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I find it very OK as long as the one posting gives you some food for thought or questions things that you had taken for granted. You do not learn much in an echo chamber.
Originally Posted by Grigoris
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08-03-2024 11:29 AM
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A few things:
1. Gentle reminder that this is an Internet forum. If you want focused advice with minimal distraction, then a private teacher might be the move. I happen to be available.
2. The 8k+ club certainly engage in some silliness but also tend to be quite helpful. Aspirations.
3. For the future, comparing music to science is pure, uncut Christian Miller bait.
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You are directly responsible for this you cheeky boy. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Here's one of my students. She stands up at 7:30; Originally Posted by Christian Miller
She's a cult leader.Last edited by Stevebol; 08-03-2024 at 12:42 PM.
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Actually lots more to see. Anyone else notice that this train derailleur picture has various flaws and irregularities that are the kind made by AI? Originally Posted by Grigoris
There are the usual errors with hands and feet.
The depiction of the bicycle indicating the bike car has its front forks inverted with the curve at the top and backwards (because AI has never had a bike).
It looks like the AI has re-used image elements to compose the inspection crew.
Also notice that the crew people are in brighter light and clearer resolution than the train next to them; even the saturation of the colors is different, the train being kind of faded.
There are perspective errors in the geometry of the curved part of the track that makes the crew figures seem to be a little "floaty" with respect to the ground.
The track on the right tells a strange story that could only be told by an AI that didn't know the geometry and mechanics of how sidings couple to the main line.
Traditional ballast (stone chippings used underneath traditional wooden ties) is present without ties, yet neither version of ballastless track, slab or direct fixation (the latter shown in this image) uses traditional ballast.
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Yeah I wouldn't want to say music theory is purely analytical like math. The data it operates with is empirical and not derivable a priori. But the way it operates on the data is analytic rather than synthetic. We hear a chord progression and describe the relationship of the chords. But there's no step of synthesizing a broader theory from which we can predict the structure of other music. There is no constructive or predictive step beyond the analysis. Originally Posted by James W
Analytic vs empirical is probably the wrong dichotomy. Maybe analytic vs constructive is better.
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I thought the whole point of this forum was off topic tirades. If not I think we've all been doing it wrong...
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This is serious stuff here. You don't want to wind up in the Yogi Berra-ism doghouse. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
There does seem to be some competition for students here.
Don't look at me. I'm just here for the chatter.
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Agreed. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
I'm not so sure about whether or not music theory enables one to predict what other music sounds like, but I will say that, given enough exposure to a composer's or improviser's style, there is a role of expectation that plays a part in how you understand the music. Someone well-versed in say, Mozart's music will be listening for certain things (I mean: have certain expectations) before listening to a work of his that they've never heard before - and this can apply more broadly to common-practice era tonal music where a general consensus existed about music, at least in a certain part of the world. Things have broken down a bit now, things are more pluralistic and depend very much on particular musical artists - but still, no one piece of music is atomised from other kinds of music... it's rare that a composer or improviser will use techniques that differ that radically from what they've done previously. Originally Posted by BreckerFan
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Yeah that's a good point, you can establish rules or patterns for genres or composers that have a degree of predictive power. But that's really only noticing trends, not discovering any fundamental mechanics of music. Originally Posted by James W
I think the difference is only important in that music theory can't (or shouldn't) be used prescriptively. There are no music theory laws that you must follow to make good music.
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Great point by the OP.
I think there's an actual strategy to this, where you decide on certain things to remove from the equation. Decide on things you like and don't like, and let it lead to an artistic identity.
For example, Ted Greene doesn't care about playing with a group. He just wants to play solo and find interesting chord melodies. Grant Green doesn't care much about chord comping. He plays the melody and a single note solo, then lays out to let the piano player comp. Wes doesn't care about solo jazz, he only plays in groups.
Once you start taking out the things you don't like, you can focus and becoming excellent at the things you deem important. I think you become a more valuable player by doing this. People will want to listen to you in an audience, or hire you to play in a group because you bring something to the table that is valuable rather than being mid at everything.
