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The Most Important Thing To Learn From Wes Montgomery

Wes is Amazing!

Pretty much every Wes Montgomery solo is a lesson in phrasing, and they are all small works of art that contain lots of fantastic and creative ideas. But how does it work?

When you are improvising and finding your way through the changes using scales and arpeggios then you probably don’t manage that, and that could be because you are not focusing on the right things.

Let’s take a look at some Wes solos and see if you can figure out what to practice to develop that aspect in your playing. The essence of it is surprisingly simple.

I’ll focus mostly on examples from fairly simple songs which you might already play, so that should make it easier for you to take these concepts and apply them to your own playing as well, but the first one is a really fast song with not very many chords.

Never Overplaying!

Notice how this is not a lot of long 8th note lines but instead short phrases and often with a lot of repetition:

Here’s the first A section

So there are a few 8th note lines but it is much more sparse a lot more  space, he is really digging into that tritone interval to get the m7(13) sound out there.

Then he starts very simple and turns that into a repeated phrase:

So short phrases, in fact just a single note, that he repeats and develops. You should notice how he is pretty free and even if the phrases are not incredibly complicated then they are not placed very predictably in the form which makes them more interesting.

For a listener that is not a giant Jazz nerd, then that is much easier to relate to as a listener since it is not so dense and not an information overload. In this case, Wes sticks to this approach throughout the solo. If you compare this to how Pat Martino plays the song then that is of course a pretty massive contrast, and Pat’s approach to improvisation is very different from Wes even if he certainly also checked out a lot of Wes’s stuff

And before the comment section explodes, don’t get me wrong, Pat Martino’s take on impressions is amazing and I really like it, but it is a very different take on it. The thing you want to keep in mind is that while you are learning to make your way through a chord progression and play lines that flow through the harmony in a natural way, then you also want to work on playing simpler,  melodic things as well so that you have more options.

#1 Making It Music

Listen to yourself

Often when you are new to learning Jazz then what you are playing becomes a never-ending stream of notes, but that is not really a melody. If you start working on making shorter statements and leave more space between them then you have time to listen to what you just played and then use that to decide what the next phrase should sound like.

This is in many ways the first step in learning to play what you hear because you give yourself room to actively listen for what you should play.

Give Your Solo An Arc

Being able to play shorter phrases also gives you a larger dynamic range since not playing in a solo often creates tension. Wes uses this incredibly well at the beginning of his solo on “No Blues” just starting with fairly basic Blues phrases with lots of space in between.

Example 2 – No Blues – Chorus 1 – first 8-9 bars

Focus On Rhythm

Another thing that is easier when you are working with shorter phrases is creating variation in the rhythm, something that Wes very clearly uses to great effect. Check out how takes this straightforward triad phrase:

and moves it around the bar in the solo on Missile Blues, which is a Blues in G, almost a Parker Blues.

He is first moving it around the bar and then starts to develop it further to continue in the progression. It is incredibly creative!

So a lot of this is not only about playing short phrases but also connecting and developing them so that they make sense and create a story for the listener. There are two ways to work on this that Wes employs in pretty much all of his solos. These two core techniques for creating melodies are probably in all great solos, but Wes is really good at using them!

#2 Call-Response

Usually, we Call-response in music is a way to describe how two parts of an ensemble communicate, so for example how Muddy Waters has a conversation with the band answering each of his phrases:

But you can also use this way of thinking to connect phrases in a solo, often connected to some motivic development which I will also give you examples of later. Wes uses this very often. In this example, it serves as a way to deal with the repeating harmony in Satin Doll and lets him develop the phrases from bar to bar:

Here you can hear a clear call at the beginning, and then he turns around the melody to make that sound more like an answer then moves up the original phrase and plays a variation on that followed by a different answer.

Another way that Wes uses Call-Response in his phrases is to use either octaves or chords to have two layers. You can hear an example of this in The No Blues Solo where he uses different short blues phrases and then makes them call response with a single octave hit. Simple but effective!

This approach could be a good way to start because either on a Blues like this or with another song where you can easily add an octave hit every 2 or 4 bars. You can find quite a few examples of Wes doing this, in a recent video I covered one from The version of Four On Six off the incredible jazz guitar album (album cover maybe sheet music)

#3 Motivic Development

Call response is one of the major ways to connect phrases, but another equally important technique to develop, one that also depends on you being able to play solid short phrases or statements is Motivic Development, something that is often associated with classical and film music like Leit motifs

But it is a major part of how Wes works with melodies as well, even if he actually goes about it in a different way very often.

