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So you look at a chart, a complicated chart... lots of modulations,busy etc...one you haven't played... can you sight sing the melody, the changes... how about the rhythm. Can you hear the music... without your instrument.
Can you sight read the melody, play the changes etc... on your instrument...maybe. Can you read and hear music on different instruments... in your hear on different instruments...
So if you can't hear the music notated, and can't sight read the music notated on the page, how can you expect to be able to perform what you hear... when you really can't hear music. All you can really do is hear what you've memorize.
I'm not saying this is wrong or bad etc... I'm just saying if you can't hear music unless you have it memorized.... how can you expect to play what's in your head unless its something you have memorized.
Everyone believes they have great music in their heads... and all you need to do is realize what you think you hear.
Get ready for some cold water... what you may be hearing in your head might suck, maybe not, you might be the exception.
Most seem to use singing to help with their phrasing and articulations. Not all music wants to sound like a voice and be phrased in a vocal style. You might want to understand what phrasing and articulations are.
Maybe the thread is a waste... I'm lazy, I don't care... I enjoy BSing.
(It don't mean a thing, but I can sight sing music from notation as well as compose music on paper).
Yea Valdan... vocalist gigs always pay well. But most of the time the music gets a little boring, but musicians never go to gigs anyway, their always working.
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12-15-2014 06:25 PM
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All valid points Reg.
However, there's that situation where you try to play out an idea that crossed your mind, and by chance, or by knowing the instrument well and having a good ear, you end with sound that closely ressembles the idea you had.
Usually that ideaa is vague, I don't really hear it but can recognize it coming from the instrument, rarelly it's scarey realistic, I can almost feel eardrums move. The later I've never experienced while playing with the band (I've experienced it couple of times while in that state of "noodling meditation", not always I manged to transcribe it), but former is almost always there.
And there's that middle ground, where I know what to play, being sure it will sound good. I don't know if that's hearing, or knowing. That middle ground can be anywhere from prety vague (I'll repeat the example) "The moment calls from something arpegio like, don't know exactly what, but if I just skip every other note arround this scale it will surelly end good" to rather concrete "Mmm, that G+ chord will be just perfect on the next bar", and all in between and variations on theme. It is not just knowing from theory, I have an idea about the sound of skipping notes and I exactly know (hear it) the sound of G+ chord and the effect it will produce.
As for reading music, I can read only the simplest stuff, like Yankee Doodle and simpler than that and curiously, I can read it better without an instrument. I have pretty good idea what it would sound. When I try to play it, while reading, that is the problem. So I have to play it rubato and memorize, than repeat it and rehearse.Last edited by Vladan; 12-15-2014 at 07:21 PM.
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Good question.
Originally Posted by Reg
But I think you might be overthinking here. I don't think a musician has any need to answer or even address the question. You just get on with it.
From my own experience I certainly needed to put music in my head. Learning solos by ear and singing them is a classic jazz training exercise, and those that did this back in the day who did this seemed to have little trouble improvising, often with a very personal sound. Take Wes for example (and Wes couldn't read a note.)
In any case if you memorise classic solos you will have great music in you head. It might not be yours, but then nothing is truly yours. As Eric Dolphy said 'you own nothing.'
Becoming one with the music will free one from egotistical hang ups like 'am I being original' and 'how do I create my own sound?' Music motivated by a desire to be original always jumps out at me, and it usually sounds shit even though it might be interesting on an intellectual level.
As Stravinsky said 'all great music comes from the tradition.'
(Singing Dolphy's solos would certainly be a challenge. I have enough trouble with Charlie Parker ;-))
I feel from what the musicians I you have to completely immerse yourself in the creative process without thinking, and without questioning, and see what it delivers. Another way of putting this is that you can't be on stage and in the audience at the same time. And you certainly can't be a scientist or a logician about it.
Absolutely true. What was in my head five years ago sucked a lot more than what is in my head now. I put this down to learning to sing solos .... It might not be ground breaking or original, but I know it's more musical. Originally Posted by Reg
Interesting point. Not sure if I agree, but very much up for discussing this - even Dolphy had for me a very vocal quality to his playing. I can think of many cases in classical music where instruments are not intended to have a vocal quality, but I would be interested to see if you can name some musicians working in the 'jazz' sphere who you feel consciously avoid this, leaving aside the free guys (Derek Bailey etc...) - guys working in a tonal/modal style. Convince me! Originally Posted by Reg
Vocalists have the magic. A mediocre vocalist has much more ability to communicate than all but the greatest instrumentalists. That's why we hate them so much. :-) Originally Posted by Reg
Last edited by christianm77; 12-15-2014 at 07:46 PM.
