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It's funny you should say that. I thought the same thing. He was in a guitar mag I read in the '70s---he was teaching at Musicians Institute then, I think. I picked up his book "Inner Jazz" in the early '80s but I wasn't ready for it. Still mainly a rock player then. But I remembered the name.
Originally Posted by GuyBoden
I think I had similar Les Wise lessons on cassette, but he looks too young.
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05-16-2014 03:12 PM
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I won't speak about the ideal. But if the posts in the thread entitled "Internalization" in this sub-forum are to be believed, and I do believe them, then some actual jazz musicians are being paid to play jazz despite needing a Real Book on the bandstand with them to get through certain standards. It would seem that at least they need help memorizing tunes. Further, some players who only perform songs they have 'down cold' wish many more of the tunes they know 'pretty well' were in the 'down cold' category but for some reason, they are not. I think these people too wish they were better at memorizing tunes. (And sometimes there's the gig where you're asked to play a song you don't even like, perhaps actively dislike, but you learn it for the gig because you need the gig...) Originally Posted by paulkogut
There are certainly other approaches. Hal Galper suggests learning the melody last because it is the most difficult and complex element in a tune.
How To Learn A Tune | Hal Galper
From the great Jazz Advice site, here's an article on how to completely learn a melody in 30 minutes.
How to Completely Learn a Jazz Melody in 30 Minutes | jazzadvice.com
It's no surprise to me that Jamey Aebersold would have a play-along devoted to tune learning. This one is by David Baker
http://www.amazon.com/Vol-How-Learn-.../dp/B000001O5W
I don't know how well the Les Wise approach works with students. (I sent him an email and asked him about this. If he replies, I'll pass it along.) But it seems to me that for those of us who cannot hear a tune once and know it forever (and I certainly cannot) and who have found ourselves struggling to remember parts of a tune we not only have heard many times but have actually played before, any help in that area would be most welcome.Last edited by MarkRhodes; 05-16-2014 at 04:10 PM. Reason: Forgot something
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That's the ticket. Tunes I memorize by looking at the notes tend to come and go and the only ones I learned that way that are actually internalized are the oldies like All the Things You Are that I've literally played 1000 times. They probably weren't internalized until the 500th time. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
When I transcribe a tune and changes it's stuck. Even if you can't remember the chord symbol you know how the tune goes and the harmonic motion and you can feel the guide tone lines etc. You've let your ear swim around in the tune for a while and soak it up. Jazz is ear music. Not eye music.
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Gotta be honest. After watching the first vid it seems like this would be waaaaay harder and slower than just learning the melody by ear or from reading it off a lead sheet and picking a good position to play it in. It seems like he's taking something that can be learned in one step (melody) and turning it into two steps (collection of pitches, rhythmic placement).
Maybe for absolutely beginners? I don't know. I don't get it.
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Hey guys,
I have been taking skype lessons with Les for the past 18 months. I can tell you from first hand experience that what he explains in this video is not his whole approach to learning tunes. It's just one way to learn lots of tunes in little time. If you have no need to learn 30 tunes in a month or whatever, then maybe disregard this technique. I personally did not benefit from using it, and have worked with him other ways to learn tunes in a way that is more adequate for my way of learning. He never forced me to use this system, nor is he forcing anyone to use it in this video either.
This sounds about right. It's probably something they all came up with together at MI, Howard Roberts, Don Mock, etc... Maybe forum member docbop, an MI alumnus, could fill us in. Originally Posted by paulkogut
Anyway, the reason you remove the rhythm from the equation is to ingrain in your brain the melodic contour of the song. If you draw the notes on a staff with out their rhythm, you get all the "ups and downs" of the tune in one quick go.
BTW, that video isn't that old, maybe 7 years. He STILL looks like that, though! I swear that man hasn't aged since 1973. Maybe it's a side effect of learning so many tunes so quickly!
K
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Les was one of the improvisation instructors when I attended GIT in 1982-83. This specific technique was never discussed when I was there. Perhaps it's something he came up with after I graduated.
As far as melodies go and please understand I'm talking Great American Songbook tune or "standards", I've never had a problem internalizing the melodies. Even as a small child, I could hum or whistle a melody after one or two hearings. Lyrics were always the problem for me. I have to actively listen to the lyrics or they disappear into the music.
The following link is to an article a friend shared with me about how people listen to music. The article resonated very strongly with me and has prompted some lively discussions for me and some of my friends. At this point I'd like to point out that the majority of discussions, even among musicians, that I've been privy to have actually been about lyrics. To me, that's not a discussion of music. Music is music and lyrics are words.
