Watershed moments in your jazz playing?

EightString · #1 11-26-2011, 02:57 PM

I have a few, and these are jazz-specific, because I had been playing for decades before getting passionate about jazz.

. getting enough jazz grips under my fingers to comp any standard with competence.

. the moment when "playing through the changes" became musical instead of mechanical.

. hearing from other jazz players, who knew me as a rock guy, that they were surprised to hear "real" jazz coming from me, and not just "jazz as played by a rock guy".

. learning enough standards that comping subsequent standards required little or no prep if I've heard them before, and just a few listens otherwise.

. breaking out of scalar forms and playing more intervalic-ally instead. I was always able to play just about any melody, but the intervalic approach makes playing "heads" from audio memory a breeze, with little or no practice.

What are some of yours?

mr. beaumont · #2 11-26-2011, 04:28 PM

The folks who have been around here for a while are probably sick of this story by now, but truly the best thing I did for my playing was the entire year or so I spent on becoming a better rhythm player and started arranging chord melody. Literally practiced no scales or lead playing for a year...and after all of that work the crazy side effect was my lead playing got better by leaps and bounds...

EightString · #3 11-26-2011, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

The folks who have been around here for a while are probably sick of this story by now, but truly the best thing I did for my playing was the entire year or so I spent on becoming a better rhythm player and started arranging chord melody. Literally practiced no scales or lead playing for a year...and after all of that work the crazy side effect was my lead playing got better by leaps and bounds...

Do you think it was because the chord tones became more second nature? I know that happened for me, the chord shapes feeding into my expanding intervalic playing.

It was also fascinating to discover how many classic song melodies rely so much on arpeggiated chord tones as opposed to more linear scalar patterns.

mr. beaumont · #4 11-26-2011, 06:25 PM

Absolutely...there was a disconnect for me before..."you play this scale over this chord"...suddendly, it was "these notes ARE the chord."

Jazz literally went from something I liked to think I could maybe do someday to something I could feel right at my fingertips.

morroben · #5 11-26-2011, 06:29 PM

I've been trying to do my own chord-melody arrangements for a year or so. Not sure how many of them are listenable, but I've learned a ton in the process. If nothing else, it's taught me that just diving in, without much direction, and figuring things out, teaches me more than any book or internet lesson could.
Honestly, stumbling onto Jeff (Mr.Beaumont) on another forum helped me a ton. It just let me know that there was someone else who liked Wilco and Built to Spill, and also liked jazz. It made me feel like I wasn't as directionless as I thought I was. And hearing his clips, and knowing how good they were, made me feel justified in what I'm shooting for.

Space Pickle · #6 11-26-2011, 06:30 PM

it was the day i realized it goes like 'be bop a do wah, boo dop bwee bloop'

you know what im sayin?

mr. beaumont · #7 11-26-2011, 06:52 PM

Gee whiz Ben, I'm blushin'

But seriously, if I helped you at all I'm glad. The world needs more jazz players...and all I ever hear about is this made up jazz police shit that some hacks who don't play jazz or listen to it made up, and it infuriates me...I think most jazz fans are of the mindset of "the more the merrier"...or at least the players are...I don't get why anyone would want it to be an exclusive club...it's music that's meant to be communal...

Rant over. Sorry...tomorrow's rant will be about the same morons who think a jazz tone is rolling the tone knob all the way back...man, guitar players piss me off sometimes...

EightString · #8 11-26-2011, 07:01 PM

Jazz players have been universally welcoming and inclusive to me.

Oh, I've heard occasional raised-eyebrow comments about my unorthodox approach to gear (always prior to hearing the results), but not a single jazz person has ever exhibited an ounce of snobbery, even knowing my history as a progressive metal guy.

