The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #51

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    There is that.

    Dang. That was just wonderful to watch.

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #52

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    Quote Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
    The post-bop, hard bop and modal thing was a big departure from bebop covers of show tunes and contrafacts. It's no secret that Mile's Kind Of Blue tapped into a big audience for jazz that wasn't focused on that chasing the chord changes bebop manifesto.

    I am very drawn to the era of the jazz composer, Mingus, Miles, Shorter, Hancock, etc., and beyond, vs the Great American Songbook. The approaches to harmony are more modern and geared to a more personal approach to concepts and application.

    However...those that choose to ignore the vocab and practices developed by bebop do so at the peril of not sounding "authentic" as you try to tell your story with a path that takes you back and forth between consonance and dissonance, tension and release. It is still fundamentally essential as basic vocab.

    I do remember when mainstream straight ahead jazz was very progressive, and then the "young lions" thing happened with Wynton and his peers, and bam, people went back to the jazz museum and started rehashing old jazz again and it slowed the progressive stuff down a bit, IMO. Jazz academia seemed to become a force in the music.

    Nobody masters all of jazz, and the individualism of the genre dictates we choose the path that best satisfies our creative appetite, but important to know the tradition.
    Well said. It only takes a lifetime or two of playing this music to learn things like this and be able to say them with authenticity.

  4. #53

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    Quote Originally Posted by grahambop
    Ragman makes a good point about playing v. listening. I don’t like hearing Misty much, but if I try and work out a lush chord melody version on the guitar, it suddenly gets a lot more interesting and I start to like the tune a bit more!
    There is this whole school of thought that we ought to learn the words to standards even if we are playing instrumental. But honestly, learning words to some of these tunes can ruin them for me. Also, some of the words were added long after the tune itself was popular, like "Misty." The connection between words and music is not always direct or original. I love the Songbook, but I also respect people who play well in some other bag. I might not buy the CD's, because I like the standards (Pat Metheny exception, of course).

  5. #54

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    Parts two and three of the [COLOR=var(--ytd-video-primary-info-renderer-title-color, var(--yt-spec-text-primary))]Bill Frisell, Bob Bain and Dennis Budimir conversation:[/COLOR]





  6. #55

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    Part of me wishes that I'd never started this thread, but you guys told me to not give up on standards with functional harmony. And it teached me to differentiate as I liked the versions of My Funny Valentine that ragman posted a lot.
    I never said I ignore this kind of music btw. I just said for me it always feels more like 'doing homework' than playing modal and rootsy stuff. I know that doing homework is required, though.

  7. #56

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    No it is not ok... it i like participating in a Mass doubting Immaculate Conceptiion.

    You should take at least 40 day of isolation from forum, feel it through, think it over and take your decision. If you understand that there is nothing - I repeat - nothing as much jazz-realated as 'a kitten on a tree' there the doors of the foum might be open to you

    At least that was a word of one of the oldest forum's gurus when I first doubted about Misty and went to the jazz church for cofession... and he added sing Polka, Dots and Moonbeams 30 times every morning and you begin to appreciate Misty

  8. #57

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    Quote Originally Posted by guavajelly
    This is a confession: I tried to like the kind of jazz standards that everyone seems to adore for decades, the standards that are based on musicals or other 40s and 50s popular songs, the Real Book variety. But honestly, songs like Misty sound just cheesy to me. "Close your eyes and a thousand violins begin to play" – once you know the line you can never unhear it. But even songs that stay a bit further away from Kitsch just bore me to dead with the stereotype modulations of functional harmony that all of them use. And whatever the arrangement may try and how innovative the interpretation may be – I just can't listen to it for more then a few minutes.
    I like modal jazz, soul jazz, funk jazz, latin jazz and the bluesy, rootsy stuff though.
    I hope it is OK to stay in the forum though I'll never feel inspired to discuss Stella By Starlight?
    We all have different tastes, nothing strange or controversial about that.

  9. #58

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    I may be wrong, but I think it is only guitarists who care about standards. Or maybe it is only northern hemisphere guitarists: I cannot remember when I last heard a standard played live.

  10. #59

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    I may be wrong, but I think it is only guitarists who care about standards. Or maybe it is only northern hemisphere guitarists: I cannot remember when I last heard a standard played live.
    What do people play in jam sessions in NZ?

  11. #60

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    I may be wrong, but I think it is only guitarists who care about standards. Or maybe it is only northern hemisphere guitarists: I cannot remember when I last heard a standard played live.
    A lot of touring jazz musicians still play standards, I think this is still common due to the economic necessity of playing with a local rhythm section for example. In fact even when they bring their own group they usually play at least some standards. The exception to this is when a group plays all their own material, this seems to be more common with European musicians in my experience.

    These observations are mainly based on my attendance at the Watermill jazz club in Surrey, which regularly features American, European and UK musicians.

  12. #61

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    Interesting. I often heard Aussies say their jazz scene is quite different because of their distance from the US and European scenes, maybe more so for NZ.

    The kiwi players I have met seem much like others though tbh, in that they know and play standards.

    Standards are a necessity of being a working jazz musician really.

  13. #62

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    I may be wrong, but I think it is only guitarists who care about standards. Or maybe it is only northern hemisphere guitarists: I cannot remember when I last heard a standard played live.
    Just to summurize:

    No standards played live by guitarist from Southern Hemisphere or by non-guitarist worldwide .

  14. #63

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    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    I may be wrong, but I think it is only guitarists who care about standards. Or maybe it is only northern hemisphere guitarists: I cannot remember when I last heard a standard played live.
    Based on my experience in Southern California, all the jazz acts I see play some standards. I have found that less standards are played than say 20 years ago. I.e. now I find it to be about 75% original material and 25% standards depending on if the group has a lot of original material, how popular the band or band members are, and the size of the audience; E.g. in a large venue and \ or for bands without a loyal following, more standards are played since most in the audience don't know the band's original material.

