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Originally Posted by Jamesrohr1
But first think about it for a minute and please tell me why you bothered to work so hard to learn that solo.
Also please tell me what you got out of it. Anything? Anything you can leverage, use again, slightly modify and use elsewhere? Add to or reply to with an idea of your own?
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02-15-2018 11:38 PM
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Originally Posted by Jamesrohr1
Sorry, but that's about the bottom line. Don't keep asking 'How do I do this, how do I do that?', find out how to do it. If you're actually interested, that is.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
2. No
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Originally Posted by Jazzstdnt
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James do ask questions people around here are really good. ragman gives good honest advice, don't take it the wrong way, I don't think he would want to shut down the conversation.
Another big thing I have found and the dude I had a lesson with addressed it, I hear a lot of top level players say it and you hinted at it re learning metal licks, narrow down what you are trying to learn so that each session you walk away having learnt something.
Definitely in jazz there is an ocean of information you can drown in.
The guy I had a lesson with was so precise and he explained his approach about narrowing down what you are going to learn in each session and over a week etc.
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Originally Posted by Jamesrohr1
Perhaps others can chime in, but I can't see playing jazz if you can't scat sing at least something.
I haven't any idea how to develop the skill.
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Originally Posted by Jamesrohr1
But seriously, I suspected a couple of things here. Before I saw your playing of "Solid" I took it from your OP that you could play, and that your fingers worked just fine, etc. So you are far from a beginner. Check.
Then I saw you play. Was that 3 chorus'? Great job! And I also suspected that you didn't necessarily have a great reason for learning/transcribing that solo beyond the fact that everyone says that's what one should do. Or maybe your instructor mentioned something but it flew by. That's OK. You've done the hard work.
To the point - when it comes to learning Jazz Improv you may have heard "Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate". Now that's just a slogan but it's backed up by logic and historical practice. It can/should be applied over many solos from the masters that you learn - AND - it can/should also be applied to EVERY solo that you learn. One might say "leverage your investments, otherwise you'll just have to keep investing and investing before you gain any return". The good news is, you've just made a nice investment. That's a nice Bb blues and is chock full of the Jazz language! Many opportunities here.
There are many creative ways to apply Imitate/Assimilate/Innovate and I'm happy to show you a few. It's difficult to say, but you may be pleasantly surprised by what unfolds.
Imitate - you have completed that step, but keep playing it to get it closer and closer to Grant Green's performance. Dial it in.
Assimilate - start simple. Play this in a different key. It's in Bb so take it to the Key of C, two frets up. If you don't want to do that for all 3 chorus' that's OK. Do it for one chorus and maybe the best sections of others. Later you could take it to half a dozen keys, but that's later. Just take it to C.
All for now, later.
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Originally Posted by Jamesrohr1
I played a show with one of my bands and during a break I was approached by two women, a pianist and a singer who joked about stealing me for their own band because, as the pianist said, "You don't make mistakes". I told her that I wasn't so sure about that because I always improvise my solos, so there were no pre-existing lines against which a deviation would comprise an error. She said, "Well, you play what always sounds like the right notes."
The simplification of improvisation others are pointing to is really just that - learning to distinguish what sounds like the right notes for the style of music. Most of that comes from listening to lots of the style and learning what the various style's dialects accept to be "right notes", and rhythms, and other things. The jazz sound is an open system of possibilities of right notes tempered only by your own musical judgements about the style's history and authenticity.
As far as getting the "right notes" expressed, when you can sing lines spontaneously in your head with the music, then you can learn to "sing with your hands" on the guitar. Then, improvising becomes more like choosing among the ideas of "right notes" you hear contending to be played... much less of a "construction" orientation and more a focus on "direction".
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
1. kinda, not so well
2. No. After playing for 41 years, usually professionally, and a lot of teaching as well, I'm embarrassed to say that the honest answer is no.
Anyway, here is what I'm doing now , and how it relates to this concept of playing what you hear in your head. I'm trying to play bebop, and I have a book called Bebop licks for guitar. It's alot of phrases that you can learn and then string them together. One of the things the author suggests is that you also sing the phrases.
