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I'm self taught, I do have a basic understanding of theory, modes, etc. You know, all that jazz.
But going over threads here, it sounds like learning how to play this music is akin to learning how to program computers, some rarefied intellectual pursuit, rather than a way to express yourself and have some fun while you're at it. Are there still good new players who get by with just a basic grasp of what they're doing, or is this a genre strictly for complete brainiacs with Phds? I try and grok all this hoo-ha about intervallic mode modulations and my eyes completely glaze over. Would Satch have fared any better?
Of course there's always trad jazz, Dixieland, that seems to have remained a bit more primal. But I really enjoy the later styles of jazz more, and as I understand it guys like Pass and Kessel didn't really grasp all the nuts and bolts of what they were doing, either. Anyway, just an observation. I play other simpler styles of music and enjoy noodling a bit at home and have been curious about this for a while now.
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03-13-2015 10:47 AM
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Anything you look at as an outsider- is hard or incomprehensible, or at least bafflingly magical. Pass and Kessel, of course knew the landscape and how to navigate it. Django too. And many people who lived contemporary with them found their music elusive.
Jazz is a composer's art, yes you have to compose your solo, with the same consideration of harmony, melody and rhythm, pitch, dynamics and architecture that a composer does. Or not.
If you do it, and you have fun, nobody's going to arrest you. If you have fun and it sounds limited because your grasp of the composer's tools is less than informed, you'll get strange looks and maybe a glance from a fellow forum member, but nobody's going to throw you in Jazz Jail.
You sound like you resent discussion of theoretical possibility, but jazz as a composer's art is a study of possibility. That doesn't preclude having fun. And the balance of information and expression can be a tricky one, and a very satisfying one, when you're an insider.
It shouldn't stop you from enjoying, whether it be as a listener or if you chose, a player.
David
Last edited by TH; 03-13-2015 at 02:07 PM.
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Believe me, the perceived complexity is actually other's attempt to simplify and codify.....go figure...
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Jazz is as complicated as you wanna make it. The complicated part is wading through others' organizational systems and figuring out what works for you.
It's just chords and melody, really. You have 12 notes...and they sound different on each chord. Learn how they sound in relationship to each other, and use them to craft melodies. See you in 10 years.
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Well ultimately one learns from the music, by listening and transcribing.
Theory is just names for musical stuff, and ways to keep them organised. Most of it is quite simple too. Takes a little while to get adjusted to it, that's all.
Just because a few of the threads around have these theoretical things going on doesn't mean they aren't fun. Mostly the talk is about different or new ways of having fun.Last edited by pushkar000; 03-13-2015 at 02:31 PM.
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By "composing" you mean improvising, I assume. The original composers of the songs now known as standards were often pretty crude musicians. What their songs have evolved into is another matter. I was a bit surprised when I got my first fakebook, I figured this music must be hopelessly convoluted to play, listening to Miles's recording of It Never Entered My Mind for instance. But it actually doesn't take much to play the tune per se. I knew major/minor/7th stuff, just throw in aug/dim/9ths on top of that. Not much of a toolkit, and futzing around with those is more than enough material to allow me to have fun on my own.
"Jazz is as complicated as you wanna make it." Well, if you don't have the chops to keep up with whatever goes on in your local session you're out of luck, I take it. Or at least that holds true in other genres I have experience in. I'm just wondering what that takes, exactly; and are their still musicians who approach all of that stuff on an intuitive level? 'Cause that's about the only way I go about things. "Now I'll form this chord shape and shift this note up a semitone and slide down and back again and..."
Maybe jazz needs a back-to-roots movement, ala punk rock, where musicians went back to the purity of three chords and the truth, as opposed to bloated arena acts like Led Zepplin, who played, er, maybe 7 or 8 chords?
Dunno about resenting anything, I'm just an outsider like you say, and curious about how this all works. Even my handy copy of Jazz For Dummies just talks about teachers, universities, bands. It's all a bit academic to me. America's classical music or something. How about a type of jazz you go about like bluegrass, which has teachers for sure but you can also just learn some licks and sit in with beginners and move on from there?
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Well I think when jazz is played, there's not much thinking going on. For the most part, you just listen and play. Or at least, that's what you want to be doing. So that part fits in with what you're trying to get at.
