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Tunes is the whole deal. Exactly right. I might add that it's also a good idea to take tunes apart in sections BEFORE going for the whole tune at once. For example I might just work on the bridge for 20 minutes or more. Or the first 8 bars, or less. or the coda, and then go back to play the whole song in it's entirety. But NONE OF THE OTHER STUFF MATTERS IF YOU CAN'T PLAY TUNES! So when I talk improv I'm talking about, for the most part, improv on TUNES.
OK. I'm out. Have a happy thanksgiving everybody!
PS - I'll probably be back.
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11-28-2013 01:59 PM
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Your tunes ARE tunes!
But I'm not buying this "I don't want to learn other people's tunes" biz. I write a lot too...and in between, I learn more tunes...Every tune is practice for the next one I write, too.
I'll bet my Henriksen there's not a decent jazz player out there today that doesn't know more tunes then they've written--even the prolific writers.
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This idea of pre-hearing lines is exactly what I struggle with. Are you, or is anyone for that matter, really able to hear a fully formed line in their head and immediately manifest it on the instrument? Please, be honest. I just find it hard to believe, especially at the tempos of bop/hard bop.
Originally Posted by princeplanet
I think the only people who can really do this are singers. What they hear goes straight from the brain to their instrument. There is no external interface (fretboard, in our case) to deal with.
Is this a question that there is no answer to?
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I've had to work hardest sometimes on the tunes I've written. They seem to be more awkward and since they're not standards have few of the formulaic progressions. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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It is quite possible to play what you hear in your mind, apart from the issue of very rapid tempos, or at least to approximate what you are listening to. Just as George Benson can scat along with his playing. I've always maintained that once your technique gets to the point where you can express what you hear, then the real challenge begins - imagine something worth playing. Improvisation is simply another form of composition executed on the fly.
I stress "listening" because even solo playing is responding to the melody, bass, and what you just played moments before. Certainly you can scat your solo or simply choose your target tones and let your intuition find the path, which is less mentally taxing. As Robben Ford once remarked to me, "ride the emotional wave". In any case, don't overthink in the moment. Let your intuition be your guide, along with the melody.
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When I practice, I rarely "hear" melodic ideas...but that's perhaps because I have a weak ear (which I'm actively working on) and I don't have an extensive vocabulary. However, I do hear rhythmic ideas...like "oh here I feel a flourish-y upwards moving thing would be good, here I feel a sustained note would be good, I'm feeling triplets here, I'm feeling upbeats here, downbeats here". In fact, I just did a solid hour practice session where over the tune Just Friends I would try to apply a concept for 8 bars and then mix it up the next 8 bars, and every now and then play the melody for 8 bars (whether the first 8 or last 8 bars), then over time I started doing the same thing with 4 bar chunks. It was a good workout, but mostly I was hearing rhythmic ideas...or perhaps feeling them.
Our big band leader tells us the notes don't matter or more precisely "it's not what you say, it's how you say it". I'm not experienced enough to opine on that, but what my current guitar teacher is really instilling in me is some sense of "form" when playing, and for me it is easier to implement that through the rhythms I play than to get too hung up on notes. (yes, I work on the notes too as part of my overall practice approach)
I'm not anywhere near a professional level so take my thoughts for what they are worth! And I'd be very curious to hear from some of the cats here that do gigs regarding my comments on hearing "rhythms".
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coolvinny - I think that's right on point. I play fast a lot. I don't even know whether I hear every single note. The moment is gone as soon as it arrives. But I DO know that what you say rings very true. Rhythm tends to be every thing. Every thing. Everything. I find it's much more important than the actual notes, which is ironic since we all have spent far more time studying the fine arts of harmonic and melodic trickery.
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I once thought it was impossible for bop when I started out, but my teacher was adamant it was a skill you had to develop. It's totally possible to pre-hear what you're playing immediately before you play it - after all think of guys that sing/scat what they're playing like Benson, Rosenwinkel or John Pizzarelli. But it's more that you're hearing the note you're about to play, or a little melodic cell of a few notes before you play it - it's not that you're playing one 'lick' while hearing another 'lick', otherwise you're not really listening to what you're actually playing. Originally Posted by GAN
Instead of 'licks' I prefer to think of having a vocab of smaller melodic cells that you can alter on the fly, and put together with other cells like lego blocks - and create longer flowing lines out of that. And I can do it away from the guitar and hear it in my head while visualizing my fingers on the fretboard. I think that's a common skill for an improvisor to have (with all instruments), but guitarists too often let their fingers do the walking.
