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I know exactly what you mean and I quit jazz because of that exact reason - I could never disengage the head and eyes from constantly minding "what chords come next, what scale, what position" - although... I did quit a bit too early, I mean, this kind of thinking should eventually move to background, leaving the musical thoughts the primary. I quit before this really happened
Originally Posted by WannaBePlaya
Here's how to get started - one way, at least:
It took me maybe about a year to surprisingly and unexpectedly reach to point whe I could react to key changes in less than a second, the changes became seemingly seamless, almost.
Since nobody really practices like that or teaches like that, I didn't know what I was really doing. It would probably take less than a year for you - I practiced it half-assedly with a mild curiosity.
I only did diatonic first.. so now I need another year to get all the more colorful scales working like that also.
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11-02-2025 02:28 PM
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About "meeting students where they are":
I may have offered this memory before, and it's not about music, but it strikes me as relevant to a discussion about teaching and learning and becoming an expressive artist.
Long ago, I took a grad-level creative writing seminar from the late Thomas Kinsella. About a dozen ambitious young poetic wannabees were there, and Tom asked us all to read a sample of our work. When we'd finished, he said, "Maybe we should spend some time reading poetry." And that's what we did for the rest of the term, with Tom leading investigations about exactly how each poem worked, and especially whether various elements operated as apparently intended, whether they stood up to close examination, whether they were earned. He was very rigorous, very demanding, and very intolerant of showboating or histrionics or imprecision.
It wasn't a particularly technical/prosodic approach (which I would get later from a couple of seminars with Edmund Epstein), but it was, I think, what the young bucks* in that room needed. Tom started where we were, which was over-confident and a bit under-read (ironic, for a bunch of apprentice lit teachers), and generally kinda full of ourselves. It was a master class in knowing what you mean to say and saying it as clearly as you can. Again, not like technical musical training, but absolutely what we needed. (Eddie Epstein's later seminar/workshops in rhetoric, linguistics, semantics, and style were closer to conservatory/theory work, and they played an equally important role in forming my writing. As did decades of study of Shakespeare & Co. Gotta fill that hopper.)
We didn't present our own poems again, let alone workshop them. Tom had spotted what we needed to do first.
* Yeah, all young guys. If I had female poetical classmates, they kept it th themselves. Though the female classmate I eventually married became a considerable writer of short fiction.
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Look out, there's always a catch.
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At least, on guitar, it is easy to "cover all keys"
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Following up on RLetson's excellent post (#76)
Here's what Keith Jarret had to say about this:
From his facebook page,
S
Keith Jarrett
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Keith Jarrett on improvisation:
"Too many things happen inorganically when you're improvising because you're thinking too much. You're thinking about what to select and what not to, so I kind of force myself to remember that while I'm playing and one of the ways I do that is by letting my hands do something before my brain can deal with it at all."
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That's the part that is nonsense (to me, Peter had other points). Originally Posted by starjasmine
Being able to improvise music is innate in humans and the present to some degree in many other species. The ability is a skill that can be developed. People who claim to be unable to improvise typically are held back by the fear that they will make a mistake and/or sound bad. That is the risk we all take with improvisation; developing the skills to improvise reduces that risk to some extent.
And there you provide a very nice example of the ability to improvise not being just inherent but being a skill to be developed. The part that is nonsense was the binary judgment by alltunes that someone is inherently not "inclined" to improvise. Being able to improvise good jazz lines requires developing some apperceptive mass so that you know what a good jazz line sounds like to begin with. This is an essential part of skill development. Another part that was nonsense was the seeming equation of being able to wiggle one's fingers around the fretboard being the same as improvising.The part about "some people just don't have the imagination to even think of something they want to play" is controversial, perhaps would be less so if it were phrased differently. For example it might be phrased as "beginning players often haven't listened to enough jazz to develop their melodic sense sufficiently to generate strong melodic ideas." Early in my uni studies, I found that I could understand theory well enough, but I struggled to come up with good jazz lines because I just hadn't listened to enough jazz to develop my concept beyond ideas rooted in rock and pop melodies.
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Hah!
When I was still a guitar teacher, I teached impro for a few students too. Kids.
They kinda got it, it was fun even when something horrible happened.
