Learning and Varying Vocabulary, Licks & Lines

[pamosmusic]

I really don't think so....

James started this thread by asking: "Firstly, what ways do people like to go about collecting vocab, licks and lines? And, how do we memorize them? Secondly, how do we go about varying them?"

I do not collect vocabulary, licks and lines, and I do not try to memorize the lines I hear, just learn to play them as I said. And as to how I may vary a line, my ear is almost always my main guide to that. And if I practice something more arcane like a Slonimsky scale pattern, I transpose it ear rather than by its fingerboard pattern or whatever.

I don’t really collect licks either but I memorize them all the time. Not sure how I could avoid memorizing a line I’m practicing. I practice the crap out of them and then let them go. Like a baby bird ive nursed to health or something. Anyway …

Things I very often tell my classical students:

1. If you don’t have it memorized you probably haven’t practiced it enough.

2. If you’re having trouble memorizing it you’re practicing too much.

[Mick-7]

I don’t really collect licks either but I memorize them all the time. Not sure how I could avoid memorizing a line I’m practicing. I practice the crap out of them and then let them go. Like a baby bird ive nursed to health or something. Anyway …

Things I very often tell my classical students:

1. If you don’t have it memorized you probably haven’t practiced it enough.

2. If you’re having trouble memorizing it you’re practicing too much.

I don't get point #2? Points 1 & 2 seem contradictory, almost a Zen koan.

[charlieparker]

How chops and ear are intertwined is interesting.

It's certainly possible to play lines that are faster than you can really think. Probably requires practiced patterns, licks, scales, arps, whatever.

OTOH, you could choose to always put ear first in which case you might be limiting the faster stuff in favor of more intentionality.

As usual, you can find more than one path up the mountain.

As far as ear training goes in general, I'm in agreement with the notion that having big ears is the single most important thing. It's not just for soloing, it's for everything a combo jazz player does.

If I could do it all over again from the beginning, my major emphasis would be on ear training.

What does that even mean, specifically? Sight singing, transcribing? Other ear training exercises?

Personally, I don't think ear training by itself is that valuable and it doesn't seem like any of the greats consciously focused on that. Most of them learned vocabulary by ear and played by ear but not sure if I would call that ear training.

[Christian Miller]

I take your point about the Grady stuff, although his 'Pickslanting Primer' now features a section on different genres, one of which is about jazz and actually mentions the picking motion I've adopted, finger & thumb. This and Pasquale Grasso's My Music Masterclass video influenced my decision to adopted that picking motion. And actually Grady's advice is not to overthink stuff - quite the opposite in fact, at least initially, or until you've found something that works at a basic fundamental level.

The style of picking is Chuck Wayne picking if you didn't know, which I'm sure you did. It seems to be working well enough for you.

So, I have been preoccupied with technique in the past but not without good reason!

You certainly seemed to be very preoccupied with what you felt were problems with your technique. I can't say it was something that jumped out at me from your playing, but sometimes it's hard to tell unless you are siting in a room with someone.

I find the shred mechanics interesting and I still think they are somewhat relevant to jazz guitar, though we are much more interested in doing relatively unguitaristic things, more based on what horn players play, or pianists, rather than fast diatonic scale sequences.

It's a completely different thing IMO. Because the aims and process of the music itself is different. I don't think Troy gets this because he isn't a jazz player. We want the instrument to disappear, to become transparent. Technique is one tool we develop to help with this. I don't think that's true of rock/metal players - at least not many of them.

I think the 'trust your instincts' advice might be alright for someone who found the technique relatively straight forward to acquire. My advice, speaking as someone who didn't find right-hand technique straight forward, would be to tell someone all the available motions and to experiment with all of them.

I don't think that's a bad piece of advice. But it is intuitive - listen to your body. If something feels tense, awkward or complicated, it probably is. If something feels simple and easy, it is probably good. Make movements as simple as you can. Be observant of issues as they arise and how they feel. It's very kinaesthetic. The visual element is helpful too. How does the playing look? This also where my contempt for my pinky finger arises, though that's another story haha.

