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Over the past decade and half I've seen more and more groups of younger players show up at gigs with Real Books and then proceed to play the entire job with their heads buried in the book.
O.K., I've been working for over 40 years and I realize that makes me Old School to some but learning the tunes is required. The music has to be inside you. If you are focused on reading the music you're not focused on performing the music. Relying on a Real Book and reading the gig places an extra layer between you and the audience that shouldn't be there.
Imagine going to a rock concert or a country show and seeing the entire band with their heads buried in songbooks.
Admittedly, here are times when you have to play a reading gig but please understand I'm not talking about playing casuals. I'm talking about groups that I've repeatedly seen playing The Great American Songbook in clubs using the Real Book to get through the gig.
The groups that I see locally that have the largest followings and can pack a club are the ones who know the songs, walk on stage with their instruments, play their butts off and connect with the audience.
Learning the tunes and playing them from memory is an important step in preparing for the bandstand.
Regards,
Jerome
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05-11-2014 01:53 PM
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I say they're pretty brave. Or stupid. Fine line.
Personally, I have little desire to go out in front of people and play songs I dont know. Or at least, I like to do that as little as possible.
Maybe im old school too...but j think ypu kinda need to know a tune before you can really say something compelling over it...
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I played a gig a couple of weeks ago where the whole band, but me, was reading the Real Book. Terrible. Pure armatures and it sounded like it. It was embarrassing.
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I've stated my opinion on real books on other threads. The executive summary is: don't use them, learn the tunes.
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Very well put, Monk. I'd been mulling over a starting a similar thread, glad you got the ball rolling. Being able to play the standards without a Real Book reference is an essential part of being a jazz musician.
One thing I'll offer for the folks who are skeptics, maybe tried it a time or two without much success and went back to the comfort of paper, What you're going through now to memorize your first tune is nothing at all like how playing a tune feels after you've learned a few hundred of them. I can clearly remember just starting out, all the old cats said learning tunes was crucial, so I set about to doing it. I figured if I worked hard all week to memorize a tune I'd have 50 or so by the next year. The first couple were real struggles, I'd think "Okay it's Eb major for 2 bars, then it goes to Dm7b5, oh no, what happens after that? It was a real struggle, and initially nowhere near as comfortable as the Real Book, but kept at it, and gradually things shifted from trying to visually remember what it said on the chart to simply playing familiar sounds by ear. I found myself hearing an unfamiliar tune at a jam session and knowing what the chords were by the time my turn came around. If I had to read a chart on a gig, I noticed I internalized the changes after a couple times through and didn't need to look at the chart to solo.
And yes, if you move away from the comfort of paper, it's a certainty that there will come a time when you fall apart on a tune. The valuable skill you'll build is learning to recover by ear, if things get shaky the lifeline you'll learn to grab for is your internal ear and musical memory, not the external reference of a chart. Since you will inevitably make mistakes, it's good to get some out of the way before you get the gig at the Blue Note. As guitarists, we're lucky that 2 of us can get together and make a complete musical statement, there aren't many records with just 2 trumpets or drummers. If you can find a buddy at a similar level, you can start to build a duo with the tunes you learn. Best of luck!
PK
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I think your playing would suffer if you didn't know the piece well. Once i memorize something then i can play it more expressively.
They would have to be exceptionally gifted to make very good music that way.
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I agree with the views expressed here.
What surprises me is that they need expressing.
I mean, how is it that guys who need a Real Book to get through standards are ON a bandstand in the first place (-when guys and girls who don't need it are not)? I apologize if that sounds like a smart-a*s question. I don't mean it that way.
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Yeah, to work for me, you have to have 800 songs memorized. I get tired of excuses.
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I like how people blame the book. "Real Bookscare Evil! Burn your Real Book!"
They're a fine resource if you know how to use one. If you need one to get through Autumn Leaves, the book aint the problem.
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I've noticed an interesting thing. There are a lot of guitar players who come to jazz after having played a bit, sometimes years playing rock or other kinds of music. Sometimes even some improvisation. But the way they learn is not as a composer, but by memorizing licks or plugging them in on simpler forms.
I've seen jazz students seek out teachers who would teach them how to acquire an impressive lexicon of melodic phrases (licks) but not the syntax ( compositional skills) and even had a guy tell me "I don't have the time to do ear training and theory, I'm not in music school, you know". The end result? They learn that music is a process of plug-ins but the backbone, the bone structure, the solid internal structure of harmony is not internalized as a part of the learning procedure.
It takes a long time to learn to compose. Going from playing rock (not that that's a skill-less art) to playing improvisational jazz sometimes can feel like going from having fun to something that feels like work. And a lot of people just don't want their fun to be work. So they don't seem to see the shame in bringing their lead sheets to the stand; it's how you get to the sounds without the work.
I don't think you know just how powerful it is to play with an internal set of changes...until you do it.
It's not an easy thing to teach to an impatient student.
David
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only 800 eh ? OKayee
Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
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I agree, knowing a collection of tunes is important, it's just apart of the tradition.
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I don't know about the 800 tunes. I don't think I know that many. But there are a good 50 tunes you can get by on. And if you know them very well, they translate to other tunes too - similar tunes where you can sneak by. Maybe 100 tunes.
