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There's a misunderstanding of what "learning licks" means.
It does not mean simply regurgitating lines. Learning licks means so much more than learning notes. It's learning the rhythm and timing, the techniques and positions. And then incorporating those things in to your own playing. I'm not sure I've heard any accomplished musician truly regurgitating licks. Once a player assimilates the lick it becomes part of their own expression.
And that's true for any instrument and any genre....
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04-08-2014 06:07 PM
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It's indisputable.
Originally Posted by jzucker
You have to learn to hear jazz links in your head. So you listen to others who can do it. You hear Em in your head, you figure out how to play them on your instrument.
You do this, you learn songs, you learn chords...doesn't have to be linear...then these other things help you understand WHY something sounds cool, or rather, how to take the stuff you like and reapply it.
That's the direct route. Can't hear jazz, can't play jazz. How do you learn to hear it? Listen and figure it out.
I just don't know how someone can argue against it...especially if they haven't tried it.
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I would go so far as to say that learning licks is *MORE* important than learning a whole solo. Sure, you should learn entire solos to understand dynamics, telling a story, flow, tension / release / building, etc., but even the best solos have miles of filler. Learning licks is how you develop your individual style. You learn a lick that just shouts out at you to be transcribed and you do it. You learn it in every position and every key and every finger of every string and you purmute it into major, minor, dom7, dim, half dim, etc. If you don't own it and make it part of you, it ain't the tool's fault. It's the guy using the tool.
When you have transcribed dozens, hundreds and thousands of licks, you eventually are able to instantaneously improvise and string them together in unique ways. No two people will sound the same even if they copied the same people. Wes and Herb Ellis for example. They both worshipped and transcribed christian and yet they sound nothing alike.
And this spontaneous creation thing is just rubbish. Benson plays so many "stock" licks and yet he owns it and makes it his own.
Maybe at some point after you can already REALLY PLAY, you begin to rely less and less on transcribing and you start developing your own thing but that takes a lot of time...And a lot of transcribing.
Experienced players can spot a guy who didn't transcribe miles away. They are almost always the ones who don't outline the changes and who have no sense of history to their playing. Every couple of generations an allan holdsworth comes along who just defies categorization and a sense of history but do you want to bank on being that 1 in a million?
And on the other hand, when you hear him play over standards, he doesn't play over the changes. He plays over key centers so there you go....Last edited by jzucker; 04-08-2014 at 06:30 PM.
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Patrick, dasien--Please re-read my posts and try again.
Last edited by Jonzo; 04-08-2014 at 06:59 PM.
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I got really disappointed with Latin the first time I tried to talk to some Latinos. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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Jonzo . . my last post was a reply to a single sentence at the end of dasien's post. It was meant in playful humor. "Please re-read my post and try again". Originally Posted by Jonzo
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OP here.......so, did any of you jazzers ever use the Mickey Baker book? What did you think of it?
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Ha! Originally Posted by Patrick2
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excellent book for learning an introduction to jazz harmony. Sorry I can't offer any empirical proof on that. Originally Posted by angelpa
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"Ha!" . . . indeed. Originally Posted by Jonzo
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Thank you Originally Posted by jzucker
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Baker's book was published around 1955. Among my generation, the baby boomers, it was the first book many of us used to learn jazz chords and lines. There are some typos and many places where he could have been more clear in his instructions but it got a lot of us going. Like Jack said, a good introduction. Originally Posted by angelpa
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Thanks Monk
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Here is an interesting take on the topic of licks:
Gene Paul Gave Me a Music Lesson
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what a fantastic thread.. who started it...You are NUMBER 1....yes im a very late starter.....no musical education no jamming .no nothing just a love of jazz and guitar..and blown away at my progress..in a couple years..without doubt Dextor Gordons transcriptions are my FAvs and WES....
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Do you like Ralph Towner? Brilliant musician - piano and guitar. I love his solo playing.
