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MP3 Frank Portolese - Plectrum Jazz Guitar Solos

Solo jazz guitar, which is rare enough, played flatpick-style, which for a complete album is almost unheard of. An update of the 1920''s and ''30''s pre-electric guitar style.

12 MP3 Songs in this album (50:29) !
Related styles: Jazz: Mainstream Jazz, Blues: Guitar Blues, Featuring Guitar

People who are interested in Eddie Lang Joe Pass should consider this download.


Details:
In the pre-electric 1920’s and 30’s, acoustic jazz guitarists played in smaller groups, exemplified by Eddie Lang’s many duo recordings, and without drums, like Django Reinhardt’s Hot Club records. We played with the pick, or plectrum, since it was louder, and we swung hard because we could! We heard the harmonies of Ravel as well as of Duke, since that was in the air at the time. Accompaniment was a large part of what we did.

With the invention of the pickup and amp our long pent-up desire to stand alongside the saxes and trumpets and be heard was at last realized, and something was gained but something was lost. We could finally let the people hear our single line solos, but most of us who came up after this era devalued the contrapuntal, orchestral concept that had dominated the instrument before.

When Joe Pass came along with the first fully viable solo guitar style in the 1970’s, everybody took notice. While he started out alternating between pick-style and finger-style, he eventually settled on the latter, deciding that playing with the fingers was the way to go. Almost all jazz guitarists nowadays follow that same finger-style example.

This is where I come in. I like the sound of the pick, and honestly I am only so-so with finger-style guitar. But I know about harmony and I know the guitar neck and I know tunes. So about five years ago I began to consider how to solve the various problems of trying to play solo guitar with the pick. It comes down to trying to do something interesting, that moves and that sounds full. You try to replace techniques that cannot be done with the pick with others that can only be done with the pick, or can be done better with the pick. You reconsider absolutely everything. The coolest thing about doing this is that it is relatively rare, and you find yourself solving problems that you have never heard anyone solve before. Doesn’t mean no one has, it just means you haven’t heard it. Either way, you’re on your own.

This disc, then, represents the first of my solutions to these obstacles. It feels fitting that at a certain point in my life I found a way to at least try to contribute to the tradition of my beloved instrument, the guitar. Hopefully you didn’t really need to know any of this. Hopefully, you’ll just dig the sounds.

Frank Portolese


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