-
I find it amusing when people are claiming that real improvisers don't follow rules. How would you - or even they - know? On the bandstand, it's a mostly unconscious process. Just because we're not consciously aware that we're following rules doesn't mean that there aren't rules there.
Similarly, people claiming that a computer would never be able to improvise or react in real time to a group or whatever... a lot of people said similar things about a computer playing Chess, or a computer playing Go. It's just a matter of improving learning algorithms and improving hardware.
Some people seem to find the prospect of a machine being able to do something like create art to be disconcerting or existentially confronting. Doesn't make sense to me. I can't swim as fast as a fish, or run as fast as a horse, but I still do those things for the sake of enjoyment.
-
12-06-2017 07:03 AM
-
No.How can I improvise jazz? Is there any system, any rules helping me to learn that?
(There is only material that you can use to master your instrument and so on, and the vocabulary of the musical idiom. There is actually a tension between, making the changes, and true melodic improvisation, for instance. The tension between the process and the strictures of the 'style' are one of the things that makes it interesting to me.)
What is a good improviser?And after reading stuff here for about five years, I am still waiting for the emergence of an reliable system to learn jazz improv. I haven't seen too many JGBE members that where brought onto a learning system here and came out as good improvisers... But I'm still not giving up!
Your challenge will be to abandon that.Being a software developer myself with a mindset working in a logical and systematic way, the OP is working in an interesting field.
-
Well, good morning! I hope that I can capture everything I wanted to comment... There's been so much said yesterday...
I fullheartedly agree. Moreover, my original question is not yet touching the debate about creativity and AI, although it is obviously related. Why? because I haven't made up my mind about it yet. It is philosophically tough.
Originally Posted by Jazzstdnt
Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
Originally Posted by grahambop
Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
Let me just say a big thank you for these additional pointers and the hint at the MIT research. That gives me so much material to work with. As has been mentioned in this post, my project is mainly for the postgrad-studies. I don't mind it being of personal interest to me and what I do to pay the bills at all. Originally Posted by diminix
I will be glad to share my work with any interested parties. It is due in February 2018, so it might take a little time.
On the first part of your response: yep. I agree that considering a subconscious ruleset does not really take away from the notion of creativity in itself. Whether or not creativity can be reduced to a combinatory process that uses predefined parts in interesting ways is a big debate though (which I consciously did not want to start with my original post. Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
).
I don't feel threatened by new developments in computers and music. Why? because that train has long left the station. There is so many terrible incarnations of people earning money with a computerised band already that there is no stepping back. I would never even consider gigging with a backing track or computer-generated bandmate as of now. It makes one reconsider the unique qualities of live performance and how that can still be sold to people. I am still not convinced that technology is to blame here, but rather a society that is continuously degenerating and stops caring about whether or not the music is actually handmade art created by a living being....
But yes, it is a huge debate that I am aware of and that I try to stay away from with this thesis, as I want to focus at underlying principles of acquiring the necessary skills. There is no intention to create anything that can be sold as an "improviser in a box".
-
Then why not analyse actual performances instead of practice tools? ('Cos it's harder obviously.) Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
These techniques for improvisation - they are like drills, exercises. They relate to music, but they are not music. They are easy to program into a machine because when we practice in this way, we do in a mechanistic way.
(There are other ways of practicing that are not mechanistic.)
There is a confusion here between practice and music making that is not limited to this thread or a discussion of AI.
I think these things are much more interesting to people interested in AI than people interested in Chess, Go, or music.Similarly, people claiming that a computer would never be able to improvise or react in real time to a group or whatever... a lot of people said similar things about a computer playing Chess, or a computer playing Go. It's just a matter of improving learning algorithms and improving hardware.
I find the economic side of it disconcerting, but inevitable. Technology will march on. The specifics on how this affects us are in the political sphere.Some people seem to find the prospect of a machine being able to do something like create art to be disconcerting or existentially confronting. Doesn't make sense to me. I can't swim as fast as a fish, or run as fast as a horse, but I still do those things for the sake of enjoyment.
