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Yep. I have gotten to learn a bit about Joe from various stories--my teacher was one of his very best friends over a 35 year period, they were very close. Everything can be understood as major/minor/dom. That is the cardinal lesson I have taken as a beacon to light up confusing situations.
Originally Posted by mike walker
The thing about Joe's playing that has not been covered, as my teacher has said countless number of times, is that you can't play like him using only a pick/plectrum. Joe was the master finger-style player who could re-harmonize a tune in infinite different ways. As my teacher wrote about Joe in Just Jazz Guitar mag a couple years after Joe's death: "As guitar players we all owe Joe Pass an un-repayable debt. He showed us that the guitar's harmonic and contrapuntal possibilities are unlimited. More importantly, he gave us all inspiration to reach beyond our limitations because he showed us that it was possible to use the guitar in a unique way"
In another JJG article, my teacher remarked in an interview: "I remember being back stage with Joe Pass, and this kid came back stage and said, 'Mr. Pass, that was brilliant how you used the myxolydian mode to the tritone sub of the Phrygian...' and Joe interrupts and says, 'I don't know what the hell you are talking about'. Joe didn't know about all that mode stuff. Sometimes I think all that mode stuff causes more damage than good".
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11-15-2012 03:27 PM
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The main thing for me joe wise was his Swing and his drive. Originally Posted by NSJ
Just steamin'.
These things do not do any damage in themselves. It's how they are used.
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Again, agree. in the original JJG article, I noted was also this nugget: "One night at a gig Joe was really cooking, and I realized what he was doing. He was playing on top of the beat so much that he was almost but not quite rushing. That was how he created tension and excitement when he played. When I mentioned it to him, he said that it was very observant of me to figure that out, and that it was a very difficult thing to achieve, that it had taken him a very long time to master that particular technique." Originally Posted by mike walker
Incidentally, my teacher also setup a very unique duo opportunity for Joe with one of your countrymen: John Williams. Alas, it never came to final fruition, as Joe died before they could record anything. Just meeting and planning stages.
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Very interesting. John plays with a good friend of mine, who's a great player. Originally Posted by NSJ
John loves so much music. A good fella.
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It can do damage if the player has no talent (and no talent in utilizing ears in conjunction with an educated ear...knowing what you are playing), but I give the kid a lot of credit for all the hard work that he put into what very few, if anybody else in the audience could analyze. Originally Posted by NSJ
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Originally Posted by mike walker
Hey Mike,
This is the book you're talking about....
Joe Pass Guitar Style: Joe Pass: 9780739018651: Amazon.com: Books
You are correct about the content and it is longer than 32 pages. The book
that I think it's getting confused with is this.
Joe Pass Guitar Method: Joe Pass: 0073999477344: Amazon.com: Books
I have the first one.... seen the second one years ago and do remember it being a little thin.
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My word that takes me back dj....... Originally Posted by djangoles
That's the one. A ton of scale stuff in that book.
Thanks man.
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Glad to hear it. Again, I never said there's only one method, or one is right for all, or that any one is wrong. Most of the old-timers I've read about had few resources available and I really do wonder if when Joe was learning to improvise he thought there were several methods of jazz improvisation. A lot of jazz education came from older players who showed youngsters what they had learned. (Robert Conti talks a lot about this.) I think the glue that held it together is that they all played so many of the same tunes, learned a lot of the same intros and turnarounds, played their "crips" and gradually needed fewer of them as they found their own ways. Actually, reading about some early jazz players is like reading about some early rock, blues, and country players: they learned from records, other players, and had a Mel Bay book or two. Originally Posted by mike walker
Chet Atkins and Tommy Emannuel do a fun tune about learning from Mel Bay books.
Here is the video:
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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You're obviously over your head in this discussion BadJazz. This is Sun Ra territory. Don't interrupt the giants Originally Posted by BadJazz
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Just kiddin' bro
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Originally Posted by 3rdOrbit
You're obviously over your head in this discussion BadJazz. This is Sun Ra territory. Don't interrupt the giants.
Just kiddin' bro
Yeah, I realized that soon after I posted and really began reading the thread. But thanks for rubbing it in.
Hey. I just looked at your number of entries. You're even more of a newbie than I am. I cry foul. I have seniority over you. You can't tell me what to do. I outrank you!
I looked up Sun Ra on YouTube. I'm sure he would not approve of your Big Brother attitude toward me
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Shut up Badjazz. Just read the thread and learn something.
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Okay.
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Can we have the moderator suspend rcaballero for starting this thread with such an inflammatory question? Originally Posted by rcaballero
Okay, seeing as passions are high, may I come back to Bird? (see #123). Listening to the "Charlie Parker and Fats Navarro: Complete Live At Birdland", I'm just convinced that knowing scales when you improvise is an essential part of being a jazz musician. Check it out.
