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Two short videos by Les Wise from a series called "Jazz Concepts for the Working Musician." (The first runs five minutes; the second runs eight.)
Since everyone agrees that jazz guitarists need to learn many tunes, the question for the novice becomes, "what's a good way to learn tunes?" This is one way.
Unlike others I've heard about, Les here stresses learning the melody first, not the chords. The tune he works with is "Green Dolphin Street." (First video covers the melody; the second one covers the chords.)
If you have a different system that works well for you and might for others too, please share!
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05-15-2014 09:38 AM
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Somebody quoted someone who quote Jaco who quotes someone else .. Learn the melody inside and out.
If it helps to learn the lyrics, learn them too.
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I don't think that learning the notes without the rhythm first is a good idea...
I just can't imagine how this will make your learning any faster?!
One thing I haven't checked up to now, is learning the tune by ear. That means you listen to several versions of a tune until you can sing the melody without any recording and then figure out how to play it (just with your singing not with the recording!) I guess this way works much better to internalize the melody then playing square quarter notes.
Some things I've did to learn tunes:
1. Make an easy chord-melody arrangement to get the chords and melody together. It doesn't need to be fancy, just a chord under the first note of each measure is enough to check the relation between chords and melody.
2. to learn the chords I take every chord and play each inversion of it starting with the lowest possible on the middle string set. Afterwards I take the lowest inversion of the first chord. Now I try to find each chord as close as possible to the first chord. Then move the first chord up to the next inversion and start over again. I do the second step also with the harmonic rhythm in real time.
3. Learn the chords in roman-numerals. If I'm driving alone I remember the roman numerals and then say the chords in all 12 Keys.
4. Find the "key-notes" (mostly the notes on beat one and three, check out Ed Byrne for more information on that) of the tune and memorize their relation to the underlying harmony (is it the third?, the fifth?...).
5. Do point three and four together. For example All The Things starts on the vim7 with a third. In C this would be Am7 with melody note c; in F this would be Dm7 with melody note f etc.
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I'm also not sure how ditching the melodic rhythm helps?
Originally Posted by Stanford J17
I might buy this guys "no rhythm at first system" when first learning chord grips. Moving back and forth between 3 and 4 note chords that are unfamiliar can be physically challenging until lots of repetitions have been done, so why strum or sit on one chord for 4 beats when you just need to practice shifting to the next chord?
But I'm not sure why this makes sense for single note melodies.
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Rich, this is irksome. First, you have no way of knowing from this clip whether Les Wise knows the lyric to that tune. None whatsoever. Second, the tune is widely regarded as a jazz standard. (That it first appeared in a movie in 1947 does not mean it cannot be a jazz standard. Google Green Dolphin Street + jazz standard and see for yourself.) Third, there is nothing "moronic" here, though your use of that pejorative term makes you seem unsuited to polite company. Originally Posted by Richb
If you prefer another way of learning tunes, fine. But nothing in your post here speaks to what that video was about---a short example of the way he learns tunes. Instead, you sound like you're just attacking Les Wise personally.
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I wonder about that too. The phrase he uses in the video is "shape." Not chord-shape but melodic shape. I hadn't thought much about that. But in my case, I tend to learn tunes I have heard a lot, so I know how the melody goes. I think to test this approach, one would need to work with a melody one did not already know. I'm not sure how that would work out, but I'm not above experimenting.... Originally Posted by MattC
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Green Dolphin Street is definitely a jazz standard. Who knows the lyric? I'm sure it's lame. I like the tune so much I actually watched the movie. Miles played it. LOVE an Oscar Peterson version of that song. To me that's the definitive version, though few people heard it. Definitely a jazz standard.
I haven't watched the video though. I'm not a Les Wise fan, but that's rather personal.Last edited by henryrobinett; 05-16-2014 at 02:26 AM. Reason: typos
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I never heard that one. I've heard jazz classics defined as that.
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I looked up many more definitions of jazz standard richb and didn't see one that said it had to, by definition, be written by a jazz musician/composer. I'm
Sure there are definitions like that , but clearly they would be less accepted or agreed upon definitions.
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Maybe I've been around horn players for too long, but I always thought learning the melody came first and chords were harmonized to fit the melody. Doing it any other way is putting the cart before the horse. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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Playing the melody (the tune) is what it's all about, the harmony you should know..ii.vi i...ect.. The rest is the artistic ability to extrapolate not just playing by numbers!....I remember reading somewhere Dexter Gordon saying he only knew half a dozen tunes but played them different every time... The trouble with standards is they're old hat I've been playing them for over 50yrs, but I try to play them different each time...just my opinion...L..
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I wanted to turn it off a minute in when he first plays the 'actual' melody, because it's so stiff and well...wrong.
If you use your ears to learn a tune, this is all moot.
In the arts, ive adapted from business a model...GOOD, FAST, EASY.
