The Guitar Channel

John Stowell & Gustavo Assis-Brasil gig to include Tim Miller

New England jazz guitar fans take note: Gustavo Assis-Brasil has announced that his duo gig with John Stowell on August 21st at the Lily Pad in Cambridge, MA will include special guest Tim Miller.

New Gustavo Assis-Brasil DVD reviewed at All About Jazz

All About Jazz has posted a fine review of Gustavo Assis-Brasil's new DVD/CD combo In Concert.

All About Jazz: Gustavo Assis-Brasil: In Concert

Review: Gustavo Assis-Brasil - Hybrid Picking Exercises - Single Note Permutations (Book)

In 2005, jazz guitarist Gustavo Assis-Brasil released Hybrid Picking For Guitar (review) - a fantastic instructional book covering the technique and implementation of hybrid-picking. Now Assis-Brasil has released a new book entitled Hybrid Picking Exercises - Single Note Permutations. As Assis-Brasil notes in the foreword, if you already own Hybrid Picking For Guitar, this new book can be viewed as supplemental material, though it certainly stands on it's own as well. Whereas Hybrid Picking For Guitar was loaded with eighth note and triplet lines designed to help develop your hybrid-picking technique, Hybrid Picking Exercises - Single Note Permutations, as the title suggests, is strictly an exercise book. It's practice patterns are based on simple 4-note finger shapes, as opposed to actual lines. Assis-Brasil did include some pure hybrid-picking exercises in the previous book, but he takes the idea a giant step further here.

The book is broken down into two sections; Short Exercises and Extended Exercises. The Short Exercises section contains 32 separate exercise patterns for each possible permutation of the 4 fret hand fingers (1-2-3-4, 2-1-3-4, etc). Each exercise spans two to four strings (often skipping a string or two in the process), and includes a combination of picked notes, plucked notes, and hammer-ons or pull-offs. The Extended Exercises section takes those same patterns and moves them up, down, and across the fretboard. At 178 pages, it's a massive amount of practice material, entirely geared towards developing finger independence for both hands.

The whole idea of this book is to get your fingers moving in ways they have not moved before, and it does this quite well. As a guitarist I can tell you, when you make up your own practice patterns, there is a natural yet unconscious tendency to use fingerings and shapes that you already have a good grasp of. Breaking out of that routine can be tough. On one hand, extrapolating on patterns you already play well is a great idea; you'll get more mileage out of a given lick. However, unless you spend a certain amount of practice time on patterns that are outside your comfort zone - patterns that feel downright awkward when you first approach them - you'll be slow to develop good finger independence. For this reason, I enjoy discovering patterns that are totally different from what I normally play or practice. If new, awkward-feeling patterns are what you're looking for also, you'll find plenty of them in Single Note Permutations.

To me, the hybrid-picking style falls under the larger category of "Legato." Better finger independence is something any guitarist can benefit from, but it's an absolute must if you are an aspiring legato-style player. The legato approach (as exemplified by players such as Assis-Brasil, or Allan Holdsworth, or Brett Garsed) lends itself to more free-form sounding lines. Granted, they may not actually be free-form, but if you have the kind of finger independence that the great legato stylists have, you can make it seem that way by relying less on stacked, symmetrical patterns, and more on your own spur-of-the-moment inspiration. Having said that, playing some of the Single Note Permutations exercises with strict alternate picking yielded a great workout for me as well.

Some educators argue that all of your technique should be learned from practicing real music (transcribed lines, etc), and that generic finger exercises will do you a disservice. A valid point, certainly. However, there is still plenty of musical benefit to be had from Single Note Permutations, even though it's exercises are not based on real scales. I found that by taking these exercise patterns and plugging them into actual scale shapes, all sorts of cool lines can be generated. Plus, I'm sure I was able to get the lines down quicker this way (as opposed to starting with the line first), since the contours of the pattern I intended to use were already committed to my muscle-memory before I tackled the line.

Most guitarists have practiced the age-old four-note-per-string left hand permutations to develop finger independence at one point or another (1-2-3-4, 4-1-2-3, blah-blah-blah-blah, etc). By taking those same patterns, and spreading them across multiple strings with hybrid-picking, the exercises in Single Note Permutations will give you a much better workout than the standard four-note-per-string patterns can. Plus, how much musical benefit can you really extract from those old exercises? The permutations in this book easily translate into real lines, which makes it a source of both technical exercise, and musical inspiration.

Rich

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New Gustavo Assis-Brasil DVD/CD combo

Hybrid-picking master Gustavo Assis-Brasil is releasing a new live DVD/CD set tomorrow entitled In Concert. This combo set is an Abstract Logix exclusive. I've had this for a couple of weeks now and can tell you it's a beautifully filmed show (which took place in Brazil in 2007) where Gustavo is in top form. The behind the scenes feature is great also. I like that a CD of the performance is included as well; it's a nice touch that I wish we'd see more often. Check it out.

