George Benson how to practice

we're back with george benson and we're talking about the early years and we left off talking uh about playing underage in bars okay now i i started playing bars when i was about 14 and there were more than one time where i had to call my dad to come pick me up after the gig because i didn't trust the guys to drive me home if you know what i mean you know but one thing i found is lots of times people weren't that helpful i remember getting up on stage and people would start a tune they wouldn't tell me what key we're in they wouldn't tell me what tune we're doing they wouldn't count it off and they just expected me to sink or swim did you have experiences like that too or was it mostly pretty supportive well the good thing in my career was by the time i was 15 and i started playing as a guitar player they started calling me to play in nightclubs everybody knew who i was and i would end up going to other clubs and stand in the doorway to hear the music because i knew i wasn't allowed in but the club owners liked me so they would come little georgie come over here sit in this seat right here in the corner and don't move a muscle right you'll be alright anything you want to drink coca-cola or something so i would get a chance to hear and see the superstars of our time you know the oregon trios sure uh johnny hammond smith jimmy smith wild bill davis and people like that and jack mcduff who came through then later jimmy mcgriff and people like that and groove homes and people like that so it was a quite an ear opening experience oh i'm sure to be exposed like that at such an early age i mean that's in your blood at that point that's right that's great well you know whether you're self-taught or people have shown you things or you've had formal training one thing that everybody experiences are times when your creativity sort of dries up or you get into a rut if that happens to you how do you work your way out of it it is a very common question i hear from a lot of people and it has happened to me many times and what i did i've discovered that if i practiced 10 things i would remember one or two of them so the sequel was practice 100 things and i got 10 or 20 things i would do you know get out of that session so i would practice a lot of different things and i noticed that when i play uh with others that someone would play something doing that to remind me of the things that i couldn't remember and they might start a thing you know with a 6 or thirteen that's oh okay [Music] that's oh that's oh and then somebody would go oh [Music] that kind of thing and then [Music] i said oh okay that's a key but the key for me was to just gather a lot of things and stay familiar with the instrument i don't really call it practicing i call it becoming familiar with the instrument so if you hear something you know where to get it i wasn't gifted with a perfect pitch like a lot of my friends are which can be a great blessing but it can also be a curse [Laughter] so i had to strive for things which were very easy for them but what did what i learned along the way were passing things usable things that i could use to to spice up the music you know in harmony um i found that if you study harmony you learn a lot of notes at one time instead of learning you know one noted what another an a13 chord okay what how many notes are in that 13 chord well there's five right there i said oh but i also noticed that that's a passing thing for this d chord now i'm thinking i'm talking very strange and simple language to you because this is the way i think of guitar i always condense things down to the simplest form that way i don't have to remember too many things so i noticed that that is part of the cycle of in the key of d if that's the case that means that when i'm playing my uh chord progression i'm trying to get back to you know to the two five progression a minor d7 back to g but i'm playing this is also d [Music] see half step back same thing now i'm back to the root but i haven't gone that that route that really allows people to hear it before you get there so you keep the surprise thing happening you know sure so this they would be able to hear because they've heard a thousand people do this [Music] they know that that's in their head they don't know where they heard it but they've heard it sure sure so we're surprised so they haven't heard that before so they said wait where's he coming from i don't know how he got there but he got there show me some more well that's beautiful beautiful stuff if i can clarify one thing with you uh when you first started talking about this you said somebody say oh start on the 13th or start on this note that note are we talking about learning to start on different degrees of accord uh relating those chords to something um that is being played like say for instance if they're playing um like we we started off in the key of g but if they play this we said wait a minute now where is that coming from we know you and i know it's a flat five but that's interesting because now we gotta um make it make sense yes you and i make it musical we'll make it uh take it someplace that's logical and we have to no matter where you start our story there's got to be an ending the place of agreement with the person you're talking to so i'm always trying to get to a place that's a common denominator something that we all can agree on that's back to the root or wherever it is we're going we want to take them there with us but in an interesting way yes so that's what we try to do we um i'm looking for ways of getting to a place uh that's slightly different than we went the last time right you know so it's it makes variety in our music and variety is the spice well you tell a different story every time yeah right well this is great stuff but we're really just getting started and we'll be back with more lessons coming up stick in there with us y'all

Channel: MattBlackParis

Views: 356,465

Rating: 4.9583707 out of 5

Keywords: George Benson, Joe Pass, Norman Brown, Ronny Jordan, Ibanez, Wes Montgomery, lesson, transcription, Latin jazz, jazz, breezin, on broadway, give me the night, guitar, affirmation, turn your love around, The Art Of Jazz Guitar

Id: Pl0JR-Pjfbs

Length: 7min 4sec (424 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021