That's what I always did - I didn't have a technique teacher - and I think it stood me in good stead. If I have any talent for the guitar I think it's in this area, so I may be guilty of not understanding issues people may have. But as someone who has also relearned technique three times (never to do with speed BTW), I do get it on some level.

But from my experience as a teacher the biggest technical issues are all psychological at root. People get very worried about hitting the wrong string. That's where poor string crossing mechanics develop from. I teach rest stroke as the antidote to that.

The other HUGE thing is that people often perceive music to be faster than it is. This is an issue with audiation and relaxation. If you feel under pressure you will tense up. OTOH if you get in the right place everything seems slower. You have to learn the pocket of a given tempo, which is psychological but manifests itself as a rhythmic pocket. It's the same place that Galper demonstrates in the video - transparent instrument, strong brain signal. This is a problem with practicing always slow as Ragman suggests, BTW...

Speaking of rock guitarists it's worth nothing that Satriani, Van, Guthrie and Yngwie all started learning things by ear. So they are very much ear players. Hearing fast music helps play it.

[pamosmusic]

I don't get point #2? Points 1 & 2 seem contradictory, almost a Zen koan.

trying to practice too much at once ... too long of a phrase

[GuyBoden]

I collect short 'Licks' I like and notate them.

Here are some examples: The Notated Lick Compendium

If I spend a month obsessively playing the same 'Lick' in multiple keys in multiple songs, the 'Lick' appears unconsciously in my improv playing.

It works for me, but you have to put the DEDICATED time in.

[Christian Miller]

I think to maybe elaborate on or reframe what Christian is saying …

There’s general technique and specific technique.

Like how to hold the pick and I would sort of consider playing scales in intervals and that sort of thing to be general technique. It will help you play everything better but it won’t necessarily fully prepare you to play any single thing at all.

Specific technique might be tremolo picking or tapping for metal or the particular way of accenting or slurring for bebop.

I think people get really hung up sometimes on general technique when what they have is a problem of specific technique.

Like I could be totally wrong about Brent but a lot of the time folks struggle to execute a bebop line and then decide to fix it at the scales and picking level. But often the problem is that they haven’t problem solved enough bebop lines.

Yes I like this.

I'm learning to trust this more and more. Playing bebop lines is primarily a problem of accurately being able to hear bebop lines, and a good way of checking this is singing them.

It is hard to sing bebop lines at first - sometimes hard even further down the line. But it's step #1 in being able to play them.

Step #2 is getting them out on the instrument. The is so much less of a big deal than people think. Obviously, it's not always trivial especially if you aren’t used to doing it, but it’s a thing you can practice, time on the instrument. People (inc. me) have the biggest issues with this when we haven't probably completed step #1 but think we have.

True for any music you can think of. Brain signal, as Hal said.

One thing guitarists do is try to play the guitar before they know what they are playing. We are the inveterate noodlers after all. So Brent H is onto something. Put the guitar down. Concentrate on the important bit. Because if you don't have #1 down, you aren't going to be able to do #2, whatever your ability to play.

Tristano of course would get the student to sing the solo they were working on away from the instrument. Sensible chap. It really is the only way to do music.

I think he taught one of them there widdly widdly rock guitar players

[Christian Miller]

If I spend a month obsessively playing the same 'Lick' in multiple keys in multiple songs, the 'Lick' appears unconsciously in my improv playing.

It works for me, but you have to put the DEDICATED time in.

It always works and yet trying to get people to actually do it is … tricky.


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[pamosmusic]

Not sure what you mean by problem solved enough bebop. You mean analysed the lines?

No, I mean that you pick a bebop line and you go "okay how do I play that." You play it for a while and work up the tempo, then hit a wall and go "crap I guess alternate picking there isn't working" so you change the picking. Then you work up the tempo and you hit another wall and go "hmm, that first finger barre isn't happening." So you change the fingering. And so on and so on.

It takes doing that a lot with a lot of lines.

In the "drills that made the biggest change thread" I put that I learned all my bebop heads in five or six positions. It was maybe thirty of them. It took a long time and I practiced them that way, and in all twelve keys, for a long time. That doesn't have to be the thing you do, but I think just being patient and trying to work out decent fingers for loads and loads of phrases, and being prepared for them to not go great all the time, is the solution more often than minute changes to the mechanics of the right or left hand.