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Very interestingly, this exact topic came up in a Wayne Krantz masterclass a few weeks ago. I think Krantz is one of a generation of post-Berklee players who actually do play a lot of stuff they can't sing/hear. Krantz mentioned the diminished scale as an example of something that you probably wouldn't hear unless you spent ages practicing singing it. While I can sing the scale ascending or descending (with thought) I probably couldn't improvise vocally within it. Originally Posted by Vladan
So Wayne Krantz and many other top players of the past 40 years definitely aren't playing entirely be ear - I think Sco mentions something like that in an interview I watched recently. They like you are somewhere in the middle ground. (I'm not sure about earlier generations - the guitar is an instrument that lends itself well to shapes even when you don't know what they are called, so it's possible that guys like Django weren't as purely ear based as their upbringings suggest.)
He talked about the experience of playing with Mike Brecker, and pointed out that while he had to calculate the scales over all the challenging changes, Brecker played everything by ear especially over the harder changes (this is something Brecker mentions in that masterclass video that's knocking around on youtube.) Wayne said that he was now interested in setting theory aside and focussing on playing entirely by ear.Last edited by christianm77; 12-15-2014 at 07:39 PM.
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Its nice to see real examples of this without the BS.
I can't figure out, for the life of me, why guitar players think in terms of absolutes...so a guy says he plays by ear...did he say "i play by ear, exclusively?" Or somehow "playing what you hear" and "playing by ear" become the same thing, and somebody finds a few examples that go against it and suddenly the whole concept is bullshit.
Guitar players spend a whole lotta time rationalizing their own shortcomings.
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Ha! Don't they/we just. Isn't it silly.... Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Incidentally, Hal Galper's views on this are pretty absolute - he says 'all music is played by ear' and that if it is weakly heard it will be weakly played. (I paraphrase.)
I suspect he may have been particularly talking about rhythm (he's talking about Dizzy.) From my own personal experience the playing I have felt happiest and most engaged with has been when I have had a really strong idea of what rhythmic phrases to play in my head and then hung notes on them (and drummers really seem to dig this type of playing too, I can hear and feel them respond to it and 'dig in' more.) For faster playing you can't sing or hear every note in a run, but you can articulate the rhythm. I find this when learning solos. This is supported by the common use of ghost notes of indeterminate pitch but very specific rhythm in jazz.
So I'd suggest that while you can be a bit hazy about pitches you absolutely cannot be hazy about rhythm - this has to be true of Krantz and Sco, for example.Last edited by christianm77; 12-15-2014 at 08:37 PM.
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He's right, if you just think about what he's literally saying and not try to philosophize it...
It should probably be ammended to say "in a jazz performance"...
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The quotation he made was from a classical piano book actually... I'm not sure one could hear the pitch of *every* note in a Chopin run any more than we can in a Bird solo... Well Bobby McFerrin probably could... Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
In any case, until I can with 100% first time accuracy reproduce singable melodies on the guitar such as Christmas songs, pop tunes and (!) jazz standards, there's a lot more work to be done for me.... I wish I'd spent more time on that and less on learning scale when I was getting started. Ah well, hindsight and all of that.
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BTW - here's an example of the sort of thing I was expected to eventually be able to execute accurately back in my classical singing days.... So, you can with training get around... Bach very much writes instrumental music for voice, but it's never unsingable just very very hard. He's a horrible horrible man.
not that I ever got my pipes around this to my satisfaction...
Doesn't mean you need to be able to that to play the guitar though thankfully....Last edited by christianm77; 12-15-2014 at 09:09 PM.
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Interesting. I won't touch that one tonight.
But yeah, ears...in the end, its all we have to fall back on...a good ear is and always has been a jazz player's best asset.
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Listening to that aria again, maybe I should just study Bach for the rest of my life....