Probably fifteen years or more ago I decided to learn his version of two jazz standards as solo guitar - Waltz For Debby and I Fall In Love Too Easily off his CD Open Letter (1992). I had just purchased a Tascam CD Guitar Trainor and sat down with the guitar and pencil and sheet music. I transcribed both solos, enjoying the fact that on the faster passages it was much easier to slow down the music to individuate the nuances of style as well as the particular note sequence. But that's all the Tascam device helped me with - get the job done faster. For someone with little patience like me, that was great. But as for the actual execution of the songs as performed by Towner, that was not a stretch for me because, like Towner who studied with Karl Scheit (if I recall), I am classically trained. In my twenties (Seventies) I learned classical pieces like Benjamin Britten's Nocturnal and Bach's Chaconne at the same time as I was learning from Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, George Benson, Herb Ellis, and Joe Pass. But back then it was using a stereo record player and a reel to reel Teac tape recorder. No slow down. You played over the record at the regular tempo.
What I'm trying to say is that while I have become much better as a jazz player, I already had the technical foundation to play back then. So I did plenty of learning from the jazz masters including transcription, although the Tascam device made it much easier if I wanted to learn something note for note. I'm not trying to parse words or the definition of "transcription", which to me means writing the music as notation on paper.
On the other hand, I also spent hours just playing over the CDs at a normal tempo. I recall the wonderful joy of hearing Joe Pass' Virtuoso album the first time, I think it was around '74. I would play along, though at that time it was challenging. Although I never did get a CD of Virtuoso to use with my Tascam trainor (which has long since 'expired'), these days I listen and play over it off YouTube. In real time but much better, because in the intervening years since the mid-Seventies, I have learned to play jazz standards much better. My jazz technique and understanding as well as groove and timing and all the essentials of playing jazz have improved.
So I have done my share of transcriptions as well as just playing over the record or CDs. These days I do my own transcriptions of jazz tunes using Sibelius, which I consider an essential tool. I don't have slow-downer software - my wife just doesn't seem to think it is an essential expense. I listen to YT and create my own by ear. In fact I often just play along in real time entering the notes using my Yamaha keyboard. In other words I transcribe guitar music by playing my piano. To me music is music - notes.
But whether I am playing my guitars or the piano, when I play a jazz tune, whether a solo break in a tune or a chord-melody solo guitar, my focus is on the music. As Barney Kessel remarked, I can tell you what I don't do when playing, including wonder which scale to use over each chord (the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen taught imo) or stringing prefabricated licks together. When I play, I interpret the music I hear in my mind. And my transcriptions today are most often just lead sheets with more sophisticated chording and voicing because I like to use them as backing tracks for practice or recording. I keep it simple because when I perform a song, I improvise or essentially play by ear. I just use the transcriptions to keep track of lyrics and as backing tracks.
Hell, at my age if I couldn't play an original thought with my own voice, then I never would. We all start by imitating or learning from the masters. (Imitation.) But along the way you have to learn the language of jazz. (Assimilation.) And finally you create or innovate your own voice. Better late than never.Last edited by targuit; 04-09-2014 at 05:19 AM.
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Funny thing. After posting about Ralph Towner, I just went to YT and pulled up this wonderful video of his live performance of the song I referred to earlier - I Fall In Love Too Easily. Beautiful playing and nuances with his "ID" voice coming through in that tone and timing especially. But I just played through it once along with the video. Thought I would make a few observations about how I work with this and respond.
This is the key of C, one that I think Ralph played it many years ago on record. It just plays well on guitar as a solo, and I play this song in C as it is also good for tenors. As the video started, I played along. Observations -
Having loved this song so much, I know the song pretty well, so I hear the song in my mind as a kind of unfolding movie that I've seen before and aurally can anticipate. I know where the lovely melody is going and the harmonic counterpoint of the progression and bass.
Because of the entirety of my experience, I realize that, apart from my aural anticipation, just watching the video and observing the fret position in which Ralph plays his arrangement permits me to anticipate the actual harmony and fret transition he will play. This aspect as a learning tool today cannot be emphasized enough. It is like taking a virtual guitar lesson if you need it from a master. As often as you like. Amazing.
