The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    May help

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    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    I've mentioned it on yt: great help in learning to read rhythm. Cheers!

  4. #3

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    "Invisible bar line." I get it. Useful name. Thanks!

  5. #4

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    Great! Now do one with ties going across bar lines. Those always mess me up.

  6. #5

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    Using syllables as if you're singing a drum part is, I believe, far superior to counting in numbers e.g. 1 and 2 etc.

    Having some facility with syllables for quarter, eight, sixteenth, eight triplets, 16th triplets and rests is an excellent idea.

    There are some things that are a little tougher, like rests inside triplets, but it will come when you can feel the rhythm.

    The ohly other point I'd add in a short post on reading is that music can be written more, or less, clearly. For example, in 4/4 you don't want beat 3 to be in the middle of a note. If the melody falls that way, you notate it with a tie, so the downbeat of 3 is shown explicitly, even if it's tied to the note before it. This sort of thing can make a big difference.

  7. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
    Great! Now do one with ties going across bar lines. Those always mess me up.
    just pretend it’s a rest

  8. #7

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    Great stuff (as always!). Thank you :-)

    Derek

  9. #8

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    Using syllables as if you're singing a drum part is, I believe, far superior to counting in numbers e.g. 1 and 2 etc.

    Having some facility with syllables for quarter, eight, sixteenth, eight triplets, 16th triplets and rests is an excellent idea.

    There are some things that are a little tougher, like rests inside triplets, but it will come when you can feel the rhythm.
    It works great indeed - the result is that eventually each rhythm figure literally gets a word associated with it. Much of mental activity is speech based so this is of great aid.

    Also one can assign an additional syllable per number and effectively combine both counting and tikadimi. Initially it is a bit overwhelming, but one gets used to it with some practice - that is the counting system I've ended with.

    For that thanks to Christian and his educational posts -- I toyed with a similar home grown counting scheme before, but was not patient enough until he pushed me to understanding that I'm reinventing tikadimi and it is bound to work.



    The ohly other point I'd add in a short post on reading is that music can be written more, or less, clearly. For example, in 4/4 you don't want beat 3 to be in the middle of a note. If the melody falls that way, you notate it with a tie, so the downbeat of 3 is shown explicitly, even if it's tied to the note before it. This sort of thing can make a big difference.
    That is exactly the 'invisible bar rule' definition for a well formed notation - most of music conforms to it thankfully. Rhythm Sight Reader (which is an awesome app to train rhythm) has a option to add this extra challenge.

  10. #9

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    Very helpful. Just yesterday I started working on Charlies version of ATTYA as my 1st try on Parker-stuff. This really comes at the right time.
    Thanks or to say it in your words: Ba dee du da dam bebop.

  11. #10

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    Congueros (and others) teach polyrhythms with words.

    There is a system that uses fruit names -- it works well! Pear for quarters, mango for 8ths, watermelon for 16ths.

    Cantaloupe for a triplet accenting the first note, banana if the accent is on the second note, don't recall the accent on the third note.

    I used this with a trio years ago -- we'd have salsa style breaks communicated with fruit names. We could all read, but fruit facilitated communication.

  12. #11

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    Quote Originally Posted by Danil
    It works great indeed - the result is that eventually each rhythm figure literally gets a word associated with it. Much of mental activity is speech based so this is of great aid.

    Also one can assign an additional syllable per number and effectively combine both counting and tikadimi. Initially it is a bit overwhelming, but one gets used to it with some practice - that is the counting system I've ended with.

    For that thanks to Christian and his educational posts -- I toyed with a similar home grown counting scheme before, but was not patient enough until he pushed me to understanding that I'm reinventing tikadimi and it is bound to work.
    Great!

    One thing I don’t like about Konnakol for jazz is it sounds very... well ... Indian. Which is great if you are playing Karnatic music but less good if you want more of a jazz prosody. Rhythm in music follows from spoken language, so in order to play jazz you have to learn the right accent (of course non US/Canadian jazz singers that’s this problem even more). (And why sometimes when I do Konnakol sometimes I worry I sound like I’m taking the ****.)

    Of course there’s no reason why you can’t simply change the syllable set. Even within Konnakol, Solkattu syllables are not nearly as set as you might think.

    that said, from my limited studies of Konakol, it hasn’t been interested in the kind of syncopated phrases that feature heavily in jazz. Mostly it’s been about polyrhythmic groupings. So you have to invent things. Also things that are easily summed up with Karnatic rhythmic arithmetic can often look completely mental when written out in Western notation. It doesn’t really have much to do with that sort of thing.