So far, the jazz-police thing has been a myth for me.

morroben · #9 11-26-2011, 07:12 PM

Yeah Jeff, sorry to single you out or embarrass you. I guess I just meant that my watershed moments aren't always technical. Sometimes just feeling included or justified can be a watershed moment.
Every once in a while someone asks who my biggest influence was. I run through the list in my head...Knopler, Cline, Phelps...but really, my biggest influence was my best friend in high school. He wasn't any better than I was, but we figured it out together, and that influenced me huge! Some popular song isn't nearly as influential as sitting on the bed in your first apartment trying to work out how to play a basic tune.

fep · #10 11-26-2011, 07:20 PM

When I started to relate to chord shapes and arps (as opposed to only scales) when soloing...I started to sound more like jazz

Now if someone asked what scale or mode that I just played... I sometimes don't really know... I have to stop and figure it out... and sometimes it's not even any one scale or arp... rather it's just "G7 stuff" or "Dm7b5 to G7 stuff"

EightString · #11 11-26-2011, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fep

When I started to relate to chord shapes and arps (as opposed to only scales) when soloing...I started to sound more like jazz

Now if someone asked what scale or mode that I just played... I sometimes don't really know... I have to stop and figure it out... and sometimes it's not even any one scale or arp... rather it's just "G7 stuff" or "Dm7b5 to G7 stuff"

Another thing that got me flowing more was learning how to foreshadow an approaching chord by premptively including notes from that chord in what I was playing at the moment. Very organic sounding and helped me blur more obvious transitions in the improv.

cosmic gumbo · #12 11-27-2011, 04:48 PM

It started falling into place when I realized the tritone sub with a b5 created a symmetry that unlocked the mystery of much of jazz harmony.

Stevebol · #13 11-27-2011, 06:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

The folks who have been around here for a while are probably sick of this story by now, but truly the best thing I did for my playing was the entire year or so I spent on becoming a better rhythm player and started arranging chord melody. Literally practiced no scales or lead playing for a year...and after all of that work the crazy side effect was my lead playing got better by leaps and bounds...

This is exactly what I'm trying to do now. I haven't abandoned scales completely and I spend a very short time with the major scale/arpeggios in different positions but it's basically all slow to mid-tempo chord melody now.

When I was younger I didn't really appreciate players like Kessel, Burrell, who were good at this but I do now.

Billnc · #14 11-27-2011, 06:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

Absolutely...there was a disconnect for me before..."you play this scale over this chord"...suddendly, it was "these notes ARE the chord."

Jazz literally went from something I liked to think I could maybe do someday to something I could feel right at my fingertips.

Watershed moment, years later, more than at the time because I found out I was on the right track. I studied chord melody first, then comping. When I first got out of high school got together with a sax player and formed a little jazz band. Awful by jazz standards I'm sure, but we sounded ok. The horn player looked at me to take a solo, since all I knew were chord shapes I connected the dots that way to form lines. Just hanging on for dear life and knowing the chord notes had to work.

mangotango · #15 11-28-2011, 08:20 AM

Have had quite a few (hey, I needed to make some serious changes!), but here are the real standouts:-

1) Finding locally (2 minutes just round the corner!!) a teacher who is a well-respected musician and musical director, but who teaches me Theory, not Guitar. Getting to grips with that in a way that I can understand has been key to my development as a jazz musician.

2) Finding relatively locally (35 minutes up the road) a Jazz Workshop band that welcomes all standards of player and features several pro musos in its ranks; and regularly has guest sessions from name British jazz players. Being accepted by this band (similar to what Eightstring says) and getting to play each Saturday morning with other musicians has done wonders for my playing, my learning but most of all my confidence.

3) A lesson with Jonathan Kreisberg that basically turned round my attitude and made me take myself more seriously to try to be someone who plays jazz music and not some guy who plays AT jazz music. It was not so much what he said but what he did and his whole demeanour of commitment encouraged this sea-change in my point of view.

I know that you were probably asking about learning things actually on the guitar, but these were more important for me.

Kman · #16 11-28-2011, 08:29 AM

For me it was learning traditionel bebop licks. My playing changed drastically. Get the David Baker How to play Bebop Vol. 2 and the Bert Ligon Connecting Chords with Linear Harmony.