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There is a lot of room for interpretation with Carol's comments above; "just arpeggios" I believe does not mean only play arpeggios, it means USE the notes from the arps and mix them musically with passing tones. PLAY from the arpeggios, no body want to hear an etude of up and down arps. Practice them till you know them inside out, then use them to make music.
Originally Posted by tomems
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10-04-2017 05:49 PM
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It is rare for anyone accuses me of being in my right mind and so I will give your video a few minutes time to evaluateAnyhoo. The next boring video no-one in their right mind would want to watch will address the difference between a 2 and a 9, 4 and 11 and so on... CST doesn't distinguish between them, but there is a very real difference.
just how boring it is.
I didn't learn CST from Mark Levine or Berklee and in fact never heard this expression before I arrived at this forum.
I was taught to analyze and hear the intervallic content of different scales/modes.
A 13th chord modal extension was the starting reference. 2 and 4 was a melodic viewpoint of 9 and 11.
Played as passing tones or perhaps suspensions are 2 and 4. Sustained notes treated as chord tones are 9 and 11.
Anyway, you can be pretty nerdy so I'll try and check out what you have to add to my understanding if it doesn't get
too boring.
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THANKS!!!! God that stuff winds me up soooo....much (curls into foetal ball.) Originally Posted by bako
I guess I won't be making that video after all *rocks back and forth sobbing*
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Link pls. I like a good anti CST rant almost as much as an anti-metronome rant. Originally Posted by NSJ
I love hey recent article by Ethan Iverson where he rails on, among other things, chord scale theory .
He makes sure however to give Barry Harris is an absolute pass and absolves him completely.
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It’s part of a larger piece about the state of Jazz .The piece centers around duke Ellington and Bill Evans while discussing what’s happened since. Originally Posted by christianm77
Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, and One Night in New York City | The New Yorker
”This is not to say that Evans himself wasn’t a devout master of harmony. He certainly was, with a strong claim to having done the most to integrate the polymodality and impressionism of Russian and French composers from fifty years earlier into jazz. To name just three obvious living examples, the work of Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, and Keith Jarrett stands squarely on Evans’s shoulders.The problem is the influence of scalar thought at a introductory level. Some of jazz education has been excellent. Any time an actual master like Barry Harris is willing to talk nuts and bolts, a wise student will listen. However, much of jazz education— especially when it exploded in the nineteen-seventies—simply lacked depth. Many teachers and method books were inadvertently offering a way to sound like a European promoter, not like an American master.”
”The problem with so much of jazz education is that it teaches scales as the first and best option for improvisation, which has led to a profound homogeneity of jazz at the college level that persists to this day. However, Coltrane knew as well as anyone that permutations of a scale were just one element of improvisation. On Coltrane’s version of “In a Sentimental Mood” with Duke, he doesn’t play any scales. Instead, he declaims the melody in his profound and passionate style. Coltrane then leaves the star solo turn to Ellington, who offers one of the most perfect piano improvisations in the whole Duke canon: mysterious, searching, surreal. That surreal piano chorus is in stark contrast to Evans’s professional and clean chorus with Gomez and Philly Joe, where each note of attractive melodic improvisation in the right hand fits perfectly with the added-note harmony (and implied chord scale) beneath.
“Surreal” was a key element to the Ellingtonian palette, but it was almost always an accessible kind of surreality. There were dancers at the Rainbow Grill. Not many—not a swarm of hundreds, like when jazz was still popular music—but some. These dancers were also probably familiar enough with current Ellington to know to stop and listen when there was a cadenza. During the first Ellington chorus of “In a Sentimental Mood,” the floor is quiet, but when Gonsalves swoops in and the tempo falls into place one can almost see partners taking each other in their arms. It is so beautiful how radical and avant-garde Gonsalves and Ellington can be while also playing for dancers. It’s a kind of avant-gardism that prizes melody and beat first. It also aligns with mystery and even pop sensibility, or at least a way to make something unusual within a confining commercial marketplace.”
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Thanks for posting that article. Ethan Iverson sums up something I have long thought about Ellington. Again, this is why I disagree with Reg so often. Reg is a complete product of that post-Evans paradigm and clearly a badass player in that mould... Nothing wrong with it...
But there's a lot more going on in the music when you dig that really isn't anything to do with CST. EI is good at bringing this stuff up in relation to jazz piano as a true scholar and historian of the music - you can be a great player BTW and neither of these things.
Again EI is close to my heart when he says that the music of Parker functions on internal counterpoint - that is rhythmic and chromatic counterpoint within the form of a song... Not notes on a chord. The post CST paradigm is pretty much useless in understanding bebop properly, so bebop students are often consigned to reproducing II-V-I licks. Bruce Foreman neatly dissects this in ep89 of Guitar Wank (there's a citation lol.)
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It's all utter BS. Evans did not make the music way he did because he used CST, he did it because he'd already heard Elington, decided it was not worth further beating and worked on a way to move the music forward.
