Guthrie Govan Discussion

[alexkhan]

I read a lot of things people say about Guthrie on forums besides this one and one respected jazz player commented that Guthrie is essentially an "inside" player. I thought that was an interesting comment. I thought about it some more and I do think there's some truth to it, even when Guthrie plays jazz or some more progressive "out there" or "forbidden" kind of stuff. Personally, I find that "inside" type of playing (or note choices) one of the reasons why I find Guthrie so listenable. I guess I am more of a rock guitar fan than a jazz or avant-garde guitar fan.

I love jazz and I'll, at times, get into pretty weird outside stuff every now and then, but most of the time, I want to hear consonance, not dissonance. The thing about Guthrie is that he can still get out just enough to not sound diatonic and more adventurous in his note choices but still sound like he's in. Even when Guthrie plays some really wacky stuff, he somehow still manages to sound "in". It's another distinctive trait of Guthrie's that naturally appeals to my listening sensibilities. Other faves of mine who seems to have this type of character in their note choices are Pat Metheny, Jeff Beck, Mike Landau, Greg Howe (although his last album 'Extraction' veers much more towards outside), Brett Garsed, amongst many others.

Guys who strike me as more "outside" are John McLaughlin, Allan Holdsworth, Buckethead, Scott Henderson, John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Wayne Krantz, Steve Tibbetts, amongst many others. Surely, both groups of names I mention can easily transition to the other, including Guthrie. But I'm talking more about their dominant "tonality", so to speak. It does seem that "outside" guys tend to get more "respect" because it's perceived as more advanced and perhaps it is. I know that I prefer something like a 60~70/30~40 mix - inside to outside. Any thoughts?
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Ed Yoon
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BOING Music LLC - Managing Partner
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[Javi]

That’s a very good point, Ed. I agree totally with you and I share the same feeling about Guthrie’s playing. It is an Inside-Outside guitarist. He seems to know when is the right time to trespass the boundaries between these two musical perceptions and combine them in a very clever formula to satisfy the most advantage listener and the most ignorant dumb.
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Javi

[dkaplowitz]

Is this a question of "playing outside" as much as it is a question of whether or not to have a lot of harmonic movement/control in your soloing? The guitarists you mentioned as being outside really aren't outside like Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, or the Bahia/Ohm/Ascension Coltrane were. Scott Henderson, John McLaughlin and John Scofield primarily (I don't know WK or Steve Tibbets) are pretty tonal, they just have a lot of harmonic movement in their playing.

I've heard Guthrie referred to as being diatonic too. And I've heard him lumped into the category of pattern players (which is where I believe Buckethead falls too). Pattern playing can be outside a lot, but isn't really quite the same as "playing outside" from an improvisational stance. Or at least, it's not playing outside and doing it with full knowledge that you want to use an altered dominant sound. It's like the patterns just happen to fall on altered dom. tonalities by mistake (sometimes in a cool way, sometimes in a bad, mechanical way).

I personally think, and this is just my opinion, that playing diatonically --during most of your solos-- shows some level of either harmonic immaturity or, if you're doing it on purpose, some level of being brain dead (The Kenny G factor). The same goes for pattern playing. I'm impressed if someone can cleanly play some ungodly amount of notes in the space of a single beat, but not impressed enough to listen to it over and over again because it's not music, it's patterns. It's athleticism (and I guess I'm just not a big sports fan, ultimately).

I think it takes a lot of great rhythmic control and skill with phrasing to pull off playing outside in a cool way. I think that's why guys like Scott Henderson and John Scofield get a lot of respect. They're almost more about feel and phrasing than just about anything else....and they've spent more time on that than chops -- which is why I think a lot of shred fans don't really "get" where they're coming from (because feel and phrasing are sometimes very subtle). Maybe I'm selling them short though, have you seen their videos (esp. SH's) about what scales to use over which chords? These guys know harmony inside and out. And shit, Sco played with Miles, who played with Bird and Trane for years. If Miles heard something in his playing, it probably wasn't just patterns.

But maybe it's just me. My ears are happiest when a line or a phrase sounds like it's a mini-composition in itself with tension and release that stands on its own. When I hear someone play more than two measures of one single tonality (even it it's full of 128th notes), my mind starts to get bored.
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[James W]

If you play so much outside it doesn't sound like 'outside' any more... this is made explicit when Arnold Shonburg (I know that's spelt incorrectly!) talked about 'the emancipation of dissonance' with his 12 tone technique... in other words, eventually the listener is going to aclimatise themself to whatever the person is playing; even the most dissonant things can end up sounding palatable. So I think Guthrie could make it sound more 'outside' if he does it scantily... also, if the harmonies he's playing over are very non-diatonic then copious amounts of outsidism isn't really necessary.

