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What's Autumn without Baseball?
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09-02-2024 05:16 PM
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Well that was great. And a whole lot of fun.
Originally Posted by A. Kingstone
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beautiful, Alan Originally Posted by A. Kingstone
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I’ll play.
Solo guitar (and as the years went by, five string then tenor banjo) is what I did at my old coffeehouse gig for five years. On occasion, I would fall into a Standard or some recognizable pop tune. But for the most part, I made it all up on the spot; I would play a note or a chord and react to it and essentially compose on the instrument.
(This is why I can’t properly call myself a jazz player: I don’t have The Real Book committed to memory and my method has more in common with Derek Bailey than Joe Pass. But I am trying to improve…).
Anyway, here’s tonight’s example:
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To reiterate my YouTube comment on this, very tasty! And you get a great sound from the Heritage. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Yeah, I will probably mostly just be watching this one. I'd love to play solo guitar and be able to entertain friends and family, but it seems like a *lot* of work, and I'm still engaged in improving my bebop chops - itself probably a never ending endeavour. But it's great to hear everybody's contributions so far. Fantastic idea for a thread! Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Old Folks
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That was nice.... I don't know this tune but I see there's a chart of it in Real Book Vol. 3 Originally Posted by deacon Mark
So you play mostly by ear? Originally Posted by L50EF15
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The tune Old Folks is an old tune jazz musicians make into a very nice melodic statement. Lots of movement and i just did the standard thing I just love the melody............the words. "Did he fight for the Blue or the Gray" check that out.
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Mostly. I understand theory reasonably well; I took a few music courses way back in undergrad before I even took up the guitar in earnest, including the freshman level Music major theory course, just because I was curious. That stuff stuck pretty well, and I still have the textbook (Music In Theory and Practice by Bruce Benward) 41 years later. I have added many more books on theory and practice to my library down the years since (among them, Composing for Jazz Orchestra, and Jazz Orchestration and Composition, both by William Russo who wrote and arranged for Stan Kenton). Originally Posted by Mick-7
All that said, I am definitely a mostly “by ear” player. More, I find that if I don’t listen exclusively to Standards, other stuff creeps in (i.e., Prog rock, blues, and fusion). Ditto sight reading; if I don’t do it everyday, it falls apart on me. And I have a sort of mental block on memorizing songs. I get nervous when trying to “play it like the record,” so much so that I spazz out into my own improvisations. It’s similar to what I have heard classical musicians I know say about trying to improvise, but in reverse.
The analogy that comes to mind is from childhood, playing with Legos (back in the 70s): My twin brother could dump the various pieces out of the box and immediately replicate the picture on the box, even without the instructions. I would just build up something from my imagination. This is still true: He plays guitar also, though he doesn’t really mess with anything close to jazz. But he can nail, say, Alex Lifeson’s sound with Rush. I can get into the neighborhood on phrasing, but not exactly replicate it.
Ditto for copping Barney Kessel, Wes Montgomery, Steve Howe, Emily Remler etc, etc, ad nauseum. I mean I can hear what to do over, say, rhythm changes or blues or whatever; but theory, chord scales and modes for instance, are not part of the conscious process.
Like I said, I am working (even after all these years) on improving. Frankly, it gives me something of an inferiority complex to not be able to play familiar songs on demand. But I guess that’s for another thread…Is it still jazz if you don’t play Standards?
Sorry, Jeff. I don’t mean to fork the thread.
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Sweet acoustic tone, deacon! And very nice playing as well.
Originally Posted by deacon Mark
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My vote for worst - corniest lyrics. Originally Posted by deacon Mark
Beautiful melody though.
Here's a couple from today. Thanks for getting me playing Jeff.
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Here’s a couple on acoustic, respectively, a Gibson L Jr. and L-75:
The second one is kinda Django by way of Larry Coryell, John McLaughlin, and Rene Thomas: Listening back, it reminds a bit of “Rene’s Theme”, the acoustic duet Coryell and McLaughlin did on the album “Spaces”.
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Man those sound good!
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Thanks! So does yours; it sounds so right on those classic tunes. What model are you playing? It looks a bit like an LG. Originally Posted by A. Kingstone
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It's a Taylor acoustic, not sure of the model. I don't know much about guitars. Originally Posted by L50EF15
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That was beautiful. Originally Posted by stringmann
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Great thread everyone. I will join in with a little "I Fall in Love Too Easily"
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You got me curious so I looked it up, it's from a musical (play), Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Originally Posted by deacon Mark
Such upbeat lyrics! For example....
The old folks dream no more
The books have gone to sleep, the piano's out of tune
The little cat is dead and no more do they sing
On a Sunday afternoon
The old folks move no more, their world's become too small
Their bodies feel like lead
They might look out the window or else sit in a chair
Or else they stay in bed
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That's not the words to the Old Folks I know.
I don't find the lyrics too corny on that one.
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Ah, I see that there are two different songs by that name! The one I mentioned is by Jacques Brel, and it's in Real Book Vol. 3. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
This is the one that deacon played:
I guess I'm culturally impoverished....
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I think my next will definitely be Old Folks.
This will be a fun one, as I definitely worked it out before-- according to YouTube, about 5 years ago. I vaguely remember there being a thread here about it, and I think I was trying to help somebody pick a key because I'm playing in in Eb here, and I think it's most commonly in F?
For some dumb reason, I don't think I've played it since. So this one I'll try to relearn from myself...there's a few things in here I don't care for too, so I'll have to figure out how I want to adjust them. Anyway, thanks for helping me remember a tune with a really great melody.
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A bit rough around the edges, needs something in the… bridge? What do you call the B and C of an ABAC form?
https://youtu.be/QA5eHqpMuJI?si=OL-EWFdLpqctelUz
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I think more accurately this may be A-B1-A-B2, since the second B section doesn't differ harmonically that much from the first. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
If I were going to write a chart, I might be tempted to turn it into a repetition, with long first and second endings.
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