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Hi guys.
I wanted to ask you for your opinion on the exercise. It's very simple but I'm not sure if it's developmental.
The assumptions are as follows:
We take any standard.
We only play 8th notes.
On the 1st and 3rd beats we play the 3rd and 7th of the current chord.
All other sounds are chromatic enslosures.
The phrase must ends in different places of the next chord so that they play over the bar line.
We end the phrase on a chord tone.
What do you think about this exercise and is it a good way to play bepop?
Do you have any ideas how to spice it up?
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07-28-2023 03:07 AM
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I don’t think it’s a good way to play bebop but it might help you develop skills useful for playing bop. I remember doing a similar exercise sometime ago.
The best way to learn bebop is to learn by ear, examine, apply and vary real bop language imo. This can be heads as well as solos.
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Anything that gets the fingerboard into your brain is going to be useful.
But to play a jazz style, I think it would be better to spend this time learning bop licks from records.
I say this because I think you end up sounding like what you practice, so maybe it's better to practice the most musical material as much as possible.
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I wish I sounded like what I practice, I’d be way better
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You need to hear be-bop music.
Learn heads, analyze solos by outstanding be-bop players.
Try to play fast.Years of work.
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Hi. I realize I must hear bepop. This exercise is the absolute foundation.
I'm having trouble playing freely over the bar line. I have a problem to rhythmically calculate (feel it) where the 3rd beat of each bar is (I have no problem with the first one). But I have a problem with pauses and then returning to the grid where there are 1 and 3 beats. 3rd and 7th are leading tones.
I know that then in the next stage you can play other notes and that you can do anticipation. But what I'm trying to do is learn to organize it all on a basic level. And then develop it.
Hearing bepop... ok i want to play melody. So the sounds that make up the melody must be on the 1st and 3rd beats. That's why I practice it this way.
So from what you write it is a bad and ineffective exercise?
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I certainly wouldn’t say so. (But it is an exercise, not music.)
Originally Posted by freud
Have you read Hal Galper’s book Forward Motion?
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I don’t think anyone is saying it’s a bad and ineffective exercise. It’s probably quite a good exercise for what you describe here. Originally Posted by freud
When you practice, it’s really important to decide what you’re practicing and don’t ask one bit of of practice to do too much work.
Bebop really needs to hit a lot of changes and this seems like pretty good practice in that respect. But a lot of music hits changes. Bebop uses a lot of specific phrasing and line shapes and things like that. I think people are telling you to supplement your exercise with things that will help you internalize those musical and technical things too. There were a few suggestions to learn heads. That’s a good one.
I had an old teacher who told me to start a collection of bebop heads and play them as a sort of warmup every day, and I’ve been doing that for a long time now. Try learning one in several fingering positions and try to make each fingering sound as much like the recording as you can. That can be really good.
Anyway … think about what you’re actually practicing and be pleased if your practice improves your playing in that way. Don’t sweat it if it doesn’t improve your playing in other ways. Just add something else that does.
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+1 Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Cool book. I feel like I found a large part of it online once?
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Yeah - freud’s exercise reminded me of it. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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ok thanks for your help and replies. I'll ask differently then. How did you learn to hear lines and melodies? In what way other than my practice? I understand that you analyzed heads and licks, but you probably did some exercises?
After all, the heads are full of sounds leading to the 1st and 3rd beat... Therefore, I wonder what other way is there to understand and hear it?
I haven't read Galper's book, but I know the concept. Maybe it's time to buy this book?
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little achievable bits at a time. Start with something like Nows the Time. Originally Posted by freud
I don’t tend to do exercises? I just work on language/music. Barry is great for this. Adapt and transpose material you hear in bop heads and solos. Compose and work things things that sound good to you. Shoehorn licks into chord progressions (play the same ii V lick on every ii V in a tune - actually I suppose that’s an exercise)
Don’t try to improvise any of this, it won’t come out for a long time in improv, but trust the process and the more you do it the more easily it will come.
