Just the melody.

[digger]

I'm most definitely a "licks" player. When it comes time for me to solo (I shall hesitate from saying improvise) I will first play around the melody, maybe fooling with phrasing, or slipping in a few extra notes here and there, or - if the melody has enough space - dropping in a chord appropriate lick. If I get chance for a second chorus I'll start to push the licks more. That's it. That's all I can do. I'd love to hear music in my mind and be able to instantly produce it on the guitar, but I don't. C'est la vie. Am I a jazz musician? Sounds like I'm not. But I'm having fun and I figure if I do this thing long enough then one day I might hear an original line pop up in my head, and find I have the ability to play it on my guitar. I suspect that's a wonderful feeling.

Derek

[AllanAllen]

One of my little "motto" statements is "I'm not making history, just music."

I’ll bet you Charlie Parker felt the same way.

[Mick-7]

I'm most definitely a "licks" player. When it comes time for me to solo (I shall hesitate from saying improvise) I will first play around the melody, maybe fooling with phrasing, or slipping in a few extra notes here and there, or - if the melody has enough space - dropping in a chord appropriate lick. If I get chance for a second chorus I'll start to push the licks more. That's it. That's all I can do. I'd love to hear music in my mind and be able to instantly produce it on the guitar, but I don't. C'est la vie. Am I a jazz musician? Sounds like I'm not. But I'm having fun and I figure if I do this thing long enough then one day I might hear an original line pop up in my head, and find I have the ability to play it on my guitar. I suspect that's a wonderful feeling. Derek

It's mostly a matter of ear training. I think my greatest improvement in this regard resulted from a non music related job I had that required a long bus commute each day. I made a business sized card with all the notes of the fingerboard (first 12 frets) printed on it and during the bus trip I would look at the card and "sing" intervals and chords in my head. So that job I disliked turned out to be very rewarding, musically anyway.

[digger]

Like I say, one day I hope the magic instant composition thing happens for me, but for now when faced with, say, the first four bars of All Of Me, if I stop and wait for that inspiration then there's four bars of resting... So instead I'll play around the melody or play a C major arpeggio line that I'll try and end on an E7 chord tone, or I'll play a C major lick, maybe a bluesy one, or I might even race up a scale (I know my Jimmy Bruno (*) five shapes really well) and down an arp, or I might play some Django inspired chord stabs or vamps, or even something in octaves. There are probably other things, but all of them are pre-practiced elements. My only "improvisation" job is how I plug and play all these different elements.

Anyway, back to melodies....

(*) I've seen the same shapes from many other sources, too.

[Mick-7]

I didn't know what time it was - for 50 seconds anyway.

Take 1: I Didn't Know What Time It Was, take 1 @Box.com

Take 2: I Didn't Know What Time It Was, take 2 @Box.com

[kris]

Totally fine to be a mediocre jazz musician, ive been one for 20+ years. I just keep trying to get better.

Its just music, not rocket surgery.

It seems to me that a jazz musician should, above all, play concerts.
If this doesn't happen, there won't be any jazz musicians either.
Some jazz musicians play a lot of concerts, others less...but that's another matter.

[Christian Miller]

It's apparently controversial to say that one can't become a good jazz player simply by sitting in one's bedroom watching YouTube videos.

[GuyBoden]

Learn to play what you hear - an aptitude you'll need to master to be a good improvisor - and this problem will go away. That is, you should be able to play the melody of a standard tune when you hear it.

But, my question is more basic than that: you need to remember the melody, so that you can hear it and then play it?

My usual technique is repeatedly listening and singing the melody. But, there must be better techniques.


Edit: I play Jazz guitar for a hobby and listen to a lot of Jazz.

I'm not a Jazz musician, I consider myself a Jazz listener.

[CliffR]

It's apparently controversial to say that one can't become a good jazz player simply by sitting in one's bedroom watching YouTube videos.

What about watching youtube videos from one's home office?

[CliffR]

I would rephrase as, "if you can improvise a 2 chorus solo." That is, if you're just playing memorized licks, I would not consider you a jazz musician, because to me, jazz is about improvisation.

Either Charlie Parker spontaneously created the same or very similar lines throughout a single solo and across many solos on different tunes, or he sometimes used licks that he'd memorised. That's not to say that he didn't know how the lick was going to sound once he played it, or didn't add subtle variations, but I think a definition of improvisation that excludes previously rehearsed and learnt licks is just plain wrong.

[Christian Miller]

What about watching youtube videos from one's home office?

That's fine because you can write that part of mortgage off against tax. Therefore it counts as work.

[kris]

It's apparently controversial to say that one can't become a good jazz player simply by sitting in one's bedroom watching YouTube videos.

I'm waiting to be Miles Davis.