The existential side of it? I honestly don't care because I do not see AI developing that intangible spark of consciousness - at least at no time soon. That's Philip K Dick stuff, and AFAIK, real AI isn't like that, correct me if I'm wrong.
But ultimately, we agree.
Where I have trouble with the OP is in his apparent profound misunderstanding of the process of improvisation, at least as I understand it.
-
This has nothing to do with perfect pitch as a skill. Perfect pitch is the ability to memorize and name pitches within certain ranges of accuracy, in a way that the VAST MAJORITY of professional musicians CANNOT. We all know individuals who can do this, and it's a very interesting/compelling ability to witness at the very least. Originally Posted by pauln
You're insistence that it can't be called "perfect" if it's off by a few cents (and therefore a myth) is your own, and completely ignores common practice usage of the term. My ability to read and understand English isn't a LIE or MYTH because the language has evolved and is different than it once was. It also also isn't dependent on some standard of perfection that you arbitrarily designate.
If you have issues with the "loose usage" of the word "perfect" in this case, that's fine, but that's your own personal beef. And it does nothing to change what the term "perfect pitch" has come to mean as a term. There are numerous other imprecise examples of terminology in all areas of life, but that doesn't mean that the phenomena they describe doesn't EXIST...or that it should now adhere to one individual's personal standard of meaning.
-
Possibly, but if you look at the analysis of AlphaGo's matches versus Lee Sedol, a lot of the analysts were very taken with some of the plays that AlphaGo made, and considered them to be beautiful and ingenious. Originally Posted by christianm77
Obviously AI people will be more interested at first, but once the AI gets to a certain point, I think that the members of the art in question, be it Chess, Go, or music can start to appreciate what the AI can do. Well, provided they don't have any ego problems due to the idea of a machine doing what they consider their life's art form.
The thesis on Charlie Parker's playing which attempts to deconstruct his playing into a series of licks which he uses in varying contexts and with various modifications is where I'd personally be taking this project - analysing a player's solos and trying to find patterns and tricks that the program can use, rather than focusing on the didactic methods; I feel that closer mimics on how people learn to play or solo - they take tricks from players that they enjoy, learn to apply them, and start utilizing them, etc.
I'm personally of the opinion that improvisation is really just making a larger solo out of pre-existing elements that have been played during practice; the closest analogy would probably be that I'm writing this sentence by taking a bunch of pre-existing words that I've become familiar with and can use in various contexts. The fact that I'm using words that pre-exist - or that an improviser is using pre-existing figures - doesn't make the art in being able to put together a good solo any less impressive or any given solo any less unique.
-
No no no - in that case, there is no trouble. I don‘t seem to remember defining improvisation anywhere. That was on purpose. I want to use computer modelling as a means of researching a technical subset of skills acquired when learning or being tauht to improvise (and which I believe can be represented in terms of rules). That is a rather weak assumption that does not touch the creative merit within improvisation as we understand it. There is a technical side to improvisation, as there is a technical side to speaking a language. Without assuming too much, the development of parsers and the advances in computer linguistics are not actually a threat to poets and novellists around the world, are they? I apologize for any offense caused by that.Where I have trouble with the OP is in his apparent profound misunderstanding of the process of improvisation, at least as I understand it.
I admit, it is a touchy subject. However, I would be very grateful, if people would stop telling me that I supposedly said anything about improvisation being reductible to a set of rules. Never intentionally said that, never will. And I don‘t intend to offend any active musicians on here. Thus, could we all please assume a little less, be less grumpy and - when in doubt - ask? The constant restating of the above is meditative, but it kind of takes away from all the productive statements that have already been posted in this discussion.
-
If you WILL indulge me ;-) Originally Posted by zirenius
On the first part of your response: yep. I agree that considering a subconscious ruleset does not really take away from the notion of creativity in itself. Whether or not creativity can be reduced to a combinatory process that uses predefined parts in interesting ways is a big debate though (which I consciously did not want to start with my original post.).
As a musician, it's not a debate. At all. Of course creativity isn't that. That's what I do when I'm NOT improvising. I'm a pro, so if the muse doesn't alight upon my shoulder that day, I have to play something that sounds good so people feel they get their money's worth. Some players just play stuff that sounds good in various combinations.
