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Never been to a jazz jam session. I always notice how people suggest you learn about 10 or 20 tunes before you go to one. But how do I get there? I like to think I'm a jazzy guitarist and thats what my friends think too, but when it comes to standards I can't stand practicing just them all the time. I gave up on learning to play jazz guitar a couple of years ago, maybe it had to do with this attitude towards learning the tunes. Its only recently that I have learned to see the tunes as real songs and not something I must practice.
How do you keep it interesting after playing the same tune for long enough to know it very well? The tunes I know the best are getting really annoying to the point that I don't think I'd play them again in a long time, which reduces the amount of tunes I can play. Honestly, I don't think I ever know more than five jazz standards at any given time. Hahah, this is beginning to sound like a rant. Anyway, I like tunes that feel so good when I'm playing the melody or comping that I just cant possibly not play a great solo. How do you learn a tune without losing the soul in the process?
I don't have this problem with any other music, just the standards
Last edited by mokapot; 02-19-2017 at 05:11 PM.
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02-19-2017 05:02 PM
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Well there's your answer then! They are songs.
Originally Posted by mokapot
I'm not sure I can answer that. I just try and repeat the tune over and over and not mess it up. Usually takes like a gazillion times because I am musically backward.How do you keep it interesting after playing the same tune for long enough to know it very well? The tunes I know the best are getting really annoying to the point that I don't think I'd play them again in a long time, which reduces the amount of tunes I can play. Honestly, I don't think I ever know more than five jazz standards at any given time.
Improvising on the chord sequence is easier for me and more traditionally fun, which is why I need to do the other thing more. That's why it's practice, and not just playing the guitar for fun.
I don't think I learn any tune properly until I've performed it at least three times in public. Usually I make lots of mistakes and its embarrassing. That helps me remember not to make mistakes the next time.
I think just have to learn the words and tune by ear, and chords too if you can. I'm not a learner who works well from charts. I'd rather read the thing, record it and then learn by ear if I want a chart to go in. :-)Hahah, this is beginning to sound like a rant. Anyway, I like tunes that feel so good when I'm playing the melody or comping that I just cant possibly not play a great solo. How do you learn a tune without losing the soul in the process? I don't have this problem with any other music, just the standards
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I have never been good at memorizing tunes.
I see it as a relatively weak ear --- meaning that I can hear the tune in my mind -- and I'll know if I hit a wrong chord -- but I still can't get unexpected chord sequences down reliably. And, if I know a complicated tune in one key, I'll still have trouble playing on the fly in another key. For some musicians, Stella would be as easy to transpose as a 12 bar blues. Not me. I can sometimes get by, by playing a melodic lick until I can hear that I've got a chord tone or two.
That said, the best experience I had in memorizing tunes was playing a year of Wednesday nights at a local bar in what I now understand was a Real Book jazz group. Meaning, everything we played was out of the Real Book. At the end of the year, I did a night without opening the book. A few stumbles, but nothing fatal.
Playing in front of an audience keeps it fresh.
Learning tunes in the practice room is harder, I think. Part of what keeps standards fresh is that it's a jazz group. Hopefully, you're playing with musicians who keep introducing new ideas, forcing you to get out of your well-practiced approach to the tune and do something else. But, how to do that alone?
Bobby Short said he always learned tunes from records not from charts. He said that a major reason was that he remembered them better if he figured them out himself.
I think it may help to play the tunes in different keys. IRealPro is good for that. You can set it up to change keys every chorus. You can set the volume on the chord instruments to zero and play along with bass and drums.
And, then, there's ear training. I'm not sure what the best way to improve one's ability to hear chord sequences is. Maybe somebody else will know.
For standards, learn the lyric from a recording. That will help you memorize the melody.
Then, go to jam sessions and try to close the book after a chorus or two. If you don't enjoy that, then standards based jazz may not be your thing.
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Anyone who is any good at standards playing learns them by ear.
Well, I'm sure you can find some exceptions. But they are exceptions.
If you ear is weak, it can be strengthened. One good way is learning lots of tunes. It will be hard at first, that's why it's practice.
IrealB is a tool of Satan.
(But I'm only human so I use it from time to time ;-) In general I'm not a fan of backing tracks, I'm more a fan of humans.)Last edited by christianm77; 02-19-2017 at 09:42 PM.
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I had a week hang with Mike Moreno last summer. He made a good point about when he learns tunes he learns them from recordings. You could use a combination of recordings and the real book. I mean you are going to the source of the music right?
This gets you away from problems like I had as an undergraduate when I would call a tune like Green Dolphin Street in C with older guys and they would ask me, "you learned that from the real book right?' 'yeah", ' I know cuz most people play this tune in Eb"
Don't trust those charts as gospel. I really notice a lot at jam sessions people will get up with Ireal thinking they can play anything but if there are errors with the chart and they don't know the tune, well it can sound like crap. I've taken a policy, if I don't know the tune, then I don't know it and I get off the bandstand. I sometimes use IReal for tunes I know that I haven't played for a while to jog my memory or when singers are being clever and transposing to some exotic key, but after a chorus or two, my head is out of the chart.
