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I don't want to be to much of a blowhard about this, and I would preface everything with a big IMHO, and also perhaps this is stuff you already know:
Originally Posted by Longways to Go
I would say that doing something that is comfortable is not great *practice*. There is an inherent vulnerability about actual genuine practice that is quite challenging in some ways. It's taken me a long time to learn it.
Most classical musicians I know who move to jazz prefer to carry on working with notation. It's very hard to change the habits of a musical lifetime, and it may not be a problem. But the one thing you really need to hear is the way the rhythms work.
In terms of the Real World and playing gigs, it is generally best to learn music in the way you find easiest I guess.
In practice I personally find that I learn things much better if I transcribe them - even when I have the actual chart in front of me, I'd rather listen myself playing the tune in the band and learn to sing the changes and melody. Why? If I remember from charts I easily forget.
I don't think this is because I have a particularly good ear (far from it) - I just like it better and I think the material I learn has a better chance of staying in Long Term Memory.
I can't play bop in position. I end up sliding around like a drunk ice skater :-) Originally Posted by Longways to Go
FWIW - the best bop players I know all seemed to have learned Parker by ear, off the record.Last edited by christianm77; 02-18-2016 at 12:01 PM.
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02-18-2016 11:57 AM
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Good advice to listen a lot to the tune before trying playing it, different versions if possible, this way you can maybe choose one which has a few notes differing from the original. I think for example of Wynton Marsalis' version of "Evidence" (Monk), not a bop head but you get the point.
Another really useful tip for me is to understand how each note of the head relies on the harmony. It helps remembering the head, and also may provide a new view on where to play it on the neck (and possibly to add here and there some shell voicings, 3rd and 7th, when there is enough rest).
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Hi Christ,
a couple of posts back I said I used the Omnibook to support what my ears heard. I also said I would seriously question anyone's belief that they can learn Parker solos (not heads) by ear. If you believe you can, just post the results on the forum.
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Nate, Originally Posted by Nate Miller
what do you think would be a good choice for a beginner's first step into the Omnibook solos?
Robert
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That's a great question. Even better if Nate (or Christ) posted a Parker solo they have copied and recorded, either learnt by ear (which they both say they can do) or from the Omnibook, but preferably letting us know where they got it from. Originally Posted by diminix
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This discussion isn't about the result, it's about the process. A video of me playing a Parker solo would prove nothing other than I had learned the solo. It wouldn't show anything about how. Originally Posted by sunnysideup
If you want to feel vindicated that I can't regurgitate a Parker solo right now, fine. I don't mind. It doesn't stop people offering me gigs.
You can track me down on the web easily enough. Try my website, for example. BTW Joyspring, the tune that pops up first on my site, I learned by ear, including the intro, which I'm afraid is slightly wrong harmonically :-)
However, what I would be very much up for is a video showing me going about my process for learning a tune - or if you want - a Bird solo. I'd be more than happy to do that. I think it would be interesting for others to do the same. Why don't you pick one so you know I didn't already learn it? Something nice and obscure...
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Originally Posted by diminix
honestly, what I would do is listen to a Parker CD and any tune that stuck in my head, that's the one I would learn.
some of the easier Parker heads might be ones like Barbados and My Little Suede Shoes. Some of the classic Parker tunes like Ornithology aren't too hard if you don't take them too fast. In fact, Ornithology might be a good candidate to work up to tempo, if that tune catches your ear. I always liked that little phrase at the ending.
but the easiest bop tune to learn will always be the one that's stuck in your head, so that would be where I'd say is best to start
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If can't think of one, I'll do the solo from Quasimodo.
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Rank amateur here. I started working out the head to Hot House by ear this week, so this is a timely thread. The only other bop head I've worked through is Now's the Time, which is quite a bit easier. Singing definitely helps me get the melodies stuck in my head, which makes it a lot easier to work out on the fret board. I was having trouble with some of the rhythmic accents and articulations—slowing the recording down a bit helped immensely, revealing the complexity of the accents and helped me figure out where to pick and where not to pick. It's interesting because even with the proper notes accented, I've found that strict alternate picking just doesn't lend itself to a typical bop feel. The quality of the recording isn't the best, obviously, so I've had to guess at a note here and there. For example, first time through the A section, over the G7, there's a descending line that sounds like it could be either a natural 13 or a b13. The recording is off by a fraction of a cent, so I can't quite hear that note properly. I've settled on the b13 since I usually play an altered chord here, resolving to C major.
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Christ, this discussion is about whatever we want to make it about.
If you think playing a Parker solo is "regurgitaion", then I'm going to refrain from saying what I feel like saying.
I tried you website before, it wasn't working.
There are lots of guys on the internet trying to sell musical services. I mean no personal disrespect to you but I have no interest in seeing the process by which you learn tunes.
