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The 'Talk Jazz' by Roni Ben-Hur has arrived in the post from the USA.
I bought the inexpensive non-guitarist version.
On Page 12 are the 'Rules for descending Major Scales'.
But, the examples all start on the first beat of the bar.
I'd never start a phrase on the first beat of the bar. Not many Jazz players would, IMHO.
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11-18-2024 09:30 AM
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BH says to additionally practice it starting on each note of the scale. start on beat 1 C, & of 1 on B, beat 2 starting on B flat etc
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Can you say this again, but in American?
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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They will tend to riff on about music is all connected to the cosmos and how theory is all about universal mathematics. Quadrivium stuff. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Thanks, I've been playing the Rule 1 ( Major Bebop scale) starting on different beats of the bar. Originally Posted by joe2758
Below, is a good example of the Major Bebop scale from my current practice routine:
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To be fair, there is a little bit of that in Barry Harris's teaching as well. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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And...............then even worse, throw in some wrongly understood Quantum mechanics. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Of course! Originally Posted by GuyBoden
And...............then even worse, throw in some wrongly understood Quantum mechanics.
David Bohm, F David Peat and Deepack Chopra have a lot to answer for…
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Yes, no one’s immune! Originally Posted by Tal_175
Although I see the diminished scale stuff as more as a mnemonic fable.
Anyway, it’s small potatoes compared to some stuff… some of it lapses into pseudoscience rather than, you know, advice on playing music. And I think Barry’s stuff is first and foremost about playing music.
The gateway to this stuff is when you start saying stuff like ‘that note sounds good because y’ and while that is present in Barry’s teaching it never dominates in the way you see in a lot of CST driven analysis (not that I see that as inherent to CST).
A better way to analyse music is to just say ‘here the musician appears be using this device and it sounds great’. It might seem like a pedantic distinction, but actually I think it’s philosophically quite different.
You aren’t making an appeal to an objective aesthetics which I think is at best a bit of a distraction.
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Joe Diorio's riffs on this are some of the most inspiring thing's I've heard. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Good for you
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For what it’s worth too, that’s sort of what I was talking about with sorting the alterations to the line by how many beats they extend it. And playing them off different beats Originally Posted by GuyBoden
Thanks, I've been playing the Rule 1 ( Major Bebop scale) starting on different beats of the bar.
Below, is a good example of the Major Bebop scale from my current practice routine:
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I mean it’s a long and fascinating intellectual tradition, and musicians still perpetuate a sort of street level version of it even though science etc has moved on.
And many things in music obviously have a mathematical basis.
But given the great diversity of music throughout the world it is impossible to attribute an objective basis for musical style without being prejudiced towards one or another cultural form. For example, the science done in this area supports the conclusion that there are no inherent human predilections towards Western theory would call dissonance or consonance, however strongly we feel this on a molecular level?
How does this relate to musicians? Well we are subjective beings, and not all knowledge is scientific.
True creativity often feels like we are surrendering ourselves up to an external force. Call it what you will. Because of that, these sort of ancient beliefs seem reflected by our everyday experiences. So, possibly they are beneficial myths.
I think the emphasis should be on the path of the musician, which is separate to that of the scholar or academic.
If you feel a connection to the cosmos that’s neither invalid or bad thing (quite the opposite, it may be essential), but it is an insight into the interior world, not the external. The ancients had a lot of insight here.
For instance, to me, the original meaning of genius more accurately reflects the nature of music, rather than the modern.
OTOH, where this stuff enters into the realm of pseudo-science, I usually roll my eyes.
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Yes I think every musician has picked up Aristotle and Plato and been like … WOW I have cosmic importance.
Most people don’t realize how blurry the line is between science and philosophy the further back you go
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Maybe you hang out with better read musicians lol. More of a sports crowd at my end haha (with exceptions) Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Also Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Also musician’s favourites. Which I think may be significant because modern music theory originates around the same place and time.
These ideas are very sticky.
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Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Wes, what do you practice?
I don't practice anything during the day that I don't use at night on the gig.
When you don't play with others or do performances, you get out of touch with this simple truth. That's probably the most important thing about playing with others (or doing solo performances whatever is your thing).
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While Wes’s advice is something I would subscribe to (along with its corollary - for crying out loud practice what you are going to play on the gig) it is possible to be too utilitarian if that’s the right word. To purposefully avoid interesting things that don’t seem immediately relevant for example.
My wife describes me as a mix of bloody mindedness and whimsy.
I’ve learned to trust the whimsical part of my brain, and the bloody mindedness to stick at whatever nonsense the whimsy has got me into. It doesn’t always turn out to be useful, but quite often it does in the long run.
I daresay none of us would be doing this stuff if it wasn’t for a mix of the two.
I don’t think we can think about Wes other than as a VERY high powered fusion of these two traits.
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It's skipping over a LOT though. You know at some point Wes learned fundamentals, chord grips, major scale runs... and the rest. Just when he was 20 years into it he didn't do that anymore. Originally Posted by Tal_175
Also, from interviews, he was also learning Charlie Christian licks.
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Yeah that’s actually really interesting. I get a lot of value out of very deliberately playing stuff that would be kind of silly on a gig. Like repeating the same rhythm for four choruses or pairs of strings or trying to stay inside a fifth or whatever.
Obviously taken more loosely — I want to use that rhythm, I want to move horizontally and play lyrically, I want to have singable vocabulary on the gig — that’s stuff I’ll use, but it’s also easy to get bogged down.
That thing Christian said early about comfort with the notion that nothing will come out on the gig is very liberating. Because it all comes out, but just usually not the way you expect it to, and almost never on the time table you expect it to.
So that whole thing where you only practice things that are practical is great advice … IF you’re really creative about what you consider to be practical
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Alright here’s this. The usual disclaimers … this is something I’ve found useful, still working out where this stuff goes, etc.
One unusual disclaimer is that my allergies have been heinous today.
Some additional stuff … this stuff is the reason why I’ve been trying to sort these lines and devices by the way they modify this basic line rhythmically. It also gets really fun when you bounce off arpeggios from those landing notes. Anyway … achoo …
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Metronome on 1 has been killing me. You make it sound easy.
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Cool. Another variation is to apply the half step rules to smaller intervals than an octave (3rd, 4th, 5th etc) and work on combining these smaller cells with other ideas to build longer lines. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Metronome on beat one is my favorite way to use the metronome. If I need to count, I tap my foot on 1 and 3 or sing the ride symbol rhythm. I use metronome apps as they allow for doing this at slower tempos than 160. I couldn't not find a stand alone metronome that would allow you to mute some of the beats in a given tempo.
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Lol … rushing like nobody’s business, but yes yes I’m very talented you’re too kind Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Yeah. This is fun. It shakes out often where if you pass through the 1-b7 then the rule is the same, but if you don’t, it’s reversed and you have to add a half step somewhere else. Originally Posted by Tal_175
Ive tinkered with it a bit for two-beat lines, but at the end of the day, I have a lot of vocabulary with little fragments and lots of arpeggios and that sort of thing, but it’s the scalar connective stuff that I don’t really have, so I ditched it and went back to the longer runs. Thats just me.
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