Can you solo in your head or hum over a tune's changes?

[henryrobinett]

Nobody is questioning whether people can hear music in their head. Yes, we can. The question is whether when people are improvising they are a) hearing a line (or portion thereof) and b) immediately playing what they hear.

I think fep had the best question (-which I quoting from memory; check his previous post for accuracy): If you can do that, why can't you immediately play anything you hear someone *else* play???????

Now, some people may be able to do that. My mother plays piano by ear and could always play any tune she wanted from memory. (Curiously, she's never come up with a tune on her own.)

My suspicion is that the lines we hear in our head (-when improvising) are the types of things we've played a lot and that our awareness of them is not their *source*: we know how what our fingers are about to do will sound because we've played it before, usually lots of times before. Sometimes we have a novel idea. (Though in my case, I come up with most of my cool licks when I'm noodling, and when I hear something cool, I go, 'whoa! Where'd that come from? Who cares, finder's keepers!")

Because I think it's a different process, as I said earlier. And no, I can't with 100% accuracy get everything I hum come out on the guitar. I'm fairly accurate. But if someone else is playing it I have to get in that persons head. But I suspect it's more transcription ability. I am intimately familiar with what I'm creating. I'm less so with what you are creating. And yes, what I'm creating has a history.
I was doing this years ago as an exercise. Musicians are always coming up with exercises. And basically it was on this very premise. Just play everything I hear. It's a good exercise. I should do it again. But it wash;t so easy.It got better along the way, depending on the difficulty.

I suspect it also has a to to do with hearing things accurately. Duplicating what you hear. And I discovered doing transcriptions that I don't always accurately hear what I thought I was hearing. Because I don't think it's ALL about hearing. It's tied into what we know. Or at least it is with me. My knowledge of the fretboard is as important, or more important, than the accuracy of my ears. I can guestimate what I'm hearing to get it approximately right based on my knowledge of chords, extensions, altered tone,substitutions, patterns, etc. . And no one is there to tell me I'm wrong.

[pingu]

Here's a thing ...........

I got better at playing the stuff in my head
(as opposed to the fingers just noodling patterns)
when I got my first Jazz box and set it up with fat strings and a highish action ........I did this originally to get a bigger fatter tone ........ but

the nice bonus was I couldn't noodle so much
so then I started to really focus on trying to play the tunes that came up in my head and found out that this is where the good sh1t is at

Of course I can't do this consistantly (and some nights hardly at all)
then I go back to known stuff that will work , patterns , licks etc
which is not really improv but sounds OK

I think Hal Galper is right when he says 'you are the instrument'
and you've got to get the tunes in your ears really big and loud first

hear the line , sing that line , play the line
Jim Mullen says something to the effect of
practicing is about getting the time between hearing a line and being able to
play that line down and down till its instant
he demonstrates it on a utube vid of a class somewhere

very cool

[Kojo27]

The way I (and I believe Hal Galper and George Kochevitsky and more) use the term “play what you hear” is something like this: play a chord to establish a key. Now, using only your brain – not someone else’s sung or played or written line – just your brain… make up a melody; call it a lick or phrase, just make something up, in the key – or not, if you imagine pitches that well. It does *not* matter how simple or how complex. Theoretically, it could be one note, but do more if you can.

Now, take up your guitar and immediately play what you just made up – no hesitations, no mistakes, and play with all the musicality you imagined when you made the thing up.

If you can do this, you can play what you hear – at this level. Said another way, you can play what you are capable of recalling into “play-time” memory and imagination – what you can perceive well enough (or remember?) to bring into the imagination at will.

I can play what I can perceive well enough, and hold in memory well enough, to sing back. I can’t sing a whole-tone scale, however – because I can’t “hear” it or “recall it correctly” in my head. It’s too alien to me; I haven’t memorized it. Some training *might* enable me to do that – I don’t know.

I think this is the big point of confusion for some here in the forum. “Playing what you hear” is a much-used phrase, a long-used phrase, and such phrases are almost always frail with confusion and worn-away definition. It means “Play what you bring into your ‘hearing’ imagination,” or “Play what you summon into your inner hearing, and can sing back, or hum, or grunt.”

Now, if it’s true that some people actually cannot imagine pitches – “hear” in the imagination – then we’ve found the heart of the whole misunderstanding!

I am so familiar with a major scale, and its modes, and with pentatonic and blues scales – that I can not only recall them, I can make up melodies with them, all in my imagination. This is what they mean by “hear.” Play what you hear. Play what you can summon into your aural imagination and hold. Play what you can vividly recall. While these made-up melodies are in my mind, I can (from much practice) play them on guitar. I know where they are, if I know the key.

But I cannot possibly “hear” (imagine, conjure up and remember) melodies taken from scales I cannot even remember. Everyone has limitations! It doesn’t matter how great one’s limitations are; if a person can play a chord and establish a key, bring a single note to mind (maybe sing it, maybe not) and if he knows where that note is on his guitar, then he played what he heard. And it must be said of him that he can play what he hears. Because of this definition of “hear.”