Right now, you could probably play a blues pentatonic solo (heard and visualised) in your head away from the guitar - no different with bop, just more info to get down.
You've got to figure out a 'system' for playing the changes, once you've done that you can start to develop your inner ear. Without your own 'system' (whatever form that takes) you won't be able to hear it - one thing informs the other.
I'm not trying to sound like I'm the cat or anything, lol - just passing on what I've been taught and have spent years working on, and found to be true for me. I'm interested to see how others view it as well, cause I find this stuff real interesting. Good thread.
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Interesting when re reading this thread how the thing I really wanted to discuss keeps getting derailed - in a fun way - into other loosely related areas. In much the same way I lose focus in the practice room, I keep getting derailed by "easier" things to think about! .... So I'm gonna try again to focus on a very precise aspect of what's bugging me, ok?
Gonna make it a very simple and specific example. A 4 bar ii - V - I, at 100 bpm continuous 16th notes. Pick just 5 lines / ideas /devices/licks, whatever, that 5 each for the ii - V and another 5 for the I. To make it more "real world", let's make each of our "lines" begin with a pickup of sorts. I like triplets in my pickups (call me old fashioned), but like to mix them up so they're all different, some with extra straight 8ths (or in this case 16ths), some with extra triplet notes (say 4 - 7 triplet notes). Whatever, the main thing is we have 5 ii-V lines with varied length pickups, and 5 Tonic lines with varied pickups.
Pick your favorite key, and your favorite position. The reason I've made the 2-5's nice and long is to give us plenty of time to think ahead, but needing to keep up the steady stream of 16ths will be the distraction against our ability to "think ahead". So check out the table below:
ii-V - I
1 - 1
2 - 2
3 - 3
4 - 4
5 - 5
Now if you memorized the above routine, once ensconced, you'll agree you are no longer thinking ahead like you needed to in order to learn it. If your brain is like mine, it can't wait to get things memorized so it doesn't have to keep "struggling" ... But I'm convinced this kind of struggling has to be a great way to sharpen one's skills. If the lines are the tools, then how we combine them, and eventually grift little bits here and there, "tweak" them on the fly etc, that becomes the art, or at least the beginnings of it.
So, mix them up on the fly. 2-3, 4-1, 5-2, etc and keep it going as long as you can without stopping. While playing, say, ii-V #1, say to yourself (out loud even) "I'm gonna play tonic #3" for example, and while paying that, think ahead of another choice for the next ii -V etc. The hard part for me is anticipating the next pick up and wrapping up the line I'm currently on so I can fit the next pickup in without dropping a note. Just when I think I'm on a roll and nailing it, I'll mess up and lose my place and have to wait for the start of the next chord to get back on the "rails". It's tight rope walking, you can't miss a note or you'll be thrown. Listen to Bird or Clifford Brown, these guys were totally in control, they never dropped a stitch. Minds like steel traps. Obviously both progressed the art to go well beyond stitching together lines, but I'm convinced they started that way, and became (or always were) good at focussing on an upcoming idea while on a current one. Bird in particular, you hear how he sets up his killer lines, he knows he's gonna play 'em. Not before the tune has started, maybe just a bar ahead. And if he wasn't thinking that far ahead during any of the recordings we hear, then I'm convinced it's because he trained himself to be able to do it so well in the practice room he had a ready supply of hundreds of connections. Perhaps the way we do when we stitch words or sentences together while in conversation....
But it's important for me to point out how this kind of playing/thinking is distinctly different to some others. For example, if the above "game" had looser rules - like leave as many gaps as you like, start phrases where you wish etc - then it's no where near as taxing on the mind. You can be falling off the rails all the time, only to get back on when you want. But the greats were always stuck on the rails, even when they laid out for a bar or more, it's never because they lose their place, it's because they feel the need for a musical pause.
I remember reading somewhere that a notable guitarist contemporary of Django's once noted "It's not his technique that scares me, it's his mind!" And that's how I feel about the great players. The way they "think" is the difference, whether or not they insist they don't think of anything on stage, there is still deep thinking going on subliminally, borne no doubt from hours of quality thinking in the shed. I'm just trying to get a little of that kinda thing going, like all these gears are relentlessly turning inside your brain, and you can engage any of them at any time, smoothly! No crunching, no grinding to a halt, stop/starting etc.
Hence the "games" like the one above. And I'm gonna do more of them, I need the discipline. Sure, the other stuff brought up in this thread is important too, but we talk about that stuff a lot. Just thought some time spent discussing how to "think" Jazz is important as well.... You guys have any other "thinking" games?Last edited by princeplanet; 11-29-2013 at 01:35 AM.