VladanMovies BlogSpot
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OK you can take that up with Ethan then. I haven't studied enough Bill Evans to confirm what he's saying. Originally Posted by Vladan
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I agree...it sounds like more of the misconception I see all the time that Evans only played ballads that sounded like gymnopedies. Originally Posted by Vladan
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The Duke/Coltrane version is on a whole different level than the other two. There are no displays of virtuosity. It's pure imagination.
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May be, but that is not the question. The question is, is it due using, or not using, CST? Originally Posted by Stevebol
VladanMovies BlogSpot
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Ok - I'm not sure what you are specifically disagreeing with beyond perhaps a general feeling of people having a dig at Bill Evans. But everyone digs Bill Evans (see what I did there? ;-)) Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
If you had read the article you'd realise Ethan Iverson was discussing more the post-Evans school of jazz education rather than Evans himself, although he does state Evan plays right hand lines that agree with the left hand harmony, this is not in fact true of all earlier jazz pianists. So while Evan's probably didn't use what we think of CST, his style represents an important step in that direction.
Rich added note voicings are (from my own limited investigations) not that common in the playing of 1950s pianists - not unheard of, but not a defining feature of jazz piano left hand at this point. EI identifies Ahmad Jamal is an important influence here. But Wynton Kelly is happily playing straight up triads and other simple chords in a accompaniment. So Ethan's narrative here chimes for me.
Evans was moving towards a more integrated two-handed approach to jazz piano. The generation of Bud Powell came out of stride. Left hand/right hand were two different worlds. For instance, in stark contrast to his right hand lines, Bud's left hand was spare and harmonically straightforward - 10ths, 6th chords and so on.
Pianists following in his train also had a dichotomy in their harmonic thinking between the two hands - for instance, check out Iverson's article on Red Garland's style. So left hand = chords, right hand = scales and melodic lines, basically.
(I think it is for this reason that Barry Harris teaches harmony separately to improvisation.)
Now Jamal is an interesting exception to this because his style is kind of textural and chordal - divergent from the Bud Powell left hand comp/right hand plays horn lines approach.
The generation inspired by Evans and Ahmad Jamal as well as Bud and bebop - Herbie, Jarrett etc - needed a way of unifying the two worlds, left hand and right hand. Suddenly things like clashing extensions and alterations - 9 and b9 say in dominant chords become significant while earlier players might have happily overlooked them if they were in different hands (Red Garland, for instance) It's my belief that what we think of as 'jazz harmony' as opposed to simply 'harmony' really came to be born in this era, and scalar approach to soloing on chords is a natural result of this change in piano technique.
To make the connection between added note chords and scales becomes natural. Especially to a pianist, playing a profoundly scalar instrument. Two hand together = chord scales.
Of course this might well be total rubbish as I don't play piano, but I trust Iverson's scholarship. He's a deep cat.
Anyway, for myself, I need to check out Bill Evans properly as my musical comprehension slowly advances to the year 1960. At this rate, I should be playing contemporary jazz by 80.Last edited by christianm77; 10-08-2017 at 05:26 PM.
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If this is in response to my post, re read my post carefully and also the Ethan Iverson article. I am making no such assertion, and neither is EI. Originally Posted by Vladan
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Wasnt Aebersold's first University teaching gig to instruct classical musicians to improvise? I think it was his intention to simplify the stuff he learned from George Russell and scales were interlingua. Nothing nefarious but unfortunately , he had a market cornered and while other great players were playing, Jamey was constructing a jazz ed. edifice. It's worth noting that he had no end of great players, Scofield, Leibman, Tom Harrell, Hal Galper, Stafford James, touring around in his roadshows selling the dictum of CST. In hindsight , having been to one of those workshops back in the early 80's it relied almost completely on the individual interpretation and musicianship of each of those guys to make sense of it.However, much of jazz education— especially when it exploded in the nineteen-seventies—simply lacked depth. Many teachers and method books were inadvertently offering a way to sound like a European promoter, not like an American master.”
If you analyse a Bill Evan's solo using CST - you can find any amount of harmonic specificity in it. That doesnt mean he thought that way. In fact Im sure he didnt. Bill developed phrases and arrangements of tunes from small cells of information. He also developed ideas around different tonal concepts which happened to include modality. His own tunes were conceptual and he viewed many of them as etudes.
The same argument has developed around how George Russell used his LCC to analyse the music of Ravel or Berg. He didnt claim that either of them thought that way , but there is this pervading simplistic and unhelpful thinking within Jazz Ed (writ large) that if its reducible via a thing - it must have been created via that thing. I have encountered it in the ever increasing quest from students seeking the silver bullet - it doesnt work that way....thankfully.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
I'm just saying people forget Bill could straight up swing and play sparse left hand as well as anybody.
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Well of course he could, he grew up with Bud Powell as well as Scriabin. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
And no slouch at George Shearing drop 2's either, with his own flavour.
If anyone thinks that Bill Evans came straight out of classical with new sounds and no understanding of the existing jazz piano tradition they probably also think Monk couldn't play piano ;-)
The point EI was trying to make (IMO) was that for jazz piano education, Bill Evans is all too often where they start and it is a style it is possible to pastiche on a surface level through CST. Does it matter? Yes, I think it does. I'm not saying everyone has to master 10 different historical styles, but an appreciation can awaken you to how things can be done differently. Also, as Evans himself was keen to point out people are often too content with getting the general gist and not the exact thing.