However, many of us are interested in finding ways to coax that muse out of hiding, and that's where the hippy shit gets involved.
It's a debate that revolves entirely around the framing of the question. In terms of what goes on in my head when I improvise, well it's impossible to know if a machine could ever do that. I can intuit through what others have said that my process is akin to theirs, and this is a leap of faith I must make in order to teach improvisation at all. (Beyond the aspects you could plug into a machine.)
Philosophically, the question only becomes meaningful (to my mind) when you frame it as a 'black box' thing - like the Turing test. Let's not think about what goes on in the program, or the human mind, but focus on what we can evaluate.
(There are some interesting parallels with other discussions I've been having elsewhere.)
The goalposts are different here to Chess or Go, of course, because it's not simply about a 'win.'
But, can a grandmaster spot the difference between a human grandmaster and a chess program?
-
Cut-up technique - Wikipedia Originally Posted by Shadow of the Sun
-
If you don't use the word Improvisation, it's all good. Originally Posted by zirenius
Improvisation is a massive can of worms. And by using the term, the OP is, I'm afraid, philosophically provocative, whether you like it or not.
If your aim is to program a bunch of typical ways of constructing jazz lines into a computer, there is no controversy to be had. That stuff is mechanistic.
-
That has been a very thorough read and a very realistic perspective on the matter at hand. I agree with your comments about creativity. Thing is, I did not mean to clash with your view on this in any post over the last few pages. On the contrary, it way only a perceived over-assumption about what I was actually trying to do that made me a bit defensive. At the same time, you are helping me consider ways to not step on anybody’s toes when formulating the actual thesis. So, thank you for that. ;-) Originally Posted by christianm77
I agree that the black box scenario is philosophically intrigueing, but it is also way outside the scope of what I can achieve in a master thesis. Also, it might well be outside my skill range...
-
Yes, but still the analysis of the mechanistic yields implications about the relationship between language and music. Although the music happening in the process might not be of interest or relevant to a true artist, I am hoping to get some meaningful insight into how musical material is acquired and whether or not it actually is related to the way grammar structures language. I just did not say it like that, because this statement needs a lot of linguistic and formal assumptions that I also don‘t want to carelessly make... Originally Posted by christianm77
-
Please also bear in mind there is no strong agreement on what exactly improvisation is even within the realm of jazz. By some definitions, Louis Armstrong was not an improviser, for instance.
Some have suggested we reject the term as over-used and nebulous.
-
Obviously the full scope of your research is not under discussion here... I find the area you talk about really interesting... It's hard to restrain myself. Originally Posted by zirenius
If I were doing something like this I would be exploring the connection between jazz common practice in the 1950s and BH line construction. 1950's jazz players like Hank Mobley, Dexter Gordon, Clifford Brown, Grant Green and so on used a very consistently defined jazz language in terms of pitch choices.
-
Thank you for that hint. There has been quite a number of essays recently in a field that calls itself critical improvisation studies. There is a heap load of that discussion in my "to read" folder.... Originally Posted by christianm77
Then don't restrain yourself! Originally Posted by christianm77
I just wanted to be very clear about that I regret any offence taken by anybody. I might not have been as careful in phrasing my questions, as I thought I was. Your point in looking at comparing actual bebop practice with the BH construction practices is very valid. Thanx. I have to think about how to fit it in and whether I can actually fit it within the constraints I have (aka. page numbers)...