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It's totally possible to hear and sing what you're playing, with a guitar in your hands. I can't hear half the things accurately without the guitar. But it's the combination seeing and hearing the fretboard and singing the lines, and knowing what I'm singing is on my instrument. Originally Posted by 3625
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I see what you're getting at but to me it's not actually improv, therefore I'm inclined to think it won't eventually result in better improv as the final outcome. What it reminds me of is the 'soloist real tracks' in Band in a Box. They've done exactly that, taken a bunch of licks and reassemble them over any given chord progression: sax, guitar, clarinet, etc. Even though everything is 'correct' there's no continuity to the ideas so it feels choppy and stunted, at least to my ears. Originally Posted by princeplanet
Your ideas/lines etc. might sound a lot more natural than the BIAB ones, but I couldn't think like that - interesting experiment though. You could end up discovering some kind of bebop algorithm in the process lol! Make an app!Last edited by 3625; 11-29-2013 at 04:19 AM.
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PKirk- "The most historically/idiomatically correct sequence of notes is not going to work unless it has all the other content important to jazz: articulation, time, control, phrasing, solo arc, dynamics, etc, and most important, connection to what the rest of the band is doing."
Apologies for not knowing how to make a proper citation.
The quoted comment rearranges the priorities to list what to me are the tougher elements. Of the 12 possible tones, you can play all but about 3 in a bebop phrase and you won't lose the key center. To play with articulation and accents that create phrases, in time with the rhythm section, is the much harder nut to crack. It seems logical to concentrate on the most difficult skills first so the critical path is the shortest. The bebop players got the skill set down first and only then went for speed to keep things challenging as I understand it.
My view is you have to record your practice or jam sessions or playing over backing tracks to get at what PKirk has listed. Fairly quickly you can develop a few phrases you can fire off quickly and your lines will continually loosen up much like an engine breaking in. The far bigger challenge is placing the notes in harmony with the other musicians and consistently liking what you hear on playback.
One question to the OP is how much ear training do you do. Can you sing an ascending m6 like the opening to Equinox or a 6th like Take the A Train or down a perfect 5th like the opening to Black Nile or a b5 like Blue Seven. Until that is mastered hearing ahead and having your fingers reliably grab the right intervals is likely to be hard.
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It's a stepping stone to other skills. You learned your scales and arpeggios once didn't you? Nobody tried to stop you , suggesting that arps and scales will only create canned, soulless music. At any rate, whether you think such a game has merit or not, the point was also to draw attention to how our mind is occupied with the task in hand and precludes us from having easy access to upcoming ideas. If you can think ahead and make some new idea fit in with what's going on, that sounds a good foundation for improv to me. Eventually you substitute ideas that are less pre fab. An organic algorithm! Like the Omnibook!! Originally Posted by 3625
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Did a few years of sight singing atonal music, so the ear's ok, can always be better like the rest of us no doubt. But pre hearing one note at a time is quite different to pre hearing 16 note phrases. I don't think the Bop greats were only about pre hearing one interval at a time and knowing instinctively which valve to hit..... that is always going to be part of it for sure, but even Miles had pre rolled lines... Originally Posted by 39cord
As for "concentrating on the most difficult skills first so the critical path is shortest", that's exactly what I think I'm doing! I suppose it's alright to disagree on what the most difficult parts are....
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I don't think about it. I'm not even interested in thinking about it. It's the opposite of where I think my mind should be. Jazz, for me, is about BEING. You're making things way too significant and complicated. Do I think in advance and how far in advance? Who cares and why??? What's the point? The point is to play. To close your eyes and listen to the music in your head while your fingers fly across a fretboard. It's really not the damned complex. We can always make things more significant and more complicated. My experience has been that most of those kinds of people never end up doing much because they've mired themselves in the complication of EVERYTHING. Coltrane could be as complicated as you could ever want, but that's because he starts with a simplicity and works himself out from there, not the other way around.
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I'm convinced there's a stipulation with GP that you can only talk about your playing in esoteric, non - concrete terminology or you don't get paid.
Edit: much clearer in the YouTube video...this kind of thinking is important...and part of it is really knowing the tune, the form...this is not "I'm gonna play that cool blues lick when that A comes back up."
It's an awareness that music is a series of "movements," not chords in isolation.Last edited by mr. beaumont; 11-29-2013 at 11:03 AM.
