6 months into jazz - overwhelmed and not sure where to focus. Advice?

[onezeho]

You're a great community, thank you for all the advice - it's been a real pleasure reading your responses

[joe2758]

Oh did you now ….

Yeah! at one of the lessons you even asked me "I'm curious, did you practice slurring into up beats or do you just do it?" and I had to admit, no, nothing has been natural

edit: then again I probably got the idea from one of your posts or C's

[onezeho]

We need to have more proper musicians in the world in the face of AI slop-music! Good luck!

Edit: Try learning the song 'Moonglow' in the key of G. Nice and simple tune. Learn the melody and chords. Then apply swing and accents to the melody.

oh, that sounds great I'll give it a try

[mr. beaumont]

I recently tried to transcribe the piano melody from Louis Armstrong's A Kiss to Build a Dream On, but when I started putting it into Guitar Pro I got completely lost with the rhythm

Any listening recommendations are welcome!

Trumpet players are great to listen to, especially on open horn.

I'd skip the software and get some pencil and paper. Just drop in the rhythms into each bar, then get the pitches. If you can't figure out how to notate the rhythms exactly, who cares? This isn't for class, its for you. The biggest thing to gain from transcription is the intense listening anyway...you don't even need to write things out to gain from it.

When you learn tunes, listen to different versions...im not sure if there is such a thing as "plain melody" in jazz. Listen to the ways players you like play a tune. Steal ideas, inflections. That part is important. Jazz is as much about how you play the notes as it is what notes you play.

We had a thread here last year, about just playing the melody. You should get in on that.

[AllanAllen]

OP said they liked Kind of Blue. Why not learn those 5 songs. If you can't get the melody by ear, videos like this can help you build your ear.

[pamosmusic]

Yeah! at one of the lessons you even asked me "I'm curious, did you practice slurring into up beats or do you just do it?" and I had to admit, no, nothing has been natural

edit: then again I probably got the idea from one of your posts or C's

Im just messing with you!

Its good stuff for sure

[GuyBoden]

[pamosmusic]

The rule:

Whenever someone tells you that something boils down to one thing, it’s probably more complicated than they’re letting on.

Slurring into downbeats is a big one, but transcribe a lot of guitarists and you’ll see how rarely people are doctrinaire about this articulation.

Even with horn players, articulation is a much more flexible thing. Even saying they slur into downbeats most of the time only implies it’s more than half the time. And I’d wager it’s closer to the 51% than the 99%. Style is important here too.

Anyway — listening is key. Sing along with stuff and trust when your ear tells you that a great player is breaking one of the “rules.”

[mr. beaumont]

Personally, I think telling a beginner to stress over something that small isn't going to help them a lick.

[joe2758]

Personally, I think telling a beginner to stress over something that small isn't going to help them a lick.

No pun intended but I don't get the sense you are a "lick guy"

I say if you're learning licks those details are good to ingrain. Not for improv tho

[dconeill]

Hello everyone. I'd appreciate some advice, ...
My main question: looking at the full picture, where should I focus right now? ... Or is there something more fundamental I'm missing altogether?

Play with others - but not other guitar players - even if you suck. Gain experience.

[John A.]

No pun intended but I don't get the sense you are a "lick guy"

I say if you're learning licks those details are good to ingrain. Not for improv tho

Is there any bigger lie in the English language than "no pun intended" followed by a pun?

[Hep To The Jive]

Hello everyone. I'd appreciate some advice, but first I'd like to provide a little context about my musical background and where I am right now

I'm 25. I picked up guitar at 16, but for a long time it was just a casual hobby - strumming chord-based songs, picking things out by ear, improvising with no real system. I only started taking it seriously about 2-3 years ago

For a while I got pretty deep into music theory - YouTube channels, reading, trying to wrap my head around harmony. My theoretical knowledge grew, but my actual playing didn't keep up. Until fairly recently I'd barely touched scales, positions, ear training, or rhythm work in any structured way.