Why Americans Don?t Like Jazz ? DYSKE.COM
Regards,
Jerome
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I suppose it was you I was thinking of, not docbop. I get confused with so many forum users! Sorry if I offended you or doc. Originally Posted by monk
K
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No apologies necessary. I think docbop, Wizard and I are all GIT alumni. There may be more but I'm not certain.
Regards,
Jerome
P.S. You're right, Les hasn't changed much over the years.
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I used to teach at The American Institute of Music in Vienna, Austria. This was a school he essentially put together based on GIT.
Then he had this method, some students told me, of learning tunes by just staring at the lead sheet. Maybe there was more to it than that, but that's what the students told me. Just stare at it. Concentrate on staring the the lead sheet. I don't know. I must be missing something.
I took his place as the jazz teacher when he left.
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That's a puzzler. I can understand looking over a lead sheet from a sight-reading perspective, checking out the range, figuring out what position(s) it would lie in, deciphering any odd rhythms or accidentals, seeing where the coda goes, etc. Maybe that's it?
PK
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I was also at GIT, a bit later: 1983-85 (sat out 6 months to work and woodshed). Wonderful time in my life!
I had Les for one class, and I don't remember him covering this topic either.
Although Howard Roberts was just coming in for seminars and other stuff by the time I was there (I mean, not teaching classes anymore like Les, or Steve Trovato, Charlie Fechter, Don Mock, Frank Gambale, Keith Wyatt, Ron Eschete...)
But I came to that school because of Howard and his seminars, and was much more influenced by this simple idea from Howard: "never practice anything wrong."
Just slow it down far enough so that you never make a mistake (ideally). I always interpreted this to mean something like: maintain the overall rhythm, the same relative timing and duration of notes--just slow the BPM way, way down. So slow that you can't make a mistake. Painfully slow if need be.
And then slowly ratchet up the BPM.
Les' idea seems a bit divorced from that idea. It might work great for some players. I don't know. We all learn differently.
But it does seem to encourage repeating the phrase wrong in the sense that one might say that it ain't really the melody without the rhythm. It's just a sequence of pitches.
Interesting to think about, at any rate.
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Here is how I learned this tune On Green Dolphin Street tonight or early morning if you will. First, I looked in my Real jazz fake book. Nada. So next I hit YT. And I found this session of Anita O'Day from 1986 at Ronnie Scott's. And I learned it in a few passes. Why? Because she clearly sings the melody with a band that plays the progression in a great key of F for this song. The point is to be able to clearly hear the melody and harmony. Amazing that the song practically plays itself in F. I've always been familiar with the tune and the Joe Pass version off Virtuoso 2,but I never really learned till tonight.
I prefer to learn things in context, rather than abstract the melody. And I like to hear someone actually sing the melody. Like Anita or the great Sarah Vaughn, who also has a cool video up where she scats the entire song, no lyrics. The song also plays well on guitar in her key, G.Last edited by targuit; 05-17-2014 at 06:53 AM.
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To play devil's advocate on behalf of Fake Books, one of the problems with learning a tune off of a recording can be that jazz players tend to interpret things very loosely. You might not be learning the actual melody, rather their interpretation of it.
I like to learn a tune off of a Fakebook chart, then transcribe 2 or 3 different versions and compare notes if I have the time.
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I generally learn the melody first. I play it until I can play it three times in a row without hiccup or misstep. Then I learn the chords in the same way. Then I improvise on the tune without accompaniment. But sometimes I just want to learn the changes so I can blow on them without learning the melody. It's kind of a quick bandaid incase someone calls the tune. At least I know the changes.
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I am always dubious when people say that if you learn a melody by ear you will remember it better. Let's say I get two melodies into long term memory--one by ear and one from a lead sheet--so that I am able to play them both from memory the next day. Are you saying that in 5, 10 or 15 days the memory of the one learned from a lead sheet will have faded more?
I have learned melodies both ways, and I don't really notice a difference. In fact, I actually track how well I retain tunes, and I don't see any difference in the data. Have any of you tested this hypothesis on yourselves to see if it consistently holds true? It seems like jazz folklore to me, but I could be the exception.Last edited by Jonzo; 05-17-2014 at 08:13 PM.
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I wonder about the use of "learn" here. My mother, for example, has a fantastic ear. She's never learned anything from sheet music. She doesn't even know the names of chords. The term "dominant chord," for example, is meaningless to her. If I ask her what key she's playing something in, she'll look for middle C, work her gaze back to the root and say something like, "It's A in the white keys." But she can play all the songs she wants to play. (She will say that some songs seem to be "on the cusp" and it took me awhile to understand what she meant by that.) Originally Posted by Jonzo
She's elderly now and her fingers aren't nimble like they once were and she can't actually sit at a piano for long, but any tune she hears in her head (or on the radio), she can play. And here's the thing: she doesn't think of playing songs she hears in her head as learning them. It's more immediate than that. (She has no idea what song forms are or how many measures a tune has or anything like that.) What she knows is how a tune goes and she is just 'doing that on piano'. She has no idea what a chord progression is, much less what the chords are to any of the hundreds of tunes she knows. She is puzzled that I seem so interested in these things which, from her point of view, are neither necessary or helpful.