-
For instance, and bear in mind I have no idea if this is relevant or not:
-
I did abandon the hope to see a complete systematic approach to jazz improv already. But I have not yet abandoned the hope that I can find a way to learn improvising--at a basic level, at least. Obviously, there have been people who learned to improvise. And I have doubts that the ability was a sudden divine implant from the heavens above. From Paul F. Berliners Thinking in Jazz I kept the insight that most jazz musicians were soaked in music from the first day they lived on this planet. Family members singing and playing instruments all day, going to church and being member of the gospel choir, sitting with older guys on the front porch, instruments in their hands. They just grew up with it, music was intrinsic part of their everyday life. Not the tiniest bit of that was part of my life. Im 50 now, and nobody is sitting with me on my front porch to teach me something. So I have to find an alternative way... Since I am a rational type, of course I am looking for information, for systematic hints how that all works. Originally Posted by christianm77
After looking for so long and progressing so little, I see one of the main trouble for beginners in jazz in the way it is taught. From my pov that trouble is grounded on the fact that the knowledge of jazz improv is what in my language is called Implizites Wissen. In English that could be tacit knowledge. An example you might know from yourself is riding a bicycle. You probably know how to do it. I know how to do it, and I am not bad at it. Take somebody with exceptional abilities in that area--let's say Peter Sagan, some Wes Montgomery of cycling--and ask him, how is that done, riding a bike. How do you do it? How can I learn it? He doesn't know, he can't tell you. He can't teach you, at least not in a systematic way. From a scientific pov bicycle riding isn't yet explored fully. It was just a few months ago that somebody came up with a systematic mechanical engineering model describing the stability of a rolling bike with all degrees of freedom. And that model is highly disputed... Yet there are robots already that ride bicycles. Robots are steered by software, which relies on algorithms. The programming of algorithms needs a model, a system describing the problems to solve. E.g.:
Quite interesting what the engineer is telling about intelligence and skills, that might connect to Jazz!
I have been teaching bicycle riding to quite a few kids in my neighbourhood in the last decades. Looking back at it, my teaching has not been systematically, not even remotely. I could explain almost nothing. The only thing I did was running alongside and keep them from crashing. At last, I could take my hands away and off they went. Just give some little hints what could be done better. Spend some comfort after crashes and motivate to start again.
I am pretty sure, that jazz improv is a complex case of tacit knowledge. The basic problem to exploit tacit knowledge, to bring it on paper, for sure is one basic problem of the OP to do his work!
I shouldn't answer this, you neglected the improv word by yourself: "Some have suggested we reject the term as over-used and nebulous". But I guess you know what I mean anyway;-) My lunch break is overstretched anyway, have to stop here. Originally Posted by christianm77
Robert
-
Christian,
Interesting stuff in the video.
Two questions:
DC#DF ED#EG FEFA GF#GBb
I understand referring to this as an ornamented scale but the presentation in 3rds makes it very harmonic sounding.
It could be heard as alternating Dm and C#o ala Barry Harris.
If I wanted to go full Reg, in that every note implies something harmonically, the chromatic neighbor notes could
perhaps represent: Dm C#o Dm || Eo D#o Eo || Dm C#o Dm || Eo D#o Eo ||
If Em7b5/Gm6 is considered C7, then surely D can be considered a chord tone.
This leads to the question about treating extensions as chord tones within BH melodic system as you understand it.
There are extensions that are very consonant and some that can disrupt the basic harmonic function if given too
much prominence.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zirenius,
I would also be interested in seeing the results of your research.
Many teaching/learning approaches can be reduced to a set of rule based responses, for better or worse.
That is not a comment on the nature of creativity or improvisation.
It is a comment on the content and presentation style that is found in some musical method books.
The Bergonzi books for example, generally develop one given idea at a time.
He is attempting to expand options by teaching about developing materials generated by a particular
mechanical approach. Humans assimilating this type of material, can sound very machine like at first
until when or if ever it becomes more fully integrated.
Anyway, a machine can tirelessly throw out material once parameters have been set in place.
Further insight can be observed noting differences as you tweak the parameters.
I find this interesting. I'm not going to study programming anytime soon but will happily eavesdrop on
the findings of those engaged in such endeavors.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness that you have brought to this discussion.
-
I didn't mean that. Abandon is a bad word actually. What you need to do is be able to shelve the logical mindset when appropriate. Originally Posted by diminix
The software engineer mindset is useful for practice. For playing, it's a drag.
