A real legend of the Jazz guitar in a video interview on The Guitar Channel with Bill Frisell at the 2017 Montreal Jazz Festival.
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Kurt Rosenwinkel in Paris for the promotion of his splendid new album Caipi answered the questions of The Guitar Channel the day after an exciting masterclass organized by the American School of Modern Music and Guitare Xtreme.
In today's Jazz, Kurt Rosenwinkel is a figurehead that traces a singular way in Jazz bringing a freshness that does not fail to upset the establishment of the traditional Jazz guitar.
Topics covered in the interview
His career as a musician
His methods of composition
His approach to tunings
The link between the piano and the guitar
Why he worked 10 years
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Finally a Jazz guitar reviewed on The Guitar Channel! Yes, everything happens. Here is the D'Angelico model EX-SS in a very standard configuration: archtop type guitar with two humbuckers.
D'Angelico EX-SS video review
Audio version of the video available in the podcast:
Photo album
What I enjoyed the most
The sounds
The built quality
The confort of playing
What I enjoyed the least
Too much gold hardware!
Conclusion
For a budget of around $1,500, the EX-SS offers a very good guitar that should delight the fans of Jazz and Blues.
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Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert: Jazz guitar player and awesome teacher
Tuesday, 10 January 2017
Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert is a regular contributor on The Guitar Channel since it is he who has been supplying for two years now the excellent Jazz Lessons so much appreciated by the Backstage Pass owners. Visiting Paris for a few days while he is normally based in San Francisco, we took the opportunity to do this video interview to
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John Scofield interview, guitar in hand at the Issoudun Guitar Festival
Thursday, 17 November 2016
John Scofield was the headliner of the 2016 Festival Guitare Issoudun in France. The Guitar Channel did an intense lobbying in order to be able to organize with John a video interview using the Guitar in Hand format which works so well. In fact, with this formula the musician has his guitar plugged in and ready all the time so he can illustrate an answer with a couple of notes here and there. John sure did that and more during the close to 30min interview.
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Nir Felder is a jazz guitarist that I met thanks to the official adviser on the subject for The Guitar Channel, namely Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert (a big thank you Bruno!).
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Jens Larsen is a Jazz musician discovered through his great YouTube channel which is full of lessons about this style of music and many guitar techniques.
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Gilad Hekselman is a Jazz guitar player discovered by The Guitar Channel thanks to Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert who is our official Jazz advisor.
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Charlie Hunter interview, a 7-string guitar player at the Montreal Jazz Festival
Thursday, 07 July 2016
Discovered in the excellent podcast No Guitar Is Safe produced by Jude Gold, The Guitar Channel is very happy to present you with an interview with Charlie Hunter, a 7-string guitar player. This Guitar in Hand interview took place during the 2016 Montreal Jazz Festival before his concert. Charlie plays an electric guitar built by luthier John Traugott with 3 strings from a bass guitar and 4 string from a regular guitar.
This instrument allows Charlie to sounds like two musicians playing when there's only him.
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Improvising with quarter notes only by Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert
Monday, 20 June 2016
We are continuing our series on “Blues For Alice” with a little improvisation exercise. Yes, we are finally going to improvise freely! However, the one and only restriction is that we are going to use quarter notes only... The challenge is to generate a flowing, uninterrupted, sequence of quarter notes-- while still outlining the changes.
Now, before you start wondering why anyone would want to do that, let me explain that it is just an exercise.
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Here's Ana Popovic interview done in Paris to talk about her triple album called Trilogy. You have to admit that it takes a lot of courage to release a triple album nowadays. Ana proposes three different moods in those three CDs: Blues, Funk and Jazz. It's the second time I meet Ana, last time was in 2013 in audio, this time we did it in video.
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We are continuing our series on “Blues For Alice” with an arpeggio study. All of the arpeggios played here are ascending. Note that we are not playing all of the arpeggios in this particular study: since there are so many ii-Vs in sequences, I chose to only play the 3rd of most Dominant 7 chords.
Blues for Alice (Part 5/6) - An arpeggio study
I wrote some diagrams above the music notation to indicate optional fingerings for some of the lines.
This study should give you some ideas for creating your own lines while improvising.
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“Blues for Alice” by Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert : 4-note groupings
Monday, 06 June 2016
We are continuing our series on “Blues For Alice” with the 4-note groupings. What we call 4-note groupings are simple patterns that are used to outline a chord progression.
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We are continuing our study of “Blues For Alice” with 2 simple comping studies.
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“Blues For Alice” is a great Charlie Parker tune. It is a 12-bar Blues, but it moves through a lot of ii-V sequences. That modified version of the Blues is usually referred to as “Bird Blues” changes.
Blues for Alice (Part 1/6)
The lead sheet shows the fingerings I use. Keep in mind that those are only suggestions.
