The Allman Brothers Band celebrated their 45th anniversary in 2014, retiring for good with one final series of concerts. Along with the Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band was one of the most influential groups in bringing extended, jazz-like improvisation to the world of rock music.The ABB Brothers were heavily influenced by Miles Davis (a previous topic of this page) in particular and his landmark modal-jazz album Kind of Blue. The early years of the Allman Brothers Band featured two keyboardists who are now legends in their own right: lead singer and organist Gregg Allman, who founded the band with his brother Duane in the late 1960s, and Chuck Leavell, who was brought in after Duane's death when the group decided that it wouldn't feel right to replace Duane with another guitarist. However, this is one of those days when I feel like talking about another (former) member of the group: founding guitarist Dickey Betts. In my mind he holds two distinctions. He is a consistently interesting and highly melodic soloist, and one of the great instrumental composers in classic rock. Dickey Betts epitomizes a couple of things that are familiar if you spend enough time studying the great composers and soloists. He uses the same materials (scales, arpeggios, rhythms) as everyone else, but he finds a way to make them sound fresh and personal. He is also a model for the use of motif and repetition as a soloist. Dickey's solos are the same mix of major and minor pentatonic scales as most rock and country guitarists, with blues scales and diatonic scales (major and minor) mixed in where appropriate. When you listen to his solos though, the first thing you should notice is how all of them start with a small, usually catchy melodic idea. Rather than just drifting from one line to another, Dickey will repeat this two or three times before moving on to a new idea, usually an expansion (branching the last repeat off into a new line) or alteration of the previous one. The same ingenuity that turns up in his solos also informs Mr. Betts's compositions. His themes are a mix of soulful melody and lively rhythms, repeated and varied in a manner similar to his improvised solos. Dickey has said that Django Reinhardt is one of his biggest influences, and that "Jessica," probably his best-known composition, is a direct tribute to Django Reinhardt that was written using only two (index and middle) fingers on his fretting hand. Dickie's personal style also includes the use of some lovely 7th and 9th chords, no doubt drawn from his love of jazz. For an introduction, I recommend "Jessica", "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed", and the under-appreciated "High Falls." I would also recommend his songs "Ramblin' Man" and "Blue Sky," both of which show the same melodic craftsmanship and ingenuity as are found in his instrumental compositions. Lessons to take from Dickey Betts: when improvising or composing, don't be afraid to repeat an idea two or three times before moving on to the next one. Furthermore, make sure that your idea or lick is catchy in its own right, rather than just randomly running up or down a scale and then repeating it. Feel free to mix in country, blues, and hot jazz lines over modern jazz chords if it makes sense to *you*. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBFEyf-N9Pw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rQWh62VUHE When learning to play things correctly from the beginning, it's important to not only learn the correct notes, but also to establish a consistent fingering that is both comfortable and efficient for those notes. I have a student who was able to play the C major scale but did so by learning to play the first 5 notes in with the five fingers of her right hand, and then flipping her hand over to continue playing them with her middle ring and pinky fingers for the last 3 notes. The fact that she could play that pattern in such a fluid manner was impressive, but it's also a perfect example of a motion that would become more and more difficult at faster tempos due to the excessive hand movement.
Memorizing an inefficient fingering, or memorizing different fingerings because a passage is played multiple ways by the student when they practice it, will inevitably lead to extra brain power being devoted to playing those passages when they are played in performance. This goes double for situations where the student is improvising, or a passage is being played at faster speeds and there is very little time to think twice about which finger should be playing which notes. If your piece has a fingering written out, I would stick to it unless it is uncomfortable for your hand size or there are clear problems with it that have slipped by the arranger or editor (this can happen). If you need to determine your own fingering, find a pattern that requires the least amount of crossing and lateral hand movement. The basic major and minor scale fingerings are a great place to start. Don't be afraid to experiment or alter the sequence if a weaker finger is doing too much work, but make sure that you decide on something and stay with it unless you discover problems later on. It may take a little while at first, but once you learn the basic principles and determine what works best for your hand it will go much more quickly in the future. [Improvisation is the one exception to this rule. Ideally, you'll have practiced set fingerings for lines and patterns that you plan to use as the basis for your improvisations. However, if you're playing one of those lines in connection with different material, or improvising new material from scratch, you'll have to adapt on the spot. Free improvisation is a great exercise for training your fingers to keep up with your brain. ] |