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I would have to agree with Jonzo here. Just the act of transcribing a solo as played by Birelli Lagrene does not mean that JQ Public can play that solo convincingly or create one equally as good. But transcription, especially aided by Transcribe or other slow down software, can help that process.
Originally Posted by Jonzo
Also, that canard about classical musicians being unable to improvise or play by ear without their sheet music is an exaggeration. True, early and intermediate classical guitar instruction does not spend much effort to teach improvisation. And, while improvising itself is not hard, doing it well is. But let's remember that many jazz musicians have strong classical background. Some who comes immediately to mind include Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett.
There is no cut and dried formula to learn improvisation. It is a combination of deep understanding of the jazz style and genre, time and agility on the instrument, and acquiring the confidence to take risks. Someone who just regurgitates a jazz solo off a transcription may have nothing to say on their own. One has to develop their voice. And there are certain tricks and shortcuts, but it not about analyzing the music to death.
And Jeff, while I like your playing, I just can't hack the espousal of the "lick hypothesis" which is absurd on the face of it. As if you could stitch together melodic and harmonic phrases from other songs and create a genuinely good solo in the moment on the bandstand. I find that notion defies logic and what I feel when I improvise. It is more about listening and responding than stitching together phrases in the moment of the flow. I totally reject that concept. Playing a solo the emerges from the depth of your experience is not the same thing as creating one of those odd carpets of many patches of fabric.Last edited by targuit; 04-03-2014 at 12:42 PM.
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04-03-2014 12:35 PM
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In both language and jazz improvisation, you need to acquire vocabulary (chords, licks, arpeggios) and grammar (rules, theory), and be able to use them creatively and fluently in response to changing conditions in real time. You can acquire these skills systematically, or informally. These are significant similarities.
The physical aspect of guitar is a difference, but I don't see how it would negate the importance of the similarities. The roll of repetition in learning a physical skill and a fact (like a new word) is also similar.
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But then again, there are scores of English professors in the world. But not each of them is a Shakespeare.
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Originally Posted by targuit
It's not stitching together concrete "fragments." It's stitching together ideas.
You practice until stuff becomes natural...it comes out, it can be tweaked on the fly. It's an overall sound, not a set string of notes. Trust me, that's very real and possible.
I think transcribe and slow downer programs are detrimental. I hate them, actually. You can either hear something or not. If it gets slowed down and you can hear it, then you can't hear it at speed. And you can't actually play--and wont play in the heat of the moment--anything you can't actually hear.
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On a practical level, I suggested the following principles from learning a second language that could be applied to learning jazz:
- Use your intellect to understand what you are learning, rather than only memorizing. Learn the rules.
- Use spaced repetition to efficiently memorize vocabulary and grammar. (Don't practice the same thing every day. Practice what is hard.)
- Use the language for a purpose. (Play music and improvise; not just exercises)
- Interact with native speakers. (Recordings, jam sessions)
(I added comments in parenthesis to clarify what they mean in a jazz context.)
Do you think these are not useful ideas?
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This surprises me. You seem to be really sensitive to the needs of beginning students, and assigning tasks at an appropriate level to avoid frustration. I am assuming that you start them off with simple, slow tunes. But simply slowing down a fast tune would work too. Either way, they are not going to be able to hear Charlie Parker at speed, until they work up to it with slower stuff. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
For beginners, you have to do one or more of the following:
- Simplify
- Slow Down
- Shorten
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It doesn't go against that. I don't blow smoke up a student's butt--if they're not ready, they're not ready. There's a ton of stuff I can't hear yet. Why are people so afraid of admitting they have limitations?
Slowing down a fast tune is NOT the same thing. Because it's a fast tune, not a slow tune. You just work your way up. And it's not just speed, it's harmonic "density." A lot of Django's lines are damn fast, but they also sit nicely within arpeggio shapes on the guitar and are straightforward rhythmically...might be way easier to pick out than a Kriesberg lick with wide interval stuff going on but played at half the tempo...
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Yes, I'd say very "bad" logic, but I'm no professor. Originally Posted by Jonzo
Whatever...
You completed ignored this from my previous reply, but again: you learn to play by playing other people's music. If you've never played in the jazz style, you need to learn the nuanced articulations of the idiom. I don't think it's as effective to learn all of these articulations abstractly, as context-removed exercises, compared to learning to play just one excellent solo containing all of the elements. Again, your statement that "you learn to improvise by improvising" implies that creativity is the only consideration and ignores playing.