Then there's the people that are just good at everything, but they are the rare talents.
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And when you find what you like to focus at, does your practicing routine consist of transcribing from recordings? It’s an honest question.
I once asked my jazz teacher (a sax player) at our weekly combo sessions about ideas of what to practice and he just said “transcribe” three times.
It seemed flippant as a response, although I understand that it must help to get better by imitating others who speak the language well.
But transcribing for guitar doesn’t come easy to me. Maybe for the sax, things are more straightforward, you hear the line on the recording clearly and there’s only one finger placement for a Cmaj7 arpeggio, not eleven!
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I know people are different but suggest not to make it too structural.There's melody
- Chords/Form
- improv
- endless amount of solos from great players to transcribe
- 12 keys
- an abundance of different possible string sets one could limit oneself
- Different positional systems
- different improv concepts
- chord melody
(sorry I'm evil)
- chord solos
- counterpoint
- Playing with a group
- Reading
- Voice Leading
Structural setup creates an illusion that you have to cover something (point 1,2,3 etc) - you achieve a kind of completion.
But completion of what?
What is the goal then? To become something and stop there?
Artistic experience is the road that never ends... and maybe it is not even the road, just wandering around...
It makes sense to make minor goals, if I use 'travelling metaphore' - just look around and see: hey, what is there - I will go and check and there I see where I am the next day...
By the way you mentioned classical... for me it is also different.
Of course 'school routine' is to create a repertoire and work over particular pieces and all... but a final goal is just to play music for pleasure. I play a lot of classical music on piano and mostly I play the same composers and pieces just because I love it... if I have some techincal issues I try to fix it as much as I can but otherwise... it is not like I am moving on all the time.
Rather moving around...
Also I think for jazz an external trigger is important: you have a gig or recording session, or just meet some amateur players in a local jazz jam... or find some amateur singer to comp, or make a small performance for the family... and it just puts very practical goals in front of you: finding some particular way of comping for a set of tunes, and next time find another way, transcribe some ideas from a player you like for this song...
I would not make too many abstract structural goals (like learn all in all keys etc.), it is important only at the beginning for very basic things.
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Well, I might say that it is a little bit of a flippant response. Transcribing is hugely important but it also is much easier to transcribe when you have more tools for identifying what’s going on, so you should also be working on some other stuff as you go. I spend time transcribing, time working on learning transcriptions, and a lot of time working on things I like from transcriptions and incorporating that stuff into, say, my scale practice. Originally Posted by Grigoris
I don’t really think this is the case. First off, it’s hard for everyone when it’s new. Work on it for fifteen a day and it’ll get better quick. And the wild number of fingerings on guitar makes learning a transcription later a different task, but the transcribing not so much.But transcribing for guitar doesn’t come easy to me. Maybe for the sax, things are more straightforward, you hear the line on the recording clearly and there’s only one finger placement for a Cmaj7 arpeggio, not eleven!
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Music theory could stand to be a lot more empirical.
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I have a video on something that might get one started Originally Posted by Grigoris
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Well, it's a huge topic. I've haven't looked into it extensively, but while I don't doubt that there is lots of music theory that is only tenuously if at all empirical, there is also lots of it that is empirical - that does endeavour to grapple with the actual sounds of music. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I think it goes there and back in circles... it definitely describes the experience, but then it can become a basis for a new experience... in 20th century the theory often comes first. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
But to be practical... how I explain theory to my kids... it is no abstract things at all ever: we play music and first I make them hear things (or notice what they already hear) without naming or labelling, then we try to repeat these things, variate them also without terms - i describe only the meaning (hezitation, resolution, doubt etc.) and only when I feel they are quite familiar with that i can try to explain in terms of basic theory. So that they really feel: how you name it and how it is structured theoretically is just a supportive thing.