The theory thing comes into play more when people work on their chops at home.
I practice very "theoretically". I sit and think of b9 #13, XYZ scale, degrees, intervals blah blah.
Other people just learn the music.
I would say it boils down to listening+transcribing a lot and understanding the music. Knowing lots of tunes too.
Jazz has this reputation of being all about theory and flats and sharps and this and that, but go to a jam session and see how many cats have their real books open. Their ears are open, and that's kind of the paramount factor. Can you hear what the other cats are upto, are you in line with them etc.
As long as you can play in the end, it doesn't really matter too much. I think along the way, you would end up picking up a fair enough amount of theory anyway.
And just to add, even if you can't play right now, as long as you listen and are trying to learn, that's good enough (my situation).Last edited by pushkar000; 03-13-2015 at 06:22 PM.
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Theory is a labeling and organizational tool it's not rules, it's things previously done. Learning theory can save time in the learning process so you don't have to discover and label things yourself, because even an ear player has to organize the things they discover. I think people get hung up on theory because they look at it as a boundry.
The most important thing in music and especially Jazz is developing your ear. You can't play what you can't hear.
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Chet Baker and perhaps also Stan Getz did pretty well with limited knowledge of theory.
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I agree with everything you say except that I don't think it should take 10 years to simply know what all your scales, arpeggios, melodic lines, and chords should sound like. Like you said it's only 12 notes. For many though it will take perhaps a lifetime to create chorus after chorus of beautiful melodic lines.
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Last edited by smokinguit; 03-14-2015 at 10:34 AM.
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Do all of you guys transcribe stuff? I've transcribed folk instrumental music and even that is a bit of a chore, and we're talking about simple diatonic melodies here, I just don't have a very keen ear. I've mulled over maybe slowing down someone's solo, I'm handy with software for messing about with stuff like that, but writing it all out, erk!
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But the thing is whether it traditional theory or ear players everyone has to learn the same things and use some way to organize and label it. Doing it on your own means your taking time to reinvent the wheel. Reading the biographies of the legends they taught each other coming up, once they reached a certain level then it was use you ear and figure it out. Originally Posted by KIRKP
I was talking to a guy a week ago who was a close friend of Getz and he was Getz knew a lot more that people realize. I could stay long, but hope to get to talk to the guy next week a bit more.Last edited by docbop; 03-14-2015 at 12:12 PM.
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03-14-2015, 12:09 PM #13destinytot GuestI do. I'm self taught, but I know my way around standards. I've had a few lessons here and there. I transcribe anything that speaks to me. I use a keyboard to analyse it and sing it. I rarely bother writing anything down. Originally Posted by KLR
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I play without a lot of theory - my eyes glaze over when people talk strings of numbers. Understanding the 2-5-1 progression is about the most useful bit of theory I learned.
Learn what are the chord tones, learn arpeggios, learn the major scale, copy lots of bits of your favourite solos. Copying phrases from the masters will teach you the melodic language and how to phrase ideas around the chord tones, with passing chromatic notes etc. And what rhythms to use.
That's about all I've ever done.
I probably should get into theory more, but the point is you don't have to be a theory-head to get somewhere with it.
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12 bar blues. you can get a lot of playing in with 12 bar blues. just don't stick with 3 chords, and don't play like a delta blues man. Originally Posted by KLR
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Jeff, you slay me. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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The trial and error method. It could work. Could. I think its faster to have some kind of organizations. ..you dont have to know them all...a really good handle on the major scale, its harmony, chord building and the way extensions and tensions sound on those chords can get you a long way. Originally Posted by KLR
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Wait, you don't have a keen ear, and you're too lazy to dig into the jazz theory stuff, and you are asking can jazz be dumb down enough to meet your criteria? Well, can't you guess the answer already? I don't mean to offend, but you can be honest with yourself at least and realize that it's not a good attitude toward music, not just jazz, everything. There's really no rewards for taking too many shortcuts. Originally Posted by KLR
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You know you're explaining why Jazz isn't for you. Stick you whatever you doing and just stick to hitting Play on your CD player to play Jazz. Originally Posted by KLR
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Slowing down a solo to figure out the notes are going by and filing them away, that I can see doing for myself, if I really wanted to tackle playing jazz. Or looking up someone else's transcriptions - I imagine there's a whole library of them out there, done by people who I'll never approach skill-wise in the first place. I can't listen to a fast string of notes and replicate them on demand by any means, even straightforward tunes often leave me stumped, I have to noodle along to figure out what's going on. I know there are ear training courses out there too, just haven't bothered.
