The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
Reply to Thread Bookmark Thread
Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast
Posts 1 to 25 of 53
  1. #1

    User Info Menu

    Mike longer was Dizzy Gillespie's piano player and musical director, maintaining an association with dizzy for the last 26 years of his life. Mike started out playing in Florida with cannonball Adderley .

    I think what he says here has a lot of merit. Jazz is mainly a rhythmic music . Even Barry Harris, with all his intricate rules on scales, chord-scales, diminished harmony, and so forth, absolutely understands this fact to be true as well .

    Mike wrote ---

    "Let me now examine some observations that have led me to question some of these concepts. At the advent of what is referred to as the Be Bop Era, Dizzy and Charlie Parker began making some musical statements that were totally unheard of and different than anything prior in jazz. To most musicians and fans alike a new musical language was born. This was obviously true, however, I now think that HOW it was born was missed. At that point a practice began in which musicians began coping melodic statements that were made by the innovators and began considering them the “language of modern jazz.” Thus the concept of “licks” was born. This concept is prevalent in today’s jazz educational system and is even a part of the lore of many professional players. It is referred to as “vocabulary.” At the same time we are hearing cries of “I’m tired of the same old stuff, I need to hear something new.”
    Now here is a point I think needs to be considered. Whose licks were Dizzy and Charlie Parker copying? Apparently they were creating the music in an entirely different way. This had to be a result of HOW they were playing but everyone started focusing on WHAT they were playing and the “lick” was born.

    There are some who will say that a lick is a jumping off point to put your personal touch on and this is true to an extent. The question becomes then isthis what Bird and Diz were doing?

    It is true that certain patterns were practiced and became reference points to embellish rhythmically but that is a different story. A pattern and a lick are not the same thing.

    A pattern is a grouping of notes into a logical sequence that once the rhythmic embellishment begins loses its identity and becomes several different free flowing melodies. An example of this can be seen in the tune Donna Lee in the 2nd and third bars. When you compare this to the bridge of A Night In Tunisia you will see that they are rooted in the same II/V pattern but are expressed in two totally unique ways.

    A lick, on the other hand, is something that someone else played and you copied. This is not the result of your own sense of rhythm.

    I recall when I first started playing at the age of fifteen and had the good fortune of playing with some older experienced players who could really swing (among them was Cannonball Adderley) I would be swinging along in my solo and as soon as I tried to play a lick I had copied it would throw the groove off and I would be off stride even though it fit the changes of where I was in the tune.

    I recall back in the eighties when my best friend, James Moody, and I were at my pad in New York. Moody used to stay there whenever he was in this area. We were discussing jazz education and Moody was surprised by my assertion that I didn’t believe in the concept of learning licks. He said to me “But Mikel, (his nick name for me), don’t you think that is necessary to develop a vocabulary?” I immediately said “No!” To which Moody replied, “Oh?” I then asked him to get his soprano sax out, which he did. I then asked him to play the notes in a C-9 chord and he played C Eb G Bb D. I then said to him, “Consider each of those notes a drum and start playing rhythms on them.” He complied and the most swinging sounds started to emanate from his instrument. I asked him, “Whose licks were you just playing?” He said, “I see what you mean.” I then told him to add an upper neighbor tone at the top. In other words the top D natural goes to D# and returns to D natural. After he did that I told him to add that to the rhythms he was making. The next thing that occurred was the melodies started to become more lyrical and get more complex. Then I had him add the lower neighbor tone to the mix. In other words play the D natural, go to the C# below it and return to the D natural. I then told him to add this to his rhythmic behavior and once again the melodies started to behave differently and get even more interesting. Then we combined the two neighbor tone figures with the same pleasing results. We spent the rest of the evening in the same process adding neighbor tones, passing tones, appoggiaturas, escape tones, etc., to the tones in the chord and dealing with the rhythms they would suggest to him and the next thing he knew he was burning the chord up with the most swinging melodic ideas that only he could come up with. He then said the following. “Mikel, this is really valid!”

    The next morning I was awakened by the sounds of Moody practicing in his room the stuff we were doing the night before going through several chords in all keys. He came out of his room and thanked me for turning him on to that but wanted to ask me a question. “How do you get from chord to chord this way.” What I explained to him was that we were just applying the rhythms to a single chord voicing to just get familiar with the concept but to get from chord to chord you don’t want to think “chords” but to think of “voicings” from the top note down and move them to other voicings with the proper voice leading and then to make the rhythms out of the voice leading itself. Once he copped that concept he started tearing the changes up. He advised me that I should write a book about this, which I did. It is called The Technique of Creating Harmonic Melody For The Jazz Improviser.

