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The Problem With Studying The “Jazz Language”
The other morning I was giving a first lesson to a jazz guitarist ( a university student) and was struck by something I notice quite often: Young jazz students spending a seemingly disproportionate amount of practice time learning and memorizing jazz lines and improvised solos.
When I asked this musician what he practices, he said that most of his practice time is spent learning new tunes, heads (like Donna Lee, Milestones, etc) and transcribing and playing improvised jazz solos by the “masters”.
This is all good stuff to do if you’re studying jazz. It lets you go deeply into the heart of the jazz tradition, giving you perspective and context. It gives you insights about how the musicians formed their ideas. It helps you develop technical skill that you can use as an improviser. It improves your ear. All good stuff.
But then when I asked my student what else he practices, his face went blank. He said, “That’s pretty much it. I want to really absorb the jazz language. All my teachers tell me this is the best way to do that.”
Then I listened to him play. He was very competent, very fluent, had a nice time feel, clearly showing how much, and to whom he had listened.
He was also stunningly unoriginal, and rather disconnected from the improvisational process. Everything he played sounded like an excerpt from one of the lines or solos he’d memorized. I don’t mean he was copying things note for note. It was…well, as if he weren’t really feeling at all what he was playing. It was as if it came from some external source, foreign to him.
As I pressed on in my questioning, he said that he already knew his scales and chords thoroughly. As I sort of tested him on this, he showed great competence with his scaler and harmonic knowledge. So why the disconnect?
Well, as we went further into the lesson, it became clear: He wanted everything he improvised to sound as if it came squarely from the jazz language, the jazz tradition as it were (or at least his conception of those things).
That got me to thinking about what exactly that might mean. Especially, the jazz language. Is there a jazz language? If there is I don’t know how to define it.
Is it certain harmonies used in modern jazz? Nope. All those extended harmonies are found in many different pieces of 20th century classical music.
Is it the chromaticism? No. There’s plenty of chromaticism from other forms of music. Beethoven used it to great effect.
Is it the types of rhythms that are predominantly used in jazz? Not that either. There’s no such thing as “jazz” rhythmic figure. Even syncopation has been around forever.
Is it the time feel? Now at least were getting close. Jazz musicians have a certain way of feeling time and expressing it rhythmically that is immediately palpable.
But what is it exactly? The so called “swing” eighth note feel isn’t even close to being codified. Some musicians (I’m thinking of Clifford Brown here) play jazz eighth notes virtually “straight”. Yet when you hear them play, you can easily tell it’s jazz.
And that’s usually the case. You might not be able to define what the jazz language is, but you can sure recognize it when you hear it. But the bottom line is that for every rule or principle of the jazz language there are countless exceptions. So why all the “learning the jazz language” emphasis?
If you examine the work of the great innovators in jazz they all had one thing in common: They redefined, edified and expanded the so called jazz language. Sure they might have spent quite a bit of time copying other players and learning tunes and heads and so forth.
But they also did one other very important thing. They spent the vast majority of their time improvising (truly improvising) to find what they had to say as artists. In fact, many had to actually ignore the jazz language of their time. They needed to free themselves from it in order to find a more personal expression.
Miles Davis was famous for this. As was John Coltrane. So was Lester Young for that matter. They were constantly pushing back against the established jazz language of their day. And they were consistently finding newer, more innovative ways to express themselves through what we still call the jazz tradition.
How did they do this? Well, if we take Coltrane as an example, he spent a huge amount of time re-mastering and exploring the materials of music: new ways of stacking chords; new ways of thinking about scales and modes; new ways to imagine rhythm and its relationship to harmonic tension. He in essence stopped looking at jazz and started looking at music in the much broader sense.
It’s important to keep in mind that, if you’re an improviser, your also a composer. You compose spontaneously, but you compose nevertheless. So follow the path of great composers. Study the tradition. Absorb and understand what has been created before you. But get down to the business of finding out who you are.
In my experience both as teacher and performer, I’d say you’re best off giving this top priority, even when you’re at the stage of development where you’re mimicking and studying others. Don’t wait for some magic moment of creative maturity. You’re ready right now. Cultivate those moments every single day, no matter what level of proficiency you’re at. Make the music yours.