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All 7 Diatonic Arpeggios in Major Key by Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert
Monday, 18 April 2016
This exercise will have us play through all of the arpeggios of a same tonality.
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Playing in and out of position (part 2/2) by Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert
Tuesday, 12 April 2016
Here's the second part on the Playing In and Out of Position theme (part 1 is here).
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Playing in and out of position (part 1/2) by Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert
Monday, 04 April 2016
Here's the first video of a two part series on the Playing In and Out of Position theme. When we first learn our Major scales, we are generally told to practice them in position. We visualize certain shapes all over the fingerboard and that helps us play more efficiently, more smoothly.
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Comping Study for Jazz Blues in F by Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert
Wednesday, 24 February 2016
Comping means “to accompany”. In our case, it implies that those chords can be used when accompanying a soloist who is improvising over a Jazz Blues chord progression.
Comping Study for Jazz Blues in F
Each diagram represents a full measure, except when slashes are written above the chord—in which case those slashes represent the number of beats for that particular chord. The circled dots are optional replacement bass notes.
All of the chords have the root in the bass, except for the diminished 7th chord used as a substitution for the D7 chord.
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Here's a Mike Moreno interview done during the 2016 Winter NAMM. It is thanks to my official Jazz advisor Bruno Pelletier-Bacquaert that I contacted Mike.
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This summer while I was covering the Montreal Jazz Festival I had the pleasure to meet again Gilad Hekselman for an in-depth interview about his latest album Homes which was just released this October.
Questions asked during the interview
How does it feel to play the Montréal Jazz festival?
Is that the occasion to play with other musicians and to jam?
Last time we met it was in Paris last year, what's new since?
How come jazz musicians are able to sound good on the first note of the first tune at the soundcheck?
How do you approach soundcheck
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Here's part 3 of the Zane Carney masterclass given in Paris on May 25th 2015.
What to expect in the masterclass
In-depth talk about music theory
What to play on the V chord
Several full pieces of music played
His approach to composition
How he practice with and without the guitar
His theory about relative pitch
The story about his upcoming Jazzica signature model with Hofner
A full demo of his travel pedal board
Zane travel pedal board
Until the next masterclass, keep on playing the guitar!
Pierre.
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Oz Noy interview – A blues guitar player who pushes the enveloppe
Thursday, 02 July 2015
Here's an unreleased audio interview with Oz Noy that I did back in 2013. There's no good reason why I waited so long to release it as I really dig the Twisted Blues Vol. 1 album so here it is now for your listening pleasure.
My attention was brought to Oz by a friend of mine who is also a pro guitar player, Jean-Michel Kajdan (merci Jean-Mi !).
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Here's part 2 of the Zane Carney masterclass given in Paris on May 25th 2015.
What to expect in the masterclass
In-depth talk about music theory
What to play on the V chord
Several full pieces of music played
His approach to composition
How he practice with and without the guitar
His theory about relative pitch
The story about his upcoming Jazzica signature model with Hofner
A full demo of his travel pedal board
Until the next interview, keep on playing the guitar!
Pierre.
You enjoyed this extract?
Get the Backstage Pass to watch the full video and
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Here's part 1 of the Zane Carney masterclass given in Paris on May 25th 2015.
What to expect in the full 2.5 hour masterclass
In-depth talk about music theory
What to play on the V chord
Several full pieces of music played
His approach to composition
How he practice with and without the guitar
His theory about relative pitch
The story about his upcoming Jazzica signature model with Hofner
A full demo of his travel pedal board
Until the next interview, keep on playing the guitar!
Pierre.
You enjoyed this extract?
Get the Backstage Pass to watch the full
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I really enjoyed the Distance Traveled album from the David Becker Tribune so I decided to do a Skype interview with him to learn more about this awesome Jazz guitar player.
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In 2014 at the Musikmesse I only had the opportunity to do a selfie with Frank, this year through the good people at DV Mark I was able to do a 30min full Frank Gambale interview with him that you can see below.
Frank Gambale interview
Subjects discussed in the Frank Gambale interview
His first guitar
The main turning points in his career
The invention of the sweeping
What remains to be said about this technique
How his gear has evolved throughout the years
The relationship with the Carvin team for his guitar
His next projects
His new online teaching website
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On March 2nd 2015, we did a 35min Skype video call with Zane Carney to get all the latest news. The audio interview is available for free on the podcast feed.
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Zane Carney interview full 35min video interview
Get your Backstage Pass to watch the interview!
Subjects covered in the interview
Latest update from Zane
All the discoveries Zane did during the 2015 NAMM show
All the info about his collaboration with Hofner for a signature model
Demo of the Jazzica prototype guitar
What to be expected during his european tour
Upcoming news of news music to expect in 2015
Zane demoing his Hofner Jazzica
Can't wait to see Zane live in Paris, hopefully something will happen.
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