Was Jerry Garcia a Jazz Improviser?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 8 ส.ค. 2018
- In memoriam of one of the greatest musicians of all time, Jerry Garcia 8/1/1942-8/9/95.
Video transcript: amarguitar.com/song-studies/j...
Free ebook on improvisation: amarguitar.com/mastering-pent... - เพลง
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Miles wasn't exactly know for sugarcoating his opinions so the fact that he had something nice to say about him speaks volumes.
that's for sure. he didn't mince words.
Miles Davis dealt with & talked about him like a peer & yeah, from such a straight shooter, it was all high praise.
True Dat
I'm with the other people in here that just watched to see Jerry's playing broken down. I don't care what you label him as or what you think of him, he touched my soul with his playing
isn't that what's all about?
Completely agreed. I, myself, am an example of how Jerry did/will continue to inspire creativity in musicians for the next several decades at least. I was born the same year they stopped and didnt pick up my first instrument (drums) until I was 13. With guitar, I didn't even pick that one up until I was 16. Then it'd be a couple years before I'd understand guitar enough to get inspired by a musician like Jerry.
We're talking over a decade and and a half after his last year, which was already 6 years after they released NEW music, musicians are still being heavily influenced by his artistry. That's truly special, man.
Those artists will go on to inspire the next few generations, and so on. All thanks to this man.
Great point. The last thing anyone can or should try to do is put Jer bear in a box musically speaking
The greatest musicians all know that music is best experienced when the vibe is one participation of musicians and audience alike and the music become a conduit for human energy to merge and reach an exponentially high magnitude or compounding the total sum of energy
Jerry was and always will be the greatest. There is no musician that could attract fans to travel across the country year after year to experience his masterful guitar playing and singing. Jerry played at a level no one else could ever do. He brought you to different levels of consciousness and allowed you to fully escape lifes daily struggles. Jerry was both humble and not fully able to comprehend what he did for so many people. When I met Jerry at an airport in Portland Oregon in the summer of 83, I told him I had just flown in from nyc to see the band play. I told him, I look forward to the show that night and he responded, me too, I hope its good. I asked Jerry to play St Stephen and he said they hadn't worked on it. Fall tour, about 2 months later, the Dead played St Stephen at Madison Square Garden in NYC.
I was the most thrilled man in the world. Thank you Jerry. Love you forever.
To me Jerry was a guy that played jazz, bluegrass,country, blues and Rock N Roll without belonging exclusively to any of them. He was also a singer songwriter with his own style.His collaboration with Robert Hunter is more to the point than any particular guitar style he used. I love Jerry for the songs. From Bird Song to Terrapin to Friend of the Devil and on. He also once characterized Jazz fusion as music for musicians which is kind of true though I like some of it in doses. Jerry was an American original.
As a drummer who will always treasure the pleasure of rehearsing and performing with Amar, I am in awe of my musical brother who brings consistency, creativity and professionalism to everything he does. I miss you my friend. Your commitment to musical excellence inspires me. Best.
Your analysis vids seriously are the best. 10/10 right here man
I can’t express my gratitude for this video. I’ve been struggling to connect the theoretical concepts in theory with creating music and this helped merge jazz with a more rock/bluegrass-centered solo approach for me
And of course there's the dynamics of his playing and its percussive feeling. Often in Jerry's solos you can discard the actual notes and rhythmically tap the melodic line. The fact he also infuses percussive playing with dynamics (loud/soft) to emphasize notes in irregular places means the melodic sense has more presence. Even when in a straight rock idiom, you'll find these characteristics in his playing. That doesn't come for free and it's a sign of a dedicated musician. There's room for everyone - we don't need snobs :)
Wow, this was one of the more interesting breakdowns I've seen. Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful presentation.
Absolutely brilliant breakdown. I'm so you do these videos. You're not getting the types of view you deserve. You're a gem to the community, thank you so much man.
Amazing, Fantastic video. Extremely well put and explained.
