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Or feel, or whatever it should be called. My problem is, that at sufficiently high tempos, I lose the ability to improvise. Case in point - band/recurring jam has decided to take up Cherokee. I don't know the exact tempo, but the drummer like it fast. Not terribly difficult changes, nothing to trip me up if we were to play t at say 150-200. But we play it fast enough that I lose the ability to improvise. I can get by running licks I've prepared in advance, Baker and Wise will stand me in good stead, and in terms of motor skills I suppose I can pull it off. But any kind of freedom or creativity is out the window. Which feels unsatisfactory
How do I work on that?
I'm an amateur, an intermediary at the best of times and an advanced beginner most of the time. And a day jobber all the time
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02-07-2025 06:19 AM
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Maybe this will be of use?
It's 8 pro guitars playing over Rhythm Changes at 300bpm. Each gives an insight into their approach after a short clip. The common theme seems to be a huge reliance on muscle memory at that sort of tempo.
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I can't play this fast, but advice I've had repeatedly from Christian for playing faster tempos is to try thinking in half speed. You can even play cool lines with quarter notes and some syncopation and sound good. Maybe mix that up with your precomposed licks for a mixture of speed and creativity. Anyway, enough speculation from me. Let's hear what some grown ups have to say about the matter.
Last edited by CliffR; 02-07-2025 at 09:55 AM.
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None of these first generation bop tunes are harmonically that hard, RC, blues, Cherokee, Indiana/Donna Lee and so on harmonically can either be boiled down to simpler stuff, or in the case of Cherokee move quite slowly to being with. But, that's not the challenge of bop - it's about playing hip bop lines. North of 240 most people find this hard, funny enough.
Not that we all have to play bop.
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It's alright no-one improvises north of about 240. Jazz's dirty secret is that all the pros who are spinning out these amazing eighth note lines and whatnot rely on repertoire for these fast tunes, pre-prepared modules that you chunk together.
Originally Posted by Average Joe
You can improvise if you cut the time - feel 300bpm at 150bpm. But then you will be improvising in longer note durations by and large. It's a different approach.
But in general, I'm of the school that learning players should focus on sounding good first, and work on modules and licks. True idiomatic improvisation comes when you have mastered the basics of music, which takes immersion.
I say this because the biggest issue I hear from learners is that they 'don't sound like jazz', to which I would say, find some stuff that sounds good to you, steal it, apply everywhere you can on tunes and rinse and repeat until you can play. Then one can start to talk about the next step and working towards more improvised approaches.... But fast tunes always have this element of repertoire.
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As a hobby player, I've always played Cherokee as a 32bar song not 64bar as written.
Thinking 32bars makes it a lot easier.
Below is my notation for an easier basic 32 bar approach to Cherokee.
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I do remember hearing Jakob Bro playing a fast Cherokee with Lee Konitz at some silly tempo and his solo was pretty much entirely quarter notes. That said, Bro is not really a bebop cat, I think it would be fair to say. (Very cool player though, not a slight.)
This is a nice approach. On this solo as well as eighths Lage Lund plays a lot quarter triplets - so a superimposed 6/8 against the fast 4/4. This comes naturally if you feel the tempo in half time anyway - it's just triplets - and at this tempo I think you really have to feel it in half time lol. It's another way of doing it. Stop it being relentless and gives a different vibe from just quarter notes.
Compare Peter's approach to Pasquale's, listen to the way he uses rhythm. Pasquale is all about the 8th notes while Peter is more free with his phrasing. Playing eighth note syncopations at fast tempos requires a well honed sense of rhythm, but you can think of it as a sort of half time funk thing. (16th syncopations at 150, say). At a guess I would say Pete is improvising more than Pasquale on a note by note basis, while Pasquale is playing more in linked modules, but a lot of Pete's faster stuff is still gestural - arpeggios, scales, the odd little lick - that kind of thing.
(This is on Cherokee)
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Another one is that you have to play fast.
Find that top tempo for yourself — you mentioned 200 — and then spend sometime every day playing significantly faster. For you maybe that’s 220 or 240 or something. You’re looking for a tempo where it’s not awkward and your time is bad, but a tempo where you fall apart. That’s the spot you want to get into.
If that tempo gets comfortable, crank it up a little faster.
Playing fast is qualitatively different than playing slow. You won’t play your Satin Doll vocabulary on Cherokee. A lot of the time we get caught up trying to play Our Stuff at the fast tempo, when what we really need is different stuff. You have to play fast enough to have a bag of tricks at the up tempo that you can actually play.
Getting the ceiling higher on Your Stuff and playing faster tempos with stuff you can play now are kind of two different projects
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I think I mostly agree with this. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
The way I tend to look at it is that not everything I can play at slower tempos I can play at fast tempos. Because of the nature of my technique certain things will feel natural and executable at that tempo while other things won't work physically. But it's still stuff drawn from my 'bag'.