For you this might mean spending a great deal more time creating and learning your own distinctive scalar, intervalic and harmonic patterns, building your own language. It could mean spending the next few years of your practice life devoted nearly exclusively to broadening your rhythmic conception (polymeter, odd meters, time feel, etc.). Explore the materials of music deeply.
Use your imagination, intellect, musical knowledge and ear to find (as the great jazz pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano would say) “your own melody.” Don’t let an over-emphasis on language limit your self expression.
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06-22-2015 11:15 AM
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I don't find this argument all that compelling because I think many people (including me for a long time) spent too little time on acquiring language. That said, if you've got that covered, surely it makes sense to trying to cultivate your own voice.
I like this guy's site though. I just discovered it recently--lot of thoughtful articles. Thanks for posting!
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It takes a long time and a lot of practice and copying others to start sounding like you.
--Me
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It's an interesting subject. I was going through some things today and something similar occurred to me. Ime, I absorb much more when I take a small figure that catches my ear from a solo, or wherever, and work on incorporating it into my own vocabulary. Either way, I'm much more concerned about sounding like me, than anyone else, especially considering I much prefer horns to most guitar playing. There is only so much you can do to sound like them, so why not absorb what you can and turn it into your own thing.
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I find this pompous. I'm always suspicious of statements like: "It was…well, as if he weren’t really feeling at all what he was playing. " Most statements like this seem like posturing to me, a way of saying: "I play with feeling, but you don't" In addition, he complains that his student isn't doing what Coltrane, Miles, Lester
were doing!!!! 99.99% of aspiring jazz musicians would be best served by trying their best to imitate, depending on effort and talent, creativity emerges on its own. Only the geniuses can forge a different path from the start that ends up being compelling to other listeners.
All in my opinion, of course.
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"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself."
Miles Davis
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There was a great movie a few years back . . "Finding Forrester". It starred Sean Connery (Forrseter) as a reclusive best selling aurthor . . . and Rob Brown (Jamal Wallace) . . as an aspiring writer. Wallace was at a loss in finding a suitable topic for a term paper/thesis. At the time, he was being mentored by Forrester. Forrester "started him off with a few words of his own" (a line used by Forrester when addressing the professor who was acusing Wallace of plagiarizing Forrester's work.) Wallace used the words, paraphrased from the preface of one of Forrester's books, as a catalyst for his own thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences. His thesis was his own. In the end, the college president over ruled the professor and determined that Wallace's words were indeed his own creation.
A great example of pretty much the same thing we're talking about here.
(It really was a great movie with a stellar performance by Connery)
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I was thinking to start a thread about this very thing. What I would have added is that for all the lines I've copped from records, it hasn't helped me think like the players that composed them. If you learn nothing but Wes, you still won't learn how to think like Wes, or Parker, or Miles, Coltrane etc etc. In fact no-one, not even those players could ever learn to think like anyone else. They would have realised this at some point and proceeded to find their own "style".
Easier said than done, but that's what I'm trying to do these days. I guess you could say I'm trying to vary the language in my own small way. I've decided I'd much rather control my own limited language, than have unlimited language that I have no deep control over...
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"They all had one thing in common."
well .. no ... they had two. There are stories about Charlie Parker playing the same record so many times the needle literally wore a whole through the wax. John Coltrane in the 40s sounded like a clone of bird. Miles Davis on his early stuff with Parker has a voice but is trying mightily to play and write like Bird did.
i get where he's coming from but it comes off as a little high and mighty and a little too reliant on selective history to be worth much on its own.Last edited by pamosmusic; 06-22-2015 at 12:38 PM.
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I think the article is bollocks.
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I agree with the article. Take your musicianship into your own hands. If you want to be original, work on it. Actively and consciously make decisions about it. Saying "I've got to sound like Wes for 1000 days and then I'll magically sound like me on the 1001st day" - that isn't going to happen. So if you want to be an innovator, then like anything, it will take conscious action. If you don't care about that stuff and just want to play convincing - if unoriginal - bop(where I'm at), fine. That's also fine and hard enough as it is. And that's also a conscious musical decision. Point is, its upto each of us. 100% in our hands, what we want to do, what we want to sound like. Our own conscious musical decisions at each stage of our development will decide what kind of musicians we are further down the never-ending road.