I'm so grateful for this channel.
This is great! I love the analysis that shows the thought process behind the choices . Brilliant as usual
This video is fantastic, thank you so much for the effort you put in to produce it! I learned a TON. Awesome.
So well done Amar!!
This is awesome. Thank you for sharing this work.
EXCELLENT video. Perfectly contextualized and seamlessly put together. Thanks.
I’ve watched the video about 50 times. It keeps getting better. Amazing job
One of the most interessant video on the Jerry's playing ! Thanks a lot to give us the chance to approach those concepts !
Man! Thank you for taking the time to break this down! Great video!
Great video as usual! Thank you so much I always look forward to your videos they help me so much.
Great video. Love Jerry, he's one of my favorites.
Love this in depth look. Very insightful. Now I need to go listen to more jazz!!
Excellent analysis and production!
Fantastic lesson. A very simple but powerful breakdown of these concepts.
Amar - INCREDIBLE lesson. Absolutely amazing.
Each of your videos are masterpieces, in and of themselves.
Good to have you back.
This video is truely brilliant, not only does it help understand the style of the great Jerry, but it gives out so much indications on how to improvize and how to apply theory to your own guitar playing. As a medium level guitar player who probably knows more theory than he can apply I was just amazed at what I found here! Thank you very much for that! Keep up the amazing work!
Thank you Amar for tabbing out, playing,and explaining the solo to they love each other! It's one of my favorite dead songs! Respect to you and your dedication to understanding why Jerry was so good and why we love the Grateful Dead so much ❤️!!!
more videos please. love this channel. thanks.
There are 3 types of guitarists. The ones who know the math , and the one's who don't.
This comment reminded me of a page I found with jokes about actuaries. Hilarious and dry!
Wheres the third one
Hahahahahahaha
✌️🐢🥀
@@gratefuldead2379 help
Those that understand the math, and those that don't! Bobby D was making the joke he is of the variety of not knowing the math. Sometimes things are formulaic, other times it's apart of the flow.
Fantastic. Jerrys virtuosity will be marveled over forever. A true artist. I love hearing people that get it nerd out over his brilliance. Big ups!
Really great video. The analyzation was clear and made good sense. Plus. I love Jerry and jazz!!
Keep em comin man .. this is great stuff..
This is a good video with good insight. Thanks!
absolutely great video ! thanks
This was great! Subscribed.
Love it as usual!
Such an under-rated channel
Another amazing video!
Great!! Never seen anything like this before, man! Keep it up!
Amazing as usual
I'm glad somebody finally put this out there. Being a Grateful Dead fan myself and also being a musician who knows how to read music. I am old enough to have had the luck to have seen Jerry live three times. He definitely, most certainly does Jazz runs all the time.
Amazing breakdown.
Awesome content dude!
Masterfully done! This was immensely eye-opening. Love the Bubbles .gif lmao!
Great video, thank you so much! The art of soloing is made much more clear to me here!
This is awesome! Well done sir.
Always loved that Ruben Blades jam.. Jerry looked so happy... everybody did
i really enjoy your videos dude thank you!
awesome post...thank you!
Well done video! Love the Dexter comparison.
Music doesn't need to be complex to be effective. Simple Music can be very effective.
I would agree and site Ravel's 'bolero' as an example.
Very nicely explained, sir.
Wow man...this blows my mind...as a huge dead fan..and a guitar hobbyist....thanks for sharing this dude.
Well done, even when Garcia is playing a jazz tune he brings his style to it without losing either the essence of the tune nor the essence of his unique artistry. It's not just anyone out there who gets to make music with multiple jazz legends blues legends,R&B and rock legends,bluegrass and folk legends as well as world music legends and have the respect of all those masters of different styles as an equal! Garcia had that rare gift of being highly intelligent, musically adventurous,with sharp ears and an open minded spirit.
Thanks, I found this video very helpful in trying to understand Jerry's playing.
