PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic music and chops

Some User Forum members have been applying the term chops to refer to technical skill on a musical instrument. I think everyone agrees that, e.g., Jaco had monster chops.

The question is: Why "chops?" What's the connection between virtuoso technique and something you buy at the butcher's to cook for dinner?

Aleck Rand

Chops has an alternate meaning to trumpet players...

Not definitive, but from what I can tell, there are two schools of thought. One is that losing one's chops (embouchure) is akin to losing one's teeth (chops). So, someone with awesome chops has an awesome embouchure, and by extension is talented on whatever musical instrument one plays.

The other is the "chops" is the result of spending time practicing in the woodshed. Makes me wonder if that's also where the term "axe" (your instrument) came from.

John, I always thought 'axe' came from reference to guitars, which are axe shaped in a way. But your idea has me thinking perhaps I misunderstood it all along!

The term, "chops" as referenced to a jazz musician's abilities, is referenced to the great Louis Armstrong, who may not have originated the term but as with so many other jazz terminologies and techniques such as "Skat Singing" certainly popularized the term.

"Chops" refers to Horn Players first and foremost, and is a slang term used to describe the strength and abilities of a horn player's mouth and facial musculature in addressing the instrument. The classical musician's term for this is "embouchure" from the French (pronounced, om-boo-shure).

Chops also refers to the horn player's ability to play and keep on playing for long lengths of time, such as would be the case on a four or five set gig. The mouth and facial muscles, being well, muscles, it takes time and plenty of repetition exercises to get to the point where a wind instrument player can keep making sounds that long. Or, as we sometimes say, "Iron Chops".

It soon became customary for instrumentalists other than wind instrument players to adopt the same hip sounding terminologies.

Guitarists, keyboardists, vibraphonists, even singers and drummers will use the term "chops" in the exact same fashion as horn players, even though we are referencing the use of different muscle groups.

For another example along the same lines, you might hear a jazz guitarist speak of "blowing a good solo" - again, the term, "blowing" comes from the horn players but has been adapted as meaning a a cool way to say, "playing".

Dang, Aleck, you need to get out more. *grin*


--Mac

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Merriam-Webster covers the word pretty well HERE:

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chops

(..never knew that it started with horses, but it makes sense.)

EX:

Q: Man, that was crazy! Can you sit in on the next set?

A: Sorry. Been blowing since 11 and my chops are gone. Gotta book.

(This is a response that might come from a horn player. Probably not a piano player.)

Am I dating myself?

Now-a-days it seems that gig refers to anyone's job, music or not, short term or long term. I remember back in the day when a lot of words were exclusive to musicians, now everyone uses them. Later, Ray

The term as used by musioians did not "start" with the given horse-related definition and the article does not say nor imply that.

The definitions in a dictionary are simply listed in order, typically the editors will try to list them in order of chronology as to the history of usage, but that does not imply any kind of evolutionary development as you go down the numbered definition list. Sometimes it may, in this caae I don't think it does.

And, yes, a Pianist can also suffer from fatigue, too, and if that happens, you might indeed hear a jazz pianist refer to the situation as lacking the Chops to continue.

Even if the Pianist doesn't use the term, odds are good that any horn players associated with said worn out pianist would.

Of course, I'm not talking the rather shallow methods of piano playing typical in a lot of musics that are popular today.

But if you are into the more esoteric pianists and styles, yes indeed, you can run into the situation as a pianist where you run out of the chops needed to play accurately and well.

Anything by the late Phineas Newborn comes to mind, here is his "Harlem Blues" - a fun excursion that, if you've already been playing all night, is better left to another time when the brain and body are fresh and ready:



Phineas was a BAD DUDE.

With BIG CHOPS.

And I won't even go into Art Tatum here...


--Mac

+1000 Phineas was a Bad Mo-Fo and deserved more recognition than he got. I was listening to him in the early '60s and he was one of the baddest then! Later, Ray

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>>>...The term as used by musioians did not "start" with the given horse-related definition and the article does not say nor imply that...>>>

True that...the dictionary did not imply that. But I will.

There is a line in Macbeth where Shakespeare uses "chops" to refer to a human mouth. This tells me that there is a long tradition of carrying the equine word over to humans. It seems likely that the musicians' expression is a similar play on words. Of course I cant prove it, but I am sticking to it.

I've been using 'chops', 'woodshedding' 'axe' and 'gig' since I was a kid, because that's what the older musicians who made a living playing music used. I figured it was just the jargon of the profession.

As a sax player, I assumed chops came from the mouth but knew it applied to guitar players too.

I knew 'woodshed' came from practicing in the woodshed so nobody else could hear it. When I was young, we used to take care of the neighbors house when they spent summers 'up north', and when I drove my mom crazy playing the same things over and over and over again, she would send me next door to practice.

