Timbral effects of the right-hand techniques of jazz guitarists Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass

Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass have left a lasting impact on jazz guitar, thanks in part to the distinctive timbre they achieved through their right-hand techniques. Montgomery played with his thumb, and Pass played both fingerstyle and with a pick. This talk explores the timbral effects of the thumb, fingers, and pick by modeling these sources using mathematical functions that serve as initial conditions for the lossy one-dimensional linear wave equation. Of interest is the sliding between the source and string, the dynamics of which were described by Pavlidou and Richardson [Proc. Ins. Ac. 19, 55–60 (1997)] and Cuzzucoli and Lombardo [Comput. Music J. 23, 52–69 (1999)]. Here, sliding is incorporated kinematically through the sources’ time dependence exp[−(t+δ)2/τ 2](t+δ)/τ, where δ and τ are the duration of sliding and attack, respectively. Setting δ/τ to 0 and 2−1/2 describes pure striking and plucking at t = 0, respectively, while intermediate values 0 < δ/τ < 2−1/2 allow for the exploration of the timbral effects due to sliding. The solutions provide a physical explanation of the timbres of Montgomery and Pass. The talk concludes with a live demonstration of their techniques. [CAG was supported by ARL:UT McKinney Fellowships in Acoustics.]