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Lol...you gotta practice THAT too, to get good at it.
Did you at least close your eyes and play over a tune?
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11-29-2013 05:33 PM
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I do 20% of my practice time (ok, a bit less lately). No fast lines, just feel my way from chord to chord. The thing I hate is the way I sound like the guys in the "Wedding Jazz" combos. No offence to anyone who plays in these kinda bands, but I just don't wanna sound like that, and get worried that more practice in that way will make me even better at it! ;D
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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More practice in "what way", playing songs?
Who says you gotta play Satin Doll? Play "Nefertiti."
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Well I don't play Satin Doll too much but I do play Bye, Bye Blackbird and Green Dolphin Street. I don't know if those qualify as wedding jazz band tunes, but believe me, they don't sound like wedding jazz band tunes. I played with Benny Green and jokingly called Take The A Train, as if when thinking about standards we'd NEVER play that. He said, "I still love that tune!" Wedding Jazz is in the hands of the beholder.
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We are endowing these great players with super powers. I don't believe for a second that they practiced the complex situational things that are mentioned in this thread. They knew their scales, chords, arpeggios, etc., and played, played, played. Immersed themselves in the music. I don't believe they knew anything more than we know. They applied it better. More often. More dedication. Made it their entire reason for being. To hell with 9-5, wife and family, conformity.
I know I'm clinging to this like a mangy dog to a soup bone. But, before I accept it as fact, somebody has to prove to me that they can play what they are singing in real time. Not a tune they know inside-out. On the spot. Someone mentioned Benson, Rosenwinkel and Pizzarelli scatting. They are singing what they are playing. Not the other way around. I've seen at least two different clips of Pizzarelli playing I Got Rhythm. He's singing the exact same licks in both. It's practiced. It doesn't make them any less great. But, they are not super-human.
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I've heard Jimmy Bruno play Satin Doll. Ain't no wedding band music when he plays it. Again proves it all depends on the vision and skill of the player.
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Shit y'all, didn't mean to rag on "Doll!" Just figured PP would think its square.
ive made good money playing that tune.
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GAN, I'll take your word for it about the Pizzarelli clips, wouldn't be the first time someone makes a pre-fab solo - that said, IMO being able to hear and visualise jazz lines in your head isn't superhuman, it's just the result of years of hard work - you develop your own jazz vocab and over time it's programmed into your brain from lots of repetition and playing - it ain't magic. Furthermore, without the ability to hear things in your mind just before you play them over bop changes (or any progression for that matter) you'll get lost really quick and instead of being in the moment your brain is constantly playing catch-up to your fingers. I'm a big fan of the great bop pianist Lennie Tristano - being able to sing lines away from your instrument was an integral part of his teaching method - he even made Joe Satriani do it! Originally Posted by GAN
Now to put it in perspective, being able to hear bop lines in your head away from the instrument is small fry compared to what composers and conductors can do. Beethoven wrote his entire 9th Symphony stone deaf - all those great orchestral composers could hear entire an entire orchestra in their heads - Mahler wrote orchestral works in a small cabin by the lake with nothing but a desk inside it. Schubert said he preferred to compose at the desk away from the piano because he found it distracting, Bach scoffed at people who needed a keyboard to compose as being 'knights of the keyboard'. All orchestral conductors can hear an entire score in their head as if a CD was playing - those guys are super freaks. The jazz pianist Brad Mehldau says he likes to read classical music scores just like sitting down to read a novel. What about professional chess players? the whole trip with that stuff is to visualise the game in your head - for the top players having an actual board in front of them is inconsequential, they can do demonstration games where they play several games at once without looking - freaky freaks.
Now jazz standards are composed of ii V's, I VI ii V's, III VI ii V's, etc. when you've played over those progressions thousands of times for years and years eventually it gets stuck in the noggin - true that!Last edited by 3625; 11-30-2013 at 12:54 AM.
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Did someone say square? How about Autumn Leaves? To prove you can make anything sound cool there's this take:
Cannonball solos fist a coupla minutes in. Miles a coupla minutes later. Most of us probably would fancy our chances winging our way from bar to bar playing in the moment, wherever our ear takes us, slow and lyrical like Miles (but still not as cool). However, without a serious toolbox, and some judicious thinking ahead (check those chromatic GT lines) along with a smattering of bona fide genius, we're dreaming if we think we can get close to what Cannon is pulling here.
Ain't no ordinary Wedding Jazz band, this one!