The way I've come to view it for myself, is that I don't have that much eighth note stuff to play at fast tempos, and seeing as I don't have eight hours a day to work on my super awesome uptempo vocabulary and endless patterns and so on, I may as well keep my powder dry so my solos will be effective. That means playing less for the majority of the solo. The best way to make "less" sound interesting seems to me to be varied rhythms in half time. Then when I play fast stuff it works as connecting tissue between other ideas.
I'm not as good at this as I'd like.
I can't believe I didn't mention the master of this - Adam Rogers. And he has of course a squillion chops. But he's also a master of playing just a few notes interestingly, and establishing place from which a solo can build.
BTW, this is the sort of situation where I would set the metronome on the 1 and 3. At least at first.
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Are you off book? There are lots of different approaches and it varies with the type of player you are and what you practice. I can only offer my own approach.
Get off book.
For my own approach, I start slow, Andante or even in the Largo range, and I play the piece by ear, ideally without a backing track or if you want to make your own backing track, whole note/half note bass note. I then set about playing that piece for an hour. If I'm playing solo, which I prefer, I keep a metronome going and set it for 2 and 4.
Playing for an hour at THINKING speed, coordinates the many levels of skill needed, but slow enough to create an awareness in your mind, ear and fingers.
First 15 minutes are often filled with stumbles, losing my beat, bad habits, but that gradually evolves into the hearing phase.
Often from 15-30 minutes, I become more sure footed, the changes are less of a surprise and more imaginative and I can turn myself away from clichés and habits. As the ear can guide me, there's a greater ability to think ahead, be aware of options.
45-an hour mark is the zone of true challenge. I can start to play with confidence but I can also expand my awareness of form, of line craft, of contrast, of different harmonic options, of referencing the head and making lines derived from that material, of using space, or using the inventory of devices that are a player's toolbox.
I do this everyday if possible. I'll mark my speed and I'll increase it each day.
WARM UP BEFORE YOU DO THIS.
I first began this routine working with Howard Roberts' Super Chops book. He rests every 10 minutes to take inventory and relax. As I said, many approaches out there.
Just remember that it looks like playing is a matter of opening up the tune and playing, but in truth, there are skillsets that must be mastered and then integrated:
Kinesthetics: Finger movement and coordination. Scales and patterns (Oliver Nelson's book is really good)
Ear awareness: You need to work relentlessly so you can hear, visualize and navigate diatonic harmony (know your I chord from your VI- by second nature). Intervallic Ear Training (Know the distances between notes and know how to find them on the guitar).
Fingerboard awareness, or note mapping on the guitar neck. What are the positions you can play a tonal area in, and how can you move from one to another?
Time awareness: How does note value and phrasing change when you increase your tempo, how does this effect the note choice?
Swing or feeling awareness? Do you abandon your sense of forward movement when you get spooked? Big beginners' mistake, hyper focusing when you should be opening up your sense of beat. Learn to practice and play with a flexible sense of beat. Phrases can be played so your sense of "1" might be as broad as several bars. This can be really helpful in retaining your phrase identity.
All these skillsets come into play. They must be confronted and mastered in the practice room.
Start slow. Play thoughtfully. Play with personal feeling. Commit. Don't underestimate the scope of the endeavour. Be patient.
No shortcuts if you want to really play with personal statement and control.
THat's what I do, how I see it. But hey, I'm just one person. Do what works for you.
Good luck.
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“What really exists is not things made but things in the making. Once made, they are dead, and an infinite number of alternative conceptual decompositions can be used in defining them. But put yourself in the making by a stroke of intuitive sympathy with the thing and, the whole range of possible decompositions coming at once into your possession, you are no longer troubled with the question which of them is the more absolutely true. Reality falls in passing into conceptual analysis; it mounts in living its own undivided life—it buds and bourgeons, changes and creates.”
- William James
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Reorient and think of it as "muscle melody" rather than muscle memory.
Then get away from the idea of playing fast; think of it as "hearing fast".
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Lotsa great advice in here from people more experienced than I.
As a fellow amateur, whose main musical activity is jam sessions, whenever a breakneck tune gets called I rely on motor memory. Or just sit out and enjoy others.
And I accept my physical limits and work with them rather than fight against them. My problem is an over-active imagination so I found slowing that down when the fingers can’t keep up helps.
I suppose the goal matters, too, and mine is to have fun among others playing the music we all love. To me, jazz is social music
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Lots of good ideas upthread.
My thinking goes in this direction...
What am I trying to accomplish?
1. Gain entry by acclimation into the bebop Hall Of Fame?
2. Cut the other players in the band?
3. Please a bop-diehard audience?
4. Play a solo that is appreciated by band members and ordinary audience?
First an anecdote. NY drum master Ari Hoenig played a show where the final tune was Cherokee. He started it around 60bpm and never sped up. Dead slow the entire time. Smiles all around and I'm still telling the story.