See?

The good part is that most of us can imagine more than one note. Some can bring forth into their play-time memories beautiful melodies, extended jazzy phrases, etc. And if they know where the sounds are on their fingerboards, they might be able to play what they created, as if all in real time.

kj

[Spirit59]

Excellent post Kojo!

[jayx123]

As I remember, you do this well.

Have you ever recorded yourself singing a solo without your guitar. If so, is it basically the same as the notes you use when playing?

10x fep, and yes exactly.
When i scat with the guitar I basically sing what I play and not the other way around, I know what the fingering positions sound like in my head.

[jayx123]

If I find myself just playing way too much, I sometimes will start to sing along with my soloing. The lines then become more focused and melodic, and less abstract and diarrhetic. The other thing singing does is it forces you to breathe, like a horn player, where phrasing becomes more natural because of it.

+1

[kofblz]

Whenever I scat sing a solo first and then find it on my instrument I'm always surprised at how simple and obvious it is. I always over-think myself when I don't do this.

[henryrobinett]

Excellent post kojo!

[JakeAcci]

I've made the personal decision (one that I think is shared by others) that I try to only improvise things that, if given enough time, I could have sang before I played them. Not at tempo by any means, but I want to have a clear conception of the melodies I am playing in my head. Even when I am comping or playing chords I try to hear/sing/whatever-you-want-to-call-it with the top voice of each chord, treating it as a melody that I am accompanying myself.

Otherwise, from my perspective, I'm just moving my fingers around and more or less relying on luck rather than musicianship. A lot of people do this, and maybe sometimes more enjoyable music is produced via luck rather than solid conception, but it's just been my personal decision to shoot for that kind of control...rather than just moving my hands and hoping they find something good.

It's something I love about improvisation and hate about performing pre-composed material: I enjoy the process of trying create music in my mind and then make that music an audible reality.

My vocal technique is pretty bad but I can approximate pitches. After reading this thread I did some recording of myself singing different types of lines and then trying to play them. I'm pretty spot on except sometimes I'd sing something with a very wide range, like a few spread triads, and if I go too fast I might lose the connection. For me it's just all about tempo...I know every interval, some passages it just takes me more time to be able to sing because I have to do more work in my head to feel sure I am about to sing the right pitch. Of course every now and again I'm off...I think I'm singing a fourth when I sing a fifth, etc, but it's rare and it only happens in the context of a line that has some foreign twists and turns.

I work on singing vocabulary all the time. I don't want to play something that I can't sing.

Also, if I can get a little out there for a second....

I want to play from the heart. My heart doesn't tell my fingers what to do, my brain does (with varying degrees of consciousness.) Ideally the channel goes: heart -> brain -> fingers.

If I don't have a clear mental concept of what I'm playing then I'm just moving my fingers.

If I have a clear mental concept of what I'm playing then, for my definition, I'm "hearing what I play" and "playing what I hear."

But, taking things a step further, if that mental concept isn't driven by the heart, from a genuine, personal place, then the music is just cerebral, calculated, non-communicative. Just a heartless manipulation of the technical materials of music...notes, rhythms, etc. I may have a clear conception of all the materials even without a guitar in my hands, but for my own standards and personal code, I don't think I'd be communicating anything. That doesn't mean it will sound bad or sound good, it just means that, by my own standards, I'm not communicating in the way I want to be communicating.

For my own standards, the worst thing I can do while improvising is wiggle my fingers hoping that they are going to find something meaningful. The second worst thing I can do is wiggle my brain hoping that it will calculate something communicative. That's just the way I look at it. These are very personal matters.

Also, here's a good thread, with a great quotation from Vic Juris:

"The Perfect world is when you can play anything that you hear......For the average Joe like me, I try to concentrate on telling a story......"

Maybe I'll go read that whole thing, lots of thoughts in there too...

[henryrobinett]

I love it Jake! Very cool way of looking at things.

[JakeAcci]

Thanks Henry - by the way, I post as JakeJew over at playjazzguitar. Good to see you here.

[henryrobinett]

Well there you go. Good to see you! There's actual activity.

[Kojo27]

Excellent post Kojo!

Excellent post kojo!

Thanks.

It's so ironic, I'm hesitant about saying it now; I made the post late (early) and was falling asleep - planned to say, upon waking, that I really dig the posts here by Spirit59 and henryrobinette! Ha! Great minds get in the same rut, maybe....

kj

[MarkRhodes]

That's like an author giving credit to his hand for writing a novel or poem. He used his hand to write it, but his mind and imagination wrote it. I see no difference here. I play the guitar. I use my hands to realize what I imagine. Not the other way around.

I think it"s more like a golfer saying he swings his club with his hands, not his mind.
Your conscious mind does *not* tell your fingers where to go. If it did, it'd take you a long time to play a two-octave major scale, but you can do this quickly because it's automatic and that's because you've practiced it.

