These days, Ive been doing lots of research on Charlie Christian. Its very hard to find good/accurate info on him. I would like to produce an instructional video on CCs style, but I really want it to be accurate on every musical level. Ive seen a Hal Leonard production where the guy (good player) just plays the notes with a modern technique. It was quite superficial, and the comping was definitely not right. Im concentrating hard on getting the voicings right, its quite difficult because CCs timing was so precise that it blended perfectly with the drummer! Nowadays, when we think of jazz guitar, we think of a solo instrument, but back in the day, the guitar and the banjo were rhythm instruments. Its so clear that CC came from this culture, which, in my opinion, only improved his soloing. It seems, like Djangos accompanists, CC mainly used triads and basic 7th shapes. At this point its still hard to dertermine how many notes he was playing, but definitely two, I would wager even 3 (usually D, G, and B strings). There are pictures of him using his thumb to fret bass notes as well , so maybe 4 note voicings (or maybe hes using the thumb to mute the strings?) Technique wise, definitely lots of rest strokes, like Django Reinhardt. He rarely played fast, and the faster lines that he played were generally in ascending order, which goes hand in hand with the rest stroke technique. For rhythm playing, based on the very few pictures that exist, he seems to attack close to the neck pickup, (sounds that way too). And the sound is very reminiscent of mid/late 40s django, staccato but driving chunk-chunk-chunk feel. Ive been researching some of his influences as well such as Eddie Durham, check out this clip! Lots of Django style/Charlie Christian style ideas! Did Durham get stuff from Django? or the other way around? or also very likely, did some of those lines come from horn players ? I will have to investigate all this like the obsessive nerd that I am!!! https://youtube/watch?v=8URrC3vPE5c
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 03:57:48 +0000
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