Last edited by whatswisdom; 11-16-2012 at 12:11 AM.
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'Glad to hear it. Again, I never said there's only one method, or one is right for all, or that any one is wrong.' -MarkRhodes
It was this post that I found needed some discussion. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
I hear it a lot.... so and so said this about scales, so and so said that.
Herb played a certain way and it sounded like he didn't devote much time to scales. So his 'caution' is about what has been his path.
I balk at this kind of advice to young players seeking guidance. It's terrible (if indeed, he did say this).
'It's good to know them but you don't have to play them every day to know them" is just terrible advice. I don't even know where to start with it.
Imagine saying that about Chord tones, arpeggios, Extensions, intervals, chords, etc etc. It is absolutely crass advice. I can't sit on the fence about it.
I deffo hear the Chordal approch in Charlie's playing. But Charlie was young and I'm pretty sure he'd have devoured anything that came his way had he lived through Charlie Parker and on.
Joe wasn't like that. Joe didn't stop at a Chordal basis for everything.
You can here this as far back as 1960. His playing is seeped in a scallic understanding. And his 'Joe Pass Guitar Style' book (1970) is a reflection of that. It's obvious Joe looked to whatever he felt was going to improve him as a player.
We can relate melodic ideas to anything, neither is better or worse (IMHO)
From many paths taken we get Charlie, Django, Wes, Joe, Benson, Sco...... which is quite a varied list of approaches.
What I get bothered about, is advice that reflects a players narrowly defined view. "Do the stuff I found easy, avoid the stuff I found hard'.... type of advice. I know you're not saying that, it's silly advice, but some do, and I think we should avoid it at all costs.
I prefer not to separate. I see the triads as part of a surrounding scale, or clump of notes. You still distinguish the triad, but it isn't isolated.Last edited by mike walker; 11-16-2012 at 09:22 AM.
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Of course they are (essential), as is all other components. We just don't think about it while performing, which some of us are presuming the OP was questioning, but I don't think that he has returned to respond, or has he? Back to improvising, it depends on additional factors, as well. It depends on the surrounding harmonic happenings, between the music itself, the interpretations and the interplay (sharing the bandstand with whomever and what is being fed to you and vice versa). Originally Posted by whatswisdom
Can we have the moderator suspend rcaballero for starting this thread with such an inflammatory question? Okay, seeing as passions are high, may I come back to Bird? (see #123). Listening to the "Charlie Parker and Fats Navarro: Complete Live At Birdland", I'm just convinced that knowing scales when you improvise is an essential part of being a jazz musician. Check it out.
This means that at times we approach improvising via the chord structures confronted ("vertical") or the linear aspect concerning extended phrasing, etc, where the progression, as a package, best represents the harmonic bedding; scalar as "horizontal". We also use combinations. The student must be careful merely addressing each chord, as an isolated entity, via it's intervals, alterations and extensions. Sometimes addressing each individual chord will mess up the over all imrov of the progression (tune, etc). Like some one already posted here, "music is moving." We don't improvise within still life. There are additional factors that are less obvious to the lesser experienced players (students, etc), for example, how tones resonate and respond to each other within improvisation. Any student studying jazz must study scales, just like he/she must study the remaining components, as well. Some of the "names" mentioned here (commonly brought up; and the same few, I might add) may have not known the names of scales, the names of the notes, etc, but they sure as hell were able to play them.
We hear scalar derived activity within their lines. Parallel to all of this talk is another factor: 1: Player 2: Musician. 3: Player with accompanying equal level musicianship. It is possible to be a great player while being a weak musician. Musicianship is her own entity. There are players (and all throughout history) that are great at the music they play (ed) and at their own style, but taken out of their comfort zones (where weaknesses easily surface), they fall down hard. It ends up being personal and in this day and age, the standard is set much higher than it was 40 to 50 years ago.
Listening to some isolated quotes from certain worshiped names (whether first, 2nd or third hand) can be a double-edged sword. It's like when you hear "Oh, I never practice"..."Forget about theory, that's a bunch of useless crap, just play." Or outside of music, "I eat chocolate cake all day long and I'm not fat." If a student tries to build his/her house on quotes alone, the first hurricane will easily wipe it away.
Hobbyists or non-professionals ( and I do not state this as a put-down or any attempt to condescend) may have no clue what it takes to be a full-fledged jazz musician. This is where much of the problem lies. It's a totally different sphere.
So, we morphed the original thread heading, unless it was ambiguously titled, into should you know your scales. Of course, you should know your scales, but you don't think about them when you are on stage blow'n or it will sound like scales.
