Anmeldung bis 14. 3. 2009 an info@egta.ch

Aus dem Konzept von Carl Orr:

Master Class Outline

1. It’s important to play spontaneously; otherwise the listener will lose interest. Practise playing in ways that prevent lick playing; e.g. soloing on one string, soloing on two strings, soloing on two non-adjacent strings. Using your ears; play short phrases (even just 3-4 notes) hearing all the notes in your head in advance. Do not allow yourself to play your own or other people’s licks.
If you do find yourself beginning to play a lick or an overly familiar phrase, cut it short and it becomes a different phrase.

2.Tone. If you don’t produce a pleasing tone, then nothing you play sounds it’s best. It’s a bit like always wearing a muddy pair of shoes and wondering why you never quite get your look right.
How do you get a good tone? Experiment with striking the strings in different places; too close to the bridge sounds trebly and metallic; too close to the neck sounds mid-rangy and lacks boldness. Of course we can strike the strings wherever we want for musical effect, but it’s important that our default hand position produces a tone that can be listened to for extended periods. Imagine your ideal tone in your head. My ideal tone is a solidbody guitar using the neck pickup with just enough overdrive to facilitate a little sustain without making a ‘dirty’ sound, something like a cleaner, smaller version of Carlos Santana’s sound. I also like a little delay; to my ears delay makes an overdriven guitar sound more palatable. For a clean sound I like a beautiful golden, shimmering front pickup sound with just a little reverb. And for classical guitar I chose my instrument very carefully based on its tone.

3. Variation of tone and attack. Spend a few minutes a day playing a single note in as many ways as possible; e.g., long, short, on different strings, as a harmonic, being slid up to, being slid down to, as a right hand (artificial) harmonic, as a tapped artificial harmonic, striking from different parts of the string (close to the bridge, close to the neck, etc), using the flesh of the fingers or the thumb, slapping like a bass player, with slow vibrato, fast vibrato, bending a semitone up to the note, bending a tone up to the note, whammy down to the note, whammy up to the note. Different combinations of the above; eg staccato artificial harmonic bending up to the note. All of these things will add variation to your playing, like adding garlic to your food. Without a good command of these aspects of playing guitar playing can be very dull.


4. Leave phrases unresolved. For example over an E minor chord you can end a phrase on an unresolved note such as C natural, or if you’re feeling really confident, F natural. This has the effect of leaving the phrase up in the air. I regard it as the musical equivalent of question mark. Every phrase doesn’t have to finish with a full stop.


5. Playing outside. Doesn’t have to be ugly sounding, but may be melodic and ‘pretty’ e.g. George Harrison on ‘Something’. When you play outside it’s especially important to play with a good tone and concentrate on playing coherently. The 60s Miles Davis Quintet (Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams) was the finest possible example of playing ‘outside’. While their playing was quite avant-garde at the time they still placed a high value on traditional musical values like playing great time with a great groove and swing and producing a pleasing tone.


6. Rewriting the melody. This way you leave your ego at home where it belongs and improvise in a very pure way, continuing the vibe of the melody, rather than interrupting it with an irrelevant stew of shred, sweeping, tapping and ‘hot licks’. It can be very easy to do; good music doesn’t have to be hard to play.

7. Playing in a band. The most important thing to remember about playing with other people is to listen at all times. If you don’t listen you’ll get too involved with the quality of your own playing which will then suffer as a result. Plus you won’t be much fun to play music with; it’s like the musical equivalent of talking to someone who’s not interested in what anyone else has to say and only wants to state their own opinions and ideas; people like that are boring to talk to, and no-one wants to be like that, so listen and concentrate on making the other people in the band sound good. This way you really take your attention off your own playing and it will improve drastically.

8. How to play passages that are technically difficult. Concentrate on breathing normally. If you take a deep breath before attempting a technically difficult passage of music there’s a good chance you’ll make mistakes. Breathe normally and you’re chances of playing the passage without mistakes increases hugely.

