El Frijolito -> RE: I'm kind of over solo guitar (Mar. 19 2016 18:51:41)
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I suspect the issues of pacing and programming are and have been at the forefront of considerations of gigging guitarists, particularly headliners. Two hours or so of full-throttle fuego tends to be rather unmemorable - it works better in small doses throughout the set, coupled with dynamics and tempo contrasts, and highlighting other performers as well. Flamenco faces a challenge in that its traditional context doesn't necessarily translate well to other types of venues, and the audience for cante is smaller - partly for aesthetic reasons and partly for the language barrier. This makes pacing and programming more challenging. In the jazz genre, Wes Montgomery seems to have thought about pacing and programming - as a leader he had to throw in some dramatic soloing, but his small groups necessarily shared spotlight time with other instrumentalists (expectations of the genre). Beyond that, he took advantage of a wide range of repertoire (standards, blues, ballads, originals) and would typically play a solo chord-melody - all with widely varying tempos, feels, and moods. He had the capacity to burn for chorus after chorus, but usually held this in check. A story I've heard recently has him turning down an invitation to play with Coltrane because he couldn't see the point of playing the same tune for an hour. I also reflect on seeing Allan Holdsworth a few years back, in a bar filled to capacity and overflowing into the parking lot. Even Allan, who is (perhaps reluctantly) a barn-burner extraordinaire, does a bit in his sets where the rhythm section sits out and he plays a slow-paced chordal composition that's rather different from the pyrotechnics of his other tunes, and with a rather different sound palette. Also, he tries to vary his compositions in terms of the string sets and voicing structures each employs. Anyway, just some thoughts on how guitar headliners in another genre seem to have addressed the issues of pacing and variety.
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