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I love being free of the book, I also love the little I-Phone app that has all the changes for what seems like every tune ever written, that little app has helped me pull off some requests that without it never would've gone down, equalling tips that wouldn't have been made. It is a real catch 22 you gotta know the tunes to gig you gotta gig to know the tunes. You have to be good to gig you have to gig to get good.In my opinion it is better for a bunch of newbie jazzers trying to learn jazz(even failing miserably) to use a book on a gig, than not to try at all, or worse play stupid video games. I mean we all start somewhere and I know that my Real Book came to many,many gigs before I was finally free of it. Does that make lame...sure it does, did I sound pathetic and look amatuer sure I did,I'm not a genius or an innovator,and I'm pretty sure I was "unteachable" for a long time, I just had to learn it for myself the "hard" way, I mean you could not tell me the color of the sky without me looking for myself from the age of birth until I made 40, but I love playing and I've given alot of time and energy to jazz guitar. I play 200+ gigs a year now, nothing fancy just bars,restaurants, private parties and the occasional art music/original music gig at a little series dedicated to that kind of thing. It isn't the same thing you are talking about but when I saw Bill Frisell with Joey Barron and Kermit Driscoll way back in 1990 Bill had 3 music stands in a row with the charts of his music on them, I know that isn't the same as reading/presenting a lame version of "girl from ipanema", but this was his own music, so it had to be coming from inside of him, which should be internalized yet he was reading it, and to my ears that did not in any way detract from his incredible performance.The sooner we can play with our eyes shut the better!
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At the time Bill was working with that band, he was going through one of the most prolific times of his career. He had written and was writing some of the most unusual tunes ever heard and his pieces often had several disparate and unusual episodes (influence of his Zorn days) with different meters...and on top of that, the book was HUGE. I traveled with that band on several legs of several tours documenting the evolution of those tunes. They would go for days doing new tunes each night before ever repeating. And they never played from a set list, never the same tunes in the same order. Plus he wouldn't even call a tune, or even pause between tunes. It was a continuous suite of original compositions that the band was telepathically linked to. Much of it never made it to the recording studio, so big was the book. Originally Posted by eddy b.
Now I'd say that cuts Bill a little slack for working with a chart!
David
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Hey, Eddy! I note you live in New Orleans. Did you know or go to hear the late great luthier and jazz guitarist Jimmy Foster? Great musician and from what I hear a fine human being. Jimmy passed away much too soon in April 2011, I believe
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That little app saved my bacon a couple of times. Late last year I was invited to a very prestigious gig, with many famous jazz musicians taking the stage. It still wasn't determined whether I was going to play because the powers that be didn't know who I was. Little did I know they were checking me out during the sound check. The band called some tune I didn't know for the check. I looked it up on my iPhone and slyly had it hidden in my shirt breast pocket. I glanced down to see the basic changes and where it went to the bridge and no one was the wiser. I got the gig. I think they were surprised I new the song! Originally Posted by eddy b.
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Hey targuit, yes I met Jimmy a couple of times, went to his shop with a good friend and great jazz guitar player, Ted Ludwig, we listened to Jimmy play for maybe forty minutes, some of the most beautiful 7 string solo jazz guitar arrangements. Jimmy was a true gentlemen, a fantastic luthier and a great player.
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Ran across the following quote from pianist / teacher Hal Galper, who was describing the 'casuals' he played in the '50s. (He entered Berklee in 1955 and estimates that by 1960 he knew 1,000 tunes "without the paper.")
>>>>>I used [to] lug my fakebooks to every gig. The problem was, the band leaders would often call medleys which gave us no time to find the page in the books for a particular tune. Rather than wait for you they’d say “fake it kid, fake it.”<<<<
How To Learn A Tune | Hal Galper
I find that interesting because I was under the impression that using fake books at gigs was something that "old school" cats never did. You learn something every day...
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Yea you should know tunes and form of tunes etc... I memorize basic tunes... the standards from roman numerial functional analysis and just know most of the heads. Generally even when you don't know the tune, you can tell where it's going.
That being said... I can play a tune just as well when I'm looking at a chart or have it memorized, just really doesn't make any difference to me. And many of my gigs are reading charts at gigs... I usually can get away from a chart before the 1st time through... and generally live performance is just that.
I mean if the music is just standards, pop tunes, R&B or Blues... I also have a fully loaded Ipad (2), at the jam I host, they're used nonstop. I also have bought just about every fake book released.
Recording sessions... depends, last week I did a couple of sessions with singer and Big band... charts with arrangements, very difficult to fake your way through... because everything you play will be checked out, listened to over and over. I have a few pics.
First part of next month I'm recording a new CD, I'll be featured, I'll be picking the tunes and my original, B-3 trio, very standard/ blue direction... won't need charts, at least after the first take... I'll have what I think are hip arrangements etc...
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Where are you Reg.
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Hey edh... I work out of SF bay area, the studio was Fantasy in Berkeley, one of the best. Opened ...? late 60's, my first session there was in early 70's. That was a different world... moviola's and flatbed editors...
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There's only two occasions I'll play with music:
1) Original music, either mine or someone else's. When it's my music, I'll have it on the stand, but really won't be reading it. It's there more as a tool for conducting the band. If it's someone else's music, it's hard to learn it. Sometimes these gigs with originals have no rehearsals (plus with other gigs in the way) don't give me much of a chance to really listen to the music and internalize it.
2) It's kind of a really loose gig, so I'll decide to try new tunes I don't know. Did this a few months ago where I played a duo gig with a bass player, and I just brought a bunch of charts I didn't know to try out. Not a lot of people came out so I just read through them. Now I know 10 more tunes.
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Performing with music on the stage has these issues for me:
1. I'm not engaging the audience when I am looking at the music
2. My spontaneity disappears when there is music competing for my mind's attention
3. I'm not engaging the audience.
If I can't look at the audience and get a sense of how my music is being received, it is not very much fun for me.
I can sit in my home and play for myself all day long.
I play out because I like to share with others the lovely music i've found and learned.
Whenever I have performed a song where I 'needed' the music to feel confident, I almost always regret it afterwards; some part of it will have gone wrong, proving to me that it wasn't sufficiently rehearsed and ready to go out.
cheers!
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