The message was always that "for these seven years here, whenever you do a solo, it's only a win for you - when a mistake happens, nobody judges you. when it comes out good - your grade will get a boost"
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Yeah that’s exactly what I mean. Originally Posted by RLetson
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At the second note played, the chord changes from Dm to Bma and the "teacher" does not respond to this. He continues to play the D melody note (mi 3) against the D# major third of the underlying chord. HORRIBLE DISSONANCE. I literally stopped playback after a couple of seconds of this. Originally Posted by emanresu
Being able to determine "same or different" and "consonant vs dissonant" is literally lesson one in any ear training course.
I would posit that formal training in music has the same goal and effect. Originally Posted by RLetson
I agree with all your points; perhaps we are differing over what "inclined" means. I view it as a continuous scale, not a binary score. We are all at different points on that scale. I present to you a video of Clint Strong improvising at age 17. He was better then than I will ever be. (I've now played guitar for approximately three times longer than his age in that video, have a music degree, and years of professional experience as a working paid player) In that sense, he may be "more inclined" or have more natural talent than me. That hasn't stopped me from working hard, studying and practicing to develop good skills as an improviser. Nor have I stopped continuing to try to develop my skill set. Originally Posted by Cunamara
Last edited by starjasmine; 11-02-2025 at 06:25 PM.
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Thank you. I will address that issue in 2.2 probably. Originally Posted by starjasmine
But good note.
This is an exercise to react to key changes instantly, not to produce beautiful music. Should have said that.
Jeepers, now I have to do 2.2.
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If your goal is simply tonal center improv - not full jazz playing with tunes and functional harmony in the stream - then that's a lot simpler. It still involves structure in addition to ear, not ear only, but it's generally easier than full trad jazz playing. There are many youtubers who teach that in various styles.
Last edited by Strat-itis; 11-02-2025 at 06:21 PM.
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SO SORRY, did not mean to inflict harsh criticism of your playing! I thought this vid was someone teaching improv, not your demo of playing over random stuff. I thought the recogniton of random chords in 2.2 was very good. Clearly your hard work is paying off. Originally Posted by emanresu
Again, apologies. I've removed the disparaging comments from my post.Last edited by starjasmine; 11-02-2025 at 06:27 PM.
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Interesting post about genetics and musical ability, from the "Playing like Louis Armstrong" thread:
Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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You don't want to practice, play, and perform jazz songs?
You do want to be able to improvise? But don't like Jazz?
You must explain, not with words, as I am suspecting AI.
So many misunderstandings and imbalance of knowledge.
I'd like to hear something, need not be video, Blues is fine.
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I can't respond to all of the great posts here, but i couldn't pass this one by. I am not an AI bot. I have my own thoughts and approach to music. I've been honest about my shortcomings, which are many, but I don't think I misunderstand much. Imbalance of knowledge, yes. Too much knowledge and theory, and can't get to making music to my satisfaction. That's why I posted the original post. Originally Posted by pauln
I didn't say I don't want to practice. I've done nothing but practice in my musical life. I've spent too much time on theory and repeating scales and arpeggios. I'm trying to find a way from them to making music. That doesn't mean I don't recognize their importance or that I won't work on those things and others as I need them. I want to play and improvise, not just practice. That's not the same as saying I don't want to practice.
I don't want to perform, that is true. It's not a prerequisite. I want to enjoy the music and learning about it for myself.
Someone else said I didn't like jazz, not me. I love jazz for the more complex harmonies and melodies and the spontaneousness. I haven't played a straight major or minor chord since I started learning. Love the seventh and all the upper extensions and perhaps especially the tense sharped and flatted notes. And I love that it's not a canned formula repeated for popular consumption. I can't listen to pop music, at least if it's conventional. I also love the improvisation, the building of musical ideas, the theme and variations, the outside excursions and chromatic tensions.
What I did say is that I don't hum jazz standards to myself. I've heard them all. I like some of them, but the original tunes aren't compelling to me. I got rhythm is no toe tapper until they get to the improvisation, or if it is shifted in an unconventional direction. The improvisation and re-interpretation is what makes it jazz to me, not the canon of "jazz standards." If you're not a performer and don't play with other musicians you don't strictly need to know those tunes.
