View Poll Results: Shapes or notes? What, in your opinion, is more important?
- Voters
- 226. You may not vote on this poll
-
Shapes
37 16.37% -
Notes
32 14.16% -
Both
143 63.27% -
I kind of just fiddle around and hope to hit the right notes.
14 6.19%
-
Originally Posted by christianm77
-
09-17-2019 03:07 PM
-
Originally Posted by Tal_175
Reading and improvisation have a lot in common.
You aren’t reading notes. You are composing a piece from a set of symbolic instructions. If you know lots of Mozart you are better at reading Mozart.
I’m better at sight reading Charlie Parker than Coltrane, for instance. Transcribing too.
Good sight readers are therefore master improvisers within a very specific framework.
-
Originally Posted by christianm77
Reading is not composing. It is following coded instructions. Or is there a joke I'm missing here?
-
Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
I could ask my tutor if he was joking but I don’t think he was. One point he made is actually good sight readers familiar with a composer’s style will correct misprints. So they aren’t actually reading the notes.
OTOH actually quite a lot of professional sight reading is ‘faking it’ and keeping the flow going in those sections that are too hard to read accurately at first glance. (Obviously this wouldn’t happen for familiar repertoire, but with hard new music it’s common.) What is the musician doing in these situations?
(I do the same thing in chord charts very often when the harmony is a little busy and non standard. I do what I can and keep the beat going. OTOH if I see a heavily subbed chord progression on a fast number I see the basic progression and then add on the subs in my head, catching as many as I can. No doubt you do something similar.)
And what makes a good reader? Same thing as an improviser. Lost of contact with music, lots of playing experience with other musicians. (This is why those atonal reading exercises I think are kind of unhelpful unless you mean to sight read Webern for a living - music is a language not a collection of syllables.)
I’m not sure how much I agree, but I’m entertaining the thought as I’m always interested in finding commonalities and unities.
Improvising is not making up music on the spot either. Not really. Not most of time. Master improvisers can approach this closer, and others create that impression by being very skilled, but everyone starts by using licks and composed material before they are ready to move onto other techniques. (At least that’s the proven, time honoured way to start.)
So there’s not in effect any difference between a learning player improvising with 50 Parker licks you learned off the records and sight reading solos from the Omnibook - if you understand how the notation represents the lines. Ask a horn player.
Shapes, right?
Of course when you start doing your own stuff, you can do this. But you pass through a process of becoming familiar with music. Most guitarists don’t do that through notation....Last edited by christianm77; 09-18-2019 at 05:38 AM.
-
Originally Posted by christianm77
I see some overlap of skills. But I don't think it goes far enough to draw too many parallels between sight reading and improvisation.
-
Also professional classical players I know never put themselves in a situation where they have to read completely new music realtime in a performance. They are given their parts in advance also they often find recordings to listen to. There is almost always rehearsals. All these reduce if not eliminate the need to fake things on the spot.
-
Originally Posted by Tal_175
Obviously you aren't reading in front of an audience not for big/prestigious concerts, but extremely common not just in classical music. And in fact, it is often the case (unless it's John Eliot Gardner or someone who can get more rehearsal time) the WHOLE piece won't have been rehearsed, just troublesome corners.
One reason why the LSO got all the calls to do film music for ages is because they were CHEAP. Less rehearsal required, music good enough for purpose.
West end deps too, turn up, sight read a show. You make one mistake, you don't get the call again. Rhythm section players tend to get charts in advance, but most of the horn players I know are beast readers.
It's funny, kind of fits the (posh) UK mentality which I think is damaging not just to our music. Turn up unprepared, pull it out of the hat, look like sloppy genius. Cultivate a studied nonchalance. Never look like you've worked at it.
-
Originally Posted by christianm77
-
Also, orchestras are one thing, but I actually had in mind the instrumentalists I had most contact with as a classical singer - repetiteurs and accompanists. That's sight reading on an (to me) insane level, and without them the classical singing world would simply fall apart.
They aren't sight reading in performance, but they are for masterclasses, lessons and so on... It's such an important skill.
Many of the ones who work with singers are able to switch into Broadway and (mainstream) jazz modes as well - sight transpose, read notation from closed or open score, figured bass, chord symbols as well as a slew of other practical musicianship skills.
To talk about reading in performance or not is a bit irrelevant, because you are still very often sight reading under pressure.
Sight reading is an everyday skill that gets used all the time in professional music of any kind, at least in my experience.
-
Originally Posted by Tal_175
-
Originally Posted by christianm77
when you reach studio musician levels your really in a very different world of playing ...the Steely Dan and other "studio musician" groups were far from off the cuff improvising
Herbie Hancock mentions a John Coltrain solo..on the Kind of Blue album ..he says with total surprise in his voice.."...he just played a major scale!!.."Last edited by wolflen; 09-19-2019 at 09:09 PM.
-
Originally Posted by wolflen
-
I am believer of the shapes. But not maybe not as is sounds first hear. I see chord shapes and only knowing the root as absolute note, and exactly knowing all places and places around which degree it is, relative to the root. So for example in every minor chord or scale shape I know where are the 6th the 9th and minor and major 7th to create dorian melody or emphasize more the minor tonality without knowing the note absolute names.
I think this is a great advantage of guitar to relate shapes with music regardless the absolute tonality, not caring about it is Ab Major or eb minor, which is not possible on piano or sax.