About six months ago I made the switch to jazz. I started listening a lot and realized this was the direction I wanted to go. I worked through Jens Larsen's material - shell chords, basic jazz concepts - and for the first time started taking the metronome seriously

From there I moved into standards: Take Five, then All of Me. Working through those made it very clear how weak my rhythm was, so I spent a lot of time on the metronome, triplets, and swing feel. The swing thing eventually clicked in a way I didn't expect - not through any explanation, but physically. At some point the triplet eighth just settled into place and I felt it from the inside. That was probably the biggest single moment for me these past few months

Right now I'm working through Chris Parks' Barry Harris material. I've got the major scale in one position down - triads, thirds, chords, up and down - and I'm working on chord tones, chromatics, and the diminished 6 scales. But I'm starting to feel overwhelmed. There's a lot coming at once and it's getting hard to hold it all

The gaps I'm aware of:

• Ear training, especially transcribing - melodically I can get somewhere, rhythmically I fall apart
• The connection between what I hear, sing, and play
• Understanding the function of notes within the harmony
• Improvising through chord changes
• Feeling free inside swing when actually playing
• Fretboard knowledge

My main question: looking at the full picture, where should I focus right now? Keep pushing through Barry Harris even when it feels like too much? Shift toward ear training and transcription? Work more on rhythm? Or is there something more fundamental I'm missing altogether?

Man, you're from Peter? Contact Andrey Ryabov, you can search when he's peforming and ask him for lessons. He's the best in straightahead jazz and I'm sure he still give lessons. Another great player is Gasan Bagirov if he still lives in Peter. Really seek them out, they are world class and good teachers.

[mr. beaumont]

No pun intended but I don't get the sense you are a "lick guy"

I say if you're learning licks those details are good to ingrain. Not for improv tho

Im actually huge on licks. But i think articulation is something you should learn organically by listening, singing, and learning lines, not by taking a rule and trying to apply it.

I mean, you were a beginner once-- don't you remember how easy it is to get caught up in minutiae?

[GuyBoden]

I do this religiously.

It absolutely works but also has limitations.

Stuff I play swings but also, for example, playing certain types of lines at fast tempos can be very tricky. In particular playing them with consistent time. The slurs can make things easier to play, but at fast tempos it can almost feel like they bunch together or something and time can get too squishy. So that takes a lot of work. I’ve been working on Grant Greens What Is This Thing lately for this reason … it’s up tempo and he picks more than the average. So trying to play it with my usual pattern of slurring is really good practice for working through that challenge.

@pamosmusic From your post in the following thread, Post 5:
The Jazz Slur Rule?

[pamosmusic]

No pun intended but I don't get the sense you are a "lick guy"

oooo you might actually have Mr B wrong here.

[pamosmusic]

From Here:
The Jazz Slur Rule?

Right. I believe the thing I said was "it works but it has limitations." Also notice that I mentioned "Grant picks more than the average," meaning I was applying a picking pattern to his stuff that he doesn't really use.

I for sure do it religiously. I trained myself to do it by learning 30 odd bebop heads in six fingering positions each and reworking the slurs in every one.

What I usually tell students is that I do it and think it sounds great but that most guitarists don't. It's an oddball instrument and you can't always slur into downbeats, so there must necessarily be other things, right? If a pianist can swing, then there must be other things than slurring? Horns who really can pretty much slur into all there downbeats will also tend to have a much much much more nuanced sense of how to articulate a line.

If you ask a horn player if they slur into there downbeats, you'll almost certainly get a response along the lines of "Can you show me the line?"

So again -- huge believer in this way of articulating and something I'll help students with if they ask, but not something I tell students they must or even should do.

Like Mr. B said, it's a LOT of detail to be worried about and will invariably run into contradictions with what your ears are telling you Jim Hall is doing. The best advice to a beginner is to follow your ears. Having the thing about slurring in your back pocket to help you recognize what you're hearing in a lot of horn-centric stuff is certainly useful, but I wouldn't advise getting bogged down in it either.

[pamosmusic]

Man, you're from Peter? Contact Andrey Ryabov, you can search when he's peforming and ask him for lessons. He's the best in straightahead jazz and I'm sure he still give lessons. Another great player is Gasan Bagirov if he still lives in Peter. Really seek them out, they are world class and good teachers.

I found this post extremely confusing at first.

[joe2758]

Im actually huge on licks. But i think articulation is something you should learn organically by listening, singing, and learning lines, not by taking a rule and trying to apply it.

I mean, you were a beginner once-- don't you remember how easy it is to get caught up in minutiae?

absolutely! still sound like one, and i blame getting caught up in minutiae.