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Whenever I want to practice a tune multiple times, I try to do something different with it each time through whether a minor tweak or totally changing it. There are so many variables to work with: keys, tempo, rhythm patterns, lead vs. comp vs. solo, etc. I can also invent little exercises to vary each time through. Think of the tune as a favorite trail through a forest, but each time you walk it you are looking for different things.
Last edited by KirkP; 02-24-2017 at 02:14 AM.
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To the op
That won't be the problem man ...
As soon as you take your tunes
to a jam session , everything changes anyway !
i think I know a tune OK
then I play it out and bam !
I don't know it so good ....
then i go back home a shed the shit out of it
Don't get bitten by the same dog twice
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f you ear is weak, it can be strengthened. One good way is learning lots of tunes.
That's true , and you get to learn a lot of tunes , it gets easier , its just hearing and
recognising sounds (harmonic and melodic moves) learning "changes" is right
My ear was shit when I started ...
but I can hear a few changes now ...
you can learn the common 'moves' just
by learning lots of different songs
It's cool
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Great topic for me at the moment. My but and head still sore from a jam on the weekend. The only consolation is I know I did not put in the time but really, do people really remember all those chords to all those songs and then there is where are we up to?
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Learn em however you can, but listen to as many versions if each tube as possible, and lift as much by ear as you can.
Your ear is gonna be your best friend at a jam.
If practicing standards is boring, you're not doing it right.
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I think it's like this. You probably can sing Home on the Range. You probably never practiced it. Originally Posted by gggomez
You can probably play a 12 bar blues in any key -- without thinking very hard. Probably, you can start on the I chord and feel when the IV is coming.
And, if somebody plays a wrong chord on a tune you know, you can probably tell it's wrong. So, at some level you know the tune.
I think that's how players who know a lot of tunes do it.
They can remember a song the way anybody else can remember a song. Then, they can find the melody with their fingers without any thought -- by hearing the intervals and knowing where they are, automatically. . And, they can also find the chords the same way -- singing the tune in their mind and being able to hear where the next chord is.
So, to me, memorizing tunes is about ear training.
As far as learning from records, well, that's probably the best ear training you can do. But, with different versions of a lot of standards around, there's no guarantee the pianist or bassist is going to know the version you know. You're still stuck with your ears.
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For sure, I am now able to play many melodies by ear if I can sing it but hearing knowing the changes and knowing where the band is ....
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I find that things in my aural memory stick around longer too.
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Moreno explained it this way. Paraphrasing, If you know a hundred tunes its relatively easier to learn another 50 because you will start to hear similar harmonic movements amongst these tunes, but if you only know three tunes its going to be a massive struggle to learn and remember even one more tune.
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I've been casually testing my chord change identifying skills. I got 'green with envy' and 'it aint necessarily so' by grant green about right. But its tunes like 'stella by starlight' that i cant get right even if I listen to a very simple backing track. I heard that you should listen to the bassline but that rarely seems to help...
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If you've never been to a jam, then go to one. You might embarrass yourself, or you might amaze yourself and others. If you can only keep 5 tunes in your head, frankly, the former is more likely, but that's lesson worth learning via experience. Ultimately, jazz is an ensemble/interactive improvisatory art form. To play it, you got to play it. If you're having trouble motivating yourself to learn new tunes, knowing enough tunes to be able to function at a jam might provide that motivation.
John
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Thanks for the replies. I have been practising transcribing and I realized all of this confusion or frustration is centered around my lack of motivation to learn the standards. Maybe going to a jam session would indeed be helpful in this regard. For now I'll just learn the tunes that I like the most, be it jazz or something else.
Does anyone else ever have these feelings that the jazz culture strongly encourages learning standards and then some more standards? Do you like the tunes that you learn or is it out of necessity?
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Could I ask a question? Do you actually like jazz? There's absolutely no shame if not--there is a ton of great music out there, much of it offering more playing opportunity than jazz. And a lot of it is very challenging and rewarding to play. Originally Posted by mokapot
I ask because some people get the impression that they really ought to learn jazz, maybe just as a step toward learning what they really want. I think this is ultimately a mistake, and I've seen it lead to many months of unhappy practicing.
You may love jazz, just asking.
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Losing the soul? Good heavens, being a little weary of working on one tune is hardly a loss of soul. Originally Posted by mokapot
... How do you learn a tune without losing the soul in the process? I don't have this problem with any other music, just the standards
You should be working on enough tunes that if you get tired of one you can shift to the other(s). But it's also true for me at least, that at the point where I'm just sick of a tune, sick of hearing myself play over it, often that's when I break past that point and start drilling into the tune more deeply and really learning it from the bottom up. Work on re-harmonizations, chord substitutions, out-there soloing approaches.