    But maybe what you are referring to is the (I think American?) ‘Takadimi’ system despite the name is not really the same thing as Konnakol. it’s concerned with reading Western music notation and tbh I don’t know much about it. But I wouldn’t necessarily adopt the Solkattu syllables for audiating western rhythms?

    in any case the idea of that, what rp is taking about and the approach i outline in the video is basically identical; if you are looking out for shapes and musical words rather than deciphering every letter so to speak, you are going to find it much easier.

    That is exactly the 'invisible bar rule' definition for a well formed notation - most of music conforms to it thankfully. Rhythm Sight Reader (which is an awesome app to train rhythm) has a option to add this extra challenge.
    Actually, it’s quite common to see the invisible barline rule violated in classical music. Not sure if it’s a thing there.

    For sight reading practice Louis Bellson’s famous book contains some quite ... surreal .... ways of writing out common rhythms just to keep you on your toes.

  13. #12

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    Mike Longo had a clever system from going from counting to rhythmic solfege btw. I’m wondering whether to outline it in a video now that he has passed.

  14. #13

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Great!


    But maybe what you are referring to is the (I think American?) ‘Takadimi’ system despite the name is not really the same thing as Konnakol. it’s concerned with reading Western music notation and tbh I don’t know much about it. But I wouldn’t necessarily adopt the Solkattu syllables for audiating western rhythms?
    Yes, I was referring to takadimi - from my limited reading I gather it differs a lot from Konnakol, but still they seem to be close enough to be mentioned together.

    In early struggles reading rhythms I found counting to be awkward – too verbose and slow. I tried to devise a system were each subdivision has its own syllable (all different for each of 32th and triplet). It seemed to be unpractical – too much strain for my poor brain, so I turned to drills of a direct recognition.

    Then there was a discussion were you said to the effect that people loose beats if not grounded in counting and every independence exercise is useful - I could certainly relate to that.
    So I started reading on Konnakol and takadimi, realized that I shelved away something similar, dug it back and amended it with counting syllables to address my tendency to loose myself in sparse bars.

    Basically it is a beat pattern ‘mask’ for subdivisions, syllables with attacks are accented while the rest syllables gradually fade away with repetition forming a word.

    When internalized it helps a lot even if you already can recognize a figure directly. When you parsed a figure – a word pops up, at this moment you know for sure you grasped it correctly and its retention in short term memory is greatly improved. It is similar to keeping a phone number in mind by repeating until it is written down.

    Whichever system of this nature one adopts - he will benefit greatly, that is for sure.

  15. #14

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    Maybe this will be helpful ...

    In Brazilian music written in 2/4 it's common to need to play on the last sixteenth. I found it helpful, to nail it in time, to sing an imagined drum break ending with an accent on that note.

    You could count it 1 e & uh 2 e & UH. Or, say the word "watermelon" twice.

    Both correct, but I found it harder than using the syllables that come naturally to me when I try to sing drum parts.

    It comes out something like dah boo doo dah, dah boo doo DAH!

    That's similar to the concepts Christian has advanced.

    The only difference is that I already had command of those syllables -- I could "sing" them in my mind without having to think about them. I'd done it, now and then, for years.

    I've noticed that different Brazilians often sing drum parts with the same syllables. There's an 's' sound in there -- I can't imitate it but I know when I hear it. I think they do it that way because the human musculature can articulate those sounds very fast.

  16. #15

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    Nicely done!

  17. #16

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    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    Maybe this will be helpful ...

    In Brazilian music written in 2/4 it's common to need to play on the last sixteenth. I found it helpful, to nail it in time, to sing an imagined drum break ending with an accent on that note.

    You could count it 1 e & uh 2 e & UH. Or, say the word "watermelon" twice.

    Both correct, but I found it harder than using the syllables that come naturally to me when I try to sing drum parts.

    It comes out something like dah boo doo dah, dah boo doo DAH!

    That's similar to the concepts Christian has advanced.

    The only difference is that I already had command of those syllables -- I could "sing" them in my mind without having to think about them. I'd done it, now and then, for years.

    I've noticed that different Brazilians often sing drum parts with the same syllables. There's an 's' sound in there -- I can't imitate it but I know when I hear it. I think they do it that way because the human musculature can articulate those sounds very fast.
    I don’t ascribe any particular importance to the syllables I use. I don’t even think they are the best choices necessary. In fact I keep changing them in the video.

    in fact when I watched the video when editing it I had half a mind to do it again with more of a system. But I don’t really use a system, so *shrug*

    if there’s a better option use it.

    that said what might go good for audiating Brazilian rhythm might not have the right sound for bop say... I feel like the vocal sound should relate to the instrument. In Konnakol it’s the mrindingam for example.

  18. #17

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    I use the same ideas for reading swing big band charts as I use for Brazilian.

    It's singing drum parts with syllables that come effortlessly.

    Sometimes, I have to count a difficult phrase to figure it out, but, the sooner I translate that to singing a drum part, the better.