    When the book came out Moody endorsed it and highly recommended it to musicians. Another book of mine that he recommended is called The Improvised Melodic Line.

    In this study the concept of creating melodic lines from rhythm is delved into and several choices of sources that these rhythms can be applied to are examined.

    Dizzy once told this pianist in Florida, “Find yourself a rhythm and hang some notes on it.” He would say that he thinks rhythm when he improvises and simply puts notes to it. These notes can emanate from patterns, as mentioned earlier, or from scales, modes, arpeggios, runs etc. Of course, one must consider the source of the rhythm, as just any rhythm will not suffice in the playing of jazz. The rhythmic behavior in Dizzy’s music, for example, is the result of a poly metric time conception which includes the simultaneous running of 5/4, 4/4, 6/8, 3/4, and other meters primarily responsible for the melodic/rhythms you hear in his playing. I recall Dizzy, in a conversation we had about this, using the term “The melodization of rhythm.”


  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

    User Info Menu

    Seems to me this is nothing less than the guiding principle from Duke Ellington - "It don't mean a thing If it ain't got that swing!"

  4. #3

    User Info Menu

    I heard someone say in a doco about James Brown

    That James started with the tune
    'Papa's got a brand new bag '
    Arranging all the instruments in the band as drums ...
    Including the vocal !

    That's not talking about swing rhythms of course ,
    But maybe a similar thing applies the swung grooves etc

  5. #4

    User Info Menu

    This narrative comes IIRC from Mike's essay on Transcription. His thesis was that while transcription is a great exercise for ear training it should not be used as a source of vocabulary, and as he indicates above the very idea of jazz 'vocabulary' is a bit suspect.

    I often use the term vocabulary myself - I think the analog to language is a good one... But I don't think you need tons of vocabulary to write your novel so to speak.....

    I would actually say that far more than melodic vocabulary, what needs to be internalised is a rhythmic vocabulary. Players starting out in jazz have very little of this, and teaching pitch choices or licks just papers over this. Play a triad on a chord with authentic jazz phrasing and it will sound like jazz - of course. What Moody can do with a Dm9 arpeggio + neighbours is a bit different to what a beginner would be able to accomplish.

    (Longo is of course aware of this and has an approach that attempts to teach the rhythm side of it.)

    But it is interesting how many jazz lines are assembled from basic building blocks - scales, arps, neighbour tones, etc - the thing that breathes life into them is of course the rhythm and the phrasing. That's what I was driving at in my Hank Mobley thread. Rhythmic creativity is often overlooked.

    A common approach to jazz education is for learners to transcribe solos and take ii-V-I phrases etc that they can use in their own solos. To be fair this is a venerable way of learning the music, but it is perhaps akin to the 'babbling' of a young infant before they properly start to speak - half digested phrases not making any sense.

    It's interesting to me that players have to bust out of this. If you know Lester Young, listening to very early Charlie Parker is actually quite funny - he is like a Lester Young licks directory. And then something happened, a switch went on, and he started playing his own stuff.

    I like to contrast this with the Lennie Tristano approach were a solo is internalised by singing. That seems to me to be a far deeper relationship with the music than simply mining a transcription for licks and lines. But - if you need a good lick on a certain progression to get you through a tune - it can be a good quick fix.
    Last edited by christianm77; 09-14-2017 at 05:33 AM.

  6. #5

    User Info Menu

    My take is that all roads are valid and lead to Rome, provided we put the work in, even if some are more efficient than others.

    Singing is important; ear training via transcription is important, and rhythm is paramount. I don't mean to discount ANY of it.

    I took a lesson from a very good local guy who studied with Art Pepper-Harold Land in the 1950s in LA, and he has a very no-nonsene approach. He was showing my some of Wardell Gray's cliches (Wardell Gray was a tenor player on that scene who died very prematurely and is hardly known at all).

    His basic point was: no one can be ORIGINAL 100% of the time or even MOST of the time Cliches are patterns one has to have that keep the phrase going until the next bout of originality springs forth.

    The more I work at it, I think a huge chunk of it is really learning the instrument so one doesn't have to THINK of where everything is: when the instrument becomes automatic or second nature , when the intervals are internalized (especially 3rds, 6ths, 10ths and 13ths), when the various rhythmic permeataions are really worked on, we are left with a situation where there are ONLY 12 friction' notes, and any note of the chromatic scale can be related to the chord of the moment. We are left in a place where thinking is thus placed on the back burner, and notes and phrases come pouring out (hopefully).