Like in learning to type: you practice short patterns, then words, phrases and paragraphs - both written and dictated - all composed by someone else. Then you're able to type your own "compositions" as an artifact of all of these rudiments of practicing the discipline. You don't even have to practice "improvising".
Jazz is admittedly more complex, but the same holds true. If you're saying that, apart from the pure improvisational factor, jazz has nothing in the way of style that needs to be practiced (phrasing, swing etc.), what are you basing that on? How is it more efficient and a better use of time to practice all of the individual elements (articulation, swing, harmony, aural understanding, micro and macro structures and forms of solos and entire songs) one-component-at-a-time instead of learning a solo with all of these elements?. You learn hundreds of things about playing jazz from one excellent solo in an integrated, holistic way. Everything informs the way you later use your own creativity to solo.
If you lack the creativity or understanding to compose a solo with said elements, at least you know the elements, and maybe a teacher can point you in the right direction. That doesn't say that you wouldn't have had the same problems with your creativity using a looper. And no, learning someone else's music doesn't "stifle" your creativity anymore than typing "asa sas dad ada" keeps you from later typing snarky comments about a musician's off-hand, casual statistic.
This statement is false because you can't demonstrate what is asserted. Originally Posted by Jonzo
The fact that some students don't learn with a given method is not "proof" that it doesn't work at all. That's pretty simplistic reasoning after all of your smarmy comments about "logic" (given, no less, in reply to forum members who shared an honest opinion about a subjective topic which can't really be quantified in your computer algorithms or measured in a test tube).
If a student practices improvisation with a looper and still can't improvise after considerable time with that method, by your "logic", loopers don't work as an improvisational tool. Chuck 'em! They're crap! That's scientific proof, right?
I'm just a musician and very casual observer of anything in the scientific or "logical/philosophical" realm, but even I know that this is total crap "science", "proof", "logic" or whatever you want to call it. You have proven absolutely nothing except that you will argue with anything just for the fun of it.
BTW, look at the syllabus for beginning jazz programs at music schools, and you'll find that along with improvisation practice from a very early stage, transcription and listening are also an integral part of most of these programs. (Honestly, I'm sick to death of going down the "always" and "never" road with you anyway. I'm sure you can find one that doesn't). If you're a scientist or an economist give us the numbers on the top jazz schools that don't include listening and transcription as an integral component for beginners. What's the percentage? We're patient. Give us proof.
Better yet, I'm permanently clocking out of this conversation as well.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 04-03-2014 at 02:24 PM.
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At some point in the last three or so decades, people in the United States have forgotten what it means to have a civilized discussion. I'll leave it to our correspondents from other countries to chime in as to the social climates in their own locales.
No longer does it seem possible for people to sit around discussing a subject either in person or on the internet without the discussion which, one would hope, is supposed to be an exchange of ideas that will engender thinking and possibly some degree of enlightenment, degenerating into a confrontation.
What causes this behavior is a mystery to me but it manifests in lack of courtesy, not respecting other people's experience and accomplishments, ignoring facts and/or first hand experience.
These confrontations usually begin with someone asserting that the other person is blatantly wrong instead of choosing to say "I disagree for the following reasons". Then that someone plows forward with Terminator-like tenacity with one goal in mind: To prove that they are right!
The attitude that "I am right and you are wrong" and "I am here to win" seems to be at the core of social intercouse of any type.
Whatever the cause or causes of this type of behavior, it is abundantly clear that few of us enter into a discussion with an open mind and the desire to entertain new ideas and perspectives.
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Accepting that jazz is a language (which I don't), I've spent enough time in a classroom trying to learn French to know that immersion (ie learning the language by copying people who can actually speak it) is the best way of learning how to actually speak French. And of course going to school and learning the rules of grammar and spelling are important, but if you really want to speak it, you have to copy people who speak it.
In addition, I'm no expert, but the question as to whether you need to play jazz well in order to give advice is often raised. In my most humble view, as with opinions on any skill, I will accept more readily those opinions which have been shown to work and to have resulted in success. I will listen to math advice more readily from someone who is good at math. I will listen to advice on how to paint more readily when it is given by a good artist than from someone who has only read about good artists. I will listen to advice as to how to play tennis well from someone who actually knows how to play tennis well. And I will listen to the advice of a great jazz player before I will listen to the advice of someone who does not play jazz well - or at least has not shown that they can play well. Not saying that you necessarily need to be great at something to be able to teach it all the time - but if you can't make it work for yourself, you have no business trying to sell it to someone else.