-
It does make it easier to play Cherokee
-
There is a certain amount of pain that needs to be suffered to internalize a concept (called learning). Mind is lazy, it's possible the know the notes on the fretboard, understand chord and scale construction and yet not be able to instantly connect that knowledge with chord grips, scale and arpeggio shapes. Those areas of knowledge seem to remain compartmentalized unless one works on unifiying them.
Here is what I mean. Suppose you're working on soloing over a tune, say you got Ab7 Db7 then EbMaj7 ahead of you, you're playing lines that connect these chords while mentally referencing some shapes/positions for these chords that you're comfortable with.
Now while playing say in the second beat of Db7 bar shift to the "note view". You want to continue playing lines but make sure you are aware of the notes. Not thinking 3rd and 7th but F and Cb (in the case of Db7) for example. It doesn't need to be a fast tempo, 80bpm.
Does it feel very slow? Does it take a lot of mental afford? Or is it seamless? Of course you can figure out the notes. But it's slow and painful if you're not used to that view. That's what I mean by compartmentalized knowledge.
It takes certain amount of practice time and pain until shifting views gets more internalized, instant and painless (like anything in musical development). I'm not there yet myself but "shifting views" is part of my practice routine and it's working.
So the thread topic is whether having easy access to the "note view" is useful at all. It's hard to prove one way or another. I'm just not willing to abandon working on the "note view" as it feels like it sheds lights into an otherwise blind area.Last edited by Tal_175; 01-13-2020 at 12:59 PM.
-
Originally Posted by Tal_175
I love that concept, and feel like it has helped me to stay motivated when learning new things.
-
Originally Posted by christianm77
: )
-
I don't totally understand what is meant by shapes, but assume it refers to chord shapes. If that is the case, then creating melodic ideas using chord shapes as a basis seems logical to me. I'm also not sure what is meant by notes. If it means scales, then that is not really music in my view. However, using scales (notes) as a reference for ideas based on chord shapes helps navigate the sometimes difficult geography of the guitar. That is, you need to know the notes in between chord tones. Think of it as a short cut to where you need to get ie playing music. If you just learn scales and try to improvise ideas on the spur of the moment you will need a huge amount of practice, awesome memory, and massive creative talent. For most of us, to play melodically and creatively there has to be some choreographing. Practice and improvisation in its purest sense is contradictory. Since jazz musicians dedicate an enormous amount to practice, you have to ask what they are doing. Only learning scales?
-
Bill Evans: I never practice. I play Bach.
-
Originally Posted by Victor Saumarez
-
Originally Posted by Victor Saumarez
We need everything to do this business properly. It's not one thing or the other or either/or, it's everything. We need scales, chords, knowledge, lots and lots of experience, talent or flair, a feel for the music and the style, the 'vocabulary', if you like, etc, etc. It all gets thrown into the mix and appears in the playing. And, to be blunt, if you got it, you got it, and if you ain't, you ain't. Too bad :-)
But, of course, it always improves as time goes on, inevitably. Unless you get old and your brain begins to fail. But that's c'est la vie.
Er... what was I saying?
-
It seems to me that not knowing the notes by a professional jazz musician is a thing of the past.
-
The guitar leads us to laziness.There really isn't another instrument (except cousins like uke and banjo) that allows one to play so much music with so little knowledge and technique. On the other hand, it's fiendishly difficult to master, given it's size and idiosyncratic tuning. I agree with Bill Evans: play Bach, lots of Bach.
-
Years ago, Arnie Berle wrote a monthly column in GP in which he'd present one fingerboard-diagram-with-dots after another.
I could never learn anything that way. Well, maybe one or two, but certainly not dozens of them.
And, yet, I guess some players do.
If you're playing All of Me and you're handling the first chord, Cmaj7 okay, when you get to the next chord, E7, do you really need a new fingering pattern or a new scale name (eg E mixo, fifth mode Aharmmin) to figure out that you might want to account for the G# in the second chord?
Why not just know you start in C tonal center and when you get to the E7 you may want to play a G#, because that's the only note in E7 that isn't in the C major scale. Or, at least, know that the chord contains that note and you have to deal with it somehow or other.
And, then, when you get to A7, apply the same sort of note-based reasoning to think about the C#.
Or, basically, you're in C tonal center and you're adjusting here and there, as needed, to account for the notes that aren't part of the Cmajor scale.
This seems easier to me.
Typically, when you see a chord symbol, it will refer to a minimum of 4 notes (not counting the occasional pure triad). Then, you get to add the consonant extensions, like the 6 and 9 on a major scale. You get to avoid the wrong 7th. Maybe you avoid the 4th. On a major chord you get careful with the altered fifths and ninths.
On a dominant chord you may want to avoid the natural 7th. The rest are fair game, if you're making decent melody.
Of course, great players can make any note sound great. I'm talking about mere mortals trying to avoid clams.
I don't see that learning a large number of patterns, practicing them from every starting point and thinking about arcane scale names is really easier than learning the names of the notes in the chords you play and knowing where they are on the neck. And then, embellishing by knowing the names, sounds and locations of the notes you might want to add -- and the few that you have to be careful with.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 11-09-2021 at 06:28 PM.
-
I completely agree. For me, knowing the notes in each chord and where to play them all over the neck is more direct. My mind has a difficultly grasping shapes - it is not how I learned to construct melodies many decades ago. I tell my students and younger players to learn the neck. It is not easy but in the end it will be worth it.
Getting hung up on rhythms when transcribing
Today, 11:59 AM in Ear Training, Transcribing & Reading