I was trying to communicate that worked out stock repetitions that I've repeated endlessly to master, aren't that interesting to me. It's the engagement with the music emotionally, intellectually, and creatively that speaks to me. I want to come at music from a place of passion and enjoyment, so starting with music that speaks to me makes sense. Also note that my original post didn't say I wanted to play jazz. It said I wanted to improvise.
I get that some of what I've said is hard to accept, but I'm being honest about what my interests and goals are. A lot of what I've said are things that I'm just working out as I engage with the group and think carefully about what I'm doing and what I want to do.
Okay, enough defensiveness. Being honest about your difficulties and limitations makes one pretty vulnerable, but it's been worth doing it here. I've figured out a lot of stuff and I'm heading down an interesting path.
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Now I want to write about what I've been learning over the last day or two. I feel like a doorway into music is opening up for me and I'm really enjoying myself and excited for what's coming.
The particular doorway I'm talking about is ear training. Training doesn't quite say it really, but it's the process of feeling and identifying musical relationships, whether melodic or harmonic. I found this YouTube channel by Max Konyi. Here's a link to the first video I watched: Essential Ear Training - Feeling the Major Scale - YouTube
He explaines and illustrates his views on how to recognize major scale intervals in this video. He has others on other scales and modes and chords and progressions as well. It was eye-opening to me. I like his way of expressing what a musical relationships is--that it's a "feeling state." An interval or a chord or a progression just feels a certain way. There are no other words that capture it. There is just a feeling to a major fifth that one can learn to recognize and name.
That in itself is not earth shattering, but what I got from it is that if I spend concentrated time feeling those intervals, chords, etc, I will be able to recognize and use them as if they were words in a language I understand. Sounds perfect for an improviser or really any musician.
I also learned that I had some misconceptions about melodic intervals. I was thinking about them in relation to harmonic intervals. I was thinking that the 5 was tense and far from the 1, when it's actually the most closely related note to the tonic. I thought the major 7th pulled toward the tonic because it is so close in pitch. It's actually the most distant note from a felt perspective. It's the extreme dissonance and distance that makes us beg for resolution, not the close proximity.
He organizes the melodic intervals in a circle of 5ths. The closer the note is to another note on that circle, the closer it is harmonically to the neighboring notes. Again, I didn't know this. I've never heard anyone describe it this way.
So my idea is that if I spend time playing over chords and progressions at length and slowly enough, I will internalize the relationships between the chords and the melody lines I play. And I will internalize the relationships between the melody notes and their parent scale and key. Then I should be able to play something with intention and with my own chosen relationship to the harmony.
I recognize that this could be a very long process, but I know that because all of the structured practice I've done, I already have a lot of this in my head. It needs refinement to be sure, but I don't think it will be hard to get a handle on.
With all that in mind, I looped a simple 2-5 vamp and played the associated scale notes over it. I played very slowly. I didn't walk up and down the scale. I didn't start from the tonic. I actually used the root of the 2 chord as my starting point. Then I just slowly played individual notes in relation to that note and to the underlying chords. I started with the 4 and 5 (of the parent key) and you can really feel stability and peacefulness in them. It's interesting that even though I had no 1 chord in the loop, it was absolutely felt because of the 2 and 5. I slowly introduced other notes and just felt what they feel like. If you introduce one new note after playing a small set of notes repeatedly, the character of the new note just screams out at you. You can feel the wonderful tension of the third against the second in the root of the 2 chord. When you stretch out to the sixth, it has its own very distinct feel.
I did this for maybe half an hour. It was absolutely absorbing and really enjoyable. It was a first step to really knowing what each note in the scale feels like, which allows you to create any kind of expressive feeling you want. Want peaceful and resolved, play the 4 and 5. Want a little more tension, play the third. Play the third against the 7th and the 4 and a whole new feel emerges. It was fantastic. This is all obvious in the explaining, but it's another thing to really hear and feel those relationships. It works because you hear each note and its relationship to the root and to the surrounding notes. If you're running up and down a scale or an arpeggio, you can't feel those relationships very easily.
So I'd have to do a lot of this to get somewhere, but I'm happy to be learning. It is truly a revelation when you begin to feel those relationships. For now, I will need to play slowly and the underlying harmony will need to be pretty simple, but the whole thing is a really profound musical experience. You don't need to run 1/8th note lines over constantly changing harmony in order to really have a musical experience. It's very impressive if you can, but I'll be happy to work up to speed and complexity if I'm really engaged and learning.