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Great post. Originally Posted by Tony DeCaprio
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Doesn't make it less true (or more true, either). You seem to be labouring under a misconception, that this is the "Jazz Guitar School Forum", it isn't. Neither is it the "Pro Jazz Guitarists" Forum. It's bigger than either. I understand that from an academic point of view you would probably want to tell a student to flog away at his scales (though personally, given the way the world is going, I'd advise him to drop out of music school and become a banker or a plumber or something, instead). But the original question was not "What should we think about when improvising?" but "What do you guys think about?" And many or most of us don't think of scales. This might be unschooled of us, or unprofessional, but it's what many of us do, in the belief that it is perfectly possible to play jazz, good jazz (perhaps not top-flight jazz but good enough for us), without thinking scale-centrically. Originally Posted by mike walker
What's more, many of us think that the worst thing ever to happen to jazz has been its leaving the street and becoming an academic subject, with the proliferation of jazz schools and academies and master's degrees and whatnot that has occurred since the fifties and sixties, in more or less inverse proportion to its popularity and relevance. We would like to see jazz retrieve some of its popularity (in the sense of closeness to the people) and more intuitive nature, in terms of both listening and performing. Which could even require deliberately throwing the scales out of the window.
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Less or more true for who? For Herb, yes. For others? Maybe. Originally Posted by JohnRoss
But as a generic piece of advice it's terrible.
Would you be less concerned if he'd said 'You don't need to practice Chords, or Chord tones, or intervals or technique?. It's just nonsense.
Who's saying 'think scales'? This is the very point.
That's the age old misconception. The point is to internalize.
Then let it flow melodically, naturally. Unforced.
I wouldn't tell a student to 'flog away at scales'. That's another assumption/misconception.
I wouldn't tell a student to flog away at chord tones or intervals. Or anything else.
I would put it into context.... step by step. Play melodically with each step.
Put the steps together.... play melodically, add a little more..... play with narrative.... what can he/she hear, feel,,,, when he/she plays.
I think you're 'throwing the scales out the window' comment is crazy.
You'd leave a scale alone in the street, splintered with glass, while all the chord tones and arpeggios or whatever party on into the night.
Scale saying 'what the hell did I do?" lol........... Bizarre.
It's cool if you want to believe it disappeared from the street into the sewer
of academia but I have to say that the young folks I'm teaching today all over the world, are carrying a torch which shows a light to the Tradition and blazes a trail for the future.Last edited by mike walker; 11-16-2012 at 10:56 AM.
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He said it. He thought guys who practiced scales a lot sounded, when soloing, like guys practicing scales. He never said don't KNOW them, but he did say it was a waste of time to practice them in all positions. His approach focused on performance, not analysis. He knew the neck thoroughly and could handle fast and slow tunes in all keys; one reason for this is that he related melodic ideas to simple chord shapes that could easily be moved about the neck. He wasn't thinking while improvising so much as singing to himself. Originally Posted by mike walker
Like Joe Pass, he seemed to find the simplest possible way to finger passages. This may come from working out of a few shapes and knowing where to move something to make it easier to play.
I've seen in several things said by players of earlier generations that, as Robert Conti puts it, 'you learn jazz by playing jazz;' although analysis is good, it need not come first. (I think most would say it shouldn't come first, but I think it is enough for here to say it need not come first, and it need not come at the same time.)
This doesn't mean that one never goes beyond the initial approach to improvising, but rather that it is hard to get several approaches up and running at the same time. For most, it is better to master one way and then branch out. That initial way (-which varies from player to player) is as a trunk that feeds all the branches and unites them in being part of the same tree.
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Care to pitch pennies? Originally Posted by mike walker
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To be fair, Bob is the king of the hyperbolic sales pitch. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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Perhaps, but he can play jazz. Well, in fact. And so can many of his students. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Originally Posted by mike walker
Let me change the wording then. Not so much 'less academic' as 'less intellectual'. When it has been most relevant, jazz has been more a visceral music than a cerebral one. Your 'let it flow naturally' is perfectly in keeping with this, but so is 'don't dedicate too much time to scales' (and isn't that the same thing as "I wouldn't tell a student to 'flog away at scales'," anyway?).
Wouldn't doubt that for a second, and all credit to you and to them, but I can't see the future of jazz being any more popular, unfortunately, unless something changes.but I have to say that the young folks I'm teaching today all over the world, are carrying a torch which shows a light to the Tradition and blazes a trail for the future.
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I get that. And Herb was great at what he did. But I don't agree with his advice. Again it's ok for him. But imagine him giving that advice to a young impressionable Joe pass? If Joe wasn't strong, you'd have had a different player that echoed that advice. Folks cling to one destination trains where jazz is concerned. That's cool, for them. But it's strange to pitch it as a 'way' for everyone. I know you're not doing that, but some do. And I often have to unpick it when a student comes to me and says 'I'm in a rut'. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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