That's true. To learn to play jazz, youneed to listen, put it together, and play, with others. It doesn't matter if you are 3 or 50. Most of the musical language on classic jazz sides is pretty straightforward when it comes down to it.But I have not yet abandoned the hope that I can find a way to learn improvising--at a basic level, at least. Obviously, there have been people who learned to improvise. And I have doubts that the ability was a sudden divine implant from the heavens above. From Paul F. Berliners Thinking in Jazz I kept the insight that most jazz musicians were soaked in music from the first day they lived on this planet. Family members singing and playing instruments all day, going to church and being member of the gospel choir, sitting with older guys on the front porch, instruments in their hands. They just grew up with it, music was intrinsic part of their everyday life. Not the tiniest bit of that was part of my life. Im 50 now, and nobody is sitting with me on my front porch to teach me something. So I have to find an alternative way... Since I am a rational type, of course I am looking for information, for systematic hints how that all works.
You can't look at this from an external point of view 'I want to sound good' - because you have to enjoy the process of playing, listening and learning for it to be worth pursuing.
If someone could wave a magic wand and make me the player I dream of being today, I wouldn't want them to. What's the point?
I'm going to be bold and suggest that the last thing you need is more info. There's far too much info on this forum already for anyone to absorb.
But I've always seen improvisation as fundamentally separate from musical style or tradition. Anyone can do the process of improvisation whether they can play or not.
When you say 'good improviser' - that's what I mean.
Some people are shuffling blocks of pre-composed material around - I do it many nights. It sounds good and people say - 'oh that sounds like bebop.' That's a result of the type of mechanics the OP is talking about. I regard that as a poor relation to my best playing, but it does the job. That's what you have to do if you earn a living playing music. So there's a tension there.
I think it would be good if you approached improv in a completely open way, separate from playing jazz, just to get used to the process. Just improvise freely, on your own or with others without any prejudgment of what comes out of the process. Don't think of it as 'music' the noun.
-
[QUOTE=diminix;823945]I did abandon the hope to see a complete systematic approach to jazz improv already. But I have not yet abandoned the hope that I can find a way to learn improvising--at a basic level, at least. Obviously, there have been people who learned to improvise....From Paul F. Berliners Thinking in Jazz I kept the insight that most jazz musicians were soaked in music from the first day they lived on this planet.
Don't see any way around this. This is what "learning music" is....at some pt., through listening, and some formal study,maybe....the architecture of it reveals itself...for some it is consciously referred to...for others not, but it is known (tacit knowledge, as you say below.)
Im 50 now, and nobody is sitting with me on my front porch to teach me something. So I have to find an alternative way...
Study the history of the music..."ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" or however, that phrase goes, in a musical sense.... listen to some ragtime and blues, and Latin-based stuff...marry that to European harmony...that is jazz, more or less. Early jazz guys embellished melodies...listen to Hank Garland's group play "Pop Goes the Weasel" on Jazz Winds from a New Direction, for a modern e.g. If you can sing a simple ditty...Happy Birthday, and embellish it, you're on your way....million little tricks, enclosures, octave jumps, inversions of phrases....Or discard the melody itself and just using the harmonic framework....Louis showed the way. Listen esp. to singers....Louis A. is also important as a singer....and his whole approach to phrasing is very, very vocally-based IMO....singing and playing around...like playing the game of Horse in basketball....don't sing it straight....make it your own...THAT is the spirit of the music.
After looking for so long and progressing so little, I see one of the main trouble for beginners in jazz in the way it is taught. From my pov that trouble is grounded on the fact that the knowledge of jazz improv is what in my language is called Implizites Wissen. In English that could be tacit knowledge.
You talk about teaching kids to ride a bicycle....I raised three of them and went through this myself with the first two....finding the empty parking lot and running along beside, and telling them, "Keep pedaling, and head up"....and after some crashes, it worked....sort of.
On my third kid, I tried a different approach I'd read about....lower the seat a bit....have the kid propel himself along by just pushing against the ground, and have him learn to balance HIMSELF.....he was able to do this fine, and it was fun for him, and a lot less stressful for me. (I took the cranks off so they wouldn't get in the way.) After he got good at that, I talked to him about pedaling, put the cranks back, and told him "Keep pedaling and head up". Guess which approach worked better?!