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Yeah these are all really good. I sometimes have more success too with little bits and pieces, maybe too small to be called licks. The first couple beats of Billies Bounce, for example could be applied to a bunch of chord types relatively easily. Play the same series of approach notes etc over all the chords in a tune. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Or like … the last two beats of m1 of anthropology (Eb C# D F) … something that small.
I don’t have a better name, so I always just call them “isms” … not even licks, but little turns of phrase and idiosyncratic things.
Au Privave is a tough tune but full of little vocabulary like that.
Take those things and try to transpose them onto every chord. Copy rhythms and articulation as best you can too. And like Christian said, it’s not really about improvising at that point.
The nice thing about those tiny pieces is that you might be able to use them for improvising quickly, but if you try, make it really really slow. It’ll sound super contrived, but that’s alright too. It won’t come out naturally for a while probably.
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Yes it is very helpful...
The next step would be to keep developing the exercise.
It's just a mechanical process. You have 8 attacks or locations within a defined space that your organizing.
Your creating melodic patterns with relationships to harmony.
Chromatic enclosure can be just as important as the chord tones... eventually they can become just part of how to get out of the Vanilla sound. They can also have harmonic organization and also use as part of creating Relationships and developing those relationships.
Notate out the possibilities... then start organizing how to use those possibilities on a chord pattern.
Then do the same with the organization of the off beats... where your using.... the chromatic enclosures.
Your developing melodic lick patterns... and what are the possibilities of developing those licks with the use ... harmonic organized relationships of note choices.
And the best part of the process.... you'll get better with technique. This is usually just part of learning how to play.
So eventually you can do this with any chord pattern and not really need to think that much... which will allow you to get ahead of the music and make conscious choices as to how you want want play and be aware of what other musicians may be going and be part of where all this is usually going.... performing jazz live.
Kind of like how you would organized the simple playing of a scale or arp. using rhythmic patterns and their organization, with different styles etc...
I did this as a kid and still do occasionally when I forget or run into newer material. It's not what you end up playing but helps you be able to play. Try and get tempos up as soon as you can. You don't want to just teach yourself how to play slow.... both mentally as well as physically.
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I think it's a great exercise. Do it over a standard for a week then move on. But the focus should be getting lines by ear from recordings, just go one bar at a time.
Christian recommended Now's The Time, here's a real cool version. Slower than Parker too, if you need it.
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Maybe more than a week? Maybe try different tunes after a week so you can get some more mileage out of the one exercise. Especially if it feels useful and like you’re gleaning some insight or vocabulary or both. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
But here’s a fun question too.
Youre putting “enclosures” around the chord tones. But which enclosures? There are so many!
So that begs the question … where do you find more enclosure ideas?
Thats a great place for Allen’s suggestion here: finding nice lines by ear. It’s pretty easy to hear an enclosure in a line, even if it might take slowing the line or several listens to get what the enclosure actually is. So grab a line that sounds like it’s using that device.
Or Christian’s: take that line and move it around everywhere.
Or mine: take just the enclosure and tinker with it.
or yours: take your cool exercise and try it, but with a new enclosure!
I love enclosures. I have a page in my Scary Red Practice Binder that has what amounts to probably a couple hundred, all things consider. I’ve practiced maybe 20 and use half that many. But still.
NOTE: I quoted Allen’s post because it was helpful, but the “you” in question here, is of course the OP.
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Scofield has an old vid..teaching a class how to use various scales and how they sound over a vamped chord..
one such scale was the Symmetrical Diminished..using the HW formula..played over a C7#9 chord..
I found a transcription of this online..and it became my daily warm up..I broke it into 7 exercises
and in doing so I discovered some of the mysteries of the diminished scale..and some of the Sco sound
taking any four notes and creating a melodic pattern I learned to use it over most of the many chords embedded in the scale..
for me it was instant "fusion flavor"..but as noted above a four note Eb C# D F bop flavor can be a starting point to many other styles
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I don't think you idea is a bad one, but I sometimes think, how did Wes learn how to do this (aside from learning Charlie Christian solos)? Or Kenny Burrell? Joe Pass?