Amar, that was awesome and really interesting. I don't know which is better, your guitar playing or video editing...Well done. bret
Fantastic video Amar! And it’s nice to see you back.
I can say that most of my jazz musician friends detest Garcia, and the whole “jam band” scene altogether. And while I disagree with them, of course, I understand where they’re coming from when I consider their (narrow) perspective. As for me, I appreciate improvisation across the whole musical spectrum, and I feel that Garcia has created his own unique world. There are various jazz elements in his playing no doubt, but I wouldn’t consider him a jazz player. Even though he can tackle playing within various sub-genres of jazz as evident in his playing with David Grisman and on the Hooterroll album. Some arguments I’ve heard (not that I agree with all, but they’re worth considering): He doesn’t swing. He has limited use of chromaticism. His reoccurring licks are less derived from jazz and more from bluegrass, blues, and country. He “celebrates” sloppiness, especially rhythmically. Harmonically Dead songs are more simplistic than jazz tunes, especially after reharmonization. If you compare and analyze Garcia with modern jazz guitarists such as Pat Metheny, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Joe Morris, or Bill Frisell we can understand how the mindsets are completely different when improvising. But at the same time it’s extremely worthwhile and educational to look at the elements of jazz that are present in Garcia’s playing and his approach to improvisation. That’s where this amazing video comes in! Always looking forward to your next video!
Beautifully put, Marcus, I really couldn’t have said it any better
Garcia did pretty much nothing BUT swing, even in the simplest of all tunes. His playing was dripping with "jazz" rhythmically, note selection and harmonically at times. He couldn't help it, was in his bones. Also, the tenor of your comment insinuates that "jazz" was something he couldn't quite attain, and possibly as if jazz is on a superior level. And I'm writing this as someone, though growing up loving Garcia and the Dead, am much more into blues myself, and also jazz. If Jerry had wanted to, he could've been all over jazz in a traditional sense, or what was "modern" jazz in his time. He had way more taste however in my view in respect to what was unfortunately happening to jazz and jazz guitar in the 70s, as it was then losing soul and becoming more technical and less attached to the blues.
Exactly 0 of your jazz musician friends are even well-known enough to be detested by anyone but themselves, because they never achieved any level of greatness except in the jealousy department! Kudos to you all!
Everyone in this thread: you're preaching to the choir here. I have personally tried showing a number of examples of Garcia's playing to the jazz musicians mentioned. The only problem I have here is Joshua Daniel's comment. Being famous has nothing to do with being a master musician. In fact, the jazz players I mentioned are top players in every respect. Their only flaw is not digging Garcia :)
@@amarguitar eeeeeeeeeeeew why the hell do you have to bring child molester from phish onto a dead video> ?? wtf! you phish fans are fuckin insufferable !!! we dont care about phish ! we dont give a crap about someone from phish opinion about jerry..he has no right to an opinion..he plays in a lame jam band that jumps on trampolines singing about lizards for christ sakes ! i am going to download this and delete the intro w phish right out !
Top notch, man. You're lifting the hood, in an accessible way, on things that seem like magic to someone who is only a hobbyist musician
Jerry was absolutely a terrific jazz improviser! His work on jams like King Solomon’s Marbles and Eyes of the World prove this. Not to mention his work with Merl Saunders!
Some of favorite examples of what you alluded to are found in the extended jams of Playin’ in the Band. And each era offers a different feel around the Dm chords that Bob would play in the background.
Great video, thanks. I learnt a lot about Jerry and a lot about jazz.
Great subject & video
I started playing guitar about 14 years ago and was really into great players like Jimmy Page, Alex Lifeson, and of course Hendrix. I really loved their technical side of playing and still do to this day. Jerry Garcia however imo of course had something special that I just cant put my finger on. When i Listen to songs like Morning Dew on Europe 72 it gives me a certain amazing feeling that i just dont get with other players. His playing is just plain magical. Its the feeling i get when i listen to the dead that really sets the band and Jerry apart from all the rest.