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Right, the great musicians and composers were/are super freaks, no question, and it sucks to compare ourselves to them, but it's only human to want to know what is humanly possible. At our composition class at Uni one day they brought in a young boy with autism, a music savant. The Prof plays an entire Schoenberg piano piece, a coupla minutes long, and the kid rocked back and forth in his chair in raptures, he just couldn't wait to repeat what he'd just heard NOTE FOR NOTE. Since then I've been aware that all the training in the world will not enable you to do what "special" people can do with little effort. But it hasn't stopped me being curious about how we can put our own endowment to best use. Originally Posted by 3625
Training our minds to open up some doors can't hurt, but I wish I knew of ways to do it in manageable incremental steps. Visualizing myself playing in my mind is difficult unless it's something very familiar or quite slow. Baby steps I guess...
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OMG. How long do you think it took for them to sound like them. You DO have to understand the tools and get the sound in your head. Each of those three have very distinctive sounds and style. You have to duplicate their style. Close your eyes and IMAGINE you are the playing guitar. With Rollins you have to think rhythmic, melodic cells, hefty hard bop. With McCoy you have to think modal fourths, chromatic, groupings of fours, pentatonic substitutions, side stepping, fast . . . Then close your eyes and be them. Originally Posted by princeplanet
You'll give it it a shot. Give me a break.
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In Derek's case as a musical savant, I suspect the answer to his remarkable abilities lies in how his brain is wired, which clearly is not normal given his significant disabilities. I would love to hear what he does with a tender ballad.
Jay
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'Twas just a joke, Joyce... of course it's gonna take years! But not just years of trying to play what I can by just following my ears within a general framework. Not for me anyway, I need bridges between what I think I hear and how to play them. I just don't see me getting to the other side without building these bridges. Chops, chops for the fingers and chops for the mind. Doesn't sound that radical to me. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
It's great (even amazing) that you got there the way you did, without needing to get micro or "complicated", but your's can't be the only way, and it may not work as well for the rest of us, maybe?. Why be so insistent?
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http://jazzadvice.com/what-to-think-while-improvising/
This is an interesting way to put it. In summary- You practice thinking about the upcoming chords and what to do against them to the point where the time gap is decreased to be almost immediate. So thinking about a bar ahead may one day be compressed to almost nothing, where "thinking" becomes "awareness".
This kinda squares with what some of you experienced folk have been saying, but to get that point we still need to practice thinking about what's coming up next. Happy to leave it at that, but will still look for ways to practice this "art" so that thinking becomes awareness. I still say the more it hurts, the more it improves...
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Why be so insistent? Good question. Because I've been teaching students to do it successful for many, many years. And through the years I've seen guys like you spin their wheels and still insist on spinning their wheels. When you know how to drive a car and have taught many people how to drive a car and meet some guy who desperately wants to learn, yet insists he MUST read the owners manual and know how the car was constructed and know how to fix and car before he gets behind the wheel it can be frustrating. Originally Posted by princeplanet
Sure go ahead. Of course. I'm
Not saying you must do it my way or even
that you're wrong. I'm just saying you're not doing it in the most efficient way.
And when did I ever say play by ear? I think you're completely misunderstanding what I'm saying.
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Originally Posted by 3625
Great post, 3625. But, aren't composition and improvisation two different animals? I can hear lines away from the instrument, then go to the instrument and find the notes that I'm hearing. Improv is on the spot. Perhaps I misunderstand what everyone means by playing what you hear.
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Removed my first attempt - it was much too basic.
Last edited by AlsoRan; 04-03-2014 at 01:06 PM. Reason: removed
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You're right - composition and improv while related are different - I was using those examples of classical cats to show how much the brain is capable of, given there is 'historical proof' so to speak, of their ability to use the inner ear to great effect. Originally Posted by GAN
I can't speak for others, but when I'm playing bop I've got a whole bag of lego blocks and the improv to me is linking them together each time in different ways in the moment. An example would be Coltrane's use of the '1,2,3,5' motif: that is playing those degrees of the scale of any given chord, such as over D-7 you would play d,e,f,a in that order - that's a famous jazz 'lego block'. So the creative part comes from either slightly altering the blocks themselves on the fly, or in the linking of the blocks creating these hip larger structures. Parallels could be speed chess, or martial arts, where you're using pre-practiced combination moves in the moment. So you've got these combination moves for ii V's, I VI ii V's, etc. that you've practiced in the woodshed that become automatic when you're actually playing - and in your mind's eye (and ear!) you know what you're going to do just before you physically play it.
Now the better I've gotten at this over the last 20 years, it does reach a point in a live playing environment where you just 'do it' and you're not 'thinking' - especially if you're comfortable with the tune and tempo etc. You just feel it, vibe it, whatever, and it comes out - some days more than others lol.