Let's assume that you don't have the chops or whatever for #1-3. So, you're going with #4. Here are some ideas for how to approach it.
1. You could work out an entire bop solo in advance, maybe a couple choruses worth, and play that. As others have pointed out, this is akin to the usual approach (assembling a collection of prepared licks), not cheating.
2. You could play the melody with as much embellishment as you can muster.
3. You can signal the band to quiet down to a whisper while you play sparse stuff with lots of silence. Since this may well be novel in comparison to the rest of the tune, as played by your band, it can work as a kind of palette cleanser.
4. Scat sing (to yourself) something manageable and play that. When I do that, I get long tones interspersed with short bursts that I can play. Nobody will complain that you didn't play a steady stream of 8ths or 16ths or some other division.
5. Process your sound. Maybe a legato solo with an overdriven sound will work for a chorus.
6. Think of some other alternative. There is no jazz police.
7. Sure, there might be somebody who doesn't think you played enough notes. Or there could be another guitar player who sounds like Bird, but better, and you get smoked. Fine, he earned it.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 02-07-2025 at 11:11 PM.
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playing fast..it can be very impressive..
I played in a guitar duo for several years..nylon string acoustics..and did mostly original compositions.
But what we played was "the book".. we honed in on about 25 standards..and varied the tempos..
this did two things for me..learned to play slow on fast tempos and not get lost and play
fast on slow tempos.
and of course..Giants Steps was the bitch of the bunch. I broke it down into five note phrases..same for the chords.
It almost merged into a three feel swing..the bottom line is to be comfortable at all tempos.
I have been playing fusion style stuff for years now..that style seems just to have a varied tempos
but your not required to follow it..check Holdsworth and others..its kind of an audio illusion
the bass line and drums are in their own world and now and then they come back to punch the end of your line and take off again.
Its like.."meet me in 32 bars on D13" Then some unison passages and then off to the races.
I practice basic pent scale patterns at very slow speeds-30bpm - (Ben Monder trick) its the discipline and it works..not easy.
and work up to shred speeds and back down.
and of course this is how you play Cherokee..yeah right,,
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Using longer tones, quarter notes or longer, when soloing works for me. Musicians who play memorized patterns on fast tunes can be and often are boring.
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Idgaf about up tempos. They're not enjoyable for me to play or even listen to. Why do I have to spaz the f out to play music? No.
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Thanks for all the advice.
I've tried approaching it as a 32 bar form in half time. I might need/should work on it some more, cause I thought quarter notes got a bit bland. But that might just be me being bland.
Thinking about it as hearing fast is an interesting concept. As is the idea of melody memy. I'll give those some thoughts.
The idea that even the greats rely on muscle memory rather than truly improvising. In a way it's a comforting thought even if their muscle memory is rather more advanced than mine.
Personally I have comparatively little interest in speed for speed's sake, but if my partners want to go there I'd like to be able to hang.
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I ask your permission to print your sentence on a big sheet of paper and put it on the wall of my studio...... Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Ettore
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You don't have time to think.
Sing, and translate that to your hands in real time.
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That simple, yeah? Originally Posted by vintagelove
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Wow, sure I guess Originally Posted by equenda
I ask your permission to print your sentence on a big sheet of paper and put it on the wall of my studio......
Ettore
Or Adam Roger’s dictum related to me by the great Dave Cliff ‘if you play something fast, you will have played it before’
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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The only way to play fast is to practice fast. And you have to really know it, which means hours and hours of playing.
That said, some people have a talent for it, others don't. Some people really love going hell for leather, others prefer to feel what they do. So ultimately all the right ingredients have to come together or it probably won't happen successfully.
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There can't be much "thinking" once you are above about 180bpm's. It should be reflexive.
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If "thinking" means silently verbalizing individual note names, chord tones (and extensions/alterations), or interval names/qualities, the threshold will be as fast as you can mentally talk to yourself; it is well known that a lot of players hit this wall about 180 to 240 bpm (6 to 8 eighths per second).
Thinking (silently verbally) may extend to chunking where parts and pieces are organized and labeled as scales, modes, patterns, shapes, riffs, licks, motifs. This is a kind of data compression that allows a slower level of organization and manipulation to manage a higher level of note streams. Chunking is not just conceptual; it manifests in what we call muscle memory, reflexive acquired execution. The transition to these higher speeds may continue to refer verbally to these chunks, or may transition out of verbal labels and simply organize them as known sounds with known applications.
The upper limit is based on how fast one can hear, both outside and inside. If you are choosing what to play based on what you're hearing outside, then you are also hearing inside to make the choice; then hearing outside again to monitor what you played against what you intended, for quality control. If you play faster than you can hear, your selection judgement and your quality control monitor both go unmusical, deaf.Last edited by pauln; 02-08-2025 at 03:58 PM.
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