SeSSion diary The Big Band
Session guitarist Adam Goldsmith found his feet as a fledgling guitarist in a big band format, and those skills continue to serve him well today
Two more opposing weeks I couldn’t wish for! Next week, I’ll begin recording my first solo album. This week, however, the advertising industry is my main employer. There’ll be a few different jingles, two of which involve playing with a big band. This is probably the most useful skill I never intended to acquire, and one which has unwittingly enabled me to play with many different artists, from Robbie Williams and the Pop Idol series, to Michael Bublé and the Ronnie Scott’s Big Band.
Like a lot of guitar players, I started off listening mostly to rock and blues, and The Beatles and Stones from my parents’record collection, until someone at my school suggested I try the local youth big band, as they didn’t currently have a guitar player. I distinctly remember turning up, full of the 15-year-old rock guitar player confidence, and then watching helplessly as the bandleader counted the chart in and the pages flew by, with me, no idea where we were, merely a dazed bystander.
My other memory from that fairly embarrassing experience is seeing the instruction‘à la Freddie Green’at the top of most of the charts.‘Who the hell is this guy? I’m sure he’s not the new Megadeth guitar player, so I’ve no idea how to play‘à la’him anyway’was (probably) my first reaction. Little did I know how having an awareness of his style would accidentally enable most of the rest of my career, through my stint in the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and segue into the Pop Idol Big Band, and the world of TV, touring arenas and recording.
Freddie really belongs to that selective club of guitar players who are instantly identifiable and have really changed the course of guitar playing.As many of you will know, he was chiefly known for his role as Count Basie’s rhythm guitar player, where he established his signature style of playing four chords per bar.The really unique thing about his playing is that it isn’t really guitar playing like any other style, in as much as it is part of the drums and bass more than a separate instrument on its own.The rhythmic drive of his playing is an extension of the drum kit, and its harmonic content helps define the chord changes and movement in the same way the bass does. It’s the glue in between the whole rhythm section, really.
Even if you don’t consider yourself a‘jazz’ musician (try defining that one, anyway!), it’s a useful skill to have knowledge of if you want to work as a guitar player.You can guarantee if you play in a function band at some point it’ll rear its head, and it’s obvious if you haven’t done any homework when you’re required to play anything near a big band rhythm part. Apart from the obvious‘playing in time’and having a good groove, it will immeasurably improve your fretboard and chord voicing knowledge as you are required to navigate your way, say from Cmaj,Am7, to Dm7-G7 (a very standard jazz turnaround), defining essential harmonic elements of the music (often just 3rds and 7ths) with small two- and three-note voicings on the middle strings.
The point behind using this area of the guitar is that, pitch wise, you don’t interfere with the bass, you’re not as high as the piano player’s right hand, and on a big acoustic archtop guitar (I use a 1934 Gibson L-50) this range will cut through the band well. I’ll also imitate his style on a more modern guitar, such as my Gibson 175 ’59 reissue, and a few times if I’ve had to play a few bars on a TV show, a Strat on the neck pickup with the tone rolled down… I can feel the wincing of the jazz purists here, and I might direct them to www.freddiegreen. org for more info, but if you only have five seconds after playing behind Westlife or similar, and 10 seconds before an ad break, you sometimes have to compromise on authenticity! Even if you’re not inclined to learn his style, you can do a lot worse than buying The Atomic Mr Basie, turning it up loud and just enjoying a real live big band – no Pro Tools and no Auto-Tune needed.
“Having an awareness of Freddie Green’s style would enable most of the rest of my career”