There's a great difference between someone who has read the Levine Jazz Piano book and can play like a 'European jazz promoter copying Bill Evans' (to quote EI) and someone who has really sat and listened to Evans and can actually play like him. One UK guy springs to mind - Bruno Heinen. Check him out.Last edited by christianm77; 10-08-2017 at 06:16 PM.
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I dunno...I think it's more the false dichotomy that CST and whatever else are totally different and incompatible and if a player thinks about chord scales then they never think about arpeggios or whatever. I don't know anybody who can play who plays that way, and I don't know anybody who can teach who teaches that way. It's a made up argument, in my opinion.
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Sorry I added a fair bit to my post through edditing above. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
EI is saying CST is a superficial way to pastiche a sort of Bill Evans thing, in the same way that II-V-I 'vocabulary' is a way to pastiche bebop. Neither are the real thing, but a surface level approach. I mean like, 'oh I play Locrian #2 on half dim which gives a Bill Evans type of sound.' That type of thing.
If you are serious you have to come into direct contact with the music and go into it in great detail. Maybe your mental toolset, CST, or whatever, can help, maybe not. (From what I know I think CST is more useful for understanding Evans than for Coltrane, but that's a whole uber thread right there.) Of course, some might call that slavish imitation. I think what it is is learning how to hear music in depth and clarity, so that you can learn to hear your own sound.
EI is in a better position to make these statements than I because the breadth and depth of his listening is frankly intimidating. Just typing this shit makes me feel like a hack fraud lol. I pastiche a lot. Oh well.Last edited by christianm77; 10-08-2017 at 06:29 PM.
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I agree with your analysis and most of the points in Iverson's article yet it's interesting that Barry Harris himself considers all those players up to and including Evans as having an integrated two-hand technique. Here's an excerpt from an interview with Ted Panken:
“With a lot of the young people, I can’t understand their logic when it comes to jazz, or their understanding of jazz, their disrespect for older musicians, and why they play like they play. Monk didn’t play that way, Art Tatum didn’t play that way, Bud Powell didn’t play that way, Al Haig didn’t play that way, Bill Evans didn’t play that way. The pianists can’t play two-handed chords; they think that the right hand is just for single notes — and that’s bull. Whoever taught them that and whoever came up with it is full of stuff. This music is two-handed music. All you got to do is listen. And yet, these people will say that they’re listening to Monk and different people, and I know they’re full of stuff. They aren’t listening to them. It’s impossible to listen to them and play the way they play.”
So much of Red Garland and Wynton Kelly's output features them in accompaniment mode and it's easy to make the assumption that the way they play on those recordings was their modus operandi. Red's solo piano introduction to You're My Everything from Miles Davis' Relaxin with its block chord intro (requested by Miles after a false start) suggests a different player altogether:
Granted, there aren't the simultaneous clashes of extensions common to later players but Red's parallel octave plus a fifth voicings - I'm sure that's where George Benson picked up on the idea - in the intros to tunes like Relaxin' and Traneing In can lead to some interesting harmonic implications.
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That I can understand. But I don't see how lousy players are to blame for a very valid way at looking at things. Originally Posted by christianm77
I also think the article shows plenty of bias, using a fun word like "surreal" to describe Ellington, and then an obvious backhanded compliment with the "neat and clean" comment on Evans. Because that's what every jazz player wants to be. Neat and clean. I'd take it as an insult if anybody said it to me, but luckily, I'm not good enough to ever be accused of it
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I keep doing the stupid editing thing, so I'll duplicate my thoughts here:
CST - I mean like, 'oh I play Locrian #2 on half dim which gives a Bill Evans type of sound.' That type of thing. It's a short cut.
If you are serious you obviously have to come into direct contact with the music and go into it in great detail. Maybe your mental toolset, CST, or whatever, can help, maybe not. (From what I know I think CST is more useful for understanding Evans than for Coltrane, but that's a whole uber thread right there.) Of course, some might call that slavish imitation. I think what it is is learning how to hear music in depth and clarity, so that you can learn to hear your own sound.
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I agree completely. But I just don't think anybody worth listening to or learning from thinks that.
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Originally Posted by PMB
Yes I have heard Barry say that on a number of occasions. The reality is always more complex.... I will hold up my hands and say that there's a lot more going on here...
EI has an article on this - 'Red's bells'....So much of Red Garland and Wynton Kelly's output features them in accompaniment mode and it's easy to make the assumption that the way they play on those recordings was their modus operandi. Red's solo piano introduction to You're My Everything from Miles Davis' Relaxin with its block chord intro (requested by Miles after a false start) suggests a different player altogether:
Granted, there aren't the simultaneous clashes of extensions common to later players but Red's parallel octave plus a fifth voicings - I'm sure that's where George Benson picked up on the idea - in the intros to tunes like Relaxin' and Traneing In can lead to some interesting harmonic implications.
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Yeah, but I daresay it took you a while to come to that realisation.... It did for me.... Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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