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True regarding CST, whatever that is. I still don't exactly know what it is. On an entry level I find it instructive to show that there's a pocket of sound that surrounds each chord that belongs to a parent scale. It's not properly playing changes like Rhythm Changes or Cherokee, in the beginning we're not playing those tunes anyway. I want them to get the concept of finding chord tones and not be afraid to apply a row of notes where you can avoid "wrong" notes. So we locate the 3rds and triad arpeggios within the modes belonging to the chords. This is beginning stuff. Basic. It gets the students foot in the door. But yeah, it's not playing bop or properly playing changes. But for lower level players you simply can't overwhelm the student with too many details without making him fail. I want him it her to succeed and win.
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01-01-2014 10:49 PM
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Getz untutored? Coulda fooled me!
Originally Posted by targuit
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Yeah, he's known to be unschooled as a player. It doesn't mean he wasn't great and a truly gifted one. But in those days many players could get by just playing by ear alone - Lester Young being another.
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Just as an aside, Lester Young's father was a renounced and well-respected music teacher and educator during the vaudeville/ traveling musical shows period who imparted his extensive formal musical knowledge to his son. Originally Posted by henryrobinett
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That's interesting. That doesn't change the fact that he was basically an ear player. Great ears though!
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I have a friend who is the rarest of musicians-a professional jazz saxophonist and flamenco guitarist. He's 75 years old now and retired, but when he was learning jazz in the 1950s in LA (Harold Land was his primary teacher), he ran into several prominent players ( the then unknown Ornette Coleman wrote his little high school band a blues to practice-it got them fired from their coffee house gig-"I ain't paying you guys to play this weird shit!") Originally Posted by Richb
one abrupt meeting was with Mr. Getz, who announced himself thusly, "you know who I am kid? I'm the White Lester Young!"
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Yeah, he was! I have a great photo of him meeting Lester Young for the first time. The young Getz was absolutely star struck. Great photo.
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Interesting fact re: Lester having formal training. Quite a few early jazzers did. It would have presumably been Western classical music theory.
Early jazzers certainly knew their scales. The whole tone scale is not uncommon in early jazz for example.
Lester was a drummer before we played sax. I think that's significant. His harmony is simple in comparison with Coleman Hawkins, but his rhythm and phrasing is more developed. Harmony wise Lester Young is like the textbook on how to play changes without fuss! I learn something new every time I study him.
Incidentally, Jazz education and learning materials didn't start with Berklee - there are books and transcriptions out there that were published in the 30's, possible 20's.
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I would argue that we should be playing songs like Rhythm Changes early on. Cherokee too a little later. A lot of players go down the chord scale route and never get fully comfortable with them. I know pro jazz players who regard Rhythm Changes as 'difficult' whereas in fact it is similar to 12-bar blues in difficulty. Needless to say they are comfortable playing contemporary material.
The changes of these songs are extremely typical. They get swapped in out as modules for other songs all the time.
I VI II V and III VI II V (backcycling)
Modulating ii V I's going down in steps
Moves from I to IV with linking IVm6, bVII7 or #ivo7 chords (or not!)
Why are they considered hard? Because modern musicians feel it is important to honour the chord/scale system over each one in order to play the changes. In fact this is not required. It isn't even necessary to play the arpeggios. Listen to Lester Young on Shoe Shine Boy for an example.
All these progressions can be very easily handled by using the strategies common with swing players - major and minor pentatonics, blues licks, arpeggios. Many of these things should be familiar to rock/blues players. If modern jazz players spent a few months doing trad gigs they'd get used to these sorts of progressions quickly and never worry about them again. Funnily enough, it's the way many older players got started.
It'll be more use early on than learning a single melodic minor mode.Last edited by christianm77; 01-02-2014 at 11:46 AM.
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All true. Or Lester Leaps In. But if you want to play like a modern player and not like a swing player you have to digest other forms and approaches. I'm personally much more inspired by Coltrane, McCoy, Rollins, Corea, Bergonzi, Brecker. It all depends on what you're after. I dig Rollins take on Oleo. Different than the way Lester played rhythm changes for sure. For him and players of that style more or less played the A sections as just Bb. The ii-V subs came later with bop. For me, I like bop.