  7. #6
    Rhythm is key. It can unlock things creatively in a way which isn't linear or gradual at all. On the contrary it can often be instantaneous and exponential. Just playing something with a Latin or double-time feel often unlocks things I didn't know were there (in my own playing/creativity) - in some stale thing I was playing a moment prior.

    There are melodic, rhythmic, and (surprisingly) harmonic implications as well. Phrasing/fingering problems are very often more easily solved with rhythmic devices/approaches than simply banging away. Problems with things like playing across bar lines are more easily addressed with rhythm than any other thought process. As a singer, I found that the secret to singing harmony over complex changes is mostly a rhythmic solution - something Louis Armstrong understood well.

    The rhythmic aspects taught me to phrase chord melody playing, how to comp while soloing, gave me better left hand technique, and taught me to hear substitution harmony better. My main day-job gigs are as a singer, and all of the rhythmic focus on guitar has made me much better at all aspects of singing.
    Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 09-14-2017 at 11:50 AM.

  8. #7

    User Info Menu

    I guess I'm from the school of thought of "keep it simple."

    I hear a lot of players trying tricky rhythmic things, but they sound stiff playing the head to "Autumn Leaves." Whatever it is you tackle rhythmically, get LOCKED in.

    The exercise of thinking of the separate notes of a chord as individual drums sounds awesome, I cannot wait to get to an instrument for that one.

  9. #8

    User Info Menu

    I really like the "drum" thing...that's going to stick.

    Thanks for the post.

  10. #9

    User Info Menu

    I often think if you can imagine some of the bebop heads played purely as a rhythm on a snare drum, it sounds like the kind of pattern that guys like Max Roach might have practiced. Probably a good mental exercise anyway, to help nail the rhythm. (or better still, bang it out on a drum if you have one!)

  11. #10

    User Info Menu

    Mike Longo. Barry Harris and Jonathan Kreisberg , to name but three, all feel very very strongly that one has to completely internalize six against four ( Longo has a video master class where each student plays six against four on drum; Barry does the same on his video in terms of emphasizing six against four to each student ; Kreisberg also has a couple videos which I have not seen, but I talked to him about it when he gave a master class at the old town school of music last year. He said that if you don't have the quarter note triplet down you don't got shit .

    I would go further and also say that three against four also has to be completely internalized . I've spent a ton of time on this, and I can already see the results, even if it seems really slow in terms of progression and development . Quarter note and a half note triplets !!!

    I would not classify this as complicated or esoteric stuff but really fundamental shit they can open up doors. Progressive Mastery over fundamental things is the overarching goal .

  12. #11

    User Info Menu

    For bop, I think it's the 8th note triplet that's totally essential, but I like where Longo's going with that kind of thinking.

  13. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by NSJ
    Kreisberg also has a couple videos which I have not seen, but I talked to him about it when he gave a master class at the old town school of music last year. He said that if you don't have the quarter note triplet down you don't got shit.
    That's really it. Especially obvious when you listen to the great singers.

    I think most of us come to jazz phrasing of standard melodies, trying to somehow hear/see it all as "jazzed-up variations on quarter notes/8ths", when actually it's closer to "jazzed-up variations of triplets". As an organizational frame work the latter has far fewer degrees of separation from actual performances most of the time.
    Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 09-14-2017 at 01:35 PM.

  14. #13

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by NSJ
    Mike Longo. Barry Harris and Jonathan Kreisberg , to name but three, all feel very very strongly that one has to completely internalize six against four ( Longo has a video master class where each student plays six against four on drum; Barry does the same on his video in terms of emphasizing six against four to each student ; Kreisberg also has a couple videos which I have not seen, but I talked to him about it when he gave a master class at the old town school of music last year. He said that if you don't have the quarter note triplet down you don't got shit .

    I would go further and also say that three against four also has to be completely internalized . I've spent a ton of time on this, and I can already see the results, even if it seems really slow in terms of progression and development . Quarter note and a half note triplets !!!
    Would love to hear more about '6 over 4'. Sounds like something I need to work on. and even your method to practice 3 over 4. thanks!

  15. #14

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by DS71
    Would love to hear more about '6 over 4'. Sounds like something I need to work on. and even your method to practice 3 over 4. thanks!
    Longo has a specific method of calculating the requisite hits using what he calls the "key rhythm". I'm not sure if that's similar to JK's teachings because I haven't seen it.