What makes Wes different

The first part of Motivic development is having a motif. And you have already heard a few examples of how Wes repeats phrases as he did in Impressions,  and here is another great example from Satin Doll:

What is different here is that Wes does have a motif, but he is actually not really using motivic development, and just repeating the melody, only changing it he needs to fit it to the chords.

This is probably better described as a riff than as motivic development. I suspect that he got this from listening to swing music which is more common. In later styles, like Bebop there is a lot less repetition and the focus in the music is on another type of energy. But he doesn’t keep it as a riff, and instead uses those first repetitions to set up our expectations Then he develops the motif before playing another phrase as an end to this chapter of the solo. Check it out!

This way of connecting phrases across complete sections of the song is a really strong way to have more of a story happening in the solo

and is also often everything that is missing for beginner players when they have just reached the skills needed to play a solo over chord changes without getting lost or playing a lot of wrong notes. It is important that you don’t get stuck zooming in on what happens on each chord and instead also hear what the entire solo sounds like.

The Exercises That You Need For This

If you want to develop this aspect of your playing then there are exercises that you can start working on and ways to think about the music that will help you develop that skill. But the first thing that you want to do is of course to start recognizing it in the music. It is ear-training just like learning licks by ear, you are just listening for a different structure. The other exercises that will help you get more flexible with both motivic development and call-response are more improvisation based and if you want to get started with that then check out this video that covers some thoughts on how you can start working with shorter phrases in a creative way. Just like Wes!

Why They Sound Better Than You Every Time!

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3 Reasons Wes Montgomery Is Amazing And Worth Checking Out

Wes Montgomery is the father of modern Jazz guitar, but it was not because he played with his thumb or used octaves. This video explores what is truly amazing about his playing.

Discovering Wes

There are not that many recordings that made such a huge impact on me that I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard them the first time, but it is amazing when you have that experience. My classical guitar teacher, Morten Skott, had suggested that if I wanted to learn Jazz then I should listen to Wes Montgomery, so I went from that lesson down to the record store and bought a Verve compilation on my way home.

The first tracks didn’t really resonate with me, and especially the string orchestra and big band were not what I expected. I was used to Parker playing with small groups and Scofield playing trio or quartet.

I guess it was the blues that really made the difference for me when I got to the last track on the album, the thumb. My way into Jazz was really coming through blues, I had the same thing with Parker where I completely got, KC Blues, Now’s The Time, and Au Privave but a piece like Donna Lee that I had heard of as being very famous just sounded random and chaotic to me.

The Thumb, is Wes playing in a trio with Ron Carter and Grady Tate, and the track is a masterclass in phrasing and Jazz tradition. Wes makes the trio sound like a big band and really relies as much on swing and blues tradition as he does on bebop harmony, again not unlike Charlie Parker.

It Is Not Playing Octaves With Your Thumb

To me, the essential lessons you learn from Wes are not about playing with your thumb, using octaves, or playing chord solos. Those are really great techniques, but they are just techniques. I think there are much more important things to learn and get into your own playing than focusing on those.

Now, If that offends you then feel free to relieve your anger in the comments, down below.

These discussions with only playing Wes line with your thumb and Django only used two fingers. To me, it doesn’t really make sense, but I guess for hardcore Django fans there is only one way to go…

At the same time if you listen to people like Robin, Christiaan and Mikko then I think have all fingers seems work too.

For the rest, you will probably agree with everything else I say in this video and I have one influence on Wes that I think is seriously overlooked, but I’ll get back to that later.

#1 Not Afraid To Keep It Simple

One of the things that Wes does really well is to make every note count, and he doesn’t rely on using many notes very often.

You can see examples of this in how Wes often uses quarter note with a single note, like this phrase from Four On Six:

and it is common when he plays octaves like this example from the thumb:

In this example from the Thumb, he is actually ignoring the changes and just playing the root for almost 4 bars which is also not that common in Jazz.

You also want to notice that he might be playing one note and only play quarter notes, but he is still playing with dynamics adding an accent to 2 and 4 to lock in with the groove.