The novel example is bad because novels are not improvised. Some are re-written dozens of times. There's a famous story of novelist E. L. Doctorow, whose daughter had been sick the day before. She needed a note for school. He started to write one, tore it up, started another, re-worked that, then trashed it and started over again. His wife, exasperated, picked up a pen and scribbled "Abby was sick yesterday," and signed her name. (I forget the child's name and use Abby here.) Annie Lamott has said all good writing has the same origin: shitty first drafts! That's not at all like improvisation!

[henryrobinett]

Well once again, we just fundamentally disagree. And that's OK with me. BTW there is automatic writing and stream of consciousness writing, which is all improvised.

Look, you can be right here. I'm not trying to make you wrong or argue with you. I'm just stating things as I see them and from my own personal experience as a player and composer. I have given considerable thought to this, as you have, over the many years I've been playing. That doesn't mean I'm right and you're wrong, or vice versa. And as far as I can tell there's no way of proving either position right or wrong. It's just interesting conjecture. But argument is not what I'm interested in.

Obviously you think a sprinter takes orders from his legs. Nope. HE decides he's going to run and then HE runs, WHEN HE decides. His legs go into motion when HE decides they move. HE decides how fast they go, slow, fast, faster or fastest and HE trains his legs and his body to move in efficient ways.

I don't take orders from my hands. I train my hands to play music they way I want it played, as much as possible. My hand doesn't know arpeggios or neighbor tones or Coltrane changes. I know those things. I've trained them in positions and fingerings and at a certain point they can act seemingly on their own. But they don't THINK. I THINK. I know you believe that my hand is inseparable from ME because it is my body, after all. Well on this point we most certainly disagree.

[JakeAcci]

Marker - I'm not clear on what benefit to music making your position will yield. Does it matter? This seems a little like splitting hairs to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

[pierre richard]

IMO...

Hearing is just that..."did you hear that?"..

Listening is analizing(sp) what you hear...

Did you hear the changes?...Hearing

Do you know what the changes are?...Listening

A lesson somewhere by someone...play the first bar...now hum/sing the second....play the next bar...hum/sing the next..etc...

time on the instrument..pierre

[Reg]

I generally have no problem hearing what I'm playing or playing what I'm hearing or reading.
Generally your hearing a phrase before you play it, like site reading, if you not ahead, your behind.

There are many methods or concepts of playing and soloing, but generally jazz developes within some type of form. Typically your thinking or hearing what you or someone else is playing the first time through and also thinking or hearing ahead to the next time while your still going through the first chorus. The better your musicianship and technique, the easier to stretch out where or what you play.

Being able to hear what you play or play what you hear is one of the cool things about being a jazz musician, your always training yourself to be able to predict what will come. So maybe we react to what's being played, but we also generally know what's coming. Pretty much required to play jazz...
Play live gigs or live whatever, you'll develop the skill.
Reg

[henryrobinett]

Yes. What Reg said.

[Reg]

hey Henry... I'm in SF area and can't believe we haven't ran into each other at gig somewhere. I don't hang in Sac. aera much, but do you know Tim Alcosta, Tpt or Delbert Bump , burnin B-3 player and teaches at Davis and Solono, anyway good friends that gig in Sac area. If you know or see them, say hey from Reg.

I checked your web site, very cool tunes and playing. We should hook up, I still gig 4 or 5 nights a week, but am trying to cut back. I'm at gig now, start in 45 ,
iPads make it way to easy to waste time...
Reg

[henryrobinett]

Hey man! Thank you! Yeah I know those cats. I'll say hi, but I don't see them all that often. You're gigging more than I am these days. But that's my own damn fault. Yeah, we should definitely hang!

[jayx123]

So this is me playing what I sing or singing what I play, how the heck do I know. (I know my pitch isn't very good, this is technically beyond my vocal abilities, maybe if I did it more often).

I sight-sing a lot and I know that if you transcribed this and asked me to sight-read it, I'd have to really labor thru it and couldn't do it anywhere near this tempo.

If you put your guitar down, in the case, in the next room, would you be able to sight-sing this at tempo if it was transcribed?

If not, why not?

This is what I don't understand. If you can play what you hear, then why wouldn't sight-singing be equally easy.

very cool man, your voice is pretty nice too

[mr. beaumont]

I'm coming back to this conversation as it has evolved...but i wanted to step back to frank(fep)'s experiment.

When i hear music in my head...i am hearing a different instrument than if i sing...i rarely imagine my voice in my head...i hear a guitar...or a horn...and of course those instruments play differently than i would sing.

[kofblz]

I haven't listened to it yet, because it's a concept I've avoided until now. But very cool picture. Can I make it my Facebook avatar?

[wizard3739]

nice playing and singing what is in your head, fep! fepBenson has arrived!
I don't sing much but I improvise almost totally by ear even though I have many, many years of jazz theory and practice behind me.

wiz