do you write ideas/lines down?

[Jazzyteach65]

So i just finished reading the entire "how not to think" thread, and there were so many great suggestions! One question stemmed from reading this was that when you go over changes, work on lines ect, and you hear a great line that you'd like to retain and make part of your vocab, do you write it down and practice it?

I know that the "masters" don't really play alot of the same thing twice

[mr. beaumont]

i almost try not to. I try to keep everything i do on hand, or rather, in my head, but in a more fluid, tweakable form...

for example, i have a thing over an altered dominant in which i play up a altered dom arpeggio, and descend altered scale. it's always in my bag of tricks, but i can essentially play it a little differently every time i reach for it.

i have most definitely written out licks that i "hear" but fumble for and need to practice to play. there's no harm in that--once it's fluid, though, it's back to keeping it in the "vault" (my brain)

ideally, i'm getting myself to the point now of getting away from licks as much as humanly possible and playing what i hear as i hear it. it's made me a much better player, however, i tend to impress the young guns (my students) less and less!

[Gramps]

I'll write down new stuff until I can analyse it and make it my own. Some of my favorite stuff started off as mistakes that worked.

[Jazzyteach65]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

i almost try not to. I try to keep everything i do on hand, or rather, in my head, but in a more fluid, tweakable form...

for example, i have a thing over an altered dominant in which i play up a altered dom arpeggio, and descend altered scale. it's always in my bag of tricks, but i can essentially play it a little differently every time i reach for it.

i have most definitely written out licks that i "hear" but fumble for and need to practice to play. there's no harm in that--once it's fluid, though, it's back to keeping it in the "vault" (my brain)

ideally, i'm getting myself to the point now of getting away from licks as much as humanly possible and playing what i hear as i hear it. it's made me a much better player, however, i tend to impress the young guns (my students) less and less!

Haha. Mr Beau, I still do have an impinged shoulder (rotator tear has not healed, that's another story) so I don't really play a whole lot not. I don't practice, but it's hard to not touch the thing, so i'll noodle every once and while, then cool stuff happens to come out, that i want to recycle for when I'm fully healthy

[JeanSut]

Originally Posted by Jazzyteach65

I know that the "masters" don't really play alot of the same thing twice

I think this is not true. For me it is a nice way to keep track of certain ideas that I want to develope. Although this is not a very big part of my practice time. From reading the very interesting book:"Thinking in Jazz" I know that a lot of great artists wrote down things they practiced.

Sometimes if I have limited time and I don't know what to practice I come back to those notes and discover things that could need a little more practice.

Best, Chris

[Jazzyteach65]

Originally Posted by JeanSut

I think this is not true. For me it is a nice way to keep track of certain ideas that I want to develope. Although this is not a very big part of my practice time. From reading the very interesting book:"Thinking in Jazz" I know that a lot of great artists wrote down things they practiced.

Sometimes if I have limited time and I don't know what to practice I come back to those notes and discover things that could need a little more practice.

Best, Chris

No, what I meant was there are certain patterns and ideas, formulas that great players use more than once. However, I was referring to using one lick verbatim continuously. Eventually after going through certain ideas, scale connections, formulas, arps and lines ect, they morph into different things, and then they are used differently from what they were intended.

Ex: for harmonic conformation, one can take an idea, say a lick, and play it through a few changes. You can take that melody and use the digits to conform through each new change.

I've never heard a great player play the same thing verbatim in different situations, it's always modified, either intentionally or unintentionally.

[mr. beaumont]

all the greats have/had licks. it's just that the really great ones could make you think you were hearing something different every time they played it by subtle tweaks and context shifts...

[randalljazz]

i write all kinds of things out: lines over harmonic formulae, lines that fit in tunes, chord voicings and sequences of chords, often for specific tunes. i date them and indicate what it developed from/where it fits (who i stole it from). i write them out in different keys if the finger patterns need to be changed to accommodate them (only have 12 practical frets).

in addition i make notes on how chords work in multiple instances (e.g. the half diminished on the fifth of a chord is the rootless b9sus).

wish i could remember everything, but ideas come faster than i'm able to drill them sufficiently to internalize them.

michael brecker kept extensive notebooks of his ideas. sure like to see that!

[FatJeff]

I write out ideas and snippets from tunes I like in my assignment book. That way when reviewing one, I automatically see the other and remember what things I'm supposed to be working on.