You get to pick only two. And this method seems to go for FAST and EASY.
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Lover, one lovely day
Love came planning to stay
Green Dolphin Street supplied the setting
The setting for nights beyond forgetting
Through these moments apart
Love come here in my heart
When I recall the love I found on
I could kiss the ground on Green Dolphin Street
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"memories live in my heart", not "love come here in my heart'
don't trust lyrics sites.
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When I was young I read something that held to a strict distinction between "standards" (-mainly show tunes) and "jazz standards" (-meaning tunes written by jazz musicians.) But that distinction collapsed under the weight of its own willful superficiality. Here is a current one: "Jazz standards are musical compositions which are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners." Originally Posted by Richb
One problem with the old definition is that it would exclude "I Got Rhythm," "Summertime," "Body and Soul," and "All the Things You Are" from the list of jazz standards. Then you have the difficulty of classifying Billie Holiday's "God Bless the Child" because she, a jazz singer, wrote the lyric, but Arthur Herzog, Jr. (a non-jazz musician) wrote the music. (I think those two also teamed up for "Don't Explain.") Is that half-jazz?
Another problem is what I call the Harold Arlen problem. Harold was born in Buffalo, NY, the son of a synagogue cantor. He moved to New York to seek his fortune and for a time was employed, along with lyricist Ted Koehler, to write songs for performers in Harlem's Cotton Club. (Harold and Ted were paid fifty bucks a week each plus all the steak sandwiches they could eat.) This was 1931-1934. The music played in the Cotton Club was called jazz. By the performers, the audience, and by people who wrote about music. Harold and Ted wrote "Stormy Weather," "I've Got the World On A String," "As Long As I Live," I've Gotta Right To Sing the Blues," "Get Happy," "Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea," "Let's Fall In Love," and many others.
(Funny story. When an American company was performing "Porgy and Bess" in Europe, a local conductor added to the night's performance by arranging "Five Old Negro Folk Songs." A member of the company later confided to the conductor that a) none of those songs was old and b) they were all written by 'two Jewish guys from New York.' Those two guys were Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler.)
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Good point. Originally Posted by randalljazz
In this case the lyrics reflect Sarah Vaughan's rendering and not the composers.
My faulty scholarship and not the lyric site's.
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Jeff, I think you missed the point. Les was doing with the melody in the first video what he was doing with the chords in the second one: taking away the rhythm. That was the point of the exercise: to separate learning the notes from learning the rhythm of the melody just as he separated making the chord changes from learning the harmonic rhythm of the piece. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
He was NOT performing the tune in either video.
In the first video, he was showing a way to play the notes of the melody in one place on the neck. When a player has that down, then he would learn the rhythm in which the notes are to be played. The assumption is that learning the notes and the rhythm at the same is harder than learning one first and then the other. It generally is easier to learn one thing at a time than two.
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Good point. In the video, Les says that guitar players often learn the chords first. (This may stem from learning the blues and rhythm changes that way.) Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
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If there are lyrics, it sure does help to know them. They set the "shape" of melody, and of the rhythm of the melody like nothing. Instant pleasure. Originally Posted by SamBooka
I can tell you, it's great experience. In practical standards threads I was at that situation on several ocasions. I'd just try to decipher notes from the staff and put some "musicality" in them. It's nothing like "transcribing", which is learning to play the melody you already know, or are listening to. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
They learn to play chords first, but those are chords for melodies they already know to play by their voices, whistling, ... Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Last edited by Vladan; 05-16-2014 at 11:00 AM.
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I'm a bit skeptical. I can see working on getting a melody to sit well rubato "Looooover" (pause, where do I play the next line?) "One lovely daaaaaay" (pause, etc) before putting a metronome on it, but to divorce from the rhythm entirely? It seems a little inorganic to me, like this method was developed to fill an artificial need created by a music school (You've never listened to jazz before but you need to memorize these tunes by Tuesday and play them in a jury to progress to level II….) Sort of like using a mnemonic like "My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies" for Mercury, Venus Earth, Mars etc. It gets you the names of the planets, but you haven't really learned anything about astrophysics.
Jazz really is a folk music, and I think things work out the best when we don't stray too far from that path. Ideally, someone wanting to learn Green Dolphin has been listening to the Miles version just because they dig it, wow, Miles and Trane and Bill Evans all have different approaches to the same chords, how would I like my own solo to sound, and how about that Barney Kessel version, maybe Al Dimeola listened to that intro, what could I steal from Barney, and, hey, what the heck is Sonny Stitt doing, is he subbing some ii-V's that aren't in the Real Book chart to give the tune some more forward motion and urgency………
PK
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Im talking one minute into the first video. I took that as "this is how it basically goes" to mean, this is what I'm going to teach you to play. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
I see how he removes the rhythm. Thats not what I was talking about.
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I think I had similar Les Wise lessons on cassette, but he looks too young.
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