie Van Halen.
1980s–2000s
By the early 1980s, the radical experiments of early 1970s-era fusion gave way to a more radio-friendly sounds of smooth jazz. Guitarist Pat Metheny mixed the sounds of rock, blues, country, and “world” music, while still maintaining a strong foundation in bebop and cool jazz, playing both a flat-top acoustic guitar and an electric guitar with a softer, more mellow tone which was sweetened with a shimmering effect known as “chorusing". During the 1980s, a neo-traditional school of jazz sought to reconnect with the past. In keeping with such an aesthetic, young guitarists of this era sought a clean and round tone, and they often played traditional hollow-body arch-top guitars without electronic effects, frequently through vacuum tube amplifiers.As players such as Bobby Broom, Peter Bernstein, Howard Alden, Russell Malone, and Mark Whitfield revived the sounds of traditional jazz guitar, there was also a resurgence of archtop luthierie. By the early 1990s many small independent luthiers began making archtop guitars. In the 2000s, jazz guitar playing continues to change. Some guitarists incorporate a Latin jazz influence, acid jazz-style dance club music uses samples from Wes Montgomery, and guitarists such as Bill Frisell continue to defy categorization.
Types of guitars
Archtop guitars
While jazz can be played on any type of guitar, from an acoustic instrument to a solid-bodied electric guitar such as a Fender Stratocaster, the full-depth archtop guitar has become known as the prototypical "jazz guitar." Archtop guitars are steel-string acoustic guitars with a big soundbox, arched top, violin-style f-holes, a "floating bridge" and magnetic or piezoelectric pickups. Early makers of jazz guitars included Gibson, Epiphone, D'Angelico and Stromberg. The electric guitar is plugged into a guitar amplifier to make it sound loud enough for performance. Guitar amplifiers have equalizer controls that allow the guitarist to change the tone of the instrument, by emphasizing or de-emphasizing certain frequency bands. The use of reverb effects, often included in guitar amplifiers, has long been part of the jazz guitar sound. Particularly since the 1970s jazz fusion era, some jazz guitarists have also used effects pedals such as overdrive pedals, chorus pedals and wah pedals.The earliest guitars used in jazz were acoustic, later superseded by a typical electric configuration of two humbucking pickups. In the 1990s, there was a resurgence of interest among jazz guitarists in acoustic archtop guitars with floating pickups. The original acoustic archtop guitars were designed to enhance volume: for that reason they were constructed for use with relatively heavy guitar strings. Even after electrification became the norm, jazz guitarists continued to fit strings of 0.012" gauge or heavier for reasons of tone, and also prefer flatwound strings. The characteristic arched top can be made of a solid piece of wood that is carved into the arched shape, or a piece of laminated wood that is pressed into shape. Spruce is often used for tops, and maple for backs. Archtop guitars can be mass-produced, such as the Ibanez Artcore series, or handmade by luthiers such as Robert Benedetto.