And if minute changes are required in the right or left hand, I think generally that stuff can be corralled into a warmup or something and doesn't need to supplant the working on vocabulary.

So much of music is collecting. It's unglamorous, but great sight readers will always tell you that the best way to sight read a piece is to have seen it before; the best way to know what you're hearing is to have heard it and identified it before; the best way to be able to default to decent fingerings for what you want to play is to have played it before.

[GuyBoden]

Can you listen to this slowed Charlie Parker lick and copy it by ear?

[rpjazzguitar]

Some well known players have OCD and are treated for it with medication.

The OCD may actually be an advantage when the player is trying to put in the intense focused effort that some playing goals require.

Conversely, some players are challenged to focus that intensely as a matter of brain chemistry or personality, or however you want to explain it. It doesn't mean they can't become great players, but they aren't going to get there by trying to be OCD.

Not everybody can make the same sort of effort. You have choices to make about when to try to overcome your weaknesses vs. try to develop your strengths. This is nowhere near being a sharp distinction.

Maybe another way of thinking about it is whether you're trying to play the music in somebody else's head or if you're trying to play the music in your own head.

As usual, I don't have advice for others, but I can say this. After a very long time trying to do things that came hard, I made a decision to try to work with what came easy. It wasn't long after that the phone finally started to ring.

So, to make this more concrete, here's an example. I can't play fast, but I thought the ability to play fast was important and I worked on it for decades. Eventually I gave up trying to play fast and settled for playing slower, focusing on melody. In this case, giving up was helpful. I could cite more examples.

The point, if there is one, is that these are tricky individual decisions. To go back to the mountain climbing metaphor, the goal would be to find a route you can execute to arrive at a peak you want to conquer. To do that you need to realistically assess your abilities and limitations and then chart a good course.

Which isn't easy given all the advice, all the distractions and all the great results that different players have achieved.

[James W]

The style of picking is Chuck Wayne picking if you didn't know, which I'm sure you did. It seems to be working well enough for you.

Yes, I knew that.

You certainly seemed to be very preoccupied with what you felt were problems with your technique. I can't say it was something that jumped out at me from your playing, but sometimes it's hard to tell unless you are siting in a room with someone.

There was no 'felt' about it, to put it bluntly. Like I said recently on another thread, audibly hitting the body of the guitar with the pick is a definite problem - it never happens now.

It's a completely different thing IMO. Because the aims and process of the music itself is different. I don't think Troy gets this because he isn't a jazz player. We want the instrument to disappear, to become transparent. Technique is one tool we develop to help with this. I don't think that's true of rock/metal players - at least not many of them.

It's true that the process of jazz is quite different from much rock/metal. However, the pickslanting mechanics of players - particularly ones who are known for picking lots of notes - still hold true irrespective of genre.

I don't think that's a bad piece of advice. But it is intuitive - listen to your body. If something feels tense, awkward or complicated, it probably is. If something feels simple and easy, it is probably good. Make movements as simple as you can. Be observant of issues as they arise and how they feel. It's very kinaesthetic. The visual element is helpful too. How does the playing look? This also where my contempt for my pinky finger arises, though that's another story haha.

The thing is, it might never have occurred to me to adopt the style of picking I use had I not heard of it and seen it demonstrated. I consciously attempted it and discovered that it worked for me. So I'm not sure how intuitive that is. I had to be told all this stuff.

That's what I always did - I didn't have a technique teacher - and I think it stood me in good stead. If I have any talent for the guitar I think it's in this area, so I may be guilty of not understanding issues people may have. But as someone who has also relearned technique three times (never to do with speed BTW), I do get it on some level.

But from my experience as a teacher the biggest technical issues are all psychological at root. People get very worried about hitting the wrong string. That's where poor string crossing mechanics develop from. I teach rest stroke as the antidote to that.

Rest stroke it useful. But in my experience what should precede it is a good tremolo technique, without which all string crossing is moot. I don't think it's psychological - string hopping is a physiological thing. The place to start is a nice smooth and fast tremolo.