[CliffR]

That's fine because you can write that part of mortgage off against tax. Therefore it counts as work.

Phew!

[mr. beaumont]

It seems to me that a jazz musician should, above all, play concerts.
If this doesn't happen, there won't be any jazz musicians either.
Some jazz musicians play a lot of concerts, others less...but that's another matter.

I don't know where these concerts are, ()but you're absolutely right, I think jazz is a collaborative effort. It's all about interaction. To the point of where I don't really consider solo playing, piano, guitar, whatever, jazz. That's not putting it down, solo improv is just a different thing, and being good at it doesn't mean you'll play well with a group.

[lawson-stone]

It seems to me that a jazz musician should, above all, play concerts.
If this doesn't happen, there won't be any jazz musicians either.
Some jazz musicians play a lot of concerts, others less...but that's another matter.

I think that is one of the keys to Pat Metheny's career. At one point he was performing live 200 nights a year. He still tours and faces live audiences very frequently. I think that is one thing that contributes to the solid confidence in his playing, he has been in front of countless audiences and learned how to make it work.

[lawson-stone]

I don't know where these concerts are, ()but you're absolutely right, I think jazz is a collaborative effort. It's all about interaction. To the point of where I don't really consider solo playing, piano, guitar, whatever, jazz. That's not putting it down, solo improv is just a different thing, and being good at it doesn't mean you'll play well with a group.

Seriously? You don't consider all of Joe Pass's solo guitar albums "jazz"?

[kris]

Seriously? You don't consider all of Joe Pass's solo guitar albums "jazz"?

But Joe Pass played great in many bands.He had a lot of experience in playing in a jazz bands, and of course he recorded a lot of great solo jazz albums.
But I know a brilliant solo pianist who had a hard time playing in a band - it was not comfortable for him.

[mr. beaumont]

Seriously? You don't consider all of Joe Pass's solo guitar albums "jazz"?

Maybe "solo jazz" if the word is important? I think Joe certainly played jazz...i just think of solo improv as a different thing. Joe had both skill sets (group and solo) in spades.

[kris]

Well, that's it - Joe Pass was brilliant.

[John A.]

I don't know where these concerts are, ()but you're absolutely right, I think jazz is a collaborative effort. It's all about interaction. To the point of where I don't really consider solo playing, piano, guitar, whatever, jazz. That's not putting it down, solo improv is just a different thing, and being good at it doesn't mean you'll play well with a group.

I agree that jazz is primarily an ensemble form, and you can't get the requisite skill set for jazz without playing in groups. But I don't think I'd go quite so far as to say that no solo improv is jazz. Ultimately, I think there's a broad set of stuff (styles, song forms, rhythms, melodic and harmonic language, group formats, etc.) we would all agree are jazz. The people who mainly do that (or subsets of that) are jazz musicians. Within reason, their music is jazz by association or default unless it's explicitly something else (e.g., Keith Jarret's or Tony Williams forays into modern classical composing).

[AllanAllen]

You can't convince me Art Tatum isn't jazz.

[John A.]

You can't convince me Art Tatum isn't jazz.

Yes, but by the same token he was an art form unto himself.

[AllanAllen]

Yes, but by the same token he was an art form unto himself.

Exactly, and we called it jazz.

[John A.]

Exactly, and we called it jazz.

I don't want to get too far afield with this, but basically no one else has ever sounded like solo Tatum (Oscar Peterson probably comes closest). His improvisation was much more like full-on composition in the moment than the "playing the changes" norm for jazz piano. Listening to Tatum makes me think more of the stories of Bach improvising fully realized fugues than it does pretty much any other jazz musician. So in that sense, I can see people saying "jazz is one thing, this might be something different." Ultimately, genre boundaries can be arbitrary and/or fuzzy, though, and its not something I dwell on a whole lot.

[Mick-7]

But, my question is more basic than that: you need to remember the melody, so that you can hear it and then play it? My usual technique is repeatedly listening and singing the melody. But, there must be better techniques.

In my experience, the two skills are related: learning to play what you hear improves your ability to remember melodies because you can quickly or more easily recognize intervals and melodic patterns. And adding the ability to read music will help even more.

Either Charlie Parker spontaneously created the same or very similar lines throughout a single solo and across many solos on different tunes, or he sometimes used licks that he'd memorised. That's not to say that he didn't know how the lick was going to sound once he played it, or didn't add subtle variations, but I think a definition of improvisation that excludes previously rehearsed and learnt licks is just plain wrong.

I wasn't saying that licks should be excluded from one's improvisation repertoire, I doubt that's even possible (definitely not possible with very fast tempo tunes). My point was that if that's all you can play, you could not, say, improvise on a tune with which you're not familiar, than it's debatable whether you could be considered a "jazz musician."