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AlsoRan - good effort - I listened to the whole thing and there were moments where it was starting to flow. I could here you making the changes clearly, which is why arps are so great. My2c - I wouldn't worry about altered doms too much at this point, just outlining the dom 7 arp with the mixolydian mode works great for now - lots of good music can be made with the ol' mixo. Originally Posted by AlsoRan
Restricting practice to mainly arps is great, but they can be tricky because they're so wide open and you're always crossing strings which can make you dizzy lol - remember you can compress things by using chromatic embellishment around the chord tones just by playing a half step below the note. Sounds to me like you're on your way - keep at it!
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Thank you for your comments. Originally Posted by 3625
Once I feel I really know where those chord tones are at, then I will work in more chromatics.
P.S.: I tried the B Mixolydian instead of the altered - Nice.
I apologize if I hijacked the thread, which was about thinking ahead to the next chord, note, etc... I probably should have posted this separate or in Jonzo's recent thread where we were actually discussing this "connecting game."
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I don't mind, had a listen too and I agree that it's time to start chromatically embellishing those chord tones. As with the altered stuff, maybe the best advice i heard there is to really nail plain mixo first (or bebop version of) along with patterns and common language, then introduce one "alteration" at a time, like a few weeks on the b5, a few on the #5, then on to the b9 and #9. Then, start combining them, ultimately using them all. You never really hear the altered scale used as a scale as such, but there are a number of ways it traditionally had it's own language uses. I'd try to find that out before making up your own ideas using it, you will then get better ideas about doing your own thing with it. Originally Posted by AlsoRan
But then, some may think this "advice" is all a bit pedantic....
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Thank you as well, PP. Originally Posted by princeplanet
I don't mind, had a listen too and I agree that it's time to start chromatically embellishing those chord tones. As with the altered stuff, maybe the best advice i heard there is to really nail plain mixo first (or bebop version of) along with patterns and common language, then introduce one "alteration" at a time, like a few weeks on the b5, a few on the #5, then on to the b9 and #9. Then, start combining them, ultimately using them all. You never really hear the altered scale used as a scale as such, but there are a number of ways it traditionally had it's own language uses. I'd try to find that out before making up your own ideas using it, you will then get better ideas about doing your own thing with it.
But then, some may think this "advice" is all a bit pedantic....
Your idea of working in one alteration at a time also has merit.
BTW, I understood your comment about sounding like a "wedding entertainer."
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Yeah, the idea about the slow approach to incorporating the altered scale is about really understanding and "pre-hearing" each of the altered notes. All 4 at once is too much to take on, but if you break it up you really hear the personality in each tension. Once you do that, the altered scale becomes your "bitch" Originally Posted by AlsoRan
Thank you as well, PP.
Your idea of working in one alteration at a time also has merit.
BTW, I understood your comment about sounding like a "wedding entertainer."
As for Wedding Jazz, I had a jazz band play at my own wedding, and they were pretty good! But yeah, you get my drift...
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I took (and recommend) the opposite approach: start right away thinking tritone sub on the V chord of a II-V-1. It took a lot less work (for me) to incorporate one idea (sub a Db7 for a G7) than to incorporate the b5,#5,b9,#9 one at a time, and, in any case, when you juxtapose two dominants a tritone apart the altered notes stick out (as do the two common notes: the 3&7). To some extent, a tritone sub on a V is "the" bebop sound so it helps to get it in your ear early. Originally Posted by princeplanet
As with the altered stuff, maybe the best advice i heard there is to really nail plain mixo first (or bebop version of) along with patterns and common language, then introduce one "alteration" at a time, like a few weeks on the b5, a few on the #5, then on to the b9 and #9. Then, start combining them, ultimately using them all. You never really hear the altered scale used as a scale as such, but there are a number of ways it traditionally had it's own language uses. I'd try to find that out before making up your own ideas using it, you will then get better ideas about doing your own thing with it.
But then, some may think this "advice" is all a bit pedantic....
I know people who like chord-scale thinking like to think of an altered dominant G7 scale, but for me, I aways figured that since I always have to know what the chord of the moment is, it's often simpler to associate sounds with chords rather than to add the layer of complexity of finding the associated scale: it "unifies" comping and soloing.
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Yeah, that's cool too, and double yeah re associating a PC with a chord. I never did think Ab MM against G7, just the "altered" scale, much easier and faster to deal with. You mention you like to think about the chord of the moment, do you find yourself also thinking of the chord of the next moment? (just trying to get back to the original premise...) Originally Posted by pkirk
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