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I think most musicians working in the construction of music have a working body of useful information that they use in a practical way. Originally Posted by James W
In terms of theory, the analysis of music can be very abstract and use tools unrelated to the tools available to the musician making the music. A good example would be using Schenkerian theory in the analysis of Mozart. However I really don’t know how useful or not that might be to a budding composer (as I don’t know much about it tbh), but it is a different toolset to that used by Mozart himself.
To some extent the creative process is of course unknowable. We can talk about the type of training a musician may have received but we can also obviously conclude the adult Mozart (or any professional composer or improviser) had entirely transcended the basic tools of the trade.
Analysis seems a funny thing philosophically to me… So to take the cliche example of chord scales, It’s totally empirical and reasonable to analyse a Kurt Rosenwinkel solo with chord scales because this is the way he seems to conceptualise his own music, and it fits well. For Charlie Parker it becomes a little more abstract, because we can recognise chord scale style ideas in his music, but it’s less clear how he would have thought of them, so we are going out on a limb a bit more.
We are spotting patterns in the music - albeit empirically - and relying much less on what the artist themselves have told us about their process, or revealed in their teaching. (Which is of course how Barry Harris did it.) This is fine I think, so long as we realise it’s our own interpretation.
In any case this is mostly a question about learning concrete things from music to do our own music, not necessarily delving into deeper mysteries about musical order. I do think some theory aims to do the second. (Which is not to say it may not be useful for the first.)
What I have noticed is that when the ‘rules’ of chord scale theory are violated in real jazz, this is most often not taken to demonstrate the limits or inaccuracies of the theory, but to prompt some lengthy justification as to why it actually fits after all. Which strikes me as not a completely empirical approach to theory, but one that relates to the desire to have a universal theory that works in all cases. I think the Levine theory books, for example,stray a little bit into this territory.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 08-05-2024 at 10:59 AM.
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I recommend:
> pick the style you gravitate towards (for me, bebop and standards)
> do _some_ practicing of basics (but not too much)
> transcribe a lot
> play a lot of lot of tunes making sure you solo _by ear_
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Yes I think that's a fair question.
IMO the practice routine has to be designed by each person to get to the goals. For me, I play in groups and I don't play solo guitar. So I work on swing feel and timing a lot, I don't work on chord melody arrangements. That is a massive strategic decision and it changes my practice routine drastically. A player who wants to play solo gigs would be working a lot on arrangements, and would not need to worry much about timing and swing feel, as solo guitar players are allowed to play lots of rubato and fluctuate timing.
As far as transcribing, I think everyone is different, but for me it has been very beneficial. There's something magical about playing the exact notes and the exact timing that the great ones played. You start to learn things on a subconscious level and it comes out in your playing every time you touch a guitar.
The problem I think you're alluding to is people tell you "go transcribe" and that's a tough pill to swallow. Nobody ever shows you how to do it. Nobody wants to help you with it. It's a bit of a rite of passage to sit there staring at the blank page trying transcribe something that is too fast or too difficult to hear. If you don't want it bad enough, you're out of the club. To some extent, teachers want it to be hard for you, they want you to earn it. And if you're a quitter they want you to get lost and stop bothering the "real musicians."
I'm not a teacher or a full time pro, but I'll give you what tips I can on making transcribing easier.
-pick a song that's not too hard. Pick a 4 bar section. Don't try to transcribe 48 bars on your first day.
-If it's too fast, grab a snippet of the song using audio editing software like garage band or something. Or maybe just slow it down using YouTube's .75x feature.
- Loop that part, use VLC or some kind of editing software.
- Sing along with the slowed down loop.
- Now try to find the notes on the guitar. Write them down in a chart so you don't forget them.
- play them at a slow tempo, then get faster. Use Drum Genius or a metronome to work up to speed.
- When you get it fast enough, play along with the original recording at full speed.
- If it takes a few days that is fine, when you are done, do 4 more bars or switch to a new song.
- Use this transcription as a warm up so you keep internalizing it. Play it every day when you are warming up. Don't just transcribe it and then forget it.