So I am trying to sing the phrases, and after I get used to a few phrases, I try to make up my own phrase by mixing up simple ideas from those I just learned. Some are cool sounding, and some not so much.
I don't know if this process will ever lead me to do it in real time on the bandstand - but I've yet to come up with a better idea.
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There is a playful aspect to the music.
How did it start?! Piano players and others, in bawdy houses, were employed to set a mood, and put waiting patrons at ease.
They played tunes they knew....but probably got tired of playing the same old tunes the same old way, and they started to play around with it...swing it....chromaticize it....etc. At first melodic embellishment, and then somewhere along the way, Louis A. (I think was the 1st) starting just playing off the chord tones, and composing in the moment.
So...how to maybe replicate this idea?! Listen to a lot of versions of a well-known tune. Find different versions, and see if you can "cop the feel"---not even exactly, but maybe in just one little way, at first.
Growing up playing basketball, we played endless games of H-O-R-S-E....where you have to replicate a shot, and then if you make it, you have the option of changing it slightly....same idea.
I maybe set the bar too high before, mentioning Charlie P. I love older swing. Sidney Bechet, some Louis A, Ruby Braff, Johnny Hodges, Lester Young, trombonists, are great players to listen to. Other players like Gene Ammons, Art Farmer, Ben Webster, Bix, Gerry Mulligan are all worth listening to, and much more approachable as models.
Or, you know the game of "telephone"?..where someone whispers a phrase like "I need to die trying"....and "passes it on" to the next person, whispering it....before long, somebody is saying "I want to try flying"...each version kind of builds on the preceding one, but changes it slightly....that's the spirit of the music, to me.
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It’s a lot to go on. I’ll definitely try to see how some of these approaches work over the coming months. And I hope to check out some of the players mentioned as well. Ultimately, even with all these numerous great suggestions, it sounds like I’ll either get Jazz guitar sorted on my own or fail miserably. And failure isn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as I learn a few things in the process.
Besides, it’s not like a band is just sitting there waiting for me to get my stuff together. Lol. It’s no great loss to the world when a bedroom guitarist fails to grasp a new style.
Thanks again everyone for being so patient.
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Originally Posted by Jamesrohr1
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Originally Posted by wengr
Like, I can transcribe a solo, and learn a couple of really good licks, drill the hell out of them, etc. But trying to put them in my playing *consciously* is very difficult, because to do that, I have to interrupt my mental flow, and essentially say to myself, "Now is the time when we play The Lick." and it always sounds terrible.
BUT, keep practicing it, and maybe in a month, or maybe in a year, that lick, or some variation of it, will pop up in a solo. I didn't plan it. I didn't think of it as "a lick" even. It was just a melodic possibility that was there, and I took it. Or maybe it's not the lick, but it might be a fragment of it. The way it foregrounds a particular note or interval or something.
Something similar (but different) happens when I try to learn a lot of licks in a short period. It's not so much that the licks will pop out, but if there's some commonality with them - a particular contour or way or ending or something - then that might be what sticks, rather than any particular lick.
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Originally Posted by Jamesrohr1
Analogy: I write for a living, so I can type pretty fast. When I first took typing classes in school though (I may have just dated myself), I was nowhere near that fast. I can remember struggling to hit 40 wpm on a couple of early tests for jobs. What happens is, certain processes become automatic. My fingers know where the keys are. Words and phrases I use a lot have kind of become "macros". I don't think about typing each letter. I think about the word or phrase.
Going back to our 180 bpm tune, suppose now you've got four bars of a common progression (say a II-V-I). Now, instead of thinking of each note, you think of a phrase you want to play, and you play it. You don't have to think about it. That's four bars you've got covered. So your time interval has gone from 1.25 seconds to 5 seconds, and you only have to think about one thing instead of four.
The point is, all this stuff builds on top of each other. As more and more processes get shunted off to the subconscious or muscle memory, you find yourself able to concentrate on larger structures, and your feeling of being rushed lessens considerably.
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I have a hunch that in "practice mode", the best things wont happen. I mean, best as the best you can do. After a hour of practicing, the spark is gone but improvisation is all about being inspired. Proof - I occasionally played a good solo with 100x less skills than what I got now. The attitude&mood made all the difference. Another hunch is that there are people that are constantly "in the zone" and build everything on this. Similar with natural born performers - every aspect of their practice driven by the "performance mode", hence the development is much faster.