The other HUGE thing is that people often perceive music to be faster than it is. This is an issue with audiation and relaxation. If you feel under pressure you will tense up. OTOH if you get in the right place everything seems slower. You have to learn the pocket of a given tempo, which is psychological but manifests itself as a rhythmic pocket. It's the same place that Galper demonstrates in the video - transparent instrument, strong brain signal. This is a problem with practicing always slow as Ragman suggests, BTW...

Speaking of rock guitarists it's worth nothing that Satriani, Van, Guthrie and Yngwie all started learning things by ear. So they are very much ear players. Hearing fast music helps play it.

Agreed.

[Christian Miller]

Rest stroke it useful. But in my experience what should precede it is a good tremolo technique, without which all string crossing is moot. I don't think it's psychological - string hopping is a physiological thing. The place to start is a nice smooth and fast tremolo.

No this is absolutely not how it worked for me.

With classical acoustic rest stoke (ala Django, Tres Cubano, classical banjo, oud etc al) I would say it's better to start with only downstrokes, and wish I'd done it that way. That's the core of the technique. More people should try working with downstrokes only for a bit. Adult students never listen though haha. (The kids do it fine of course.)

The thing is students almost always sound better when they do it, including me. You can play 8th notes at medium tempo with just downstrokes only, no problem. Of the modern players Mike Moreno does it. I should do it more.

But mechanically, the upstroke is then easy to add in. It's a natural extension of the downstroke - it feels like a bounce to me. OTOH there's things like double down up cross-picking and triplet picking which relies on downstroke dexterity, which have a lot to do with rest stroke picking actually (Josco Stephan mentions triplet picking). Rest stoke picking only resembles alternate picking in special cases, and it's usually no more than four strokes on a string, which feels different to tremolo.

But I had no interest in playing tremolo at first. I just couldn't do it. I got into it later and found I had to do a different movement from my hand than when playing jazz lines. That's more like wrist rotation. Not what I do when playing jazz lines at all.

But then I approached things very much - here's a line I want to play, how do I do it? I watched some videos on Djangobooks of a guy teaching the picking style, practiced it for a few months, and it started being my basic way to pick. I didn't reason out picking, I just sat down and let myself be taught (for once in my life.) It took a while to stick.

The string crossing thing - yes it is absolutely is a psychological issue - it's just that it manifests itself as a physical tic, basically.

People find it very hard not to do a movement to jump over the string because to them it feels wrong not to and they'll hit a wrong string. When I teach rest stroke technique what I find is that students often find it feels wrong because they are used to always intervening to make sure they don't hit the next string. It feels uncontrolled. It's a hard stitch to unpick which is probably why Troy spends so much time on the subject. It's important to me that kids don't get that in their head. If they make a natural free stroke though, I don't mind.

OTOH I feel having a slightly inefficient technique is not quite such a deal breaker for jazz eighth notes. Any problems with that you can solve by economy picking.

[pamosmusic]

I have spent a good deal of time taking picking patterns from Stick Control for the Snare Drummer


R R L L R R L L = d d u u d d u u

R R L R L R L L = d u d d u d u u

etc

I got the idea from Miles Okazaki a few years ago. This is not really what he does, but he does some cool stuff using drum rudiments and mapping them onto picking.

Anyway … I do a lot of slurring so consecutive down or up strokes end up turning up fairly often in my playing, separated by slurs usually. But being able to do that has given me a lot more control and came to me because I thought about the way I like to sound (beboppy slurring into downbeats) and went from there to what technical considerations I wanted to make

[Christian Miller]

So much of music is collecting. It's unglamorous, but great sight readers will always tell you that the best way to sight read a piece is to have seen it before; the best way to know what you're hearing is to have heard it and identified it before; the best way to be able to default to decent fingerings for what you want to play is to have played it before.

Word.

(Luckily stuff gets reused from piece to piece.)

[Christian Miller]

Some well known players have OCD and are treated for it with medication.

The OCD may actually be an advantage when the player is trying to put in the intense focused effort that some playing goals require.