#2 The Power Of Short Phrases

Compared to a lot of other great improvisers then Wes plays a lot of short phrases, especially if you compare him to a lot of other Bebop and Hardbop guitarists, but that is also one thing that he uses to make his solos so incredibly melodic and often also incredibly groovy.

Wes will play short melodic ideas and he is a master at tying them together in very creative ways:

In this example, he starts out with call-response between a lower and a higher melody.

Then this is turned into a descending arpeggio motif that he takes through the shifting II V’s

And you can easily hear how the shorter phrases are connected to each other and develop tying the entire segment together as a complete piece of music. Again not playing more notes than needed.

Side-note: If you know your Wes solos, then you will probably notice that I am using fragments from both the Incredible Jazz Guitar version and the Smokin’ at the half note version. This last one was from Smokin at the half note.

Another example of how he employs Call response is from the other recording of four on six:

Here you have a very clear call with octaves and then the response with the arpeggio melody.

Again the idea is that we recognize one part and hear the other part change

The most important aspect of this is that it ties the whole solo together, he is not just playing from one note to the next. He is playing phrases that are related to each other, and often this ties together longer periods like 8 or 16 bars.

I think this is a huge part of what Pat Metheny describes as “melodic clarity” when he talks about how Wes influenced him in the interview on Alex Skolnick’s podcast “Moods and Modes”. If you haven’t heard that then go check it out, it is certainly worth listening to, both for Pat being an amazing musician, but also for Alex’s really useful perspective and explanations that tie together the whole thing.

#3 Repetition Legitimizes

Another thing that is closely related to the short phrases that Wes also really takes advantage of very often is using riffs. In the Thumb he repeats a two-note figure that really comes across as a part of a big band shout chorus:

Example 5

Essentially he plays the same melody with the same rhythm and only changes things to fit the chord progression.

The use of quarter note rhythms and drop2 voicings also really helps to bring the big band vibe.

The Secret to Wes’ Phrasing?

There is one influence on Wes that is rarely mentioned but is clearly very important.

This example is almost a direct quote of the shout chorus riff in Count Basie’s Splanky, and usually we talk about Wes being inspired by Charlie Christian, and you can hear Parker licks in his playing quite often, but you have to remember that he was also growing in a period where popular music was Big Band Swing, and those types of melodies and that type of phrasing is not getting the credit it deserves for being a part of his playing.

Splanky is off the legendary Count Basie album Atomic Basie, and if you want to improve your phrasing and learn to think in shorter riff like phrases in your solos then learning a few of those melodies and playing them along with this amazing big band is probably not the worst idea in the world.

Another example of a similar big band inspired riff is found in his solo on Nica’s Dream, again using rhythm and drop2 voicings to make it really stand out:

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Wes Montgomery – How to make Simple sound Amazing

This Wes Montgomery Guitar Lesson is breaking down parts of the solo on Four on Six. This version is from the album: “The Incredible Jazz Guitar”. What makes Wes a great improviser and jazz guitarist is not that he played octaves or chord solos. There are other aspects of his playing that are the reason that we consider him the most important jazz guitarist in modern jazz.
This video goes over 5 aspects of his playing that you can easily work on in your own guitar solos. I think really defines what is great about his playing.

If you want to check out another Wes Montgomery Lesson then have a look at this lesson:
Wes Montgomery – This is What Makes Him Amazing

Content:

0:00 Intro Wes Montgomery – Four On Six

0:10 5 Simple Things in Wes’ Style

0:53 Four on Six and The Incredible Jazz Guitar of WM

1:22 #1 Just use the arpeggios (and make great melodies)

3:32 #2 Don’t be afraid to Use Repeated Notes (Groove and Melody)

5:24 What are the things you love about Wes Montgomery? Leave a comment

5:50 #3 Motifs and Call-Response melodies

8:05 #4 Dynamics within the Solo lines

9:28 #5 Do You Have The Blues?

11:26 Like the video? Check out my Patreon Page!

Want to develop you Chord Solo Chops?

One of the most interesting and impressive aspects of Wes Montgomery’s playing is his chord solos. If you want to develop your own skills with chord solos you can do this here:

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The PDF with examples for this video is available through Patreon. You can check out my Patreon Page here: https://www.patreon.com/jenslarsen

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If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics then please let me know. Leave a comment on the video or  send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make them fit what you are searching for.

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