There's people (esp sax players) who don't agree with this method, they think you should just play it full speed from day 1. That's not for everyone. Everyone has a different ability to hear this stuff. Bravo to the sax players who have been to 6 years of music college to get a masters degree. Not all of us can transcribe at full speed.
I also think it's OK to use someone else's transcription sometimes, just learn the lines using their notes or tab. There's lots of YT clips where people just give you the chart. All the sax players learn Charlie Parker transcriptions from this one book, I think it's call Omni Book. So don't believe them when they say "do everything by ear and never ever use a chart" .... they have all used charts to learn solos. You just won't get the benefits of the ear training as much, but there's still a lot of benefits.
The idea is if you transcribe or learn these solos all the time, you will build up a great vocabulary over years and years of transcribing. Even if you're only doing 4 bars a week, that adds up fast over 2-3 years. You would have a large vocabulary.
If it's hard to focus, set a timer for 45 minutes. Go for 45 minutes uninterrupted, spend that time attempting to transcribe. Chances are you will probably get a few bars done. If you get zero bars change to an easier song the next day.
Last tip- choose the solos you want to transcribe very carefully. Whatever you choose now is what you're going to sound like in the future.
Originally Posted by Grigoris
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Two things that are commonly recommended, and for good reason, are transcribe and practice with a metronome.
There are some who argue against the metronome, but I've never heard anybody argue against transcribing.
But, there are some great players who will admit that they don't use a metronome and haven't transcribed much.
I think the non-transcribers are the rare birds among great jazz players, but they exist.
TBH, I don't really enjoy transcription. When I get very curious about the underlying logic of a line I like on a recording, I'll usually figure out the gist of it, but not the details.
For example, the other day I heard some outside stuff against a D9sus D9 Dm9 vamp. I slowed it down, sang some of the lines (which makes it easier to find them on the guitar) and played enough to realize that it was mostly Dalt and some chromatics.
Tangent: Dalt is D Eb F F# G# A# C. Then, from D9sus, you get a G, A and an E. That's 10 notes. The other two are C# and B. The C# is going to be tough against dominants, but the B should work.
So, in a way, what I was hearing was pretty much everything but C# -- and there was a C# as a passing tone in a chromatic line. But, the solo tended to lean on the notes of Dalt.
So, that's the harmonic area of the solo. Pretty broad palette, so what you lean on and what you omit or gloss over becomes very important.
Making it sound great depends on other factors, e.g., melody, rhythm and tone.
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When I was starting out, I had to rely on a cassette player: play the tape, stop, sing what I heard, attempt to play it, then rewind and repeat the process. There were no "slow downing" apps available. The benefit is that it helps you develop your musical memory, the ability to recall and repeat long musical phrases. So it may be advantageous at first to do it that way and think of the slow downer app as a crutch to be used only when necessary. Originally Posted by JazzIsGood
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Interestingly Bruce Forman suggested that the lack of infinite replayability and limited capacity to slow down passages (only by dropping overall speed and therefore pitch) on analog audio media may have encouraged more personalisation of material. Whereas now musicians can absolutely nail it with enough time but maybe don’t inadvertently bring their own style into it so much.
And it’s the greats? Bill Evans plays a wrong note in the first bar of Conception for example. Benson’s Billie’s Bounce is not the same as Birds. And if we were to talk about Miles we’d be here all day, but no one can doubt his creativity even if he completely messed up the bridge to Well You Needn’t. (And played Conception wrong too for that matter.)
I think error and accident have become squeezed out of music a bit. Often regarded negatively as opposed to being embraced as a possible source of creativity.
At least that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. But it’s a good one no?Last edited by Christian Miller; 08-07-2024 at 05:40 PM.
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Check out what Sco makes of Confirmation: Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Aside from not really nailing the head, here and there he departs in weird ways from the chords in his solo (e.g. during the second chorus, which is as far as I got transcribing).
Still sounds cool though.
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