9. Transcribe solos. Transcribing solos is the most beneficial activity for any student musician. It’s the best possible ear training. It improves your notational ability. It’s good for your technique and, most of all you learn the ‘language’ of improvising. People sometimes worry that they will end up sounding like a copy of the musicians they are transcribing. There’s no need to worry about this; for example I transcribed lots of solos by Allan Holdsworth, Mike Stern and John Scofield and I sound nothing like those guys. However, learning their solos gave me a tremendous insight into the kind of things they play. And, most importantly for me, with every note I transcribed I felt the huge gulf between my ability and that of the great musicians I was transcribing grew a little smaller; this, in turn gradually gave me great confidence.
I also transcribed a few solos by non-guitarists, specifically trumpeter Miles Davis and tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. This was extremely beneficial as they naturally play things that no guitarist would ever think of, and this opened up my mind, my hands and my ears to many new ideas and made a huge impact on my phrasing and the types of ideas I came up with. In fact when I learned a couple of Miles Davis solos, this was a decisive step in my developing an original sound. My approach to melodic improvising and even the way I play melodies is more influenced by Miles Davis than any guitarist I have listened to.

10. It’s important not to be a musician 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Herbie Hancock recently said that ‘A musician is what I do, not what I am’. Being a 24-hour musician is not the way to become a great musician. I’m not advising you not to practise. Of course you need to practise very hard; I used to practise five-six hours per day, six days a week from when I was 19- 26 years old. Then I became too busy but I still managed to do four hours per day well into my thirties. Now I practise at least an hour a day, ideally 2 hours plus an hour of writing. However, it’s important to be a human being who happens to be a musician, rather than a musician who happens to be a human being.

For example, in my case, I like to help my son with his homework; when I’m doing this I’m not a musician; I’m a parent. When I take my wife out to a restaurant I’m not a musician; I’m a husband. When I’m chatting to my next-door neighbour I’m not a musician; I’m a neighbour and a friend. And because I approach life this way I have more energy for my music and I play better. And it prevents me from feeling like I’m always being dragged away from my music every time I do these things.

I’m still a devoted musician, but because I nurture the non-musical aspects of my life, have a solid stable life and, as a result I can really concentrate on my music. I remember Frank Zappa said something like’ If you want to be crazy, be crazy in the music’ and he went on to encourage musicians to create a stable, solid home life, in order to live really creatively.

Have a day off! A whole day. Don’t play the guitar, talk about the guitar or even think about it for a whole day. It’s guaranteed to make you play better If you’re in a relationship spend a whole day with your girlfriend or boyfriend couple of times a month and don’t even talk about music if possible. This will makes your music better and it helps you play better and prevents relationships from deteriorating due to neglect!

It’s good to take an interest in something outside of music. Regularly read books that are not about music; it will improve your music. Watch a film. Do some kind of sport.


11. It’s important to remember that the reason we create music is to make our world a better, more interesting place. Music is our contribution to society. A doctor’s contribution is to look after people’s health; a gardener’s contribution is to take create a calming, inspiring environment and our job is to make interesting music so that people can forget about their problems; everyone has problems; in the areas of health, relationships or money for example. Music enables the listener to forget about these things and to gather their strength to tackle their problems. I think that by looking at music in a broader way, rather than obsessing about guitar licks or other musical details all the time, we can create music of unbelievable power. This became really obvious to me when I saw a TV programme of BB King playing in various jails. Hardened criminals were breaking down crying and the music was clearly functioning as a release and a form of spiritual healing for these men who were suffering greatly. BB King was very clear about the purpose of the music; maybe this explains his greatness and enduring popularity.

12. Listen to lots of different music. Don’t just be the world’s leading authority on Pat Metheny, for example and never listen to anyone else. Whatever type of music you play make an effort to listen to all the different styles; soul, blues, jazz, rock, classical, folk, country, world music, anything you can think of. When you think about the leading musicians in any style of music, the originality of their influences is one of the things that sets them apart.
For example, in the world of rock, Led Zeppelin, Jeff Beck and Frank Zappa have shown obvious influence of Arabic and Indian music, as well as blues, jazz, classical, reggae and fusion music. Yet its integrity as rock music isn’t compromised, in fact it rocks even harder because of all these exotic ingredients.

It’s important to know your own idiom extremely thoroughly. If you’re a jazz guitarist, for example, you should be familiar with current guitarists like John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Pat Martino, Kurt Rosenwinkel, George Benson, John Scofield, Allan Holdsworth, Wayne Krantz, and younger guys like Mike Moreno and Jonathon Kreisberg. Apart from that you should know your history and be familiar with Kenny Burrell, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Christian, Eddie Lang, Django Reinhardt and Grant Green. And you should be familiar with jazz composers and masters of other instruments like Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Ben Webster, Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Gil Evans, Jimmy Smith, Ron Carter. Otherwise you have no foundation for your style.

13. Write and play your own compositions; the surest path to originality.

14. Recommended books;
The Advancing Guitarist; Mick Goodrick
Effortless Mastery; Kenny Werner