I wish that I worked for a guitar magazine or online guitar magazine. What I would ask everyone I interview is how that learned? That's the kind of question I'd love to do a deep dive on.
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Yea it's just one of the many things...in a practice schedule that should be organized and adjusted as you get better.
You or someone qualified needs to put your schedule or practice routine together with goals and again adjust time spent on each part as needed. Of course your the one who should decide on what your goals are and what type of person you are etc... to also help organize your schedule.
Technical skills and eventually performance skills.
If your going to play bop or most jazz style... it's just not going to happen with out getting your chops together.
So as most players usually do... they get their level of play up on a few things and then start adding more technical details....(bebop licks etc...)
Become really good at least a few things before you try and become good at everything.
The theoretical aspect are cool and great to talk about, but if you can't transfer them to your playing.... it's almost mute. I've been saying this for ever... Get your technical skills together first... and apply the theory to your playing.
I went to and was a Berklee grad back in the mid 70's..... But I didn't go there to learn how to play... I already could and was working guitarist. But I picked up tons of musical understands ... because I had chops. I could transfer the theory and terminology to my playing... adjust easily as needed.
Talking about theory or different approaches to understanding theoretical concepts... doesn't really come into play until you can play or have arranged, composed etc...using those concepts. Maybe for some... not me.
Post notated examples of what you're practicing and I'll post example of how to musically expand them... I don't really practice playing... but gig a lot, have chops and sight read etc.. It's not a competitive thing, it's just about getting better without wasting time.
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Enclosures are part of bebop vocab so that is a useful exercise. Although you will need a grasp of more vocab than that exercise offers you.
An effective paradigm for melody exercises that I came up with is: scales, arps, intervals, chromatics. If you practice these over the changes individually, and then combine them creatively either in exercises or just as improv, it results in accurate sounding bop lines.
Use this in tandem with the real world stuff of building your intuition through listening and building your vocab through transcribing and bop lines will make sense to you.
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Speaking to just the issue of starting lines someplace other than 1 and 3 ...
First step is to get a good line starting on 1. Something you can sing is a good idea. You can even use a song like All of Me, which starts right on 1, no pickup notes.
Now add an eighth note pickup in front of it. That's and-of-4. To feel where and-of-4 is, you can count 1&2&3&4&, but it may be better, instead, to make up a drum lick that works to get you there (by scat singing it to yourself) and memorize the drum lick. So, you're scatting dabadodahdadah etc. whatever works to get you to and-of-4.
Then, when you've got that, add in a note at the beginning of your lick, meaning, this time, right on 4.
Then repeat the process with and-of-3, all the way back to and-of-1.
Every one of those eighth notes needs to be an old friend, easily recognizable. In fact, salsa musicians actually have names for and-of-2 and 4, bombo and punche.
The key to this, I think, is getting to feel these note placements. I think it may be more effective to scat drum parts than to count.
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Can you say more about this? I assume we’re talking raw materials here—scales, arpeggios, interval skips, chromatics. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
But can you say more about how you like to incorporate them? What does practice look like?
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Yes, talking about how to go from raw material to accurate sounding lines. The idea is that those are the only possible ways that melody can shape. So once you get those under your fingers, and use them in tandem with your intuition from listening and transcribing, you can free flow bop melody intuitively.
I'll practice them individually in exercises. Then I'll practice them together both in exercises, or in improv.
The problem people run into with theory is that if they only use scales, it doesn't tell you how to accurately shape. So people think theory isn't helpful and they have to rely only on ear and music intuition. But that isn't true. You just have to structure your theory material right.
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What kind of exercises do you do for intervals and chromatics? I would think intervals are covered in arpeggios and, to me, chromatics is just filling in the blanks. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
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There isn't a whole lot you can do for chromatics, just the chromatic scale or different kinds of enclosures / approaches I'm thinking.
Intervals adds a lot compared to only the intervals in arpeggios, you can sequence them and make patterns / licks out of them. You're really limiting yourself if you don't utilize them, they're really good for ending bop phrases.
12:30 Just sequence them to get em down:
3:50 make ideas out of them:
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