Maybe works for OP- play as simple as you need to not mess up and overthink too much. But play it like you would play for a stadium full of people. Or another - try to become inspired somehow.. listen to your favorite great stuff or think happy thoughts.. whatever. And then try to just play nicely. Play, not practice.... sometimes. This kinda works for me when in similar trouble. Hm, practice is important but actually playing and hoping for great stuff for happen, that takes other kinds of preparations.
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There is also an aspect of improving where you work, and work, and you ARE in fact learning, but it may not be immediately apparent.
To keep going at this....takes some faith, in what you're doing, and granted you might be completely deluded, but there is a kind of "intermediate zone of understanding" .
I guess what I'm saying is that I've noticed with athletic skills, sometimes you keep working and working at something, and you figure out what you need to do...when you finally get it, you might not even realize that the proverbial "light bulb" went off, but it did.
I think this is why accomplished practitioners are not always the best teachers: They often can't articulate exactly what they're doing, though it is obvious that they are skilled at it.
Harry Vardon was by far the greatest golfer of his day...pretty much invented the modern swing, but when he was asked to write a book on golf instruction, he really struggled to put into words what he did. It's just something that he figured out, and knew how to do.
With music, your ear gets better--you can figure out riffs faster and tunes more easily, and your fingers seem to find the spots on the fretboard, more easily, and yet this can happen without any obvious "aha" moment.
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Originally Posted by wengr
I think that this is a very important point for part time players pursuing jazz improvisation on the guitar - a dicey proposition in the first place.
Focus is key to making progress - NOT taking every little tributary off the main river.
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Originally Posted by Jamesrohr1
OK, from an Imitate-Assimilate-Innovate perspective you have competed the first part.
Now for some Assimilation Ideas:
1. Play this solo in at least one other key. That's easy on the guitar, we can use the same fingerings in a lot of cases. The key of C is two frets up. Give it a try!
2. Select the "best" phrases and play each one around the cycle of fifths. You can choose your favorite motives and phrases. Some of mine started and finished at:
40-45
50-53
136-139
142-145
148-152 (loved this one. Jazz gold!)
The circle of fifths can begin anywhere but typically starts at C. So if you played each one of these phrases starting where you are in Bb, the order of keys would go like this:
Bb-Eb-Ab-Db-Gb-B-E-A-D-G-C-F
I hope that you try a little bit of this. It should start building your toolkit and your confidence to boot.
Best of success!Last edited by Jazzstdnt; 02-18-2018 at 11:18 PM.
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Originally Posted by Jazzstdnt
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Originally Posted by Jamesrohr1
But what matters isn't the playing/copying, it's whether you understand what you're playing. There's not much point in just shifting to another key if you're merely going to copy that too.
This isn't said cruelly. What matters is whether you understand what you're playing and why. Because then you can shift it to any key you like. Then you can take the same principles and apply them in your own way to your own solos. Then you'll be improvising, not copying.
So how far do you understand that solo? Is he using pentatonics, mixolydian, blues sounds? Do you see what happens when he shifts from Bb7 to Eb7? And over the F7? Do you see how he connected the chords? And later got those outside sounds?
This is what matters. The copying will surely give your hands and memory a workout but it won't do much for your comprehension - but the comprehension matters more than the imitation. That's how you become independent and find your own voice.
Ask us, or better, the guitar teacher if you're lost. Hope that's all right, I don't mean to be overbearing :-)
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Yes, that is part of the Assimilation process, but not the only part. It's not either/or, it's both.
h'ttp://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/improvisation/65808-develop-improvisational-capability-imitate-assimilate-innovate.html#post848213
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Originally Posted by Jamesrohr1
When you say you understand, do you mean you see the point about merely copying or you understand what the music was doing?
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Originally Posted by ragman1
The biggest takeaway for me, and it’s a small thing, was realizing how important those little slides from below are to getting a real Jazzy flavor. It’s not on every note, and I don’t think there’s any real formula. But it’s stuff like that that seems important for nailing this style of music.
KA PAF info please
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