Conversely, some players are challenged to focus that intensely as a matter of brain chemistry or personality, or however you want to explain it. It doesn't mean they can't become great players, but they aren't going to get there by trying to be OCD.

Not everybody can make the same sort of effort. You have choices to make about when to try to overcome your weaknesses vs. try to develop your strengths. This is nowhere near being a sharp distinction.

Maybe another way of thinking about it is whether you're trying to play the music in somebody else's head or if you're trying to play the music in your own head.

As usual, I don't have advice for others, but I can say this. After a very long time trying to do things that came hard, I made a decision to try to work with what came easy. It wasn't long after that the phone finally started to ring.

So, to make this more concrete, here's an example. I can't play fast, but I thought the ability to play fast was important and I worked on it for decades. Eventually I gave up trying to play fast and settled for playing slower, focusing on melody. In this case, giving up was helpful. I could cite more examples.

The point, if there is one, is that these are tricky individual decisions. To go back to the mountain climbing metaphor, the goal would be to find a route you can execute to arrive at a peak you want to conquer. To do that you need to realistically assess your abilities and limitations and then chart a good course.

Which isn't easy given all the advice, all the distractions and all the great results that different players have achieved.

I think the main issue is that a lot of people have no idea how to practice. It's not obvious to most people. It does require intense focus and concentration, but it doesn't need to be more for about three to five minutes at a time. Get up, stretch, make coffee, put the dishes on, and do another five minutes on something else. Come back to the first thing later that day when you get a moment. I set a timer when I started doing it, until it became a habit.

Interleaved practice like this basically saved me from myself - exactly because I tend to hyperfocus for hours on one thing, which isn't actually a good thing. Then I had kids, and it became useful for the opposite reason haha.

But if you aren't focussing with that kind of intensity and attention, it probably isn't really practice.

[Christian Miller]

Ah ok, I understand. Yes, that's kinda my default way of figuring out stuff (bop heads and melodies).

Some bop heads are slightly easier and don't take that long (Tunisia, Ornithology, Well You Needn't), while some are ridiculously hard and takes inrodinate amounts of time. Took me like 4-5 months to figure out Hot House. (I sometimes wonder if all that effort was worth it; I could have spent that time learning a lot more tunes that are far simpler and enjoyable like 'Chinatown, My Chinatown' or 'Jada'.)

Definitely worth it. It all sharpens up your ear.


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[James W]

By "learning" I mean I learn to play the line (which implies I have the chops to do so), so I could play it immediately if I heard it again, but I don't try to memorize it. If I really like an idea, I'm likely to fiddle around with it, vary and phrase it in different ways, but I think we all do that with motifs we like?

I'm still not satisfied with your distinction between learning something and memorisation. 'If I heard it again' implies the motif is still floating around in your head or inner ear, ergo, it's memorised even if that is subconscious.

Edit - also I'm reminded of Yoda - "Do or do not, there is no try".

[James W]

No this is absolutely not how it worked for me.

With classical acoustic rest stoke (ala Django, Tres Cubano, classical banjo, oud etc al) I would say it's better to start with only downstrokes, and wish I'd done it that way. That's the core of the technique. More people should try working with downstrokes only for a bit. Adult students never listen though haha. (The kids do it fine of course.)

The thing is students almost always sound better when they do it, including me. You can play 8th notes at medium tempo with just downstrokes only, no problem. Of the modern players Mike Moreno does it. I should do it more.

But mechanically, the upstroke is then easy to add in. It's a natural extension of the downstroke - it feels like a bounce to me. OTOH there's things like double down up cross-picking and triplet picking which relies on downstroke dexterity, which have a lot to do with rest stroke picking actually (Josco Stephan mentions triplet picking). Rest stoke picking only resembles alternate picking in special cases, and it's usually no more than four strokes on a string, which feels different to tremolo.

But I had no interest in playing tremolo at first. I just couldn't do it. I got into it later and found I had to do a different movement from my hand than when playing jazz lines. That's more like wrist rotation. Not what I do when playing jazz lines at all.

But then I approached things very much - here's a line I want to play, how do I do it? I watched some videos on Djangobooks of a guy teaching the picking style, practiced it for a few months, and it started being my basic way to pick. I didn't reason out picking, I just sat down and let myself be taught (for once in my life.) It took a while to stick.

