Sax Play

Wes Montgomery – Jazz Guitar Music Legend – Part 3   by Steven Herron

From the beginning, Wes Montgomery seemed to hear things differently on the guitar! Instead of pursuing the traditional “plectrum” or “pickstyle” approach, he opted for a thicker, warmer tone produced by picking the strings with the meat of his right hand thumb. He created a uniquely personal sound in his single note playing with this unorthodox, seemingly impossible physical playing approach. His tone and technique confounded and charmed the guitarists and audiences of his day. One glance at any video performance of Wes Montgomery is more than telling and continues to astonish guitarists today.

Wes Montgomery rested his plucking hand with the fingers spread on the face of the guitar and the pickguard edge just behind the neck pickup. The thumb picked the strings with a relaxed stroke originating from the second joint. The thumb tip was cocked at the first joint at a backward angle, which has led many to believe that he was double jointed. Wes used downstrokes predominantly but could play long intricate lines with alternating down-up strokes when desired.

Wes Montgomery’s melodic conception has been described as “horn like” – little wonder as he drew great inspiration from musicians like Charlie Parker who played Alto Sax, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins who played Tenor Sax and Miles Davis who played trumpet in addition to conventional guitar influences such as Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. The fingering of his single note phrases from simple melodious statements to earthy blues lines and blazing bebop passages has always been a source of consternation among jazz guitar purists!

Like many blues and rock guitarists, Wes rarely used his “pinky” or fourth finger of his left hand for single note phrases, irrespective of their complexity or physical demands. Furthermore, his technique was extremely linear. He frequently connected several positions laterally up and down the guitar fretboard in one phrase and often shifted on a single string. As a result, he seemed to avoid the normal position confines of guitaristic “box playing”. Instead, most of his lines overlapped and dovetailed each other in the manner of chord inversions arranged horizontally on the guitar fingerboard.

Wes Montgomery was a true guitar innovator and a jazz pioneer! In his quest for sonic expansion, he developed a signature parallel octave approach, which is arguably his most identifiable musical trait – particularly to the general public. An octave in this case is an interval 8 steps apart, fingered as a dyad and articulated like a two note chord. His technical facility with octaves on the guitar remains unsurpassed to this day, as even a superficial listen to almost any of his recordings will reveal.

The articulation for octaves was a variation of Montgomery’s above mentioned “thumb attack”. When playing octaves he did not rest his fingers on the face of his guitar, but lightly touched the pick guard and the body. The stroke was a mixture of thumb and wrist motion, much like a downstroke for strumming chords. Wes was famous for his improvised octave solos in tunes like “West Coast Blues”, “Four On Six”, “Besame Mucho” and “Fried Pies”.

About the Author

Peabody Conservatory trained guitarist Steven Herron helps people succeed at becoming better guitar players. His company ChordMelody.com features an enormous, unique selection of jazz guitar tab as well as guitar books and instructional DVDs by Wes Montgomery himself.
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