Learn vocab =/= original voice. It's not an automatic process. It's also not in order (vocab first, voice second). Both of these are like organic living beings - constantly in flux and constantly changing and updating to reflect our latest decisions. They will react to the developments of the other as well as a million other things that are in relation to them. If you learn one piece of vocab, and change it to make a lick you like...chances are its going to be a crappy lick. Fine. This is also practice. You have to make 100 crappy licks before one good one comes along. If you learn 100 more pieces of vocab, then revisit your crappy lick and update it. Whatever. Point is, its our choice. Our 101 pieces of vocab won't just automatically form a unique individual voice for us one day.
Using Miles and Trane as examples are not appropriate however. They were not in the same place as most others. They were of a time/place/caliber that they could envision radical musical concepts that would change the playing field for years to come. This is not of the same scope. But the underlying logic is the same - Miles and Trane made 100% conscious musical decisions in the sense that they decided that "yes, ok, now I will play this new sound, ok I need to practice this..." . Miles didn't just wake up one day after playing with Bird and suddenly have this fully formed modal concept or cool concept in his brain. He must have actively nurtured and developed a tiny little nugget of an idea over countless hours of trial and error.Last edited by pushkar000; 06-22-2015 at 01:45 PM.
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I take this article to me in the following: after years of work, study and effort, one should acquire enough discretion and awareness to find out about one's own playing and approach, both to the music and to the instrument.
Speaking Only for myself, after a few years of study and analysis, I discovered that what I enjoy the most and what I want to play is a 100% finger style "pianistic" or "guitar as lap piano". This realization alone will result in new obstacles and problems to solve, separate and apart from the rudimentary learning of the instrument and of tunes and style and language .
Simply put: play what excites you, what makes you want to pick up the instrument and play in the first place. Sometimes it takes a few years to really recognize what this is
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From your online tag I can see why haha.
Originally Posted by grahambop
It's a bit of a tricky one isn't it? Anyone can write a blog. I've put plenty of verbiage up online as we all know. Most of it is probably worthless. Perhaps all of it. You have to embody something in your playing, otherwise it's all hot air. I don't know who this blogger is - apologies if he's some real heavy player.
He has some points I think. I could seriously write a book on this blog, so I'll try and keep it snappy.
- How do you transcribe? What is transcription?
- Is bebop (for example) a licks based music - ii-V-I's parker licks? You can get these off records (or from a book.)
- From my limited contact with Barry Harris, he didn't mention transcription - I would welcome comment from those who know his teaching better. For me, his advanced students have the ability to play fluent and idiomatic bebop without cliche.
- I also know many players who transcribe furiously. One thing I am keen to avoid in my playing is sounding like a collection of Parker licks. I know some very accomplished players who sound like a textbook example of bebop - this is something I am not interested in, although I admire their accomplishment hugely.
- To me Peter Bernstein is one of the best players - if not the best - in the world for playing straight jazz without empty patterns or cliches. IIRC he mentioned he hasn't transcribed any complete solos since college. His main approach with records (again IIRC) has been to check out lines, work out why they sound good and then apply the principle to his own playing. He also sounds like someone who has a great ear - whether he developed this or if it is innate I don't know. See also Gary Burton, video posted elsewhere.
- How good are your ears? How quickly can you acquire musical information?
- Tristano. Just that.
- Finally I think this blog is specifically aimed at the common 'jazz school' practice of acquiring language and applying through ii-V-I's etc. I don't regard this as a valid way of producing anything but superficial regurgitation in solos. But there are other ways of working with transcribed material.
EDIT: also to anyone who hasn't - check this outLast edited by christianm77; 06-22-2015 at 02:03 PM.