  15. #64

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tal_175
    What do people play in jam sessions in NZ?
    I was at a "blues and roots" festival once (no jazz to speak of) where they had different groups and solo performers jam together, a bit. Seems like all they could jam on was the blues. It would have been nice for them to be able to call out some standards.

  16. #65

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    The Black Sedans roll in the middle of the night.

  17. #66

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    Is everyone here familiar with the GuitarWank podcast? It's interesting to hear the contrasting experiences and opinions of hosts Bruce Forman and Scott Henderson. Bruce knows a ton of standards, Scott doesn't, but has other production/recording skills, and their career options reflect that.

    PK

  18. #67

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    guavajelly -

    Sorry, I missed your reply before.

    I think I'm just tired of chains of II V I and I VI II V progressions
    Absolutely, quite agree, they can get repetitive. I quite believe the 80%. Personally, at first I couldn't get them. Then when I'd got them and got bored with them I needed to alter them. Then when I'd got bored with altering them I sort of ignored them (within reason), then when that was too easy I went back to altering them and inventing my own subs. These days I've no idea what happens as long it resolves okay:-)

    our corona infection
    Sorry to hear that.

    ...Kind Of Blue and she asked me to turn it up. I don't know if that is about modal or functional
    I guess that's why it's popular. And it's basically modal, that was the conception behind it.

    One could say that in general modal jazz provides more space for an improviser, the music can breathe more as the improviser doesn't have to concentrate on modulating keys as much. Now a musician is free to do the same with a functional harmonic piece of music – ist just seems like most don't do that.
    That's an interesting point. It's quite possible to play standard (functional) harmony tunes pretty minimally, I see nothing wrong with it. I think it would depend how it was done, and maybe who did it.

  19. #68

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    Just a thought from the above ...

    Good changes players don’t follow every chord. The secret is to block down tunes to simpler functions and redecorate. That’s what Charlie Parker is doing.

    So; the modal thing is less different from changes playing than I think people suppose. you can get a sense of this listen to Cannonball on Kind of Blue where he is superimposing changes in his bop lines on the mode. This is not very different to what he might do on a rhythm changes.

    OTOH you could take a more modal approach and apply it to a standard. You hear modern players doing this all the time.

    No one should be playing 1 6 2 5. It sounds terrible anyway, and doesn’t give enough space.

  20. #69

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    Joe Pass' cliche was there's only dominant and major or minor. And he rarely, if ever, played a straight dominant (his words).

    So a 1625 in C would be just C or Cm - G7alt.

    (Presumably dims are dominants and augs depend on the type of chord which is augmented).

  21. #70

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    Quote Originally Posted by ragman1
    Joe Pass' cliche was there's only dominant and major or minor. And he rarely, if ever, played a straight dominant (his words). So a 1625 in C would be just C or Cm - G7alt. (Presumably dims are dominants and augs depend on the type of chord which is augmented).
    Everything Joe Pass played on static C major chord can be played on 251 or 1625 progression. Note how he uses V7 altered over C major often. Heck I even lifted the entire c major etude and played it over the changes of "Night and Day."

    DB



    Last edited by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog; 05-29-2020 at 07:27 AM.

  22. #71

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    Let the dominant dominate

  23. #72

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    Quote Originally Posted by guavajelly
    Funny enough the opposite is true. From the three interpretations I like Gerry Mulligan's version the best. That doesn't mean I don't like Bill Evans' and Jesse van Ruller's interpretation. Now go figure. ;-)
    I'm the same. But then again I happen to think that the early Mulligan stuff (quartet/quintet) with Chet Baker is some of the best music ever. The way Mulligan and Baker played together contrapuntally, harmonising together, is just so fresh sounding and I've never heard anything else quite like it in jazz.

  24. #73

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    I got into jazz via avant garde music. So the wrong way round, if anything. Started off listening to Anthony Braxton, Art Ensemble of Chicago and free improvisation and then started appreciating Monk, Mingus, Dolphy and from them back to Duke Ellington and from him finally to the crooners. I find listening to standards/songbook arrangements by people like Nelson Riddle on Sinatra's 'In the Wee Small Hours' album, for instance, really quite inspiring in terms of ideas. Same goes for many of the arrangements that accompany Mildred Bailey, Billie Holliday, Fred Astaire and others.

    And the lyrics to standards need not be cheesy. 'You Don't know What love is', 'I Can't Face the Music Without Singing the Blues', 'I'm a fool to want you', 'every time we say goodbye'... the lyrics are pretty good by most songwriters' standards. 'Summertime' too, although it's so common that no-one really pays any attention to the words anymore...

  25. #74

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    Quote Originally Posted by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog
    Note how he uses V7 altered over C major often
    That's also an old blues trick, used often. Instead of a bar or two of the tonic between phrases, they stick in the V. Breaks it up, sounds good.

    Here's Big Bill doing it at the end of the verse.


  26. #75

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Interesting. I often heard Aussies say their jazz scene is quite different because of their distance from the US and European scenes, maybe more so for NZ.

    The kiwi players I have met seem much like others though tbh, in that they know and play standards.

    Standards are a necessity of being a working jazz musician really.

    The tyranny of distance is not an issue. We are not colonials.

    Jazz in New Zealand is progressive. In large part that is due to the influence of the music schools, through which most jazz musicians attend and where many teach. We have a record label, Rattle, which releases new music in jazz and other fields. Many of the artists receive state funding from Creative New Zealand. The emphasis is very much on composition and innovation. Standards are are still played by combos at weddings and wine festivals, but an audience at a jazz club would expect new music. This is a nation of noodlers.