I'm retired and we have a long winter starting soon. I can think of little better way to spend my time this winter than feeling all of this stuff and building the ability to feel where I am and express myself against the background of the harmony. It's remarkably satisfying even at the simplest level, but I'm sure I will quickly move on to more complex challenges. Playing over a 2-5 vamp is nice for a half hour, maybe an hour here and there, but I will keep moving on and learning different feels and relationship and working to improvise with intention rather than randomness. Sounds like a really worthwhile challenge to me.
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That makes sense. I'm not in love with the totality of the jazz tradition either even tho I'm really enthusiastic about playing jazz.
Do you want to improv in the style of traditional jazz? Or do you want to first learn exclusively tonal center based improv? They're mutually exclusive. Trad jazz sounds the way it does because there's the functional harmony of the tune IN the stream of the improv. Some tonal center approach is used, but not exclusively. So if you approach improv as tonal center only, it will not be trad jazz.
That's where theory comes in. Because unless you're a genius, which you're not based on your outcome, you need to learn the mechanics in addition to ear. They work in tandem, one doesn't hinder the other, they boost each other. So for like the 4th time. If you want to learn improv in the style of trad jazz you must work up chops using ear and applied theory, NOT raw theory. No just running a scale doesn't result in music. Learning contours, rhythms, phrasing, sequencing which creates lines out of a scale DOES result in music.
So you must learn this yourself, which isn't likely to happen, or you must get a teacher. If you just want to do tonal center based improv you can probably pick it up on your own using youtube tutorials. There are a lot of good youtube teachers who teach tonal center based improv which is a deep subject in its own right.
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For the moment I need to start with one tonal center and build from there. One center will be pretty dull before long, but If I can't hear one, I'll never get to moving centers. I'm starting with simple movements from one diatonic chord or cadence to another. I won't get any of it if I don't slow down and own one small piece at a time. It was striking in my slow playing over the 2-5 that the minute I started moving quickly either by scale or chord tones, I could feel the shift from felt understanding to recognized pattern but without real understanding of it. Right now I'm learning words. Phrases and sentences will come in time.
The only encouragement I have in this is that I have ingrained a lot in my ears and fingers. With new understanding I can quickly hear what's going on. Play me a melody and in a reasonable amount of time I can identify the notes and their relationships without hunting and pecking all over the guitar. At least I have something to draw on. Chords and progressions I have much less ear for. I've not really focused on them except as background to melody. I'll work on those too as a break from melodic intervals.
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A large part of Jimmy Bruno’s DVD No Nonsense Jazz Guitar is him applying a major scale to the II V progression. You might like his take on it.
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learn lines. really learn real lines.
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I am so excited about what the ear training is opening up for me. Almost overnight it's transformed my way of relating to every aspect of music. Even with just a little practice on feeling the intervals in a major scale, I can already sing each note I play as I play it. The pattern of a major scale now feels like a palette of sounds, not an arrangement of numbers. Playing a lot over a key center very quickly gives you a strong feeling for the sound and feel of the notes, at least it does if you've spent countless hours playing an instrument.
This feeling of the notes and the key changes a lot. I learned that the feeling of each note is tied to the key or the felt tonic. It's not tied to the chord you're playing over. The notes relationships to the chord change, but the notes feel the same over any chord in the key. This makes hearing melody so much easier. I'm not thinking "I need to play this chord tone or arpeggio because this chord is sounding." I can just hear the sound I want to play. It might echo the chord, or it might create a tension with it, but I only have to feel what I want to play at that moment and I know exactly where that note is on the fretboard. That's an entirely different world than the one I lived in two days ago.
After spending some hours playing around a single key center, it was time today to see what changing key centers is like. Will it be an entirely different world where I will feel confused or disoriented? I kind of expected that, but it isn't like that at all, at least not with the key change I played over. I took the first key change from the progression in Corcovado. The chords go from F Major to F Minor, which sound and feel very different. But once I worked it out, it was an easy transition.