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The point was more that a beginning student could get into playing rhythm changes etc quickly if it was approached from a more swing/trad/blues point of view. They could then move onto bebop (if they wanted) and so on.
I think you touched on something when you mentioned 'ii-V subs' the thing is ii-V's are not structural really, they are stylistic change with bop. As you've clearly checked out some Lester it seems that you have an awareness of this stuff anyway, which is kind of what I'm talking about... :-)
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Look at the star struck admiration.
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Many good points in this thread, especially vis a viz rhythm changes.
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Practicing scales alone won't turn you into a jazz player, or a classical player or anything else except a scale player. However, there's a good reason that players on every instrument in every idiom practice them. With enough practice, they give you dexterity in every key and over the entire neck, and a framework to hang whatever concept for line playing you choose (CST, tonal centers, pitch collections yada yada...). Some pretty advanced players swear by the Segovia diatonic scales, and there's nothing jazzy about them.
Last edited by unknownguitarplayer; 01-02-2014 at 02:00 PM.
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Personally, I disagree on the rhythm changes thing...The system doesn't make it more difficult for the player..The player does.
Ever hear anybody try and hit every change in RC with arpeggios? Just as painful. Sounds like someone falling up and down stairs.
The system is just that--a system. It complicates nothing. All the complications are in the player's head.
And CST doesn't "dictate" one scale per chord...you could argue blowing a blues scale over most of the A section of RC actually IS CST!
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Exactly. Things are as simple or as complicated as you want to make it. I tend to make RC over complex because I tend to like it that way. But there are so many ways to play it. Playing the A section all in Bb - there are so many ways to do it, sometimes just nodding to I -vi - ii - V or not; playing around with the Bb triad the whole way hitting the 6th along the way or just bluesing it. I tend to always hit the G7+5b9 because I hear it that way and then throw in all kinds of ii-V subs in there because it's just fun and a study in applying them. Sometimes some Coltrane changes. But it's easier to complicate from a simplicity than simplify a complexity.
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Hey now! I actually do hit every change. They love it over at the nursing home! Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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@mr beaumont
I think the thing one needs to have is a structural understanding of what, for example, the A section of a Rhythm tune does. Once you've got that you are free to play lines over the top. Chord scale theory itself can't help you with this - learning lots of tunes can (the old way), putting things in numerals different keys etc... That's something I try to impress upon my students - simply pointing out the similarities between one tune and the other.
In terms of understanding some aspects of vertical jazz harmony, CST can be really useful - as in: Wes plays a dorian scale on the minor and so on.
In terms of construction of authentic melodic jazz lines CST theory is basically useless: if you play a dorian scale over a minor chord, you will probably not sound like Wes.
The question is whether you need theory to do that (Hal Galper's Forward Motion is a theory that attempts to do this) or whether you can do it just by learning jazz by ear.
Yeah chasing every change is boring and cliche. It's significant that neither Bird nor Lester Young appear to do this.
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All true, kind of. There's a way of chasing the chords down that doesn't really sound like it. Coltrane, Hubbard, Corea, Brecker comes to mind. That tends to be more my approach. Sorry I'm not referencing guitar players like Wes.
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Do you play guitar?
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you really seem to be under the misconception that using CST implies you must "play scales." Originally Posted by christianm77
Fwiw, I'm with you completely on what is necessary to play classic jazz sounds...All I'm saying is, if a player using CST sounds bad its the player, not the method...I should also mention that for as much as I defend CST, it's not my main approach when shedding a tune either.
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Nah, I'm just here for the free beer and pretzels...... Originally Posted by christianm77
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Wait a second, Free? They've been charging me...
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Me? Yeah, of course. Originally Posted by christianm77
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You talkin' to me?
Yes, I do, but in the never-ending process of learning to play jazz, I took notice of how players were learning on other instruments, and scales were always part of the process.
Sometimes it seems that guitar players want to skip steps that everybody else has to go through.
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