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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Originally Posted by AlsoRan
But then, some may think this "advice" is all a bit pedantic....
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
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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Originally Posted by AlsoRan
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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Originally Posted by princeplanet
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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Originally Posted by pkirk
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