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You've pretty much depicted my approach too, Mark. Play with all fingers...just pop the chord once, and only three note voicings...you don't need any more than that. Heck, most jazz piano players drop the root and fifth anyway, which leaves the 3rd, 7th, 9th, 11th, 13th, and any of the altered tones (b9, #9, b5, #5) to choose from. And to be quite honest, the soloist should be driving what alteration and coloration that the comper uses anyway (that is, if he is a good soloist and the rhythm section knows how to listen and support the him/her). Hence, in a looping context, if you are looping your own bass lines/comping, then you shouldn't use any radical coloration or alternation (just 7ths, 9ths, and an occastional 13th), otherwise, either you are asking for some major tonal conflict when you solo, or you are dictating what alteration your solo should include before you even do it. Hence, if you keep your comping basic, you can do anything with your improvised solo and it will sound good. If you start altering your comping and loop it, then you've painted yourself into a harmonic corner. Intereseting that you use the 3rd and 6th...that was Freddie Green's approach to big band guitar comping...most all his voicings were that simple, because the guitar in a traditional big band was not meant to be heard, but felt and in support of the rest of the rhythm section. That's just one approach though..whenI played in an 18 piece jazz big band, I went crazy with my voicings, otherwise I would have died of boredom. ...fun stuff. Kris ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Smart" <mwsmart@insightbb.com> To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com> Sent: Saturday, February 03, 2007 7:52 PM Subject: Re: Joe Pass-like looping rendition of Autumn Leaves (on YouTube) > Wow, very cool clip...a man after my own heart! I was just jamming with >a > friend > at the music store on jazz tunes today and we played this tune. > > Okay, this is going to be a long post... > > I like to do the walking bass + chords thing and have been working on it > for > many years. The guy in the clip is REALLY good at it, I'm impressed. >BTW, > that > guitar is the Ibanez Pat Metheny, great guitar. > > There are a lot of different approaches. Jack Grassel has a whole book > about it > called "Big Ax". His approach uses a LOT of notes, playing the bass line > with > the pick and then using three fingers to play all three-note chords >above > the > bass line. > > When I started working on this in about 1990, I first did everything >with > the > pick, and then switched to all fingers to make it easier to play the > chords on > offbeats, just like in the video. But I would almost always play 2 chord > hits > per bar. Over the years I've gone to playing fewer and fewer chord hits, > because > it's less awkward, and you don't really need them. Like a lot of the >time > I'll > only play a chord when the chord changes. It's a lot more important to > have a > good bass line that swings, so I don't restrict playing the bass notes >to > just > the thumb. > > I started out playing 4 and 5 note chords, but then reduced them to >"shell > voicings", which are chords with just root-3rd-7th or root-3rd-6th of >the > chord. > Then you can get good voice leading by letting the chord notes descend >in > small > steps while the bass line moves around. That sounds really nice. Like, > here's a > tab for the beginning of a blues in Bb (look at this in Courier font if >it > doesn't look right): > > Bb7 Eb7 Bb7 Fm7 Bb7 Eb7 > ----------------------------------------------------- > ----------------------------------------------------- > --7-----------6-----------7-----------8-----7------6- etc > --6-----------5-----------6-----------6-----6------5- > -----5--8--7--6--------------5--6--7--8---------7--6- > --6--------------3--4--5--6--------------7--6-------- > > > The bass line moves around but the chord tones are all on the middle 2 > strings. > The 3rd of one chord moves to the 7th of the next, and vice versa. This > shows > the chord tones hitting at the same time as the bass, but you can >displace > them, > like this: > > Bb7 Eb7 > --------------------------------------- > --------------------------------------- > -----7------------------6-------------- > -----6------------------5-------------- > --------5---8---7---6------------------ > --6------------------------3---4---5--- > > > > Bb7 Fm7 Bb7 Eb7 > ---------------------------------------------- > ---------------------------------------------- > 7----------------8------------7---------6----- etc > 6----------------6------------6---------5----- > ------5---6---7------8---------------7------6- > 6--------------------------7-----6------------ > > On the last few chords, the chord tones come before the bass note, which > sounds > pretty cool. > > Then I started adding TECHNOLOGY (shudder) to it, and got the hexaphonic > Copeland pickup and the octave divider. There is a short clip on my page > here of > me doing this kind comping on a "Bird Blues" with this setup: > > http://tinyurl.com/23ehcx > > Then I added a Boss Loop Station. Then another Loop Station to play back > drum > loops. Then an Echoplex! Pretty soon I had this monstrosity: > > http://tinyurl.com/yonu6s > > What's weird is that I hardly ever use walking bass plus chords for > looping, > because now I like to play block chord solos, and the chord tones in > Walking > Bass + Chords get in the way when you try to solo like that. But I use >it > when I > am accompanying someone else playing a single note solo. > > Chapman Stick lends itself to this kind of comping even better than the > guitar > does, so I've worked on that, too: > > http://www.marksmart.net/instruments/stick/BluesNoodling/noodling.html > > But I still mainly do it with the guitar since I'm much better at it on > guitar > than Stick. > > Hope this helps, since I've been obsessing about this for a long time. > > Mark Smart > http://www.marksmart.net/ > >