The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
Reply to Thread Bookmark Thread
Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 12
Posts 26 to 38 of 38
  1. #26

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by alez
    What's that supposed to mean?
    If flow charts help you understand music, cool.

    But the principle work is learning tunes and doing music.

    I was having a chat with my Konnakol teacher today; he said music is like a building site. It’s not neat and we are just trying to put it together as best we can. The best thing is that things should be practical.

    Like many educators (he is a conservatoire professor) who are also highly experienced and capable professional musicians, there is a central distrust of written sources; the idea of writing a book itself, for example, has a tendency to corrupt or (more charitably) modify knowledge. For instance, the study of harmony from a textbook is obviously not as valuable as what you are doing in fact; I would say carry on, but advise simply to not expect everything to be neat.
    Last edited by christianm77; 12-16-2020 at 07:08 PM.

  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #27

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by alez
    BTW, Christian, you said "Fm = Bb7" but I've put them in different boxes. That way Fm goes well to Em (and still goes to C anyway) and A7 goes well to Fm, both of which I've seen in use. In this case it's all about the tone Ab, and all 3 chords have it anyway. I may be totally wrong, but I'm inclined to say "Fm = Ab = Ab7".
    You know, I stopped doing diagrams like this when they became so complex it didn’t seem to really say or communicate anything useful.

    There’s quite a few ways things can move. The more tunes you learn the more you see....

    it all seems simple in mind but when I try to systematise things on paper it just ends up looking like a map of hell. That’s the thing about embodied knowledge....

  4. #28

    User Info Menu

    An aside with an apology in advance, since I've posted similarly before.

    If you can play the melody to Happy Birthday starting on any fret/finger/string ... how did you accomplish that?

    It probably was not that you remembered it starts with two notes (Hap-py) and goes up a major second and so forth.

    More likely, if you've got some time in on the instrument, you heard the melody in your mind and you played it without any intervening thought.

    On the bandstand if you're trading fours with another melody player and he plays a line and you play the same one back at him, you heard it and your fingers played it and the rest of your brain probably was not involved. I'm referring to the linguistic analysis that you probably didn't use.

    This is, I believe, a basic skill for jazz, developed with a lot of time on the instrument.

    Speaking now just for myself, I have a much easier time doing this with melody than chords.

    But, I don't see why the goal for chords should be any different. You hear the next chord in your mind and your fingers find it, leaving the irritating busybody part of your brain out of the process.

  5. #29

    User Info Menu

    In response and maybe amplifying what @rpjazzguitar said, it actually begins by being able to sing in your mind's ear the melody of "Happy Birthday".

    This is something most of us can do. This may be less true of a Charlie Parker solo, or the bassline and strong guide tones of a standard.

    I think this gets a bit overlooked because guitarists are all obsessed with the fretboard.

    Once you have this together with whatever it is you are trying to play, learning to play it on your instrument by ear becomes a relatively mechanical and practicable task. Just throw hours at it and you will get better.

    But underestimate the first stage and you won't make progress with ear playing and be tempted into other, easier seeming alternatives that serve only to distract from this central aspect.

    (Tristano knew this for instance.)

    So, the number one thing most guitarists do which gets in the way of this is their tendency to noodle. I actually think overly theoretic approaches to learning improvisation encourages the tendency to noodle around modes and so on, rather than cultivating this strong aural intention. You can barely know one end of the guitar from the other, and provided you have this you will work it out well enough to get the music out, and play more convincing music than a schooled technician who doesn't play by ear (however, being a schooled player doesn't mean that you can't also play by ear.)

    (This is not ear training BTW, ear training is categorisation of something you can already hear.)

    Anyway, a little OT perhaps lol. But in terms of the value of learning tunes - I think not. Learning tunes by ear is at least as much as it is about practicing learning tunes by ear, as much as it is about building repertoire.

  6. #30

    User Info Menu

    Guys,

    I'm overwhelmed by your enlightening responses. Thank you so much.

    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    well you asked for feedback...unfortunately 40 years of working in systems has left me with a pathological hatred of flowcharts!
    No Visio or similar software back then, eh? I'm old enough to favour pencil on paper for all these things, maybe you do too.

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    If flow charts help you understand music, cool.

    But the principle work is learning tunes and doing music.
    Totally understood, thanks.

    It's odd however that, upon posting a diagram, some people (and I'm not talking about you) will assume that all you do is diagrams and you aim to improve your musicianship through that alone. Obviously, people are just trying to be helpful, so I'm not upset but much the opposite, grateful.

    Konnakol is a beautiful form of art.

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    You know, I stopped doing diagrams like this when they became so complex it didn’t seem to really say or communicate anything useful.

    There’s quite a few ways things can move. The more tunes you learn the more you see....

    it all seems simple in mind but when I try to systematise things on paper it just ends up looking like a map of hell. That’s the thing about embodied knowledge....
    Ha ha, I still know very few movements (in number, not in frequency of appearance) but it's happened to me already. I guess the only way to come with something that looks like something is to incorporate some things, leave some others out, rather than trying to capture every movement you know or have seen in use.

    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    An aside with an apology in advance, since I've posted similarly before.

    If you can play the melody to Happy Birthday starting on any fret/finger/string ... how did you accomplish that?

    It probably was not that you remembered it starts with two notes (Hap-py) and goes up a major second and so forth.

    More likely, if you've got some time in on the instrument, you heard the melody in your mind and you played it without any intervening thought.