[Javi]

[frankus]

I had a reread of Guthrie's comments on playing outside, here:

http://online-discussion.dhenderson.com/GuthrieGovan/viewtopic.php?t=38

I think as he says there are numerous methods, I reckon he knows and has internalised those methods.. they do crop up in performances at the Bassment where it's a friendly audience and they're at ease to experiment.

I would say they're used a fair bit especially with the Mooger Fooger, it might sound atonal but it's hard to tell what is really being played, it could be quite pleasant

I think the "jazz notes" come out to shepherd the band along or make an amusing statement to his fellow performers.. just my opinion mind
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Fabulous powers were revealed to me the day I held my magic Suhr(d) aloft and said "by the power of great scale!"

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[alexkhan]

[Eisenbach]

[sumis]

great topic! jazz improvisation (minus the freest free jazz stuff) has always been based on patterns. it's a question of variating a certain amount of more or less fixed idioms. nothing wrong with that. that's the art of it, making it interesting despite limitations. actually, playing "inside" with a limited tonal palette, and making it interesting is hard! try to sound cool by playing strict c ionian over a c major vamp! (zappa does it great.)

the terms "inside" and "outside" sometimes seems to be a bit too relative to make sense. playing #f, #g, bB, #C, #D over a cmaj7 chord could certainly be described as outside playing in a way that makes sense. but often people refer to outside playing when they are talking about jazz improvisation, and more specificly: what people are playing over the V chord in a II, V, I progression. a lot of the tension in jazz is produced with and around the V7 chord, and the cool "outside" ideas and sounds often happpens here, but playing a whole tone scale, a diminished scale, or a phrygian dominat scale, or augmented arpeggios over a V7 going to Imaj7 IS NOT PLAYING OUTISDE, although it will have a lot of tension and sound "dissonant" to some.

when guthrie plays more straight jazz, he definitely has these idioms down (duh!) but also manages to be creative with it in a way that's rare among other players than those who have been concetrating on jazz. or at least rare among players with cool tappping and speed picking chops but to get back to Ed's initial topic: hell yeah guthrie is mostly an inside player, but not an uninteresting one. and yes, he uses licks, patterns and approaches to playing and constructing lines that reoccurs all the time, but HE HAS HIS OWN VERY IDENTIFIABLE STYLE and really manages to vary himself. i've only heard guthrie play in quite "domesticated" situations, pretty inside music. but considerning guthrie's eclecticism, i wouldn't be surprised to find him in a post derek bailey (r.i.p.) situation playing a one stringed suhr with a drumstick and making beautiful music out of it

[James W]

Following on from what Ed has said about the neoclassical style, I think there are a certain few points that distinguish authentic say, Baroque music (i.e. Bach) from a pastiche of it (i.e. Malmsteen).

For instance, whenever something non-diatonic comes into a pieces by Bach it is (more often than not) a sign that the music has modulated, and one of the main points of the music can become about the modulations; the length, smoothness and emotional impact of the modulations in a piece by Bach. This differs most conspicuously from the one modulation I have heard in Malmsteen's music - it was glaringly obvious and quite incongruous, and was in dramatic contrast to the (frequent) subtlety of authentic classical compositions.

And in fact, I think one could claim that classical music is totally not suited to the rock music setting - one of the deepest interests of classical music is the textural nuances, the contrapuntal interests and the dynamics. This is all lost in neoclassical rock music.

[sumis]

[dkaplowitz]

[alexkhan]

[iplayguitar]

This is an interesting topic. I think of all sounds, whether inside or outside the tonality, to be colors. But, though I play things that may be considered "out," I can hear everything that I'm doing. I think people who can't hear these outside colors, have trouble understanding or getting into music that has those qualities.
There are some players who utilize some of those colors for some of what they do, most of what they do, or none of what they do. Holdsworth does of the most beautiful inside and outside playing I've heard Mick Goodrick and I were once talking about Holdsworth, and he doesn't think of him as out player, citing Ornette, Leroy Jenkins, Anthony Braxton, and others who base most of their vocabulary on outside sounds.
I think Guthrie does play a lot "inside" things, but he has great ears, and so his solos are always melodic and seamless. He is a master of his own vocabulary.

[Javi]

I haven't got much knowledge about theorical music because most of my playing is by ear... One question, I don't know the historic roots of the most successful scale in the guitar music in the last times, the pentatonic scale, but Could have been this scale an outside pattern 300 years ago, something no familiar for the average ear in those times? Something dissonance? Just curiosity.
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Javi