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New to the Forum - in my journey to become more fluid in my improvising (not sure that is possible for a part time player) I find myself getting lost in the progression. ATTYA for example.
Memorizing the progression when comping is going fine. But when I go to solo over the chords I’m, at some indeterminate point, becoming un-anchored to the particular chord I’m over. Of course it’s easier if I’m just arpeggiating chord tones over each chord. But at some point I’d love to do some phrasing and begin making music.
I’m hoping I’m not he only one who’s ever faced this challenge (or maybe I’m just not as smart as I thought I was). I think also rhythm tracks have made me a bit lazy. So I’ve begun to force myself to spend at least some time without them.
Would be grateful for some exercise suggestions or basic suggestions on how to force my brain to keep track of the chords I’m over without having to play a line for every chord.
Thanks in advance !
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02-20-2018 12:19 PM
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You need a general overview of the tune. You need 2 brains. One that is busy, the other that is watching over everything.
When practicing comp or arps/stuff, you're developing the busy brain. The other brain needs to listen the tune a lot, and hum along with it. Basically it's a book-keeper.
It's not a crazy talk. You really need 2 brains. Ask a schizo pill from your doctor.
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I know a really great player who basically echoes what emanresu said.
I would just add that it takes time and a lot of crashing and burning to get there! Learning tunes by ear definitely helps. Getting away from any sheet music crutch for the tune as early as possible also helps. So does listening to a lot of jazz and mentally tracking the song form all the way through (through all the solos, trading, etc) while doing so.
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Simplify tunes into "movements." 4-8 bar chunks.
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Take a pencil and sketch out, on the lead sheet, where the 1/2 step chord tone resolutions are. These are the juicy ones.
1st bar, c is going to d flat, moving from fmin 7 to B flat min. 7, and 2 bars later, c is going to d flat, as chord goes from A flat maj. to D flat maj. 7, etc. (ATTYA)
Really experienced players can suss this out quickly, maybe at a glance. I read that Benny Carter still wrote this out after playing for 40 yrs.
Can sometimes find interesting voice leading lines this way too.
Often, just hitting this chord tone resolution is enough to refer to the underlying harmony....everybody goes through having to identify, and then hit most (if not all) of the chord tones. After a while, you begin to get a sense of being a little less tethered to them. That will probably help musicality.Last edited by goldenwave77; 02-22-2018 at 12:07 AM.
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As soon as you start crossing bar lines you're less moored to the harmonic rhythm of the tune.
I'd had (and have) the issue.
Here are a couple of thoughts:
Practicing with IRealPro helps. The backing tracks are good enough IMO and you have as many shots as you want. You can start with watching the chord changes light up on screen as they go by, but then stop looking.
Then, when you try to transfer the skill to a new situation, you may find yourself at the mercy of the bass player.
Here's what I find. I play with one guy who, when he hears me getting excited, also gets excited. So, when I start playing with the time, so does he. In contrast, what I need him to do is to get even more basic. So, when I'm off into space, he would be playing a lot of roots on the downbeats. The nature of the situation prevents me from discussing it, so I just take it as a challenge to keep the time internally, which I need work on anyway.
Other players make it much easier. They seem to accept that it's my solo and I need bass drum and keys to be the anchor. Even drummers who have a hi-hat in their kit can, somehow, make the time ambiguous. The kb player always has the option to comp with random sticks and jabs or to push things in a direction that you don't want your solo to take. But, in my experience, it's the bassist who is most important.
I have heard bassists asked to play "more roots". As far as I can tell, they won't change.
The other thing that helps is really internalizing the tune. It's a lot easier to cross bar lines (and know where you are) on a blues than on a lot of Wayne Shorter tunes.
If you want the one word take home message: "IRealPro". $10 on your phone and you can practice just about any tune.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
This helps me too. Sections. So if the tune is AABA form etc., get comfortable with one section at a time, then start stringing them together.
All The Things You Are | Chords Analysis and Guitar Examples
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I am a raw beginner but what has helped me with the same issue is learning to sing/hum/grunt a/the melody over the basic harmony and time until it becomes ingrained. I find doing that with a tune means that now if I lose my place it is possible to come back in at the right place in time and when playing with others if the comping/interpretation gets complex I still have a my basic reference as an anchor/safety blanket
Will
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In a very ideosyncratic and personal approach, I "look" at a piece as a landscape; to the point that when getting to know a piece, especially a piece like All The Things You Are, I find it helpful for me to block out segments in each key section and highlight them in different colours on a lead sheet. I also list the key areas on a piece of paper, this is like my musical google maps (remain in Eb... in two bars you will modulate to G...).
This combination of listing/mapping works with my ear. The key list talks to my left brain, the coloured lead sheet gives me the larger picture that the right brain clicks with.
As with all the great suggestions above, getting to know it by ear and just living with the tune is essential. The mapping system I use helps me visualize where my ear is leading me to. But it also tells me essential details like where EXACTLY I'm modulating to. This is really important in a tune like ATTYA because that piece flows like a river with many tributaries and your ear may easily lead you into a key that feels right but isn't the way the tune actually goes. In fact, Jerry Bergonzi wrote a tune based on ATTYA but it takes alternate changes that feel "right" but it never reaches the bridge, it just comes around from a series of interconnected A sections. Lots of ways to sound good when you're playing by ear but only one way that gets you out without a train wreck, ha ha.
I guess this might seem kinda kooky but this mapping I do helps me see each and every tune as familiar and clearly as a landscape of a place I call home, complete with possible shortcuts (reharms) and scenic spots I can see and look forward to. Too, I wind up with a very colourful real book! Topographic changes. Make any sense?
David
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I agree with David, I might put it like this though. I get lost when I try and use theory to generate ideas. I don't get lost when I already have a tune I want to play in my minds ear and use theory to help me find the notes.
But the contradictory thing is that if I try and practice a tune with a theoretical goal in mind (ie play one motif outlining the changes with minimum movement) and am reasonably successful then my ear will want some of those things and they will be part of the perspective that generates new solos.
Maybe all I'm really saying is, yup it's tricky.
D.
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I like to simplify the harmony to its
really basic. Vanilla version ....
Then remember it as 4 bar blocks
not the actual individual chords ...
Gives you a lot more time and room
to hear/ think. / feel your way on the the road ...
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Originally Posted by pingu
I absolutely agree with that. It is easier said than done though. The thing that helped me most was a way of working which forced me to do that.
I would take a song where I could hear that the melody was diatonic and bloody mindedly harmonise it with chords I IV and V. This would make it seem either poppy or folky or nursery rhymie.
I'd then systematically plug in substitutions WHILST SINGING THE ORIGINAL MELODY. vi FOR I first, but not every where just in one position at a time, say it happens in bars one and four of an eight bar section I would try it on each one in turn so I could hear how the substitution affected the OTHER I chord, which is actually much more interesting to me.
I'd then do the same for with ii for IV and iii for V.
I'd then break V's to ii V's.
Next I'd add in secondary dominants to the substituted chords, again trying to hold the tune and just listening to hear what I thought and how it changed the style of the tune. Most importantly I would not be able to escape the visceral effect of the harmony on the tune because I would be singing it and would be unable to avoid FEELING it.
Then I might try and aim for the style of the original if I could and this would teach me far more about how the chords worked than any book.
I'd then repeat the whole thing in a new key, from step one, as soon as I felt I had learned something in the first one.
Like all good 'short cuts' this way takes a lot of work and time because the destination is much further away than we hoped. But thats OK because the well trodden (WELL SOLD) paths goes in ever decreasing circles and takes us to nowhere.
But luckily working in the way I am suggesting is SO MUCH FUN and most importantly it puts me in the driving seat making aesthetic choices and responding honestly to the music ( you will sing the tune differently and feel A LOT when you do this).
Whenever I learn a new harmonic device I just plug it in to this method, (from the ground up) to see if I am ready to use it or to teach my ear to hear it.
You could write a whole book about one tune doing this (I think Martin Taylor did...) but that would be pointless because to make things vivid YOU need to be in the driving seat. And another problem with books is that we read them and instead of learning from them we just 'AGREE' with them which is pretty pointless. Like reading a maths textbook, if you just copy the answers out at the end then you ain't learning any maths.
Nothing I learned from a book on jazz made much sense to me till I started testing the info on tunes. But not from a lead sheet or fake book, just working from my memory of the tune and trying to reinvent harmony from scratch. And that is the best way because there is no one size fits all theory, the principles that guide music are emergent and infinite and best observed and PLAYED WITH first hand.
Increasingly I realise it is best not to play anything that I can't easily play by ear or see from the perspective of this method.
Anyway, that got a bit ranty. I hope the OP can get something out of it.
D.
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This is exactly what I do. Originally Posted by pingu
It's funny...I find myself simplifying complex tunes...but I'll often add chords to simple tunes!
But yeah, break things down. Don't chase changes, make melody, highlight the important twists in the harmony. I imagine simplifying tunes as a "in the zone" baseball player feels when he's timed a pitcher's fastball...everything slows down and looks bigger, even though it's still moving at 95mph...
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Make sure you know the songs melody really, really well and use it to guide you thru the tune, then you'll be less likely to get lost. Its a song after all not just a harmonic obstacle course to be navigated. You can't ignore the harmony but the melody is the simplest guide.
Tim
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.... wonderful post Tim!
„an harmonic obstacle course“ .... that is how I often felt. You are right! If I‘d only manage to let the melody play in my head in time while letting the improvisation flow ... sigh ... that jazz thing is a bit complicated
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Tim -
I couldn't agree more about having to be 100% familiar with the song etc. But, to be honest, the only time I've got the melody in my head is when I'm playing the melody! The rest of the time it may - I say may, I'm not aware of it - be there subliminally but not otherwise.
I couldn't improvise or feel my way through a piece if I'm thinking about a set tune. But I wouldn't play just anything, it must be within the feel of the piece. That I think one should do.
I mean, that's what improvise means, doesn't it? Create or produce from available resources. But perhaps I'm missing something...
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Rag, Originally Posted by ragman1
I agree with most of what you write here. my perspective is that the melody of a tune is one of the very important "available resources". Some (perhaps most) of my favorites of the great improvisations seem to weave the melody into the phrases or use the rhythmic or metric form of the melody as the base of an extrapolation. ATTYA is a perfect example of a tune where the melody, because it is so simple and being based primarily on the 3rd of each chord, can easily be woven into countless variations. On other tunes that have a more busy melody, I might use the metric aspect of the original melody to give structure etc.
Here is a wonderful example of using a melody as a starting/reference point for an improvisation. which might illustrate what i'm getting at. Of course a pure harmonic or thematic based approach can also yield perfectly good results. From what i have heard, Your playing is quite well ordered and melodic so I'm not suggesting that yours or anyone elses approach is wrong or less valid.
all the best
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Tim -
But what is the 'metric aspect' of a melody? Don't know that one.
I hear what you say. Mind you, if I make so bold, that Charlie Parker recording was him playing the melody at the start. He played one chorus and I'd say he was actually embellishing the melody. He had to get it over but was filling in a lot.
Would you say that the trumpet and piano solos after that were melody-based? I mean, any solo, probably, on this tune is going to sound a bit like the melody because of the way the harmonies fall. But apart from that.
Btw, I'd forgotten how they went into Tango mode in that one. Quite clever :-)
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How well do you know the melody?
Every single note of the melody spells out the harmony in the clearest way possible. Learn the melody really really well, even the lyrics if you have to, to help it stick.
Make a chord melody arrangement, doesn't have to be fancy at all, just something that's enough to hear the melody against the chords, and be able to play it in time.
Get a metronome on 2 and 4 going, comfortable tempo, where you don't have to strain yourself too hard to keep up, Play 4 bars of the melody, then play 4 bars of comping, then 4 bars of blowing then 4 bars of melody again. It'll look like this:
melody over |Fm7 |Bbm7 |Eb7 |Ab^ |
comp over |Db^ |G7 | C^ | C^ |
blow over |Cm7 |Fm7 |Bb7 |Eb^ |
melody over |Ab^ |D7 |G^ |G^|
etc etc.
hope that helps!
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[QUOTE=ragman1;849825]Tim -
But what is the 'metric aspect' of a melody? Don't know that one.
I suppose another way to say it would be, the phrasing of the melody, where each phrase begins and ends can be thought of as the metric aspect. Make sense?
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Yes. At my stage I’m playing way to many notes as the king said in Amadeus. “Just cut a few”. Easier said than done. But that’s the goal isn’t it. To start to be more selective. Thanks for the direction.
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To which Amadeus looked wholly indignant and screamed 'There are precisely the right number of notes, pal!!!' Originally Posted by Glen Rude
Or, more realistically:
Too many notes, my dear Mozart.
- Emperor Joseph II to MozartExactly the right number, Your Majesty.
- Mozart to Emperor Joseph II
h2g2 - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Composer - Edited Entry
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Understood. Originally Posted by TLerch
Actually, I remember trying that once. I thought 'What would happen if I played some sort of improv using, obviously, different notes but the same phrasing as the original?'.
It didn't work. Formulas never do
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There are lots of approaches to playing... but generally they all fit within the FORM. All tunes have a FORM. At almost any level of musicianship, there a million different aspects of what, how and where to play etc... But the Form is always there.
The ideas mentioned above about using blocks of tunes are in the direction of becoming aware of Form. How the music is mapped out in space. Once one begins to use memory to learn tunes... either the melody or changes etc... your going to have problems. Unless your performing all the tunes all he time.
The form is just a way to help you use whatever works for you... melodic or harmonic. Don't get caught up in the melodic verse harmonic debate.... they're both going on all the time. Some players are better at one or the other, so generally that become they're approach, which is usually memorization. But what there is usually not much debate on is the Form of any tune.
You'll learn basic Forms of standards, how tunes are organized into Forms, the spatial shape of the tune... then become aware of how the tune works within that Form... both harmonically and melodically, (skipping the other compositional aspects), Then become aware of the organizations within the sections of the Form.... example A A B A , ABA, ABC...
Once you have a basic understanding of the overall spatial shape of Tunes... the memorization problems become a little easier. Become more of plug and play. And the getting lost thing will happen less.
There is much more... but you said your a beginner, start at the beginning, not somewhere in the middle.
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this sounds like a great exercise. Going to try it. Thanks. Originally Posted by don_oz
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