The rules are so context bound, that they are not really very useful, IMO...I had the Aebersold "Minor" and "Major" CD playalongs....he suggested just playing different chromatic scale tones against each simple major or minor progression....you can learn a LOT by this ....so much so, that I've resisted learning the formal little "transformational tricks", like the Harmonic minor/alt. scale thing, and applying it....I more or less look at altered dom. tones in terms of where the line is going, not in an "automatic", technically valid (because it's a tautology) way.
I took a Modern Drama course in college where we studied Ibsen, Shaw, Checkhov, O'Neill and Strindbergh...we read about 40 plays in 13 weeks...one for each class lecture. Professor lectured and we absorbed the themes and devices, pretty unconsciously.
Final Exam....we walked in...he had provided on paper, a brief situation and some names of characters...and we had to write a treatment, or synopsis as 2 of the 5 writers might....so in 80 minutes that was a good, and fun exercise....much more useful and revealing than "O'Neill has been described as ____, _______, and _____. Agree or disagree."
So, playful fun....is a major theme for my learning. E.G. I was just looking at "I Had A Crazy Dream" by Harry Warren....starts out with classic arpeggio phrase ending on the tonic 9th, then a little chromatic walk-down...that little device is worth playing around with in a million ways. I think that is the only way to learn this stuff...bit by bit...patiently...
Or look at "Hot House" by Tadd Dameron, the phrasing construction is almost a graduate course in bebop...analyze why it works....listen to people play it...Dizzy, Barry Harris, etc., then take those phrases and start to play around with them yourself....they WILL be different...just because people's "prior knowledge base" (in learning theory jargon) is so different.
Rule based stuff can be a conceptual "bypass" of what is really at stake....the sounds themselves. And that is why I think computer-aided stuff is useful....it enables a listener/learner to hear sounds against some harmony, and to reach some useful conclusions. Doesn't replace live playing, but it's a whole lot better than nobody playing with you.Last edited by goldenwave77; 12-06-2017 at 11:44 AM.
-
Christian & goldenwave,
thanks for the optimistic approach to my doubts! Essentially your both telling the same. And that is what I am doing: trying to immerse myself in jazz, in any way possible. Listening, reading, transcribing, analyzing, trying to improvise without any expectation to sound "jazzy". I have reduced the complexity by working only on the blues. Harmonically the most simple blues, no quick change, last four bars V7 | V7 | I7 | I7. Trying to
understand the form, the call and repeat model of the blues. Trying to develop melodic motifs from the arpeggios I am learning slowly.
Doing that for months now, and still feel only the tiniest progress. But I am enjoying the process of playing, listening and learning, like Christian said. With a little despair from time to time. It is worth pursuing, otherwise I would have given up long ago. But it still is such a slow and tiresome process... Last week I started a project to analyse only the first four bars of jazz blues pieces I like, and to extract motifs from these, typical blues idioms. Then I play a simple blues backing track into my looper and try to expand the four bar phrase into improvised choruses. That is a way that feels good (started with Zoot Sims Blues in E flat)!
The experience of your third kids way to ride the bicycle is great, goldenwave! I have seen the same with two boys here, who had a Laufrad (balance bike?), a little wooden bike without pedals and breaks. They started at around two, and they developed to little bike artists in no time. Couldn't wait too long before stepping up to the real bicycle. And now they are doing great on bikes, much better than any other kid around. Three year old Emelia from next door got her Laufrad a few weeks ago, and she seems to go the same successful way. So, isn't that a systematic approach to the complex task of bike riding?
What is the balance bike for jazz beginners?
Robert
-
I think you can look at it a number of ways. Originally Posted by bako
The BH approach to improv is to use simple blocks of harmony (in this case Dm) and not to sweat the small stuff.
Even if you use an arpeggio based on a scale - we wouldn't really dwell on what harmony it makes over the underlying chords.
Of course - that's not to say there isn't an underlying harmonic relationship. It's just that we don't really think about it.
Now the scale pattern - yes, you can understand it that way.
But I think you - and Reg - have it backwards actually. Typical guitar players! ;-)
It's not that the chromatic notes in this case suggest a chord progression - it's that chord progressions like the one you wrote are an extension of melodic principles into multiple voices. The dim7 chord is often used as a harmonisation of a leading tone (lower neighbour) - which is what those chromatic notes are doing in that pattern.