So when Joe Pass or Miles or Wes say that they learned by copying others, then I think I might want to head that advice before I take the advice of some Sschmo on the internet who read a book once about it.
Of course I could be wrong.
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I have said repeatedly that you need both input and output. I have also said that I am not against transcription. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
Yet many people who know many tunes cannot improvise. How can this be? Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
That is not what I said. Please re-read. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
I have said that limiting your practice to one element would be absurd. Please re-read. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
If someone is telling me to do my homework to verify his made up statistic, I'm going to call it what it is.
I'm done explaining words to you. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
Actually, you would be showing that sometimes loopers do not work. I never claimed they worked perfectly. I was comparing two large sample groups, thus demonstrating that copying solos, by itself, generally does not work. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
You have ascribed a lot of opinions to me that I have not expressed. So I guess you are really saying that I have not proven what you think I have said. I won't dispute that. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
I didn't have to look far. My sons are in a conservatory. They do listening, but not transcribing. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
I didn't say people shouldn't transcribe at all. Again, you are arguing with phantoms. But go to Amazon and type in "Jazz Methods" and see how many books on the first page are transcription based. There is your data.
After all that verbiage, I'm betting you will check in to see what you stirred up. But after your dramatic exit, it will look lame if you reply. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
That's a shame. It would be cool to discuss what I actually said.Last edited by Jonzo; 04-03-2014 at 04:49 PM.
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After learning a Joe Henderson solo, I felt like I had actually had a lesson with Joe. That was after my lesson with Lester Young. Next week I think I'll take lessons with Kenny Wheeler or Bill Frisell.
Last edited by cosmic gumbo; 04-03-2014 at 05:35 PM.
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Actually, an argument may be sound and false. Example: Girls are made of cheese. Maria is a girl. Therefore, Maria is made of cheese. The logic is fine but the first premise is false. Originally Posted by Jonzo
I don't think anyone here ever said that copying solos alone will make someone a good improviser, let alone necessarily make one a good improviser. Rather, many members have pointed out that several great improvisers started that way; further, several great improvisers who turned to teaching have suggested that a novice should "imitate, integrate (or assimilate), innovate'". That is, start by copying. Conversely, I don't know of a single good improviser who said he learned to do it by "making shit up."
Have you read Paul Berliner's "Thinking In Jazz"? I think you'd get a lot out of it. Here's a link.
Thinking in Jazz : The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology Series): Paul F. Berliner: 9780226043814: Amazon.com: Books
"A landmark in jazz studies, Thinking in Jazz reveals as never before how musicians, both individually and collectively, learn to improvise. Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner documents the lifetime of preparation that lies behind the skilled improviser's every idea." What's more, he talks about jazz as a "language"! Big fat book, lots of analysis, interviews with dozens of players; real in-depth work.
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Looks good. I'll check it out. Thanks.
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That's a very interesting discussion.
I just hope some people would rethink their exit from the discussion and keep contributing to help mutual understanding.
I would like to report a few personal facts and ideas.
It's been said that most of the great players learned to play jazz by copying solos of other jazz players and that this method is the quickest way to learn and play jazz.
While this is generally true it should be said (or at least it seems to me) that those players who learned or learn by this method were (are) generally really talented people who were able to transcribe, organize and internalize everything they learned from a transcription into a personal style.
In other words those great players mentioned above went straight to the source and learned from it, they did not have to "waste" their time with other learning strategies.
They were potentially great, so they "immediately" transcribed and copied.
But, what if the beginner does not have the skills to transcribe those difficult solos of the boppers?
Ok, he could start with simple melodies and then transcribing simple solos and then slowly approach,
for example, a solo by Charlie Parker. But this could be, for someone, a slow and frustrating process.
I am one of those who learned using different paths.
Of course I am not one who could be defined a great player.
Many years ago I transcribed a "simple" solo by Miles Davis from a Solar version of the fifties.
Great choice of notes, great use of space. I tried to reproduce that and I noticed that it really worked, so I learned a lot from a transcription.
Another positive experience was when I had a Scofield transcription from one of those albums from Blue Note back in the ninties. I analyzed how he started the solo by playing sparse notes and using arpeggios with great intervals, just touching a few chord tones. I worked trying to reproduce the idea and noticed that it was great.
In this case did I learn by transcribing and copying?