For example, take "Satin Doll," at tune most jazz players think of as pretty much played to death. I kept trying to do more and more far-out stuff with it, then one day I decided to play 10 choruses using nothing but the C Maj Pentatonic scale as my melodic base. It really fired me up about the tune. Sometimes minimalism will make it fresh for you.
But we are not really talking about "soul" here. Just being tired of a song has nothing to do with soul, unless of course one's soul is a pretty flimsy thing. In which case the problem isn't the tune, but the player.
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Ha, yes. Originally Posted by dingusmingus
Even in the jazz world, I know many college graduate players who say 'I hated bebop at college and I wasn't very good at it.'
Look I'm a bit of a bop head and Barry Harris fan - but why should anyone be forced to study bebop? How joyless....
Anyway, find some songs you like and learn them. And/or write some new ones.
BTW I have grown to like standards a lot more than when I was starting out. I had to come to the classic repertoire in my own way.
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Yes and no ... A large portion of standards have elements in common (e.g., form, sequences of II-V-I changes). You can blow over or comp on a tune you don't know well by relying on knowing a lot of similar material and by listening to the bass and/or keys and being ready to think on your feet. But to get to the point where you can do that, you have to have learned a lot of tunes cold. Jams are a great opportunity to build repertoire -- Come to a jam ready to call one tune that you just learned on your own; take home as homework at least one you don't know that someone else called. Lather, rinse, repeat. Keep this up for six months, and you've got 50 new tunes, at least half of which you know someone else wants to play. Originally Posted by gggomez
John
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The only jazz jam sessions I ever got to be involved with were what I call "not so big band" sessions. Some of these were actual paying live performance with "standards".
Not that I was good at it. But I never stressed over it. They would always have some sheet music laying around. I would just review the charts before playing the pieces. When no sheet music was available the band would just briefly discuss the progressions and where the bridges were.
Probably not good advice, but it always seemed to work for me. I really believe such "jam sessions" value your unique contribution more than anything. But then, I never played or sang, attempting to sound like or play note for note, or even put their expressions in a given piece, as far as what anybody else plays or had played.
Maybe that was my downfall though. I would not consider myself successful by any means in my music career. But I did work and I did make a little money from it over the decades.
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A couple of years back I was in a class sitting next to two pros, one a professor of guitar and the other a player whose name many of you would know.
The teacher started playing Stella in F instead of the usual Bb.
The wedding musicians of my NYC youth wouldn't have batted an eye.
But, the two pros struggled a bit. One got it on the second or third chorus, the other took another chorus after that (and might have cheated by looking at the first guy's hand).
I got it some weeks later <g>.
There's a skillset involved in doing that sort of thing that most people simply don't have.
I have some sympathy for a young player who wants to be able to play standards gigs or jams with a leader who knows a zillion tunes and will call any one of them.
Years ago, those tunes were on the radio and TV and Muzak and everybody knew the original versions (usually with a pop vocal). Now, a young player has to make a list and devote time to seeking them out and learning them. Not that easy. And, even if you do that, there's still an excellent chance somebody will call a tune you don't know.
If memorizing tunes comes easily enough to you and you want to play in those situations, sure, have at it. And, if you need to train your ear, you could do worse than spending some time every day figuring out chords to standards.
But, if time is precious and your goal is only to avoid horrible embarrassment, then I'd suggest that you might get by with 20 or 30 standards.
For example, if somebody calls All the Things You Are, Stella, Blue Bossa, Autumn Leaves, Bye Bye Blackbird, All of Me, Girl From Ipanema, etc (tunes that have been played to death) it would be embarrassing not to know them. And, if you have to make a call, it would probably be good to have a couple that people know, but aren't sick of. Off the top of my head, maybe, Miss Jones, Night and Day, The Song is You, Alone Together, Yesterdays etc.
If the calls get obscure and you get the evil eye when you consult your electronic device, then maybe just sit down. If you want to go back and master the situation, then list the tunes that get called and learn them for next time.
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Something we haven't mentioned yet is if there's a jam in your area, go stalk it for a few weeks and keep track of what gets played. You'll see patterns. Learn those tunes.
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Thats a wonderful question Originally Posted by dingusmingus
I gotta say I did start out with that attitude. I still think its a great way to learn to play any other style. In fact what I like the most about jazz is the creativity and being able to express these ideas, both emotional and intellectual.
That being said I do like jazz as a musical style. It's just that I guess I want to focus on songwriting and other formats (other styles as a way to express myself), I like singing too and I like songs without a solo or a head-solo-head form. Now I may be biased never having been to a jazz jam...
I agree that this attitude could lead to a slower process of learning but on the other hand, I really do love some qualities of jazz. I think that all musicians should take everything they like about every genre and then start creating their own stuff.
Yeah, I do like jazz but its just one of the many influences I have
Last edited by mokapot; 02-23-2017 at 05:46 PM.
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