In the case of the pattern, there are notes that stable (D F A) less stable notes (E G) and notes that are not stable at all (C#, D#, F# and Bb) - these notes all suggest degrees of movement, colour or static-ness within the key. The chord progressions we know and love (ii-V-I etc) use these qualities in several voices.
One of the key melodic principles is that notes a half step below a chord tone resolve upwards for instance. Efficient cadences in harmony - for instance V7-I make good use of this semitone movement. The V altered scale can be seen as an extension of this principle.
And in the case of polyphony and harmony, it's not always not so simple that you can write down a chord symbol that captures the full harmony. Think of a Bach fugue, for instance. I mean you could stop the B minor Mass in its tracks and go - look F#9 to Bm! But that's just a simplification.
A jazz group working in functional style changes is like an improvised fugue, if you like.
Barry's approach - as I see it - is a scale-centric, melodic, approach where harmony is emergent from melodic movement.
-
Personally I think I made more progress playing, using play alongs than anything else. I had a teacher who heard me playing along with Aebersold 54, and ended up using it in one of his student-band groups.
I have BIAB, and a disk with about 200 songs on it. I work with these....change the keys, tempos..etc.
The blues is kind of funny....in some ways, it is trickier than straight diatonic harmony. Sort of its own special language, and in some ways...harder to extract things from. (Albert King is a favorite....he has NEVER wasted a note in a solo...never, not no how, not no way....just pure meat, in his playing.)
I like more Great American Song Book stuff, and listening to jazz versions of it. Cole Porter's stuff is very good....melodies look "dull" but harmonically, they are pungent, e.g. "Love For Sale". I think it's worth listening to "slower" improvisors....Gerry Mulligan or trombonists, or Gene Ammons.
Chord-melody study is also VERY, VERY helpful.
Also, don't forget to work on pure technique....it also helps you to figure stuff out at speed, and it is hard, if you can't execute to do this....anyway....good luck.
-
Boy, do I agree. Even though I hate that term Originally Posted by goldenwave77
I learned so much trying to figure out how to play tunes "solo"-- I pretty much had to figure out how to put any note on top of any chord, and to improvise in a way that clearly connects to the harmony (which interestingly enough, I might NOT outline as heavy if I'm not playing solo, but learning how to do it freed me up later on--that's the whole "then don't ever do that" quote we were talking about recently in a nutshell)
One of the first things I do when I learn a tune is play through it, chords and melody. Even if I have no intention of playing it that way--knowing where the melody lives in relation to the harmony (in a few different areas of the neck) is really important to me "understanding" a tune.
Also, from recording myself as often as possible, I was able to hear and make corrections to my internal clock and work on my time, as that's SOOOO important...because you can get away with murder when you're only playing by yourself--and get very sloppy.
-
Question 2: :-D Originally Posted by bako
TBH I'm not really sure the extent to which a theory of chord extensions as you would recognise exists within the Barry Harris approach. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable (Mr Kingstone?) could chip in.
For instance, we number the scale degrees within one octave. That D is a '2' to us, not a 9th.
It's a little bit ambiguous, because we could for instance we could construct upper extension chords like Fmaj7 on G7 or even something like melodic minor harmony - say - Fmaj7#5 on G7... And never actually be thinking about what those chords are. We are just breaking the scale up into stacks of thirds. In this case, an arpeggio from the 7 of G7, or an arpeggio from the 3 of D (melodic) minor.
Another thing is that the harmony - chords - side of things is handled differently, so it's like there is a very pointed separation between harmonic improvisation and melodic improvisation.
So - short version - we don't really care?
Anyway, perhaps you could do a Reg style analysis of the Mobley line... I'm not saying Hank thought exactly this way, but it seems more likely as a sax player he was thinking primarily in terms of lines and not chords, and the BH stuff seems to work well as a way of building lines in this idiom - if not necessarily understanding them in an harmonic sense.
Reply With Quote
Autumn Leaves (Fingerstyle Chord Melody)
Yesterday, 11:56 PM in Improvisation