I copied but I did not transcribe, someone else did it for me.
It would have taken days and days for me to transcribe the solo and learn it.
I just took what I thought was interesting and that (almost) immediately worked.
Another great experience was with the books by Bert Ligon.
I opened the book "connecting chords with linear harmony" and noticed that it was packed with great jazz lines transcribed by all the great players of the past. They are organized using a clear and solid logic.
I started to learn those "outlines" and all the transcribed examples, playing them night and day all over the fretboard in all 12 keys, and after a while they started to come out fluently under my fingers, and I also started to modify them at my will. Then I went to jam sessions and gigs and people were saying "Wow, you really play great lines when improvising" or "I can hear you have listened a lot" and things like this.
Well, it's true I was listening a lot, but, by working hard over the Ligon's book I had done a major step into the bebop language without doing a transcription. Someone else did it for me.
Would have it been quicker to learn directly from the transcriptions made by myself? I really don't think so.
Finally I would like to mention that I heard once a famous pianist in my country saying at a seminar that one should learn by listening, without looking at those transcription books, and that that was the way he had learned the harmony of Bill Evans. In principle I agree, I also do (or better did) a lot of listening, but transcribing or being able to hear and play the harmony of Bill Evans is not something you do in a couple of days. So probably most of the students would not have been able to follow his advice because were just not as talented as he was and might have benefitted from a different and more gradual approach.
I'd also like to mention two more facts
1) I read in some interviews Scofield saying that he never really learned entire solos from other players, but just bits and pieces here and there that he liked.
2) Bert Ligon himself stresses the analogy between the musical and verbal languages and the similarities between the music and language learning process.
(Warning: Every opinion I expressed might as well be wrong)
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Jazz_175...
No, I don't think you're off track at all...I've said several times in this thread I wasn't ready for solos right away--certainly not at 300 bpm on an instrument I wasn't used to copping ideas from (sax, por ejemplo)
I learn nothing from other people's transcriptions...that's work. Figuring out stuff by ear and trying to play it is much more fun...I never learned much from anything I couldn't physically play.
like sco, most of what I've done is "lick copping," not full solos...i tend to look for the "hell yeah" moments, I call em. I have done some whole solos--mostly miles and chet baker, and they have taught me a TON. It was so never important that I could play them in real time, but looking back, the stuff that stuck was the stuff I could actually play in real time.
As for "jazz is language," no its not and I'm tired of hearing that it is. Maybe more like jazz is like learning a second language as an adult, more like jazz is learning to cook...that's a much better analogy, I think.Last edited by mr. beaumont; 04-03-2014 at 09:06 PM.
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I think it helps to step back and look at something fundamental to much jazz: swing. We've all seen sheet music (-even those who don't read it have seen it) that is written in straight eighths (-for ease of reading) but the direction as the top to play it with swing. Sometimes swing is explained as "triplets with the first two notes tied together". Players have to learn how to swing, they don't all swing exactly the same way. It is something one develops, either by playing along with records or in a band, and some players swing together better than others do. I don't know of anyone to learn this other than imitation. Further, it is listening that one gets a sense of how one wants to swing.
The same goes for Latin grooves (-for funk and blues and rock and country grooves too). You learn it by doing it, comparing your results to players you want to sound like, and making adjustments.
Then there's the matter of how aggressively (or relaxed) one plays. Whether one is more apt to play legato or in punchy, detached way (or what is most often the case, one learns both and uses either depending on the circumstances).
It's interesting to read trumpet players talk abut Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. Both were jazz giants, they played the same instrument, but their sounds were radically different. If one took a Miles Davis solo and played it with Satchmo's tone and inflections... Compare the way they played the heads of standards and realize the great differences in what they are doing that have NOTHING to do with note choice. (The only two tunes I know they both recorded are "Summertime" and "Basin Street Blues".)
<<<< Miles playing "Summertime"
<<<< Louis Armstrong playing "Summertime" (Ella sings it too)
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Jazz is to popular music as poetry is to language.
Jay
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One thing books like this
Thinking in Jazz : The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology Series): Paul F. Berliner: 9780226043814: Amazon.com: Books
makes me wonder about is how learning jazz has changed over time. That will be one of my questions as I read.
For some people it's, "This is how Wes did it. This is how I do it. End of discussion". But how else could Wes have learned jazz other than transcription? No other methods had been developed.
Interesting fact: 100% of great jazz guitarists from the 50s and 60s did not study Ted Greene or Mick Goodrich.