[Goofsus4]

Originally Posted by Jazzyteach65

So i just finished reading the entire "how not to think" thread, and there were so many great suggestions! One question stemmed from reading this was that when you go over changes, work on lines ect, and you hear a great line that you'd like to retain and make part of your vocab, do you write it down and practice it?

I know that the "masters" don't really play alot of the same thing twice

I write down original song progressions I work out just so I don't have to transcribe my own recordings to figure out what I played again. I used to write down some lines, because I really didn't understand from where they were derived harmonically speaking, so I couldn't really remember them. But now that I've developed a pretty high degree of fretboard mastery as far as note recognition goes, and my understanding of theory is much better, I seem to be able to recreate and remember lines much easier. So I don't write them out any more.

Related to the masters - I have some transcriptions of Joe Pass virtuoso standards I got a couple of years ago. Every now and then I revisit that material to see if I understand it better. I do now, and in fact, I've noticed just how frequently he uses the same ideas, but just transposed to different chords. But you don't really think of it as the same line when you are listening to it. But when I play it myself and can see what it's derived from I think "Ohhh, it's just the same thing as he played over the C11 a few bars ago."

[JimBobWay]

I record almost everything I play. I also 'write' a lot but mostly with software - it's much easier to store and search. It's not (yet) as easy to search recorded sound, so I delete a lot after a session/gig, and keep the bits I like and index them with annotations. Think of how much music you hear and/or play every day - it's tough to keep track of it all! But it's very easy to capture it all now, and getting easier in every way daily.

[FatJeff]

So JimBob, what do you use to do this? A portable recorder or something?

[JimBobWay]

Originally Posted by FatJeff

So JimBob, what do you use to do this? A portable recorder or something?

I avoid broadcasting my recording setup for several reasons. First: a lot of my tools are old, and while they work for me, I would not recommend them to anyone now. Second: the state of the art for recording advances so rapidly that even if I had the latest recording gadget, it would be obsolete by the time I posted it here. Finally, I don't want to be a proxy salesman for anyone. But here's a sketch: when in my home studio, I use either a direct or mic'd computer interface, or a legacy tape system (connected to the computer). For the field I have several analog and digital units, and I choose the best one (& appropriate mics) for each scenario. I never thought I would say it, but digital is better now.

[Doubet]

I really don't write any lines down unless it's a theme melody for a song I'm writing. Solo wise I don't because then it's not as fresh as the first time I played the line in question

[pierre richard]

when learning a new tune (sometimes) I will write out 10 to 15 chourus for it and then play it..

it's one of those things that you study when you do not have the guitar in your hands....

time on the instrument...pierre

[timscarey]

My teacher always told me that writing lines over changes was like soloing in slow motion. I do it every time I practice. It has made me a better soloist, reader, and composer. I find it to be one of the most rewarding practice techniques as many skills develop at once.

[Goofsus4]

Hmm...interesting. While I don't go back and write down lines improvised on the fly, I can see a number of advantages in the idea of composing solos. For instance, it's not done in real time, so making the right choices on voice leading and guide tones and all that is much simplified. While that's not improvisation really, I can see how it could lead to better improvisation later, as you internalized your own compositions. I have written down original melodies using that concept but for some reason I've never tried to write out an entire solo that way. Need to give that a shot.

[markerhodes]

As a songwriter, I'm a fiend about 'getting it down on paper.' Not that I'm especially good at it (-though I'm getting better.) Aside from songs, I often take down lines that grab me---later I look at them to figure out how they cast their spell, and sometimes they become the germs of blues heads or starting points for improvisations.

[guitaroscar]

i often write away from the guitar; just sit down, write out a chord progression, imagine a rhythm section, and write out my solo.
Sometimes I am right on the money, and sometimes it sounds totally wrong.
In this manner I feel that writing is an instrument all on its own.

[Bash-O]

There's a quote from Derek Bailey that goes along the lines of a "search for material of infinite flexibility"

[markerhodes]

>>>I know that the "masters" don't really play alot of the same thing twice<<<

I think this notion is oversold. Once Paul Desmond interviewed Charlie Parker and asked about a line from one his solos that reminded Desmond of an exercise in a much-used saxophone book. Parker, "It was all done with books." He and Dizzy Gillespie worked from method books and found ways to incorporate those lines into tunes they played on the bandstand. This is not meant to diminish Parker's creativity but rather to (-I hope) restore the proper focus. Improvisation is like conversation---you don't invent new words while talking to someone; you rely on familiar ones to say what you want to say now. Parker, like many great jazz musicians before him and since, loved to 'quote' other tunes and players that he admired. Thomas Owens (in a book called "Bebop") lays out several phrases that Parker used in nearly every solo he ever played. He wasn't making it all up on the spot--he was *reorganizing* what he already knew, the same way you do when you talk to another person. (Mind you, some are better conversationalists than others, and as a rule, they work at it!)