I was learning tunes before you were born, and that is a fact, not an assertion. And CP was doing it before I was born.
This thread started by talking about classic bop, but it seems to be a thinly veiled marketing exercise for people who think they are teachers.
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Agreed, this is what I meant when I wrote that one can search YT for that Originally Posted by christianm77
Sorry if I didn't read well the whole topic or maybe you already discussed this elsewhere on the forum, but I found your comment a bit strange (to say the least) : when Omnibook didn't exist, everyone would try and emulate Parker and other bebop players by ear, so why should this be considered difficult or impossible ? And nowadays we can easily speed down the songs so it is even easier. Once again sorry if this sounds "rude", but to me your comment was. Originally Posted by sunnysideup
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Not much of a dog in this hunt, I'm not a great bebop player, but Nate's OP advice is pretty sound...for anything.
Here's a few things I think need to be added to the discussion...discuss or ignore as you please
1. There's bebop, and there's Charlie Parker. Parker heard things in a way maybe nobody else did...particularly rhythmically. Therefore, if you can internalize what you're hearing, even if just rhythmically--its going to make the whole thing fall into place easier.
2. Parker stuff can be hard to hear...for a lot of reasons. First is the recording quality...Charlie had a short recorded career, and was playing some seriously fast complex shit that if recorded even just 5 years later would be a whole lot easier to hear. Oh well. Nothing we can do about that. Couple that with lines being played in NEAR (but sometimes not complete) unison with trumpet...well, the deck is stacked against a young musician's ears from the start. So maybe beginners shouldn't be starting with Parker? Seems obvious to me.
3. One has to set a purpose for learning, when we start talking SOLOS (Not talking heads here) I think the phrase "copy the masters" gets thrown around lazily a lot. Which masters? To what extent? The Omni-Book is an impressive resource...but the question is, what am I hoping to gain by learning this solo, or part of this solo? If the end gain is to train your ears to hear bebop, put the Omni-Book away. If the goal is to cop some licks to analyze, or a solo to pick apart bit by bit, something like that becomes a real resource. It's important, and should be a given, but perhaps it's not--that one's ears are ALWAYS the most important final judge.
Anyway...just some things I think are important.
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I think that your point #1...to internalize the rhythms... is the most important part of the listening and scat singing phase. That's exactly what I'm trying to do when I'm listening before I start working on the tune on my axe Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
and yes, if anyone was wondering, I have the Omnibook on my music stand right now in fact. I was playing Red Cross and Marmaduke last night, so its right where I left it when I went to bed.
and also, you're right about there being bebop in general and then Parker tunes. There's tons of bop tunes that aren't Parker tunes. And then as a guitar player, if you know the blues and rhythm changes, you can play loads of bop tunes with horn players and never even know the name of the tune, much less the head
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Haven't good melodic solos become heads for another song in bebop ? If so, "by ear" method should work for solos too (using a slow downer of some sort when needed). I like the idea of internalizing the tune by ear first and then maybe looking at sheet music for some reinforcement. That is pretty much how I taught myself to play Leyenda and Recuerdos. Since I am not a good reader, this method decreased my chance of learning wrong notes due to poor reading (or printing errors which has happened).
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After years of trudging through whatever has been suggested, I finally realized that I need to pick the tunes I want to play! Originally Posted by Nate Miller
I do believe there will a come a time when there are tunes that I need to learn, but I suspect those will come easier after I've worked on a dozen or so that I want to learn.Last edited by gmek; 02-18-2016 at 03:16 PM.
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Yes, I am doing that. Since I am reluctant toward fast jazz anyway, it would be slower pieces of him. Something I can follow and stucks in my head, like you said. Such as K. C. Blues or Blues for Alice. And wouldn't bring disturbance into our house (sometimes, when I am hearing something fast, especially with sax solos, my wife somewhere in the house is aping the music; when I take a look at her, I see her beautiful smile, her hand doing a windshield wiper motion in front of her face--back down to earth;-) Originally Posted by Nate Miller
Right, not form me. Originally Posted by christianm77
I see Parker solos as a kind of stone quarry, where I might break something out and use. Don't want to learn complete solos. Just experiment with his stuf a bit, to find out if there is something I like. That's why I asked what could be accessible for beginners. Originally Posted by christianm77
While trying to learn some chord solos from Joe Pass in the last year, I made an interesting discovery: there are pieces (especially Stardust) Joe recorded that I don't like at all, I don't get it, don't get the faster fills and solo lines. When I worked myself into these (slow downer, transcriptions of others) and adapted the stuff to my very limited abilites in speed and accuracy, I found something beautiful in there. Even more, if I don't listen to the original for a long time. Then it becomes my own. Others would probably cringe in horror, but for me it's great. And I wonder, if a similar thing could happen with Bird. That is making the Omnibook transcriptions so alluring for me--working with transcriptions I don't know the original music for, where I don't have the lines in my ear. Finding out, where the lines could be positioned conviniently on the guitar[*], if they make musical sense to me at all, if I like it. So I am going to explore the quarries...