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Ran across this quote from Barney Kessel. Supposedly from a "Guitar Player" interview in the early '80s. The quesiton is, "what do you think about when improvising?" Certainly not the same question as "how did you learn to improvise?" or 'how would you teach someone to improvise?" Nonetheless, I found this interesting and hope others do too.
"What goes through your mind when you’re improvising?
BK: First of all, I think that any kind of introspection is a complete waste of time, and can be harmful-asking yourself why you did that, or what should you do next. You don’t have to explain anything, You just are. Let me tell you what doesn’t go through my mind: scales, the names of chords, arpeggios, licks, devices, formulas, what could possibly work as a superimposition, what John Coltrane would do at that point, what I could do now that will make people think I’m hip, what my jazz lessons through the mail tell me I could do here, what finger shapes I could use on the fingerboard that will sound real weird and eerie and will impress people. Those are some of the things I don’t think about. I don’t think about the notes in the chord, and I don’t think about the fretboard. Well, that leaves me with very little.
Okay, you asked me what I do think about. To me, it’s like this:Let’s say we’re playing a song and all of a sudden we were to freeze at a certain point-just as if we were taking a picture. Say we stopped at a point where I just struck a Cm7 chord. At that moment, to me, it’s just like somebody came in with an atomizer and sprayed with a Cm7. But I don’t think about what I’ve just said. All I hear is how the chord sounds, not its name.
It’s very much like if I was blindfolded and somebody said they wanted me to taste a piece of cake and tell them what flavor it is. Chocolate, cherry, pumpkin? Well, I’m tasting that chord, and the next thing that wells up in me-is, what’s my musical comment? Not a lick, or a run, but a statement. That’s what I think about. If I have to think about what George Russell said in his Lydian Chromatic Concept book, or that John Coltrane would do, then I’d be filled with too much data, filled with intimidation and need to comment in a way that what I’m playing would be nothing more than status-buying. Everyone would know I’m buying all these other licks and devices, The only way that you get good at improvising is to improvise on what’s in you.
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Yeah, after 40 years of playing jazz, being in Bird's band etc. etc. we would expect someone to be at that level.
(Kessel was another Charlie Christian disciple in his early years though, wasn't he? I met him once in a music store where I taught by the way. I briefly discussed jazz guitar methods with him. He had an opinion.)
a number of greats have also said that you should learn everything then forget it when playing - because you won't have time to think. I think that is consistent with Kessel's commentary here.Last edited by fumblefingers; 04-04-2014 at 06:43 PM.
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In a bio I read of Christian, there's a scene (-recounted by Kessel) f Charlie seeing BK in a club and complimenting him. I don't know if BK was younger than CC, but he was certainly less established. Charlie told BK, "I'm going to tell Benny [Goodman] about you." Originally Posted by fumblefingers
The two met and Barney's description of how Charlie played (-mostly downstrokes and with a heavy pick) is the best description we have of Charlie's playing by another major guitar player. I don't know if Barney thought of himself as a disciple of Charlie's, though Charlie was hugely influential.
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My vote for quickest method is with VOXSS in post #14 and taking BK's comments to heart. No amount of reading or watching are going to develop the synapses required to bring your hands and fingers under control. Only by doing are you going to build the needed muscle memory. Django, as an example, didn't have a normal deck of cards (hands). He still seemed to get by pretty good based on all the 'Hot Club' bands coming along recently. Record what you practice against a swing rhythm and see what YOU come up with. Throw down all 12 tones, every one of them. Figure out from training your ear which tones confuse the key center and which need to be stepped on quickly as passing tones to keep the rhytmic tempo going but not lose the key center. After you come up with your own organization system, only then look at theory for new ideas and sounds, like when to drop part of a harmonic minor scale over which chord. Jimmy Bruno has a very good philosophy and practical descriptions about theory so he might be one to look into after you start building the framework of your improv house. For me everything is based on minor pent relative to the major key written on the staff. It no longer is that simple but that is and always will be the monument reference point for me. When I look at the heads from all the Blue Note guys of the late 50's it appears to me that's a big part of their frame of reference too.
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Barney Kessel was a pretty insightful guy, whose guitar lessons are well worth checking out. Love that comment about 'what I'm not thinking about when improvising'. LOL!
Although this video clip of an interview with Kenny Barron is not strictly pertinent to the discussion, I think it is a brilliant comment on music today.
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Just one more clip - I couldn't resist.
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