[markerhodes]

Originally Posted by guitaroscar

i often write away from the guitar; just sit down, write out a chord progression, imagine a rhythm section, and write out my solo.
Sometimes I am right on the money, and sometimes it sounds totally wrong.
In this manner I feel that writing is an instrument all on its own.

I do that too. I usually don't write chord progressions away from the guitar---it's not something I tend to think about---but I'll often 'see' the fretboard in my mind's eye and ask myself, "Hey, what if I did THIS and then THAT?" I'll write it down before I forget and later play it. Sometimes the catchiest riffs are found that way.

[Jazzyteach65]

Great answers. It's insane how many approaches there ae. I do write down merlodic cells and certain motives. I know a lot of players do write down "composed solos" for study sake

[Shadow of the Sun]

I think that working out and writing down individual motifs is a very useful thing, provided you don't just write them down to memorize them.

Once you've come up with a simple motif, write it down, and then, using that motif written down, try to expand on it, work on it, create variations of it so that you can immediately, if you have too during a solo, do the process again and find a new permutation of it. A good guide for that would be a book written by Arnold Schoenberg on compositon- you can find it on scribd at the following URL: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2187051/Ar...n?classic_ui=1

I found the ideas Schoenberg puts in there about developing motifs very useful and thought provoking.

when learning a new tune (sometimes) I will write out 10 to 15 chourus for it and then play it..

it's one of those things that you study when you do not have the guitar in your hands....

I dig this one and am going to steal it!

As for the original question, I write out transcriptions. I use it as practice for notation. I will write out my own lines only every so often, but I do keep a lot of notes on concepts I want to work on.

[franco6719]

Originally Posted by markerhodes

>>>I know that the "masters" don't really play alot of the same thing twice<<<

I think this notion is oversold. Once Paul Desmond interviewed Charlie Parker and asked about a line from one his solos that reminded Desmond of an exercise in a much-used saxophone book. Parker, "It was all done with books." He and Dizzy Gillespie worked from method books and found ways to incorporate those lines into tunes they played on the bandstand. This is not meant to diminish Parker's creativity but rather to (-I hope) restore the proper focus. Improvisation is like conversation---you don't invent new words while talking to someone; you rely on familiar ones to say what you want to say now. Parker, like many great jazz musicians before him and since, loved to 'quote' other tunes and players that he admired. Thomas Owens (in a book called "Bebop") lays out several phrases that Parker used in nearly every solo he ever played. He wasn't making it all up on the spot--he was *reorganizing* what he already knew, the same way you do when you talk to another person. (Mind you, some are better conversationalists than others, and as a rule, they work at it!)

Hey, thank you for this comment! It was strangely exactly what I was looking for at the moment. Sometimes I get extremely frustrated (yes, I know we all do) when I listen to myself and find that I am playing "too much of the same" just in different contexts or with minor modifications. But really, as you point out, it's not that I am incapable of improvising, am not tone deaf, or can't "create on the fly", but it's probably more a question of continuing to "expanding my vocabulary of words" and so on. This forum is great for bouncing ideas back and forth like this, since I don't have any real feedback where I'm currently living.

[franco6719]

Originally Posted by pierre richard

when learning a new tune (sometimes) I will write out 10 to 15 chourus for it and then play it..

it's one of those things that you study when you do not have the guitar in your hands....

time on the instrument...pierre

If I had to write that much music down though, I don't think I would have any time left for the instrument!

[gersdal]

Anyone foud a good note book to write them licks down? A link would be great.

[franco6719]

Originally Posted by gersdal

Anyone foud a good note book to write them licks down? A link would be great.

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[FatJeff]

Originally Posted by gersdal

Anyone foud a good note book to write them licks down? A link would be great.

I've been using this stuff: Amazon.com: Guitar Manuscript Paper - Standard (Gold Cover): Hal Leonard -: Books

Its basically 64 pp. of 5-line staff paper (that can be expanded into 6-lines for tabs), with a bunch of blank fret diagrams at the bottom.

It seems to do the trick.

+++ EDIT +++

Here's an image so you can get an idea of what it looks like: