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Miles is OK (stick with the Workin'/Steamin'/Relaxin' albums. Don't get into the stuff he did with Herbie, Wayne, et. al.) I'd say listen to Parker, but don't try to play it just yet. The main thing about Parker is rhythm. You really want to understand his rhythmic approach.
Originally Posted by Roscoe T. Claude
I'd also look to some of the earlier guys like Coleman Hawkins, Ellington, Freddie Green, Charlie Christian, etc. The swing-era guys will give you the basic roadmap without all the advanced harmonic stuff (I know, I know, the advanced harmonic stuff is where the fun is, but you've got to be able to write like Stephen King before you can write like James Joyce.)
But on the whole, I'd say don't worry so much about who... think more about what.
Autumn Leaves
Out of Nowhere
On Green Dolphin Street
Alone Together
There's a few tunes. Work on the chords. Just get the mechanics of playing over these kinds of progressions down (chord tones only to start with). Once you can do that, then you can start looking at other players' solos. Transcribing won't mean anything to you unless you've got the basic roadmap first.
The basic point here is crawl before you try to walk. Walk before you try to run. Trane was very advanced, but he could play the basic stuff as well as anybody.
Also: Even if you don't want to post your recordings, it's worthwhile to do it. You get a much better sense of your playing if you listen to it while you're not playing.
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04-18-2016 02:58 PM
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A Love Supreme is ridiculous for you, myself, and most people. If you feel compelled to learn some Coltrane lines, I suggest the Autumn Leaves on Cannonball Adderley's Something Else, and the standards on Lush Life. You will probably need slow down software, but the harmonic approach he used in that time frame is more standard, mainstream jazz. One of the revelations many have had when slowing down someone like Coltrane's lines is how simple the elements of chord tones, approach tones, enclosures, chromatic connections, etc. are that the master is using. Like Christian said somewhere recently, and I paraphrase, "I was surprised at how little information was in each measure when I started transcribing...".
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Our own Grahambop on Autumn Leaves, plenty to chew on and aspire to IMO:
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Originally Posted by boatheelmusic
Nice. Where's the backing track from?
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I think that he uses Aebersold and BIAB. He's a tasty player alright. Originally Posted by Boston Joe
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Boston Joe, you bring up King and Joyce who are worlds apart but if you have the skill you can write like either--I'm terrific with dialog and so so with story but I can write a page like, in italics, William Faulkner, though I will never win the Nobel Prize because I don't have a story burning in my guts the way Faulkner did. He lived a haunted life and is quoted as saying the past is never dead (gone?) it's not even past. I feel echoes of Quentin Compson in my self when I read The Sound and The Fury, but I've at least largely exhausted my literary aspirations whether they be a novel or poetry, and though I may publish one more book of poems (my third) it's a part of my life I've largely left behind and the best of it feels distant like that birthday you had in autumn or that Christmas when you were how old? And life just stood still so you could feel how precious a day could be before it passed and the once densely woven coat is lying in threads at your feet so you can feel even one cold, cold winter before you die...so that's what it means to be all grown up. Ah, I may still write a poem or two yet, but I am dedicating the majority of my time to learning jazz as that is what fascinates my mind and what I feel in my bones--maybe I'm most attracted to what I'm not so naturally good at. I've gone on too long, what's new? Boston Joe I wrote down the tunes you recommended and I will focus my attention on them one by one...if it's okay I'd love to listen to Coltrane and Parker because I feel their sound like warmth on a cold day, but I will confine my working and doings to the list you gave me. So as The King of Entertainment would say, uh, thank ya, thank ya very much!!
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I understand the progression for Autumn Leaves on paper I guess you'd say--I've been studying cycle of fifths (or fourths) and I use fret board imagery and a mnemonic technique to figure the cycle out in my head: I'll keep working with it till I get the changes fluid in my mind. I am suddenly self conscious-I am oh so aware that I am a self absorbed narcissist but dammit I still want to play jazz like nobody's business-I'm finding voicings I like and I should have the changes to A.L. down soon. I entertained thoughts of getting really creative with a solo but have now decided to just play licks off the chords and match the rhythm: sound kosher? or jazzy rather? BTW Big Question for Boston Joe: should I continue through the Jazz-Blues ebook I've got? Its got scales and arps and harps and angels and blues progressions and all that jazz...I'm thinking your recs need to be priority because they get me fiddlin' real jazz real quick, but what do say about the ebook? I know you're only one person and people make mistakes but I'm going with my gut and I think you're the right person to ask..Thanks!
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Sorry to use up all the space if in fact the space can feasibly be used up....
Go Grahambop! I'm a newbie but I recognize cat class and cat style when
I hear it and I know I ain't got it yet---I wouldn't call myself a bad player--
I can flat bend and shake the damn guitar strings work up a frothy rhythm
and skin that smoke wagon! But then you turn on a Wes Montgomery album
and nobody's listening to me anymore, no...they throw my ass out and say
"don't come back you hear!" I'm looking forward to the day I can comp. and
play beside a recording of Wes, me with a pick and him with his thumb and
maybe it would m-o-v-e people--I am a dreamer--
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Thanks very much guys! Yes that one was an Aebersold. I also use BIAB and sometimes the Session Band app on my iPad. Originally Posted by Liarspoker
I have to say it would never occur to me to tackle Love Supreme on the guitar, I wouldn't have a clue how to even start! And I'm very familiar with it, I used to listen to it for hours when I first got into jazz. Maybe John McLaughlin could do it?
Once I even transcribed a bit of Trane's solo on the fast track, Pursuance. But when I played it (slowly) on the guitar, it just didn't work or sound right, even though I knew I had the correct notes. I realised then that Love Supreme was beyond my powers!
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Thanks Roscoe. You've got to be a dreamer to play jazz I think! If you are obsessed enough with Wes, Miles, Trane and all those guys, like I was (still am!), then you just keep on doing it because you can't stop. Originally Posted by Roscoe T. Claude
You know I would say it took me 20 years to get to the point of playing Autumn Leaves like that. My excuse is that along the way I have had a busy full-time job and raised a family, often there wasn't much time for playing guitar. But I still kept doing it.
By the way, comping along to records is a brilliant exercise and very enjoyable. I should do it more often myself!
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Guys, we may be a distraction to Roscoe's wish and need to woodshed for an extended period. The keyboard is easier than the fretboard. I, for one will stop encouraging his writings, and look forward to a nice jazz clip in the medium term.
Bill
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My friend Dougie is from Illinois. He stands 5'3" and is a ferocious pint sized dragon slayer--how does he lay to waste to these fire breathing serpent beasts? Dougie breaks them down a piece at a time and I think we should proceed in like manner. I play the changes to Autumn Leaves once...shh...hear the mistakes: play them again add this...shh...not quite right: I take away and add cycle through to the start...shh...not clean, correct voicing: again and we tread over the Autumn Leaves so softly the last time, yet so precise...shh...and miles to go before I sleep---
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The clip thing caught me off guard which is why reacted as I did: I'm not opposed to the thought of playing a tune for the Jazz Guitar folk, it's just I'm hideously unprepared so I've been in the woodshed trying to figure something between Autumn Leaves, Misty, and I'm warning you I don't plan on sending a clip in anytime soon but if I did right now it would sound something like Kurt Cobain came back from the dead and sat in with The White Stripes and they were all wasted...!
Okay I got it out of my system. Misty is slow but I still don't find the chord changes easy and I know why---two reasons: 1. I am unfamiliar with the chord progression 2. I didn't f-e-e-l the rhythm.
Autumn Leaves is manageable and I say that because I have not yet found exactly what voicing options to use and how exactly to play each chord so as to give the tune a certain vibe. The Autumn Leaves I'm practicing is different from other recorded versions on YouTube and quite different from what grahambop played, which was very nice and enjoyable to listen to...thanks for the tune! Piece by piece...
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ask and ye shall receive Originally Posted by grahambop
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I had a guitar teacher who saw John McLauglin live playing solo I think and he remembered everyone being in awe and unable to believe how good he was. Wish I could have been there!
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Interesting! I was aware of that record but never heard it before. Didn't realise it was based on Love Supreme. Originally Posted by pkirk
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A Big Thank You To pkirk and grahambop, the McLaughlin/Santana album is pure gold: I got it way back in the day as McLaughlin was my favorite guitarist/musician--now I'm not so sure--John M. would still be my greatest guitar love but John Coltrane would be my fave musician: you've probably already thought about the fact that both John M. and J.C. combine chops and soul like no one else and brew a musical medley all their own. Boston Joe forgive me...I agreed to 'No Coltrane' and I meant it but I was blinded by John M. and Carlos S., (the latter being a very fine player as well) so somehow, even though I knew A Love Supreme was Coltrane I took the bait and tried to learn the song by ear--I was unsuccessful, I mean not even close--I have Transcribed rock and metal guitar with no qualms...I guess I'm missing something or I'm getting lucky on the heavy stuff, I can't sing maybe I'm tone deaf, or just have a "bad ear"...no matter which is true, either or, it's not going stop me from being a good jazz musician in two years, ten years, twenty years---There has been a great hole inside of me for so long now and nothing seems to fill it; I've tried books, writing, Buddha and Jesus but now I have not a reason to live but a reason to"be" at peace with myself knowing I'm doing the right thing: I don't mean to sound over the top but I just told the truth, so hang me: Everybody play on after you're imbued with A Love Supreme...I've gotta hear it again but then it's back to Autumn Leaves and the Jazz-Blues ebook: Boston Joe I'm not trying to go my own way or not heed advice: to the contrary I'm working on the tunes you prescribed and while there are scales in the book it also teaches chords and chord tones. Thank all of you who have been genuine for your help...
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Yeah the two big challenges for a rock guitarist moving into jazz (and I think many of us started with rock/blues? I did.)
1) learning how harmony and chord changes work.
2) learning how jazz timing works
There's a few other big challenges but I think those are the two key ones that gave me a lot of trouble.
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Hey Christian, I hate to always bring up the Aussie bastard but Frank Gambale illustrated the jazz timing you mention and he actually did it very well, showing how to "play against the beat" by clapping out the rhythm and saying "1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4" while showing how starting on a different beat can make all the difference in your tune. That was new to me, and I thought I would have the jazz harmony thing knocked in the head because I practiced the progressions in the purple Guitar Grimoire, but I soon found out they were generic and had only a litle in common with real jazz tunes. The author of the G.G. series is no cat, he's a rocker who uses jazz chords for exercise...fine, good for him, but I want to be a jazz cat and be able to play the authentic progressions, so I'm searching out real jazz books and tunes and I plan on getting the most up to date version of The Real Book: Do you agree that I should??
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You know, I hate the Real Book. So may bad changes in it, over-complicated chords. I started with it, but my jazz education is all messed up, like most people these days. Originally Posted by Roscoe T. Claude
If you were my student we would follow the history. I would start you on Swing, 1930's music and go form there. You'd have to learn to play straight 4's through tunes with relatively simple changes, play solos based on arpeggios, blues licks and the melody of the song, and transcribe a bit of Charlie Christian.
After a bit of these, we'd move through to bop and later music. Fusion would come up later. It wouldn't be to master all styles, just get an understanding of how things developed. Probably not for everyone....
Anyway, jazz time is a huge subject. What Gambale is talking about is one small aspect of it. You can get locked in with the fusion thing with the metronome etc and get accurate but it doesn't mean you can swing or understand jazz rhythm.
Anyway, if you want to learn to swing that's a whole different area. Most fusion is straight 16ths/8ths. Jazz is all about the fusion of triple (3/4, 6/8) and duple (4/4, 2/2) time sometimes even 5/4 and 7/4 overlapping and pulling against each other over the basic 4/4 rhythm section, and the way you construct lines is about how they interact with the beat.
It's an art form. It's actually the art form of jazz IMO. All the harmony stuff should be in service of the rhythm. That's what a lot of students get wrong both with their listening, playing and conceptualising. Jazz is a rhythmic art form.
One problem is guitar players are the 'village idiots' of this music (or at least I am haha). You are always coming up against our weaknesses - most guitarists don't have a strong background in functional harmony, tend to have poor time and rhythm and have undeveloped ears (particularly for melodies) :-). If a guitarist is strong in one or more of these areas it's often because they play another instrument.
Also, reading is very useful, and most guitar players can't do that either.
Those are the three big things that I and I daresay everyone here works on constantly. Rhythm, Harmony and Ears...Last edited by christianm77; 04-19-2016 at 09:06 AM.
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Yes, but point being is that before Joyce could write Ulysses, he had to be able to write Dubliners. You want to go straight from "goo goo ga ga" to Ulysses. (Or maybe a better analogy would be that you're coming in here speaking a foreign language, and trying to go from English 101 to writing Ulysses). Originally Posted by Roscoe T. Claude
(Not to mention that it took him seven years to write Ulysses. And SEVENTEEN to write Finnegans Wake.)
BTW, for a writer, your stream-of-consciousness posts with no paragraph breaks are kinda hard to read.
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I won't say that I'm a bad writer and don't know what I'm doing because I'm not, and I do, the s.o.c. is a signature of my prose style and I learned it from Faulkner, not Joyce. Since the post I'm responding to is hardly a thinly veiled complaint or a deliciously dressed Gorgon I will switch gears and mid speed and deliver tough terse prose from now on, clear, clean lucid lines and I will do it just because I'm able to. I've written for the school and county newspapers, penned short stories, novels, poetry, published poetry and am moving away from the literary so I can be totally immersed in the musical, in this thing called jazz: but yes, I can write well and I know it. i am duly grateful for your help on the forum so let's get off the literary kick and back on jazz shall we? Thank you.
p.S. for a writer, people say Faulkner is hard to read,
and he won the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize...
Few can make heads or tails of Finnegan's KeWa
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Yeah, well, there's a difference between writing a novel and writing a forum post. (I happen to be a writer by profession. I didn't mean to digress into writing stuff. Just making an analogy.) Originally Posted by Roscoe T. Claude
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Christian, so I'm not just "expressing" I want a fabulous reply like you usually give---
from what you say The Real Book does not contain the golden ticket to Willy Wonka's
Chocolate factory or the answers I want concerning jazz harmony, rhythm and improvisation--
Thus, I will seek education elsewhere, but I've got books on books on books of jazz and
I'm really wondering if the next I buy is going to be the one: or if I need to stick with an
ebook or too, my Jazz Theory, Charlie Parker and Joe Pass books? No, I don't read music
and I know that's a negative, but it's kind of like picking with my fingers, it just doesn't feel
right and I don't want to do it. If I'm limiting myself then I'm limited, if you're right and I'm
wrong then fine, you win, but I am immersing myself in jazz and if I don't do what works for
me I'm gonna drown--Sorry Christian, didn't mean to come off hard, you've been very kind
and I don't want to appear to be an ass. RHETAT. Pronounced like it is spelled, that's how
I'm going to remember what to work on:Rhythm, Harmony, Ears, Time After Time.
What do you think? Simple, effective. I've been introduced to Trey Grady and I'm getting
"the best" picking video emailed to me so that side of my playing should be put together soon...
I like to start my practice with picking and legato practice. I don't do someone else's routine
but rather I have drawn from the masters to create my own to suit my needs. If I don't get
carried away picking/legato routine is a long warm up then it's on to chords, esp. in progressions,
i'm learning to use arpeggios melodically for improv. at this point: I like to say something with
an arpeggio or scale: I'm sick of sweeps, I want to take a conventional form and slide, bend, vibrato,
'mess' with those notes until music comes out. I mostly played a lot of sweeps cause I was "supposed"
to...I couldn't give a rat about "supposed to" right now, all I care about is making Jazz music that
people can't ignore, like Wes Montgomery, George Benson, John McLauglin...aiming too high? It's
not as bad as selling yourself short, I know that from life experience. I've paid enough dues to do
me till I'm 90, but thanks so much for your help and I will mind your advice.
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If you're a writer by profession then certainly you understand that when someone has a gift for writing, as I do, they may want to write a post stylistically and I have not gotten even one other complaint about my writing on this forum. I write song lyrics as well, but I generally keep my lyrical style out of posts and I see no reason why I can't use a style resembling my creative prose as a post: perhaps others enjoy it and furthermore I disagree that it is hard to read, I think you are either trying to throw your weight around or start a squabble but whatever your intention, you will Not ruin my experience on this forum, not if I can help it. I had nothing against you, I was learning a lot from our discussions but for some reason you thought it would be a good idea to make me look small. small, and you so large on your horse anal academia surrounded by greedy, power hungry hounds--not another word about writing, just jazz, and I foresee no problems in our immediate future. Roscoe
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