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This is a sticky point. Music produced from a drive to be original IMO is invariably crap, and quickly forgotten. Originally Posted by pushkar000
On the other hand, I strongly identify with the desire to be individual. But by this, I really mean, I don't want to play stylistically in different gigs. I want to play without thinking. I don't really want it to be an ego thing - "look here I am" - so much as a dissolution of all of that.
In fact true originality is something that emerges. It's a by-product of what is truly important in music, the death of the ego. It is possible to work on this but AFAIK it doesn't come from working on material. It comes from somewhere else.
Elsewhere on this forum there is a discussion of a simple boogie woogie lick - a I IV thing. When Coltrane plays it he sounds absolutely and completely like Trane. When Charlie Christian plays it, the same. That is true originality/individuality.
I think there is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path (sorry to quote the Matrix.) You don't need to find new words to write a great novel.
This perhaps is what the blogger is perhaps trying to say, but his recipe for developing originality doesn't quite clear this up for me. It has to be an intuitive process. Contrivance is absolutely the enemy - I think the Hal Galper video puts it really well BTW.
EDIT - I am not saying don't practice scales/patterns/polyrhythms, etc - practice whatever the hell you want. Just don't do it from a desire to be 'original.'Last edited by christianm77; 06-22-2015 at 02:27 PM.
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The guy he's talking about seems like he's off to a very good start in his journey to become a jazz player. It may sound like he's only playing licks for now, but it's just a phase of his development, and he will get through that if he keeps working. I think we have more than enough testimonies of many great jazz players who insist on the importance of learning the language to stop questioning its crucial importance.
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This article is right on. I transcribed plenty of solos, and then what? I could played some of them note for note, as etudes, at home, but on a bandstand, if I try to play like those guys, it goes out of the window in 5 sec. I stopped practicing someone else solos, all my practice time is jamming on the tunes, trying to make sense in my own way. Im lucky I ve been to college, so my theory is covered, but copying other players has never been my strongest suit. So why waste time, trial and error works for me much better, even though its probably a longer way to master jazz, but its the only way for me. That is not to say I dont steal licks here and there- I do! But slavishly transcribe solos is exercise in futility. Different strokes for different folks, I suppose...
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OK I was being a bit facetious! Don't read too much into my tag, it's just a handy username (name + jazz is usually already taken everywhere). I like Scofield and Rosenwinkel too. Originally Posted by christianm77
I had to copy and learn some language to get started, I couldn't see any other way of doing it. But in fact I think I only transcribed about 6 solos. That gave me enough to work with. For me the fun was just messing about and coming up with my own variants and tweaks on what I'd copied.
I guess if someone had been transcribing solos for years and still hadn't started to come up with ideas of their own, I would question whether they had the right mindset to play jazz properly.
Surely a good teacher should be encouraging in a student not only the imitation and assimilation, but also the innovation, to quote Clark Terry. In my case that just meant, ok now I've learned a phrase, it's boring to keep playing it, let's see if we can change it a bit. Keep doing this and eventually you are inventing your own phrases.
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I hear ya. Your process doesn't sound much different to mine. I don't think what are saying is that different to what the blogger meant. Originally Posted by grahambop
It's quite complex. I used to think I knew all the answers 'how to play jazz' and all I had to do was knuckle down and get on with that - but I keep meeting people and hearing players who trample all over my neat little theories. I can only really comment on what I enjoy and get out of music, and my comments of course reflect this.