You're feeling F Major for the first 8 bars for the most part (there is a passing diminished chord in there). When you get to the F minor chord it feels like you're in Eb Major, just a whole step down from F. Simple to visualize and navigate on the fingerboard, and I found that my ear and feeling for the notes, along with the ability to sing and play the sound I wanted, translated immediately between the two. That was almost shocking to me. I thought it would be difficult. It wasn't.
I recognize, btw, that F minor feels like Eb only if it's F Dorian, not Aeolian or Phrygian. I learned earlier in the day that when I played a minor sound, it felt really strongly as if it were Dorian and the tonic was right next door. It was very difficult to feel or play it as phrygian. With no context to put it in, the Phrygian mode just felt wrong. I suspect that is because we play so many 2 5 1 progressions. Minor tends to just feel like Dorian unless there's a really strong context to pull it elsewhere.
Anyway, I'm thrilled that starting this conversation has led me to this place. I think I'm quickly headed for a completely different relationship to music. In a sense I'm already there. I will still need to learn a lot, but things are coming much more naturally when coming from the perspective of the feeling of intervals, chords and keys rather than from the complex intellectual constructs of music theory. You need the theory for understanding, but playing from the feeling of the notes removes all that mental work while you're playing and lets you play what you feel.
As I internalize the feeling of the notes of the key, I'll next be able to play with outside notes, chromatics, etc. and I'll begin to experiment with phrases, both diatonic and not. It may take a while to get to that, but at the rate this is clicking for me, maybe not so long. I'll be able to transcribe more quickly, and develop a feeling for jazz vocabulary that I can feel and own. No memorizing fingerings for a lick. I'll be able to feel what the lick is and I think I'll be able to extend that feeling to other places rather than just stick the lick in anywhere I think I can make it fit. I think it will be natural to explore more outside sounds. I'll just start experimenting with them as I improvise over a key. It will be natural to play with those in-between notes. I think their sound and feel will easily become familiar.
Well, I've run on too long again. I hope someone is still there to see where this has led me. Maybe it will lead someone else to look in this direction. The entire thing started with the one video on the major scale intervals on Max Konyi's YouTube channel. Please check it out. I'd be interested to know if his approach is different than what you might have done with ear training. Maybe this is just the way everyone else hears music. I'd be curious to know.
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Just a quick aside on Bossa Nova. I've mentioned that I absolutely love listening to and playing it. Looking at the harmony in the Bossa songs I know, it's no wonder that I respond to it and that it was adopted into Jazz. The chords are beautiful. There are 6s, 9ths, 13ths, #5s, diminished chords, b9s all over. They are often simplified for lead sheets, but there's a lot going on there. Add to that the beautiful rhythms and the beautiful voices and guitar comping and it's a natural.
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Thanks for your response. When I was a university student a guidance counselor had me sit for an aptitude test indicating orchestra conductor or a professional mathematician. In hindsight, that might somewhat explain how I self taught myself to play the guitar exclusively by ear from day one a very long time ago continuing through today. Originally Posted by WannaBePlaya
I could tell so much more of what's going on with you from hearing a few seconds of playing (and I'm sure a lot of others here could, too). Please consider posting something to hear.
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Paul, I'd like to oblige with some audio or video, but I'm hesitant. I'm at a point in my playing that I'm not ready for performing, even in that limited sense. Originally Posted by pauln
I'm really enjoying playing for myself and that's good for me right now. Maybe I can capture some of what I'm doing and post it, but I need a bit more time. There are some things that need to be protected and nurtured and that's just where I'm at now.
Things are just beginning to open up for me in a really dramatic way. I play with more confidence and enjoyment every time I play. I couldn't be more excited about what I've learned. The main thing is that I have far more capability than I was able to recognize because I was blocked by reliance on the visual spatial aspect of fingering patterns on guitar. As soon as I just started listening and playing over progressions, including key changes, I found that all of it was right there for me. I can hear it easily, play in key without any theoretical knowledge, and play expressively as well. I literally didn't know I could do that.
I need more time to let that expand and add more jazz vocabulary. I see also that I need to be able to play faster so I can vary the flow of ideas as I play. I don't want to be a shredder, but there's a place for faster passages.
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Wannabeplaya -
After 40 years, off and on?
I don't mean to be blunt but really. Anyone can be a legend in their own bedroom. If you never venture out your music has very little meaning except the one you invent for it.
I don't believe there's nothing you can show to others.
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