I just always assumed 'axe' came from the tool you used in the 'woodshed'.

Was always curious about 'gig' but never found a satisfactory etymology to figure out where that one came from.

The English language is very interesting at times.

Insights and incites by Notes

when I first moved to the south, I heard people use the word GIGGING as a term for going out at night with a stick to catch food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigging

If you compare that to the musician who goes out at night with his instrument to earn a meager living, its close enough in concept to fit as a possible origin of the term. Especially if you consider the terminology that was probably common among poor rural musicians with a subsistence lifestyle, living on whatever nature made available.

Also, telling the wife you were out all night "gigging" might be better received than telling her you went out to play music in a beer joint.

interesting to note that the terms AXE and WOODSHED also work back to the lifestyle of poor rural musicians.

My wife goes out gigging with me!!!

When I grew up a gig was a specialized tool for spearing fish from a perch above the water.

Insights and incites by Notes

One of the legends, actually repeated a few times in different autobiographies and other books I've enjoyed over the years, makes the claim that the term originated with Charlie Parker, who was laughed out of the NYC jazz clubs upon his first excursion there from his hometown in the midwest.

Bird had to go back home with tail tucked between his legs and spent the next year or longer practicing, actually out back of his residence, in a real woodshed.

Determined to never get caught in a situation where the other musicians could ever again "stump" him onstage by using tricks such as sudden key changes, turning the beat around, etc. Bird worked up his own rather complete practice regimen out back in that woodshed. He is said to have worked on his reading skills, checking out classical scores borrowed from public library, forcing himself to practice every line on those scores to include the violin parts, etc. until he could sightread them forwards - and even backwards (!) - a feat that he demonstrated in front of the NYC musicians at least a few times, documented, after his triumphant return. He also used the radio during his legendary woodshed experience, simply put, he would turn the dial to ANY station and practice playing along with whatever musics came out of the radio, in realtime and by ear.

Anyone who knows the least bit of jazz history knows what kind of skills Bird had obtained by the time he returned, triumphantly, to the NYC jazz scene. The woodshed experience he placed upon himself actually led to the development of an entirely new form and method of jazz improvisation, playing in realtime "from the 9 forward" and leaving behind the single modal improvisational technique by being able to hear and play an appropriate mode over each successive chord or chord group in a progression, all the while maintaining that essential swing feel of counting method. Now known as "straightahead" playing.

That said, I don't think it is possible to study the history of terminologies used in any living language and come up with a definitive and final determination as to the real root of the adoption of such terms.

For example, Andres Segovia also is said to have spent much time in an actual backyard woodshed, which may have been really an abandoned chicken coop or the likes, when Andres was a young violinist who discovered and came to love the Guitar. He spent a lot of time in his personal woodshed as well, in his case, transcribing classical violin pieces and etc. for the guitar. And again we have the example of someone who literally changed the face of music forever after putting in the disciplinary time of repetition in controlled environment known as Music Practice.

It has been said that if Andres Segovia had not been so thoroughly devoted to the Guitar as he was, if he had not brought the concept that the Guitar could be approached and appreciated as a "real instrument" (their words, not mine) able to do justice to the classical works originally written for performance on instruments such as violin, piano, etc. - that the immense popularity that the guitar finally enjoys in our time may not have taken place.

The record of guitar sales seems to bear the above paragraph out, but again, there is no way to absolutely prove history. Unlike the empirical sciences, Historians must rely on the tabulation the statistical result of the known facts in order to theorize, simply because there is no way to reproduce history in a laboratory to proof a theory.


One aspect about the term, "woodshed" that I like to point out to our generation is that we have to understand just how prolific the actual woodshed used to be at one time. Before the advent of Electrical Power availability, before the advent of Natural Gas distribution and use, before the advent of Central Heating, just about every home, building, etc. that was not in the equatorial regions likely had an outbuilding for the storage of solid fuels such as wood and in some cases, perhaps coal, or even for the purposes of raising chickens. So the availability was there. Another rather modern term that likely came from the same sort of situation is "Ham Shack" - where the original Amateur Radio Operators designed, built and operated their Amateur Radio Stations from, rather than being inside the home proper.


--Mac

Thanks Mac, you insights are always a treat!

Ditto!

I remember when hip musicians used to refer to "scarfing" too...



--Mac

Still do!!

Here's three pages of discussion on gig and woodshed, from an etymology fan discussion forum from 2005:
http://wordsmith.org/board/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=139834

I heard that many times from the older musicians in and around New Orleans but it was always said as a way to describe "how much a cat could eat or the speed at which they ate". I.e., where is Tom man? Answer "he scarfing up the groceries in the kitchen".

Mac, in what context do you know of the word/term having been used, playing etc.?

Later,