Jerry floats above jazz, leaving the snobs and close-minded theorists (not all jazz players) beneath him. Also, he wrote some freakishly harmonically rich tunes (Terrapin Station Suite, Help on the way, Slipknot, among others). I know this wasn't intended to be a "whose better" video but anyone who pooh-poohs Jerry Garcia musically is either one of the aforementioned snobs or just hasn't heard anything beyond Truckin' LOL.
All Blues and So What by Miles Davis only have 3 chords and are considered two of the biggest and most influential jazz standards of all time.
@ I'm unsubscribing - …...Said the dipshit troll who obviously has never looked at or understood any Dead music much less tried to play it. Much of it is far beyond standard 3 chord rock with interesting timings, inverted chord progressions, complex bridges, etc. Talk to us once you've mastered playing through the bridge section of Estimated Prophet in the proper 7/4 time.
Hey there "I'm unsubscribing," You've never listened to Terrapin Station or Slipknot have you, troll?
@@edm781 Right even the Dead had trouble playing Phil's stuff live!
@@bradenwright2586 Seastones. WTF was that anyway? Lmfao.
(~);}
You are right with this. An old Jazz musician tried explaining this to me years ago (he's gone now), but I played some of Garcia's jazz to him and he was shocked, because he had heard mainly Dead tunes without jazz influence. There are few musical geniuses out in the world who make their mark, Garcia and alot of those he chose to play with were in that class. Thanks Josh. People need to be reminded of Garcia's other musical achievements.
Very nice analysis! I've know quite a few people over the years I would have like to have shared this with!
Lightbulb moment! 💡Thank you.
Thank you!
Of course he was! This is a fantastic music lesson. Thanks
Awesome tutorial!!!
Thanks for this.
Awesome video Amar! What a breakdown of TLEO. I love Jerry just as much as all my jazz guitar hero’s. Mike Stern is a player ive looked up to since i was 16. I like to think every player in their own likeness adds a different element. I LOVE garica grisman version of “so what”. So cool, a very different garcia. A lot of the deads improv could be considered jazz, or fusion, just not in the traditional sense. I love it either way. Thank you so much for posting.
Great video. Jerry was a big fan of Django I have heard, and can ben heard in his playing.
That was wonderful. He is someone to admire for his creativity, even though I'm not much into the genre he played in. We must keep an open mind :^)
so happy for the inclusion of 5/8/77's tleo, i always thought it was underrated and it's been one of my favorites for years
5/8/77 is honestly the most overrated show in the dead's career
Jerry playing is more than just notes up and down ...the dynamics! Loud and soft and feeling !
Yeah that’s just b.s. from people who don’t know much. People say stoner music, when anyone who plays and who’s ever been high knows that music was INVENTED by stoned people
Jerry absolutely understood how to explore every possible nuance in his improvisations. People who have never tried playing a guitar improvisation would never understand how brilliant Jerry was. Of course anyone can be reductive to a player like Jerry, but it was a style that was both challenging and a beautiful thing to witness. Take songs like She Belongs to Me or Blues For the Rainforest and you can see just how incredible Jerry could explore a melody. Many guitar players used devices without real emotional content, where as Jerry rarely played anything that was rote scale runs, he really avoided playing mechanically. He was never playing fast for its own sake, but looking for the most lyrical melodic tones to his solos. He definitely put some bluegrass country feel into a version of rock and jazz. He let all that flow into his style. This is why we discuss him to this day, and he left countless taped improvisations that we can still marvel about. He was able to never just become a robotic rehasher, but instead a dynamic improviser in a world of by the book rock bands.
Music theory is a foreign language to me, but this beautiful presentation was fascinating and gave me newfound appreciation.
Great video! I’m listening now to his former group with Merl Saunders and John Khan, “Reconstruction” . The members must have all wanted to take a dive into a more jazz derivative of rock n roll.