    6 is in CAPS, 4 is in lower case DAA-DU-ga-DA DAA-DU-ga-DA. EXCEPT Both hands hit on DAA. So the downbeats (the 4) are DAA-ga-DAA-ga. The 6 is DAA-DU-DA DAA-DU-DA.

    But the simplest way is to internally count "4" (tapping the foot on one and three, while feeling the 2 and 4) and VERBALLY counting aloud (1-2-3-4-5-6) in the same time span as counting out 4 . Tap out 1234 (hitting the ground on 1 and 3) while counting aloud 123456 . Make sure the 1s wind up hitting at the same time.

    sorry if this confusing. I'm not a teacher but I sure learned alof from Longo and Harris

  16. #15

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by NSJ
    Longo has a specific method of calculating the requisite hits using what he calls the "key rhythm". I'm not sure if that's similar to JK's teachings because I haven't seen it.

    6 is in CAPS, 4 is in lower case DAA-DU-ga-DA DAA-DU-ga-DA. EXCEPT Both hands hit on DAA. So the downbeats (the 4) are DAA-ga-DAA-ga. The 6 is DAA-DU-DA DAA-DU-DA.

    But the simplest way is to internally count "4" (tapping the foot on one and three, while feeling the 2 and 4) and VERBALLY counting aloud (1-2-3-4-5-6) in the same time span as counting out 4 . Tap out 1234 (hitting the ground on 1 and 3) while counting aloud 123456 . Make sure the 1s wind up hitting at the same time.

    sorry if this confusing. I'm not a teacher but I sure learned alof from Longo and Harris
    I get it, this will be tricky, lol.
    Gonna work on this. Currently working through 'Getting in Time' exercises and a few of my own to work on my feel.

  17. #16

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by NSJ
    Longo has a specific method of calculating the requisite hits using what he calls the "key rhythm". I'm not sure if that's similar to JK's teachings because I haven't seen it.

    6 is in CAPS, 4 is in lower case DAA-DU-ga-DA DAA-DU-ga-DA. EXCEPT Both hands hit on DAA. So the downbeats (the 4) are DAA-ga-DAA-ga. The 6 is DAA-DU-DA DAA-DU-DA.

    But the simplest way is to internally count "4" (tapping the foot on one and three, while feeling the 2 and 4) and VERBALLY counting aloud (1-2-3-4-5-6) in the same time span as counting out 4 . Tap out 1234 (hitting the ground on 1 and 3) while counting aloud 123456 . Make sure the 1s wind up hitting at the same time.

    sorry if this confusing. I'm not a teacher but I sure learned alof from Longo and Harris

    Yeah, if you get tapping, 1 2 3 4 5 6 over two taps isn't too bad. tap on 1, 2 3 tap on 4, 5 6...

    What were some of the reasons this was considered a key rhythm? I can think of some of my own ideas, but the mostly involve further subdivision...but perhaps that's the point?

  18. #17

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
    Yeah, if you get tapping, 1 2 3 4 5 6 over two taps isn't too bad. tap on 1, 2 3 tap on 4, 5 6...

    What were some of the reasons this was considered a key rhythm? I can think of some of my own ideas, but the mostly involve further subdivision...but perhaps that's the point?
    I think his use of the word does not impart IMPORTANCE or signifigance but rather just merely maps out where the relevant HITS are.

    My brain is mush, right now, I'm at work, I'll have to think about it a bit. I know Christian has worked this out because he saw the same videos I did, he could no doubt explain it much better.

  19. #18

    User Info Menu

    The other thing you can always do on your lap is to tap out the downbeats (4), for example, with your RIGHT hand while tapping out every other iteration of ONE-trip-let TWO-trip- let THREE trip-let FOUR trip-let with your LEFT hand.

    So, right hand taps out ONE TWO THREE FOUR

    Left hand taps out: ONE-let (of one) -trip (of two)- THREE- let (of three)-trip (of four).

    So, you can derive it from 8th note triplets while counting out the conventional way of logging in 8th note triplets. (one trip let two trip let three trip let).

  20. #19
    Are we talking about quarter note triplets against quarter notes? Is Longo teaching this to horn players etc?

    I mean, I don't think drummers learn that way, because they're playing a bipedal instrument. I don't know that they go to a class and learn to play a on their knees as if playing a drum and saying something, because they literally have a drumstick in each hand. If they play 8th note triplets with alternating hands, each hand is playing its own set of quarter note triplets individually as well. In the same way, I'd imagine that piano players learn this triplet feel by playing a rocking eight note triplet double stop with the right hand ....or maybe by playing against the other hand in the same way the drummers do. That's the way I learned it on the keyboard anyway.