So if you asked her how she learned a particular song, she would say she didn't. She can just play it whenever she wants to. For her, playing a song is like taking dictation: she's translating to the piano the tune running through her head. She has no inkling of scale degrees, whether something is a chord tone, anything like that.
She can't understand why I bother with guitar books and sheet music. "Wouldn't it be easier to just play the songs rather than studying them?" This is not a mean-spirited question. She's honestly puzzled. She seems to think I could do what she does but have chosen to go about it in a much more time-consuming way.
The point of all this being: people with keen ears may not think at all in terms of "learning" a melody but rather of simply "hearing" it.
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Your Mom should be patron saint of this site Mark!...+++++
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Mark : do you think her facility has something to do with the instrument she plays ? I recall hearing several stories similar to the one you told, and I'm thinking that the neatly organized keyboard really helps when doing things by ear. On the other hand, you really gotta know the fingerboard inside and out if you want it to make sense and understand how it's organized, which might explain why doing things by ear on the guitar is a hit or miss process for most people who don't "do their homework". In my experience, it ceases to be a hit or miss process when you understand what you want to play : for example, you are playing on a D-7 chord, you hear the descending arpeggio. If you practiced that before you know where it falls under your fingers and you can play it without guessing. More theory = less guessing.
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Seam to me, there is truth in that Professor.
For example, when I try to learn to play something from memory, I usually recall it in original key, in my mind.
However, when I start chasing that first note on the neck, I start realising where the other notes from the melody are,
in reference to the note I actually played at the moment. After couple of tries original key is forgoten, and it usualy
sets in one of usual CAGED keys (I have very little idea about, what seam to be ubiquitous, CAGED system, it's just
those keys come natural, somehow).
After years of visiting this forum, F and Bb begin to emerge as (not so) close followers.
All in all, there where you know fretboard the best, moset easy it'll be to transcribe.Last edited by Vladan; 05-18-2014 at 08:35 AM.
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Great story, Mark. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
When I was 17, I joined a church and when the pianist heard I had played for a few years (I only memorized a bunch of songs from classical to standard old folk songs and played recitals -no improvisation) she asked me to sit in. When I asked her how she expected me to play a song without sheet music, I distinctly "remember hearing her say , "Just Play."
Needless to say, I lasted only one song and never sat in on the piano again, but I always thought to myself how amazing it was that she could just play what was in her head. Like Mark's wonderful mother, for the church pianist, the piano was just like diction on a typewriter.
I have met several people like that in my life and all of them started very, very young on the piano and grew up with music all around them. What a special talent.
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Ha! That would be something. Her first order of business would be to order me offline to go clean my room. (She can't see it but she knows it needs dusting, and she's right about that...) Originally Posted by larry graves
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I've met other such people. Mom started playing for high school recitals when she was in fourth grade. She filled in at church when needed. Looking back, she says her family never thought this was the least bit unusual and their only concern was that she would kick off her shoes when she started to play in public like she did at home. Originally Posted by AlsoRan
Last edited by MarkRhodes; 05-18-2014 at 09:34 AM.
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There are a million ways to learn tunes.... most of them reflect what skills you have to learn with.
If you have great ears etc... but don't read or understand music. I wonder how your going to learn a tune... and just the reverse... if your ears suck, but you read and understand academia etc...
Personally... I can't remember every tune for ever. I use my ears... but I always plug tunes into Forms. I use logical forms for everything. Very mechanical approach... most tunes fall into standard forms... not just the spatial... or AABA stuff, Melodies, harmonies, rhythms patterns...Music isn't magical to me personally, I have very magical experiences performing music... but this subject is somewhat subjective and can be very personal.
The melody... the harmony, they're all the same with me, they're both going on all the time... and personally nothings going on with out the rhythm. (we're talking about jazz standards)
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I talked with a jazz drummer once and asked him how he kept his place while someone else in the band was soloing (-or when he was soloing, for that matter) and he said, "O, that's easy. You just keep the melody going in your head and you never get lost." I wonder if many other players keep track of their place that way. (I find it hard to keep the melody going in my head while I'm improvising.)
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Try this using a simplified skeletal version of the melody. It need not be the exact literal tune. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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