The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    About Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck:

    Both he and Dave would play telephone numbers in their solos. (The notes of a scale are numbered; any sequence of numbers can therefore be rendered as a melodic phrase.) When one of his girlfriends would arrive at a club, Paul would play her phone number into a solo. Dave came to recognize some of these numbers and if two or more of Paul's ladies turned up at the same time and Dave was the first to see them, he would alert Paul by playing their numbers on the piano.

    Jazz Profiles: Paul Desmond - Another Perspective

    I couldn't do that (without working it out in advance) and would not hear it if someone played it to me. Musicians like this are living in an entirely different musical universe than I do.

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  3. #2

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    How true. I can’t remember anyone’s phone numbers.

  4. #3

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    Big deal, I could do it with extensions.

  5. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    How true. I can’t remember anyone’s phone numbers.
    Did you ever get a phone number in your head and couldn't place it at all ?? That happened to me, and I tried everything - - correlating / categorizing faces, family members, girlfriends, customers -absolutely nothing clicked....

    Then after about an hour, the lightbulb went on - - -guess whose number it was ??

    Yup - - mine !!

  6. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
    Same thing happened to me! With my name!
    Somebody told me there was something I could take to help my memory... I can't remember what it was though
    I always carry a sign with me wherever I go to solve this problem.

    Real musicians are different than me-3fa33524-3db1-48dd-93e5-19a1e2a55f9f-jpg

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by Dennis D
    Did you ever get a phone number in your head and couldn't place it at all ?? That happened to me, and I tried everything - - correlating / categorizing faces, family members, girlfriends, customers -absolutely nothing clicked....

    Then after about an hour, the lightbulb went on - - -guess whose number it was ??

    Yup - - mine !!
    Haha sounds about right....

    Thinking about it, often I sing PIN numbers a few times to help remember them as melodies. Me and the missus do it all the time. Which I suppose takes us back to the OP, but that's only 4 notes.

    Maybe I'd do it with phone numbers if I needed to.

    It's good sight singing practice. I usually have 0 as a rest. You can do different modes when you get bored. I used to get bored... public transport and not having kids is good for that haha.

    Not sure if I'd recognise them on a gig though lol. You know, if you work a long series of gigs you do get into doing silly stuff, all though that's next level silly stuff...

  8. #7

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    I think it was Pat Martino who said when he realised he could convert text to musical notes the whole world became music. Street signs, names, cereal packets - it all got played.

  9. #8

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    The first book of the Bergonzi improv books is basically about this.

    Personally I think it was sort of a bad choice. I banged my head against that several times and thought I was just an idiot. Maybe true. I don't think it's a super musical way to start improvising. A book of cool licks would have been way better for book #1. Now I'm working on his jazz lines/Bebop scales book which would have been a way better choice.

    But anyway, I think "real musicians" start out as beginners and just practice obscene amounts of time.

  10. #9

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    Those are the kind of games my pianist likes to play. Pure nerd.

  11. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    How true. I can’t remember anyone’s phone numbers.
    Kids today... ;o)

  12. #11

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    I don't do this with music but I do do it words.
    I'll see a word----on a billboard, on the rear bumper of the car ahead of me, whatever---and see how many words I can make out of it. (Things like this are one reason my wife, the mother of a severely autistic child, told me back when we were dating, "You know, you're on the spectrum...")

    Sometimes in grad school I would take a phrase---say, 'temporarily closed'---and jot down all the words I could make from that and THEN pick some of those words and find a way to hook them together. (With a word set like this, it would be best to say each word must be at least 5 letters long, 6 if one is feeling frisky, because otherwise you'd be writing words long after the thrill was gone.)
    Pillory, tactile, rotary, loosed, clasped, mortar, pestle, sporty, lyrical, limped, clamped, placid, merrily, scared, sacred---with lots left over.... the 'y' offers adjective a-plenty: portly Rotary? lyrical pestle? (Band name!) sacred mortar (nice phrase for a cynical anti-war lyric) merrily clasped....

  13. #12

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    Quote Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
    I don't do this with music but I do do it words.
    I'll see a word----on a billboard, on the rear bumper of the car ahead of me, whatever---and see how many words I can make out of it. (Things like this are one reason my wife, the mother of a severely autistic child, told me back when we were dating, "You know, you're on the spectrum...")

    Sometimes in grad school I would take a phrase---say, 'temporarily closed'---and jot down all the words I could make from that and THEN pick some of those words and find a way to hook them together. (With a word set like this, it would be best to say each word must be at least 5 letters long, 6 if one is feeling frisky, because otherwise you'd be writing words long after the thrill was gone.)
    Pillory, tactile, rotary, loosed, clasped, mortar, pestle, sporty, lyrical, limped, clamped, placid, merrily, scared, sacred---with lots left over.... the 'y' offers adjective a-plenty: portly Rotary? lyrical pestle? (Band name!) sacred mortar (nice phrase for a cynical anti-war lyric) merrily clasped....
    You have a devious mind. Come sit next to me.
    H/T Dorothy Parker