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I've got 2 friends who are advanced NLP practitioners - they're good people, but I'm a bit suss on the whole scene - seems to attract some real dodgy types. I rib them a bit and tell them they use the 'dark arts'. Originally Posted by christianm77
That said Christian, that's a really good practice exercise! On the Steve Giordano vid (page 4 this thread) he actually does that for a few seconds - he sings the phrase while the left hand silently presses down the notes - I hope people reading this thread watch that vid. He also says that after you've got it down reasonably well, you no longer have to literally sing along - then it's about choice. Like Reg mentioned, it can be difficult to sing fast lines but you can still hear them internally.
Two modern players who have the singing while playing thing down are Rosenwinkel and Kreisberg. Rosenwinkel has even gigged using a lapel mic hooked up to effects, plus he mixes his voice with the guitar in the studio, at least on some recordings. Live clips and bootlegs of Kreisberg show he's technically very good at singing what he plays - now that dude qualifies as a freak.
Yeah, with Krantz - his style seems to be about rhythm for the most part. And he tends to play lots of outside stuff over vamps, so in that case I could see how it's more about doing cool rhythmic ideas while viewing the notes on the fretboard as a grid. Definitely easier to hear it the more diatonic the style, that's for sure.
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NLP? I thought that s**t was dead for at least 20 years, already.
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Thanks! Yes I remember Kurt saying he mixes the vocal sound into the guitar, says that there's something missing from his sound if the singings not there. Originally Posted by 3625
I have a friend who studied with Kreisberg and said he's very hot on students singing everything.
EDIT - as of the last few months or so Krantz is now very into this as well.... so he says...Last edited by christianm77; 12-15-2014 at 10:15 PM.
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Nope. People still making money out of it. Originally Posted by Vladan
I'm pretty suspicious of it's claims TBH.... I like the anchoring thing though....
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Why y'all dissing NLP? That Dane is a hell of a bass player!
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I think the parallel is actually well chosen. From decades of typing, I can say I can write practically as fast as I can think, without any transmission gap. Of course there is a physical limit to speed, but that also exists on the fretboard, and - admittedly bizarrely - I even won office-wide speed-typing competitions, probably the only partner who even participated against hard-practicing secretaries. However, unfortunately I am a few galaxies away from being able to do the same on my instrument. I did meet some people though, who had no idea of music theory, could not even read a simple score, but they played the most complex bop lines, because they could immediately translate what their inner ear hears into action on the fretboard. One can acquire this slowly over time, but to some it's a natural ability, and I would swap this one with typing any time. Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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While guys like yourself and Reg may see this discussion as "tail chasing", how else are the rest of us gonna understand anything without "debunking"- at least for our own interests- much of the BS often associated with Jazz performance? Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
"I play what I hear"- we hear it all the time, yet we obviously don't really know what it means to everyone. As this thread has shown, we all have a different take on it. I don't think it's a simple topic at all, in fact, I think it's a biggie! It's critical to not be intimidated by the idea that we need to be au fait with that ability as with many other skills that in actuality very few people possess. What's wrong with calling people on it? Not to debunk necessarily, but to define it, and to consider it's usefulness to certain players. Novices will waste much time trying to get good at things they don't really need to, and hopefully threads like this one can help them realise it.
For myself, I don't like singing what I play, even though I can to some degree. Does that mean I'll never be considered a real Jazz player? I learned to sight sing atonally at Uni (and was good at it), but was never interested in continuing to develop the skill as an adjunct to my Jazz skills. Am I a poorer player for it? I don't practice solfeggio, I haven't memorized 500 standards, learned to use modes of MM for every chord all the time, use nothing but quartal chords, triad pairs, mid century archtops, Benson picking, Polytone amps etc etc etc.... And the reason I haven't done these Jazz Guitar "must do's" is that I don't believe they are what will fulfil my personal musical ambitions. But this only happens after much deliberation and soul searching, and I thank this forum for challenging me and making me think... for myself!
So yeah, what's BS to you may not be BS to me. And vice-versa.
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I do get what you're saying, and I don't think the topic is BS...I just think there was a lot of waffling, or discussion, on definitions of stuff I thought was commonly accepted...I'm actually going to start another thread and get people's input on it...I thought everybody was on the same page with what terms like "playing by ear" and "playing what you hear" mean, but I was wrong.
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Hey christianm77
that was pretty much my point... the over thinking thing. I figured if I posted some basic BS, it might push some buttons. Maybe there is a something new... but I don't really believe any of us are going to hear it in our head, which leads me to we're all just hearing what's been heard before.