Very nice little lesson for amateur players like me, who've been around for a long time, but have never ventured very far into the true nature of jazz, which is melody. A simple session like this is a nice reminder for me, that guitar playing can - and should - strive to be more melodic. Thx.
Great harmonic analysis. He left such a wealth of improvisational flights that would be fascinating to break down like this...hard to know where to start. Inspecting the elements doesn't take away from the magic--listeners just do the same thing that the players do--in the sense that (the best) players forget about all the notes, scales, rules, etc., in order to _make_ music, listeners do the same when they _appreciate_ music.
excellent job ! All I know not many players not even some of the greats have a identifiable unique sound like garcia
I really miss Amar’s insights and new explorations from this channel.. sad it’s been left behind
Jerry (to me) had the greatest ear and intuition in rock music. Blows my mind how people break it down mathematically like that... I think he was just lettin it rip, but it could certainly go far deeper... All I have is my ear so even more humbling seeing things explained like this. Wish we could ask him now ...
bam boom wow , thanx man, that was very very well done
Great video :)
Nice video thank you , touching , I'll take a simple C to G & feel brand new about it !
He was one of if not the most melodic soloists in all of rock music. That is what amazes me the most about his playing, the way he approaches his lines not from a scales or modes or even really chord progressions although this latter approach would be the best way to describe the foundation of his solos. Jerry definitely does what all master improvisers do...he emotes in a way that uses the discipline of years spent learning and practicing music theory and the freeness of storytelling and conversation. The the rhythm section and chord progress provide the setting and punctuation but Jerry Garcia’s solos tell as much of the story as Robert hunters lyrics. I can picture what jack straw looked like (an outlaw biker who escapes hoping to get revenge on the man betrayed him before the law catches up to him) at the end of the day you can play any note you want or any combination there of some compliment each other others clash and in between perfect harmony and cacophonous dissonance there is a world of emotions which can be described musically with so much more detail and subtlety than they can be with words or even pictures (although when all three are combined in an inspired way the effect can be so powerful it almost feels like you are there experiencing the story along with the characters in it) was Jerry a jazz player? Well if by jazz player you mean someone who has such a command and familiarity with their instrument and 12 tone equal temperament that they can tell a story with their instrument as easily as they can with words...being fluent in the language of music...in such a way that it can evoke a very specific emotion as unique as a character in a book or movie...then yes he was. I prefer to say he was a professional musician who had come as close to mastery of his instrument and “musical voice” as any one has.
nice T-shirt,I love wearing my same one too.I started to listen to Jazz because I had heard Mr.Garcia was influenced by Jazz players.That led me to a lot of great music.If Mr.Garcia had not played the way he did, I don't think I would have been so intrigued with his music.excellent video
loved watching him play from '72 at Kesey's creamery through the eighties with Merl Saunders.
wow. what a concept ...
come back to us Amar...everyday I look for a new upload
another few years and this might make sense for me :D
I’ve only been playing for 2 years and don’t understand all this theory stuff but enjoyed this video!
I seem to recall a quote from Garcia regarding his admiration for a jazz horn player, I believe it was Coltrane. He goes on to say how it was his goal and focus to play his guitar in the same fashion as a jazz horn player. Such a unique and idiosyncratic player and songwriter, and he was truly a blesssing to "popular music" (using the term rather loosely) of the last 100 years.
expert analysis, i really enjoyed it....so nice to see the greater "outside world" grokking on Jerry's unique style... you touched on it, too often people dismiss his musicianship based on misperception or stereotypes (or something?)...when studied objectively his body of work is very original and sophisticated. there's a reason why jazz players and icons like the guys mentioned in your video take garcia seriously. ornette coleman didn't sit in or record with scrubs.
I have always sensed a close association between Jerry's technique and jazz (as well as R&B) but your analysis did a nice job articulating how he did it. Garcia pulls out the melody a bit more than a lot of jazz players, but the influence and jazz presence is undeniable. I believe I will now immerse myself in some of Jerry's finest work this evening- I'm thinking something from '74