I'm not completely ignorant in regards to theory, too, I can sight read and know that major-minor = Ionian/Dorian = happy/sad, or that a diminished chord wants to resolve to something less unsettling, or what shell chords and inversions are; nor am I chronically lazy, I've worked quite hard over the years on the music that I play. I'm just wondering how much of this rigorous technical knowledge you're expected to have on hand to take part in sessions, or whether there are still people around who obviously understand it but haven't gone through a formal learning process.
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1) Not much if any Originally Posted by KLR
2) Uncommon
Theoretically if you know the degrees of a scale and some stuff about 7th chords, its more than enough really.
In addition to what you do on your own, you can invest in some good books to help you out, or maybe a couple of lessons with a private teacher who knows what he/she is doing. Its always good to hang out at a jam session or jazz gig just to see what things are like.
Jazz is more fun than hard, even though its hard sometimes. All the best.
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Thanks for all these replies, this is all very helpful to know. I'll definitely hang out at a session soon, just to see what goes down in the first place. I'd have done that a lot sooner but I live a bit away from the local area's music epicenters.
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Hey no need to wait for a live session to begin the fun. It's nowhere near the same but here's a playalong for Autumn Leaves. Hit the play and do like Barney Kessel and just start playing. You can then decide if there are things you'd like to work on in order to make your playing interesting. It's not really like programming computers to look for options and technical solutions to the question "what do I do?"
Nobody's going to make you transcribe here, nobody's going to make you into an intellectual egg head. Just push the play and play. You may have it all already.
David
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Originally Posted by KLR
Small's Jazz Club in New York has a free live stream of the shows and the nightly Jam. So you can checkout what goes on at the jams. The jams vary from night to night the level of players.
http://www.smallsjazzclub.com/joinau...TOKEN=44569905
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Depends what you are after.
My own dummy method, for very beginners ...
1. The 1st way is to learn tunes and mechanics behind them, so you do not have to learn each one by heart.
Basicaly, there are types of tunes, and you probably already know many. Also, as an aid, you can have some pet songs to think of when you see certain progressions
Couple examples:
- 12 bar Major blues (Usually I think Chuk Berry R'n'R type of thing)
- 12 bar minor blues (Here I don't think anything, Gary Moore, maybe)
- 8 bar blues (Oh when The Saints)
- I vi ii V (The Twist)
- Circle of 5ths from III to I, in C it is E A D G C (they call this one "Ragtime")
Then you have combinations. For example, infamous Rhythm Changes are
((2 rounds of The Twist) + (the second half of Saints)) x 2 + (Ragtime)
Then you go and change all that to preference, by various substitutions, trying to keep at least one of original lines intact, or in close ressemblence, be it bass, melody, or some inner counter line. There are some common substitutions, but you are not obliged to use those, as long as you are not to play in a quickie standard jam. There you'd better play what everybody else does. That means, you have to listen to "originals" and have an idea about main melodies, sort of being able to hum the melody of requested song. Just like you'd do with pop, rock and folk. Over time certain patterns will emerge and you will be able to play them whenever they are applicable in given situation.
2. Second way is to mungle with (kn)own stuff. Pick a tune, melody, preferaably of your own, one of basic 3-4 chords and try to harmonize each note in meaningfull manner, so each chord to sound naturally going from the previous and leading into the next. Then break the line in straategic places with some abrupt jumps, but don't forget to keep at least one line in close ressemblence. Hopefully, you'll notice some "patterns". Then, pick another tune, in different key, do the same, but try to aapply mentioned patterns. It will force you to find different grips for same old thing, which will open new possibilities for both above mentioned tunes, in both keys.
Again, there are no rules, if it sounds good it is good. Only if you are to jump into session with unknown "Jazz people", without rehearsal, you'd better follow some commonly used patterns, because they will.
To all above you can apply: "... let's see if..., lift a finger, put it down, slide away, come back ..., let me hear that thing ..., now "that" move over there ... ",
I mean, I do it that way, but I'm not your average Jazz player, let alone good one.
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