    On the bandstand if you're trading fours with another melody player and he plays a line and you play the same one back at him, you heard it and your fingers played it and the rest of your brain probably was not involved. I'm referring to the linguistic analysis that you probably didn't use.

    This is, I believe, a basic skill for jazz, developed with a lot of time on the instrument.

    Speaking now just for myself, I have a much easier time doing this with melody than chords.

    But, I don't see why the goal for chords should be any different. You hear the next chord in your mind and your fingers find it, leaving the irritating busybody part of your brain out of the process.
    Thanks for this. I'm not quite there at all, but I think I'm taking the correct steps because I'm getting better at it, slowly but steadily. Without any thinking involved, I can handle really simple melodies (Happy Birthday is a good example). I'm really excited about this ability, it's a modest achievement but I realise how far from being able to do that I used to be.

    As for Christian's last response, I don't really have anything to add. It made so much sense to me and I really enjoyed reading these things explained so clearly, and I fully understand "mind's ear", "central aspect vs. noodling vs. ear training", etc. Thanks.

  7. #31

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    In response and maybe amplifying what @rpjazzguitar said, it actually begins by being able to sing in your mind's ear the melody of "Happy Birthday".

    This is something most of us can do. This may be less true of a Charlie Parker solo, or the bassline and strong guide tones of a standard.
    I've always assumed that there are different ways to go about constructing a solo. But, I don't really know how most people do it.
    I'll take a shot here at describing some approaches, with the hope that others will chime in with their own takes on this.

    1. Clearly sing a melody in your mind, perhaps actually vocalizing it, and play that. I'd have to assume that Herb Ellis was doing this, because he always vocalized (you would see his mouth moving) when he soloed.

    I'd like to think that Paul Desmond thought that way, because his solos were on the same level, often, as his compositions. On Bossa Antigua, for example, it's hard to tell when the head ends and the solo begins. That's how melodic the solo is.

    Oscar Peterson also vocalized. Was he doing it too, even at his rapid tempi?

    2. Start with a brief idea or melodic cell and cycle it around the harmony. So, for example, R 2 3 5 is a short melodic idea and if you play it through the harmony of Giant Steps, you'll be following an approach Coltrane employed. Warren Nunes often seemed to play that way. It was all about the cell vs the harmony.

    3. I have the impression that other players tend to think in scales and arps and play them with some input from their melodic sense, but it can sound more like noodling than approach #1 above.

    Any approach can sound great if done well. That starts with great time feel. It continues with something interesting about the melodic idea or the harmonic juxtaposition or the rhythm.

    That's not an exhaustive list. My own goal is squarely in #1, for better or worse. But, I have to focus on it or my fingers will noodle without me.

  8. #32

    User Info Menu

    You can broadly categorise melodic soloing approaches of one of two things;

    1) embellish the melody
    2) make up a new melody

    sometimes you think you are doing one but you are doing the other.

    Oh yeah things I have learned; Improvisation is a goal, not a given.

    Improvisation can be a cumulative process.

    And it doesn’t have to start from scratch from a blank page; in fact it is often freer and more creative if it doesn’t.

  9. #33

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    You can broadly categorise melodic soloing approaches of one of two things;

    1) embellish the melody
    2) make up a new melody

    sometimes you think you are doing one but you are doing the other.

    Oh yeah things I have learned; Improvisation is a goal, not a given.

    Improvisation can be a cumulative process.

    And it doesn’t have to start from scratch from a blank page; in fact it is often freer and more creative if it doesn’t.
    If all your solos were playing around with the original melody of the tune -- and you did it with solid time feel -- nobody would complain and the phone will keep ringing.
    Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 12-18-2020 at 07:01 AM.

  10. #34

    User Info Menu

    At some point I switched from playing over backing tracks or iReal Pro to doing it over the head of recordings in a loop. I load the track into a waveform editor (I use Audacity because it's great and free) and carefully select the head so that it loops well. Hearing the melody during my practicing connects things together really well. In my practice sessions, I sometimes play the melody, sometimes something totally different (a solo), sometimes something that falls anywhere in between. I don't make a distinction at all, that is, I don't play a number of choruses in one fashion, then switch. I don't switch at the end of choruses, I just drift during the choruses.

  11. #35

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    If all your solos were playing around with the original melody of the tune -- and you did it with solid time feel -- nobody would complain the phone will keep ringing.
    Yep. Easy to overlook.

  12. #36

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by alez
    At some point I switched from playing over backing tracks or iReal Pro to doing it over the head of recordings in a loop. I load the track into a waveform editor (I use Audacity because it's great and free) and carefully select the head so that it loops well. Hearing the melody during my practicing connects things together really well. In my practice sessions, I sometimes play the melody, sometimes something totally different (a solo), sometimes something that falls anywhere in between. I don't make a distinction at all, that is, I don't play a number of choruses in one fashion, then switch. I don't switch at the end of choruses, I just drift during the choruses.
    I really like doing this, it's a very organic way to internalize form.
    A companion variation on this (when improvisations are on song form) is to play the melody against a looped solo chorus. I particularly enjoy playing
    along with drum solos.

  13. #37

    User Info Menu

    Interesting, I will try that

  14. #38

    User Info Menu

    I once had a chance to sit in while an old master pianist gave a lesson to a young master.

    The teacher played drums throughout. He was feeding the student rhythmic ideas and suggesting that he incorporate them into his solo.