The string crossing thing - yes it is absolutely is a psychological issue - it's just that it manifests itself as a physical tic, basically.

People find it very hard not to do a movement to jump over the string because to them it feels wrong not to and they'll hit a wrong string. When I teach rest stroke technique what I find is that students often find it feels wrong because they are used to always intervening to make sure they don't hit the next string. It feels uncontrolled. It's a hard stitch to unpick which is probably why Troy spends so much time on the subject. It's important to me that kids don't get that in their head. If they make a natural free stroke though, I don't mind.

OTOH I feel having a slightly inefficient technique is not quite such a deal breaker for jazz eighth notes. Any problems with that you can solve by economy picking.

My solution to my problem with picking i.e string hopping has been to mostly reject wrist motion - I say 'mostly' because I'm aware I still move my wrist a bit when playing/improvising, but I'm gradually moving to getting more of the movement from the thumb and finger while improvising because it's no problem if I'm doing some exercise on a single string. Rest strokes for me in and of themselves wouldn't solve the problem of string hopping and I'm curious if they have helped any of your students overcome string hopping? I recall watching a video where you explained gypsy rest stroke picking including what motions for the down and upstrokes etc. but I remained somewhat sadly immune to the instructions - similarly to the quite detailed instructions for reverse dart thrower wrist motion Troy gives.

I'm still not sure how the string crossing thing is psychological - I mean, doesn't it depend on what escape or slant your picking technique has? I'll take your word for that anyway.

[charlieparker]

Can you listen to this slowed Charlie Parker lick and copy it by ear?

Without going to my guitar it sounds like 1-31216-1-37 (dash is eight note). Not to sure on the rhythm and had to listen 5 times.

[pamosmusic]

So I decided to practice James’s line today.

So the raw footage for this was about 18 minutes, which sounds about right. I usually set a timer for 20 minutes when I’m doing this.

I edited out a couple increments, but still would normally up the tempo more gradually than I do here.

Yes, I really do this. And would probably do it again the next day, because it’s a little sloppy at the top end. After a couple days, if I had the lick together, I would move to another string set and do the same thing.

If I had to guess, I probably played the lick 200 times. So after seven or eight days of doing this, we’d be up over 1500 passes through the lick. So 1500 times that I would’ve heard, and watched my hands play, this particular line.

It sounds like a lot but it works, and I think it speaks to this thing we’ve been talking about. We think that to be able to hear the honeysuckle rose lick better, we need to work on our ear in isolation (which is good to do); or that to play it better at tempo, we need to work on our technique in isolation (which is good to do).

But I think we sometimes forget that the best thing is often the obvious and boring thing. Which is to play the honeysuckle rose lick a few hundred times.

I’ll take it in small parts sometime and work on varying it and that sort of thing too. But this sort of repetition of longer lines is a thing I do more or less every day.

Anyway … here’s a very boring five minutes.

[Mick-7]

Can you listen to this slowed Charlie Parker lick and copy it by ear?

Yes, why do you ask? Db major scale lick, ending on the 4th scale note, Gb (or Gb Lydian).

If anyone cannot identify a diatonic line like this one the first time they hear it, they really should work on ear training.

[charlieparker]

Yes, why do you ask? Db major scale lick, ending on the 4th scale note, Gb (or Gb Lydian).

If anyone cannot identify a diatonic line like this one the first time they hear it, they really should work on ear training.

That's not how I heard it. It ends on the b7th of the key doesn't it?

[Mick-7]

That's not how I heard it. It ends on the b7th of the key doesn't it?

I was just quoting the scale notes, didn't consider the harmony.... Ab7? It would be the V7 in Db major. But what is the tune, a blues?

[pamosmusic]

Yes, why do you ask? Db major scale lick, ending on the 4th scale note, Gb (or Gb Lydian).

If anyone cannot identify a diatonic line like this one the first time they hear it, they really should work on ear training.

Mick, do you really not read this as condescending?

And not to condescend in return, but is this not a pretty common blues/bop Ab7 lick.