I already have an original transcription of this tune in Sibelius, so I did not transcribe Ralph's performance. But if I were to do so, I would have opened Sibelius in another Window and prepped the program with a melody and guitar staffs. I use a Korg tuner to get the rough tap-tempo of the video and get the Sibelius synced to the tempo (harder than you think with the old Legacy $69 GC software), then I enter the bass and melody in real time on the PC as the video plays on my Macbook. Afterwards I 'fill in' the harmony or change it and the bass line as I please.
Essentially, to respond to how to learn improvisation, I agree that transcription is essential. This is how I do it. But my attention is to the aural dimension - I hear the music, its flow, its rhythms because I have worked at it for some half a century now - I should be getting it by now. Time is running out!
In any case, I am a perpetual learner addicted to music and the guitar and keyboards. If learning the "language of jazz" is important, transcribing or just playing along to the music is just one important element in mastering timing and rhythm which is more an essential feel or groove that elevates the music into an experience that transcends the transcription.Last edited by targuit; 04-09-2014 at 05:23 AM.
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jzucker - To whom are you referring your psychological insights (Dunninng effect) - Ralph Towner, Jonzo, or myself? If you were referring to me, I was wondering if you have heard me play? If not, then your prescience is stunning.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than is accurate. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their ineptitude.[1] jzucker 's Wikipedia Reference.Last edited by targuit; 04-09-2014 at 09:04 AM.
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I wasn't referring to you but now that you mention it, anonymous posters making definitive and controversial statements (i.e. you shouldn't copy licks) should demonstrate via their playing that they know what they are talking about. For example, Scott Jones has never transcribed and I respect his comments because he backs it up with demonstrations of his achievements. Originally Posted by targuit
Do you have any music online? When I asked Jonzo, all I heard was crickets chirping...
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Ha! I referred to this research a few years ago here when a new member who, in compiling survey data for a research project, invited members to fill out a survey that included an assessment of their ability. I said I thought this was a poor idea and cited the Dunning-Kruger effect as the reason. Another member wrote me privately and asked about it because the idea was new to him. And thus began a great friendship. I think this research is important and worth knowing about. Originally Posted by jzucker
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I'm a legend in my own shower.
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Yes, I do. Soundclick and YouTube. Stylistically, all three original compositions differ one from the other.
My apologies if your psychological insight was not directed at me personally, which I doubted given it was unlikely you have heard me play. And I doubt you were referring to Ralph Towner. But I think it is still unfair to be so harsh in judging someone else's opinion.
I think the issue of licks may be more semantic than not, but I still reject that general concept as the basis of playing once you get past an early intermediate stage of development as a musician. I mean, there are devices in music generally and in jazz specifically, such as cadences, "rules" of counterpoint, modal playing, etc., that can be demonstrated by studying phrases in the context of songs. If in the course of learning to play a Pat Metheny song, for example, you try to mimic to the T what Pat is playing, you could do that as an exercise or to demonstrate your musicianship. Here! I can play like Pat Metheny! Well, I used to put Pat's recording with Charlie Hayden - Beyond the Missouri Sky - on the CD player and just play along for the fun of it, and because I really liked the acoustic duet idea. I studied the CD pretty thoroughly and transcribed parts. I got something out of that period.
But I don't try to duplicate, beyond the melody and general harmonic concepts, what Pat played, nor do I think that is the objective. I think Metheny himself said something similar in regards to his playing early on in Wes Montgomery's style - it was frowned upon by the seasoned musicians. Roy Hargrove has said something on those lines as well.
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Not when they are disputing something over and over which is common-knowledge in the jazz community. Originally Posted by targuit
And regarding your other point, Pat copied an immense amount of Wes. And it was definitely *NOT* frowned upon by seasoned musicians. Wes' first gig was playing CC solos note for note. Benson extensively copied wes as did martino and dan wilson and just about everyone else in jazz.
The entire language of bop was predicated on RIFFs which are licks.
Where are your youtube/soundclick files?
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