I guess I have just been so stuck for so long and when I switched to focusing on vocab, timing/articulation I improved faster than I ever have in 20 years of playing (although, I stop guitar for years at a time and sometimes focus on classical..so maybe 5 years cumulative of jazz).

I've been blabbing about it here for a couple weeks...probably talking to my beginner self I guess. Makes more sense to listen to you guys who are better, but at the same time it's hard to turn down that personal experience excitement

[pamosmusic]

It sounds like you guys are saying the same thing.

I think maybe the caution an old fart would give someone super excited about progress they're making learning vocab and stuff is to not try and condense it into rules too quickly. So maybe that's where Mr. B is going with it. Keep learning the vocab, but maybe be aware of our tendency to let rules take over for ears.

[Tal_175]

Playing with the recordings doesn't get mentioned enough, I think.

[joe2758]

It sounds like you guys are saying the same thing.

I think maybe the caution an old fart would give someone super excited about progress they're making learning vocab and stuff is to not try and condense it into rules too quickly. So maybe that's where Mr. B is going with it. Keep learning the vocab, but maybe be aware of our tendency to let rules take over for ears.

Good advice!

So by rules taking over you mean I might get in the habit of playing a phrase because I know it will fit, even if I could play something better?

Anyway I look at what I'm doing now as a bridge, I don't think it's the answer as an "approach"

Just saying if I was a beginner, that's how I wish I started

[rpjazzguitar]

I agree with getting a teacher, focusing on tunes, having fun.

All the stuff about nuts and bolts is, to me, arguable. There are as many ways to learn to play as there are players. Sure, there are commonalities, but for every great player there's another who did it a different way.

One way of thinking about it, which is probably not the mainstream, is that you only need to do two things to solo. One is to be able to imagine a good line and the other is to make it come out of the speaker.

So, if you can already scat sing a line you like, then all you need to do is practice thinking of lines and playing them instantly. If you can't scat sing a line you like, or you get bored with what you're coming up with, then it's time to lift stuff from records. I say "lift" because you don't need to write anything down, although it wouldn't hurt.

If you go full nuts and bolts, you have to be careful not to fall into a bottomless abyss. And, if you ever escape you'll still end up needing to learn tunes and imagine good sounding lines.

BTW, by "full nuts and bolts" I'm thinking of advice I saw in an online forum years ago. It recommended trying every possible triad pair against every possible bass note in every key. I don't recall how many places on the neck. To me, it's ridiculous. It's hard enough to get one new sound into your playing. Trying to incorporate 1.34 zillion sounds in one practice regimen, well, words fail. Of course, not all technical advice is bad, but a lot of it is optional.

One quick anecdote on nuts and bolts. At a jazz camp, I was able to record one of my favorite players playing through a ii V I in C. He sounded incredible and exactly like himself -- as if only he was privvy to this special harmony. But this time, I knew the chords and they were simple. So I transcribed the line. All my excitement turned out to be about Galt. That is, the same scale I already used. The point is that complete mastery of the nuts and bolts doesn't mean you're going to sound great. You still have to turn all that debris into music, somehow. And, the "somehow" usually involves, listening, lifting and playing tunes with others. And, to twist it further, that player is actually encyclopedic about theory. But, I think his superpowers are enormous ears and a truly vivid musical imagination.

The only other advice I'd offer is to avoid becoming distracted once you're on a sensible path. There is so much great music and so many great players that it's easy to get derailed.

[emanresu]

The overwhelming feeling just a while after beginning - so common
Maybe because so many things you never knew about even existing before suddenly become things you only merely know about and not be able perform with complete comfort.

But yeah, get 10ish very likeable tunes and each with a different "quirk", learn and try to play those well in various ways.
Then, the next 10 takes way less time probably. Because lot more of the massive assortment (what is happening theory-wise) is already familiar by then.

Hm, one thing that actually helped to see through the chaos was to bring them pieces into one key. A bit of hassle but it kinda simplified them all and got a better clue about what's happening in a tune harmonically.

[AllanAllen]

If you can't find someone to play jazz with, or think there is nobody else interested in jazz, go to blues jams or open mics wearing a Miles Davis t-shit until someone talks to you about it.

"Nice shirt, Miles is great"
"Thanks, do you play?"