Gustavo Assis-Brasil: In Concert (DVD/CD Combo)

New Gustavo Assis-Brasil Hybrid Picking book coming April 15th

Gustavo Assis-Brasil has a new book on hybrid picking on the way. Hybrid Picking Exercises: Single Note Permutations will be released on April 15th. You can pre-order now through Gustavo's website.

See also: my review of Gustavo's previous book Hybrid Picking for Guitar.

Book Review: Gustavo Assis-Brasil - Hybrid Picking for Guitar

My review of Gustavo Assis-Brasil's instructional book Hybrid Picking for Guitar has been posted at Modern Guitars Magazine.

Review: Gustavo Assis-Brasil - Hybrid Picking for Guitar

UPDATE 1/29/08: I've republished my review below.

"Hybrid Picking" is a technique that combines the 2 most common methods of playing the guitar - finger picking and flat picking. Using a flat pick alone is a great technique, but large interval skips can be difficult, and you can't play all the notes of a chord at the same time. With finger picking, you can execute these intervallic leaps and chordal ideas with ease, but you lose the ability to perform many common flat picking techniques (funk rhythms, alternate picking, etc). By combining the techniques you get the best of both worlds. Most flat-picking guitarists use some amount of hybrid picking, maybe without even realizing it. You may not consider yourself a "hybrid picker", but how many times have you grabbed all the notes of a chord using the pick and your right hand fingers? Ever pick a note then pluck another with a right hand finger in the middle of a line? Technically, you're hybrid picking. While it's quite common for country guitarists to use hybrid picking, many rock, jazz, and fusion players use the technique as well (personally, I was bitten by the hybrid picking bug back in the early '90s after seeing rock fusion great Brett Garsed use the technique for the first time).

With his self-published instructional book Hybrid Picking for Guitar, jazz guitarist and hybrid picking guru Gustavo Assis-Brasil lays out a full curriculum for developing this technique that is applicable to both beginning and advanced hybrid pickers. A fine player with numerous recording credits, Assis-Brasil is the director of the Jazz and Contemporary Music department of the Cambridge School of Weston, and a Berklee College of Music grad.

The book is broken down into 4 sections: "Hybrid Picking Exercises," "Lines," "Compositions," and "Charts". The bulk of the book's material is contained in the "Hybrid Picking Exercises" and "Lines" sections. The "Compositions" section features seven complete songs, and the "Charts" section at the end is essentially an appendix showing pick/finger permutations for both chordal and single note applications. A CD is also included containing recorded examples of everything from the "Lines" and "Compositions" sections.

Note: For the purposes of this review, the picking hand will be referred to as the right hand throughout.

After an introduction that gives general tips for developing proper hybrid picking technique (such as nail care and picking angles), the "Hybrid Picking Exercises" section focuses on building your technique from the ground up. In general, a hybrid picked phrase involves picking a note with a flat-pick, then using a right hand finger to pluck another note, usually on another string. As this first section of the book demonstrates, there are countless variations on this approach. These early lessons are geared towards building strength and independence in the your right hand fingers. To that end, several of the exercises include alternate right hand fingering instructions that omit the pick entirely. Many of the examples in this section use only open strings as well so the focus stays squarely on what your right hand is doing. Every possible combination of pick, second, third, and fourth finger is covered here, so it's a pretty intense workout program. Obviously you can just take bits and pieces from this section if you prefer. If you're just looking to throw your second and third fingers into the mix once in a while, there are exercises here to help you develop that. If you're looking to get more advanced, you can certainly do that too. Hybrid picking is a technique that you can use as much or as little of as you want.

Now comes the fun stuff. The "Lines" section concentrates on putting your new-found hybrid picking prowess to good musical use. Chock full of great jazz and fusion lines, this section is the real meat-and-potatoes of Hybrid Picking for Guitar. One of the great advantages of hybrid-picking is the ease at which one can execute wide interval jumps. That's certainly reflected in the musical examples Assis-Brasil presents here. Some of these lines, such as examples 9 and 24, are reminiscent of Carl Verheyen's angular, intervallic approach. There are plenty of odd meter and atonal examples as well. Overall there's a wealth of material in this part of the book that will keep even an advanced player busy for some time.

Assis-Brasil also includes seven fully transcribed, original compositions in Hybrid Picking For Guitar. The songs represent a wide variety styles and hybrid picking approaches to demonstrate the versatility of the technique. In "Sem Partidas," for example, Assis-Brasil uses hybrid picking in a chrodal jazz context. "Jaywalker" on the other hand is a great, fast country tune that relies mainly on single note lines. "Next Week", with it's upbeat mood and liberal use of open strings, is a real standout as well (Assis-Brasil also recorded this song with his band Dig Trio on their self-titled studio release).

Hybrid Picking for Guitar is to hybrid picking what Ted Greene's classic Chord Chemistry is to chord voicings. The point being it's as much a reference tool as it is an an instructional one. Long after you're comfortable with the technique, you'll be combing it's pages for new ideas and approaches. While the musical examples are mainly jazz-oriented, guitarists of all styles can vastly improve their hybrid picking technique by using this book.

Rich

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