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There is a middle way - a very productive one. Take the material you have transcribed and try to work with it - grow it. Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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This article has some very important insight that you should all pay attention to. Stop being so black and white, it's not one or the other. You need a balance of both copying and originality in order to learn and grow as a musician. This article reflects a very similar insight I have had over the last few years. I've been playing music for 25 years. I've copied so many musicians from so many different styles. I've basically have spent the last 25 years mostly just learning other peoples music, and have barely ever written anything of my own. The pro to that is I have a huge variety of experience in playing different types of music including folk, rock, blues, jazz, classical, baroque, renaissance, modern musics (like 12-tone, poly-tonal, minimalism, etc..), a large variety of Brazilian music, tangos, milongas, etc....and more. The negative is that I've spent less than 1% of my time focusing on original ideas. After all these years of studying and performing music, here is the one important realization I have had: I should have spent more time working on original material. Why? Because here I am at the age of 42 and like many of you, the best I can do is get some shitty restaurant gig playing background music for people who don't care anyways. And the music I'm playing has been played millions of times before by millions of other musicians, so why should it surprise me that nobody cares or wants to pay me very much? Who are the musicians making a great living and enjoying themselves while doing it? The ones who have been working on original stuff from almost the beginning. I'm not saying that writing original stuff = success. I'm saying those musicians that are successful write original music. There's a big difference between the two statements. Who are the musicians who either have to work a day job or barely scrape by playing shitty gigs? The ones who spend the majority of their time learning covers. It's easy for me to see now that quite possibly the worst thing you can do as a musician if you want to have a successful career in music is focus on learning other peoples music instead of creating your own. Hey I'm not saying that it's the worst thing to do if you just want to play music as a hobby, or do weekend gigs for extra cash. But let's be honest here, most of us didn't have the goal of eventually playing shitty gigs while working a day job. Many of you, like me, probably had the dream of having a great career in music. And so what I'm saying is if that was your goal, but you find yourself in a similar position that I am in, the problem is almost certainly that like me you have wasted too much time copying and not enough time creating. That's all the article above is really saying. Not that it is wrong for you to copy other musicians if you just want to sing campfire songs or do weekend warrior gigs, or just play for fun or to show off on youtube. If you have a solid career that you enjoy and pays the bills, then by all means spend all your time learning covers / transcribing solos. But if what you really want to do in life is have a career in music, you need to spend the majority of your time working on original material. If I could hop in a time machine and go back and tell myself 1 thing, it would be that. If I could tell myself 2 things, the second might be get a degree in marketing instead of music (so that you can be successful in music).
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I don't try to play entire solos that much, nothing sinks in. Better to just pick 2 or 3 favourite phrases, then just mess about with them, try and fit them into another tune you already know well, maybe tweak them a bit to fit. They will seep into your playing somehow if you do this. Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Guitarzen makes a good point - it's not black and white. And the article wasn't being black and white either. He wasn't saying - "don't do any transcribing at all."
And while it's good to wide in your musical experience - it's also good to be 'narrow' as my friend, a fantastic bop player put it. I don't think that means 'play bebop' or 'fusion' necessarily. There are other ways to be focussed.... Being to wide and trying too play in styles all the time can lead to you not having a personality. That doesn't mean you can't be versatile ... I always think of Pat Metheny....
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I believe that my post has been slightly misunderstood. I have used the wrong word from the outset. I should have used individuality, not originality. I was referring to each person's individual "voice", which I consider basically the product of a series of conscious decisions and lots of follow-up work, not some automatic reward for learning 200 tunes and 200 licks(that is my entire point in one sentence actually). It may or may not be good. May or may not be original. Your motivations may be honest or superficial. For the purposes of my post, none of these things matter - regardless of motivation, outcome, product quality etc., it is going to be upto the player to decide - "Will I play other peoples notes, or my notes?" Originally Posted by christianm77
As far as the motivations to sound original go, I won't comment on what is right or what is wrong. I say, however superficial the motivation, if you want to do it go for it. At the very least, you're playing guitar - you're working on chops if nothing else. Working your musical judgement skills too. No harm done. If it is dishonest, or false, you will feel it in your gut. It just won't be that much fun. But if at any point in your day, you hear or imagine or play something that just hits you like a ton of bricks - chase and nurture it as far as you can. Or don't. It's upto you.
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who takes up jazz and plays it "dishonestly", or "false"? This just seems like knocking down a straw man to me. Originally Posted by pushkar000
I think the reverse is more often true, that people want desperately to be "artists" and "meaningful" and "profound" and "authentic", etc, but don't do the basic homework required to do it in their chosen endeavor, especially when it's something with as much history and depth as jazz.Last edited by pkirk; 06-22-2015 at 06:26 PM.
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I thought we were talking about jazz here, and developing one's voice as a jazz improvisor. Your use of the word "covers" indicates you are referring to pop music, and perhaps everything you say is correct in that context. But that's a different topic. Originally Posted by Guitarzen
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