The Howard Roberts Guitar Style
by Wolf Marshall

Howard Roberts guitar style can be truly described as eclectic. Few can play with the combination of fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants abandon and excitement, virtuosic finesse, imagination, and soulful blues feeling that Howard generated...often within a single phrase! Roberts was a astonishing improviser of jazz guitar and one of its greatest innovators. There wasn't an element of music he didn't explore and apply in his approach--melodic, rhythmic and thematic development, harmonic experiments, counterpoint, texture, sound effects, dynamic contrasts and phrasing nuances. His style is as modern and awe-inspiring today as it must have seemed when he first floored audiences back in the fifties and sixties.

In the sixties Howard pioneered a style of jazz rarely heard in the genre. His solos in the apex of the Capitol period (1963-1968) were unusually concise and compact and the tunes themselves averaged two minutes or so in length, a significant departure from the lengthy blowing of most jazz recordings to this day. In what would have been a rigid and constricting environment for most jazz soloists Howard was an unstoppable creative force; fashioning improvisations of great clarity and logic delivered with an unbridled energy and unpredictable phrasing. He treated his listeners to the full spectrum of his musical experience in a microcosm, wherein each solo was a memorable gem. 

Roberts' improvisations were immediately recognizable and filled with his musical trademarks. In addition to his technical command of the hard bop vocabulary he employed intervallic sounds based on odd finger patterns which he called "sonic shapes." These produced striking angular melodies within otherwise brilliant but more conventional jazz lines. Howard also juxtaposed earthy blues and funk licks freely into his playing creating unexpected mood swings while improvising.

Howard described his alternate picking technique as "circle picking." "Circle picking is a thing that came as a result of my playing bebop when I was a kid. There was no conscious attempt on my part to develop it; it just happened to accommodate the music I was doing. It was the only way I could get the notes out. I use the fingers and wrist when I pick. You know how most people write, by moving their thumb and forefinger. ...Just like writing your name across the strings."

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