    Anyway, as guitarists, we are in the same boat with being able to emulate this stuff pretty easily on the instrument itself, even pre-audiation, by using individual fingers of the right hand or using alternate picking. The polyphony , the notes themselves teach you to audiate this stuff as you PLAY it. The guitar has an inherent natural PHYSICAL reference for all of this work.

    It's EXACTLY the same thing as quarter notes and eight notes - with alternate picking. EXACTLY.
    Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 09-14-2017 at 06:11 PM.

  21. #20

    User Info Menu

    yeah, 6 against 4, the 4 being quarter notes (ONE TWO THREE FOUR). Each eight note triplet (one-trip-let, two-trip-let, etc) = one quarter note (sorry, I'm sure we all know this)

    I find it great for comping as well. Play a bass note on the downbeat against a chord that sycopates. Also useful for comping is quarter note against dotted quarter note: Quarter note bass notes hit on the downbeat, don't syncopate (ONE TWO THREE FOUR). Count it as 8th notes (one-and two-and-three-and-four-and).

    The bass note and the chord hit together on the 1 every three measures, so great for a, for example, a blues format (12 bars).

    Bass note on the downbeat. Chords hit on:

    Measure 1: downbeat of 1, and of 2, downbeat of 4
    Measure 2: and of 1, downbeat of 3, and of 4
    Measure 3: downbeat of 2, and of 3

    Measure 4 repeats same process as above.

  22. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by NSJ
    yeah, 6 against 4, the 4 being quarter notes (ONE TWO THREE FOUR). Each eight note triplet (one-trip-let, two-trip-let, etc) = one quarter note (sorry, I'm sure we all know this)
    Yeah. But I'm not sure that we really DO for the most part. I mean I didn't , until I started playing around with it trying to learn to play a little jazz as a hobby. Kind of accidentally. The way I remember learning to counts quarter note triplets in school, classical study, was simply to ape what the teacher was chanting, approximating them. That kind of works for the way you use them in classical music . You only play them occasionally anyway, and who cares?

    But in jazz, it's the least common denominator of the music. It's the currency of jazz time really , and they need to lock more. I mean the drummer's playing ALL of them basically a lot of the time. And jazzers don't just play straight triplets accenting the first one all of the time either. Not necessarily even complete triplets most of the time. More than anything, to my ears, they are usually subbing fragments of phrases for straight quarter or eighth note lines, to convey that ahead/behind feel that we think of in jazz.

    Every guitarist should do some work on learning to "tripletize" any given melody. Eventually, the same using 16ths and double-time triplets. All of the grease is in the cracks in between.
    Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 09-14-2017 at 06:41 PM.

  23. #22

    User Info Menu

    Anyone feel like recording some video of how they utilize 6 against 4 in the context of, say, practicing lines or comping? I hear rhythms in jazz as being quite a bit more complicated than how they're generally transcribed, and I appreciate the discussions and important of subdivisions, quarter and eighth note triplets, but so far haven't found a way of working them into my playing in a more meaningful way.

    Are we talking about things like, say, playing swing eighths that sound behind the beat because they are actually starting on the 2 of an eighth note triplet? Or even on perhaps the 1-and of an eighth note triplet?

  24. #23

    User Info Menu

    If you get the Longo material, there are examples of the application of the polyrhythms on the cds. My kids know all the songs from the longo cds that you buy to get the polyrhythms cds.

    Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

  25. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by wzpgsr
    Anyone feel like recording some video of how they utilize 6 against 4 in the context of, say, practicing lines or comping? I hear rhythms in jazz as being quite a bit more complicated than how they're generally transcribed, and I appreciate the discussions and important of subdivisions, quarter and eighth note triplets, but so far haven't found a way of working them into my playing in a more meaningful way.

    Are we talking about things like, say, playing swing eighths that sound behind the beat because they are actually starting on the 2 of an eighth note triplet? Or even on perhaps the 1-and of an eighth note triplet?
    I'll try to post something after breakfast. Taking the wife out for Fridays...

  26. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Bobby Marshall
    If you get the Longo material, there are examples of the application of the polyrhythms on the cds. My kids know all the songs from the longo cds that you buy to get the polyrhythms cds.

    Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk
    Very cool. What specifically are the names of the products you're talking about?