For sure there is something to be learned in regard to guitar technique--these fast figures within a narrow intervallic range he is doing frequently, I don't even know a name for it, enclosures? And how can these be transferred to guitar, hammer ons, pull offs, whatever. That could be interesting stuff for a teaching video...
Robert
* Stumbled over this on yt, like it how the hand traverses the fretboard up and down, a lot to be discovered here for me...
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that's exactly how it happens, morekiller. the first time you try anything new in music, the first one is always hardest and it gets easier each time you do it.
if the easiest tune to learn is the one stuck in your head, then if that's the first one you try and learn, then you get over that first hump faster and then you can start learning more tunes and picking up steam.
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Many years ago I transcribed the 'Now's the Time' solo by ear, before I had the Omnibook. I didn't have much trouble with it.
The hardest aspect is when Bird plays around with time, elastically reducing then expanding the notes, you can hear what he's doing but it's hard to decide how to notate it.
You can't rely on books anyway, so it pays to check with your ears. There is an example in the Omnibook where they get it wrong, it's in the intro to KoKo, the notes are shown on the wrong beat in one section.
I have also learned several bop heads by ear before I had the Omnibook, or where they are not in the book, e.g. Billies Bounce, Scrapple from the Apple, Hot House, Fried Bananas.
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I am a Johnny come lately to this discussion. But I would posit one thing. If I had Transcribe or anything similar to slow down by 20% or so any music, I could pretty much guarantee that I could notate a Charlie Parker solo. Let's be real - if you slow down the tempo, you can transcribe anything. Repeat anything - whether it is Coltrane or Parker or Pat Metheny.
I don't have any 'slow down' software. But I did use a Tascam CD Trainer for many years. Slow it down? The notes become transparent. I don't care who you are talking about as long as the fidelity of lines is there to be transcribed.
It is obvious that transcribing a rapid tempo tune by a Charlie Parker or John Coltrane without a Transcribe software is much more arduous. Not impossible - just more difficult. But is this really a discussion worthy of such contention? To not avail oneself of a tool that makes things much easier is akin to using mules to plow a field rather than a tractor. Possible but smart and efficient?
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Presumably the guys who wrote the Omnibook figured out Bird's solos with their ears...
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how do you think guys in the 40s, 50s and 60s learned his solos? and they didn't have the amazing slow downer or transcribe, they did it with their ears. That's one of the points of transcribing, working on your ear.
Also a video of them playing a solo proves that they can play it, not that they learned it by ear.
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To get back on topic, it might be worth making a list of bop heads listed by difficulty. Unless this resource already exists, of course...
Obviously AABA heads are easier - Dewey Square and Scrapple... These tunes have a free bridge too.
Blues a little more difficult - 12 bars as opposed to 8
Then AABA's with a set B - for example Anthropology, Moose the Mooche, Yardbird Suite etc...
ABAC heads such as Quasimodo, Donna Lee and Little Willie Leaps are a bit harder/more stuff to learn.
Through composed heads like Confirmation (which are technically AABA's with variation) are the hardest...
I feel that tempo nonwithstanding, form is the main determinant of how hard it is to learn a head, but I'm sure there are other factors too.
I've got so much from mining heads as a source of language... I think it was David Baker who said that if you learn 50 bop heads you know all the language you need. Put them in all 12 keys, I guess....
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For what it's worth, my first shot at Be Bop was Charlie Parker's Billie's Bounce.
I've lerned the head and the 1st chorus of solo from notation found on the net (I believe it was nicked from omnibook, but that does not really matter), I did it @ 160 BPM and after 3 learned choruses, which were actually 2, as 1 head in 2 octaves and 1 chorus of CP solo (the first one) I continued further with my own view on the thing.
In all honesty, I think I could have made it to the same extent without notation, but with much more trouble and in far longer time frame. At the level of chops/ training I was at the time it'd probably take months. For all 7, or 8 choruses of solo, it'd probbably be like year, or so.
All that with some help of modern technology as in "slow downers".
And Billie's Bounce is just a blues, almost Rockabilly, IMO.
It is located here (you won't see me playing, but you may enjoy a pretty girl, or two): Billie's Bounce by VladanMoviesLast edited by Vladan; 02-18-2016 at 04:44 PM.
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I think there's even a level under the easy tunes there for tunes that aren't strait 8th notes like Lester Leaps In, Barbados, Cherokee and stuff like that.
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I wouldn't class Lester Leaps In or Cherokee as bop heads, but the divide between swing and bop is hazy. Airmail special for example - bop or swing? Originally Posted by Nate Miller
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