What about trombonist Dick Nash? I fell in love with his playing when I was a kid and bought a couple of "Music From Peter Gunn" LPs (I now have them on CD). Very melodic, great dynamics and wonderful expressive use of the slide.

BTW, they are great examples of Cool School jazz done right (except for the Peter Gunn song itself which is actually Rock And Roll).

I've never heard Dick Nash do a solo album, but I've heard his session work with Mancini and other jazz bands of the era and think he is quite under-noticed.

I play sax, flute, wind synth, and like all wind instruments it can do swells. --- On MIDI instruments I use Continuous Controller 11 or if enabled cc2. --- Bowed strings use speed/intensity of the bow. --- Snare drummers a double stroke roll. --- Tympani players a single stroke roll. --- As you mentioned electric guitar players can use a potentiometer either on their guitar or a pedal.

On acoustic guitar, like acoustic piano, there is no real way to do that. I would think the closest you could come would be changing the volume while tremolo picking.

A favorite quote of mine comes from the great alto sax player Charlie Parker, "You don't play the sax, you let it play you."

And the way I interpret it, it can apply to any instrument. Each instrument has it's own voice. It has it's own sounds, capabilities and limitations. For example, you can do portamento on trombones, bowed strings, synths, and if you are real good at it, clarinet. That becomes an expressive device. You can't do that on a sax, trumpet, oboe, flute, and others, but you can do a glissando. Example 2: Acoustic pianos and guitars can play harmony with themselves but can't increase the volume of a note after attacked. Most wind instruments can only play one note at a time, but can manipulate the volume. The list goes on and on.

So the trick is to find out what the instrument in your hands is capable of doing, and focus on getting the full range of expression out of the instrument and not at what it cannot do. In other words, you let the instrument play you.

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