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or even larger scale: what order to play tunes in over the course of a set: what dynamic vibe to go for for each tune, etc? Originally Posted by princeplanet
When you are improvising with like minded players, many times things develop organically, as far as solo arc, or even the arc of the tune, so thinking ahead doesnt have to be precisely worked out. Suppose I think ahead and plan a particular run and the bass player or drummer instead plays something that might clash with what I had planned? I'm better off reacting or meshing what I play to him, or maybe force my intended lick in anyway, but now it's become something entirely different than I anticipated, and maybe will have to be resolved differently.
One more thought: there are formulas you can use, like Wes' famous one: a couple choruses of single note, a chorus of octaves, and a chorus of chord solo. simple, predictable, and yet it worked so well.
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Man!
After spending a lot of time playing the connecting game in different ways I have to compare it to teaching someone to paint. Some of this just has to be in you. Getting it in you otherwise will take a whole heck of a lot of "doing." By that, I mean paying your dues in the woodshed.
Alas, for some, that price might be too high, given other life priorities.
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Wes' formula gave overall structure to the solo - a far cry from a "insert Lick A.4 here" approach. I don't think you can look at his formula to support your theory.
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Jazz is a fantastic art of balancing the known and the unknown in a melange of intuitive improvisation. It ALL COMES APART when we leave the intuitive improvisation out of it. Jazz is a FANTASTIC human creative endeavor. It takes years, in most cases, to learn how to do it well. There are an infinity of ways to learn how to do this. But it almost always begins and ends with learning the tools, understanding the tools, applying the tools, improvising with the tools, forgetting the tools, learning new tools. Continue. But THE PURPOSE, as I understand it, is to improvise. And it's best accomplished AFTER you've already forgotten the tools.
There. Take that to the bank.
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coolvinny: I didn't think I was putting forth a theory (or trying to support one!) I'm just thinking out loud about my interpretation of Princeplanet's question as to how one might think ahead in improv, which I interpret as: Originally Posted by coolvinny
how do I get get from "Here's a chord sequence I recognize and here's a lick I've memorized I can insert" "where am I headed in the next 4 bars, or chorus, or, what is the large scale structure of my solo going to be".
But maybe here's my theory (for the moment, anyway!): There are formulas you can use at all levels, from the micro to macro, and these can be useful to put some structure on your solos. Just as one can memorize a 251 lick and insert it on bars 5 through 8 of A-train, one can apply Wes' formula over 3 choruses. And all kinds of in between stuff: One can intend to play only 5 bar phrases for the next chorus. Or spell out the changes a bar early (or a bar late) for half a chorus, or play in 3 over 4 for an entire chorus. Or do the Martino repeated 3 note hemiola riff thing for the next 32 bars, or play only long notes and lots of rests. Or play the entire solo very quietly (or loud). and a million other things that can be "formula-ized".
These are examples of some of the formulas I use and interpret as my version of "thinking ahead." So for me, the extent to which I think ahead (and I'm confusing this with "think larger scale") involves knowing formulaic approaches that have to do with larger structure. In reality, I have to be prepared to jettison any of this if the band doesnt respond, or if it doesnt sound as good as I hoped. I know great improvising transcends formulas, but I used Wes as an example because he used an obvious formula, but his solos were still killing.
These are also things I can practice, independent of the "what notes over what 251" approach PP is asking how to transcend (If I follow this confusing thread correctly). Incidentally, recognizing a 251, as opposed to the "play dorian on the 2, myxolydian on the 5, and ionian on the 1" approach that we sometimes read here, is *already* thinking ahead by comparison.
I'm not a great player, so I rarely get through an entire solo feeling like everything fell into place nicely, but I am at a stage where what thinking and practicing I do is more focused on large-scale than bar-by-bar.
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That's probably the case. But just as with speech, you could say that a poet or other great writer "is only stitching together words and phrases that he/she has heard and used before. Ah, but what a difference it makes HOW they stitch them together and what new story or imagery they can create with them! Do we denigrate a visual artist because they are "only using the same colors that others have previously used"? Originally Posted by GAN
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Here is a person who was able to unlock that part of the brain.
Wonder what his practice was?
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Didn't see the vid, but was disappointed in the GP mention of "thinking ahead", some BS about travelling into the future to check out the B section.... but then goes on to talk about the importance of being in the moment..... Originally Posted by GAN
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OK, I'll give it a shot, just close my eyes and play you say........ nope, still don't sound like Wes, or Rollins, or McCoy...... guess I just must be plain stupid ..... Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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