Like I posted early in this most... if you play all the time and listen... your going to be able to play what you hear, as long as you have the skills on your instrument.
The immerse your self without thinking approach... if it works for you, great. Why wouldn't it work? It's generally just not the way I work. No wrong or right etc...
Like I also said... accept who or what you are... not what you want to be... and make music.
I don't think I'll convince you... but
Martino... great stream etc
Mclaughlin
Coryell
Glaser
Vignola, Lagrene and lots of the burinin gyspy playing
Di Meola
Stern
Rosenwinkel
even freddie green rhythmic repeating pattern styles
Any large interval organized pattern of developing relationships
Chordal relationship improv
You can put vocal phrasing and articulations on anything, just like you can sing or try and sing anything, but maybe you might be missing the point of what the solo is about.
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There was some mention before of singing range. When I scat, I find that my range including falsetto goes from roughly the low G on the sixth string to the high D at the tenth fret first string. I find that my scatting and playing in synch depends essentially upon my sense of relative pitch. In addition unless scatting note for note, I also sometimes go for the target notes of a measure or the blue note. To me it is about anticipating one's destination and exploiting outlining chords in a natural way. I think this is also easier in a bluesy jazz context rather than a modal progression, although Miles' Kind ofBlue is a good example of a scat type blues modal melody.
George Benson is often mentioned among guitarists who can scat their melodies they are playing. Think of a song like On Broadway. A bluesy tune with a relatively predictable melodic flow. Remember that most decent singers can hit the melodic intervals fairly naturally. So again it is often about getting the voice (vocal cords) and the guitar in synch.
Just for an experiment, I went to YT and played over a recording of Miles' Kind of Blue in G. Just to be clear I was scatting my improvisation over the tune, not trying to scat the soloists. Although that is possible when transcribing for example, at 20% slower or so, that is a different skill because you are mimicking what you just heard. But scatting your own solo is a matter of connecting pitches and intervals. I find I can sort of 'fade in (vocal scatting) or 'fade out' (internal scatting). Vocalizing is more labor intensive in a sense.
In this discussion it would be helpful to agree to a definition of certain terms. To me, scatting what I hear in my head in response to a rhythmic chord progression means being able to sing and play the melody in a roughly accurate fashion simultaneously. Essentially your vocal and your guitar line match up.
Or do you perceive a different definition of "playing what you hear" when improvising?
Jay
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Keeping it straight ahead... simple,
"Playing what you hear" personally implies performing on my instrument what I hear in my head. Which implies that I hear it before I play it.
The singing aspect is a different subject, being able to sing what I hear in my head. No instrument involved. Again hearing before I sing.
Of course there is the ability of singing what you play on your instrument.... not what's in your head, what you mechanically or randomly play.
So one is realizing on your instrument what you hear in your head.
One is realizing with your voice what you hear in your head.
One is realizing with your voice what your playing on your instrument,(the hearing is after the fact).
The last example is getting close to being able to hear music from notation'
You can also hear changes, chords. Most can hear from memory,
example, Ima7, VI-7, II-7, V7. now change the chords... I 6/9, VI7#9, II-11, V7#9b13.
If you can hear chords from memory... you just plug and play. And then also from memory you hear and understand intervals, like the I VI II V. So you'll be able to hear notated changes from memory. just using memory of intervals and different chords. I'm fairly sure most can hear I IV V's, blues etc... just from hearing and playing them many times.
Sorry... back to subject.Last edited by Reg; 12-16-2014 at 12:03 PM.
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The whole 'debunking' thing that's popped up in this thread - it's been a surprise to me that many have such extreme views about improvisation and hearing what you play. All I really care about is trying to play well - how do I get through a solo without f***ing up and hopefully play something hip in the process? How do I not get tangled up in the changes and avoid hitting bum notes? I think being able to hear it internally is a big part of being a competent player. It's a safeguard to not getting lost in the chart. Originally Posted by princeplanet
As for all the comments saying 'you're only hearing what you know' - the great players have lines and phrases they re-use over and over again every solo - Coltrane, Bird, Martino, Raney, Metheny, the list goes on and on... that shouldn't be a shock to anyone who's ever listened intently to a lot of jazz.
To think in extremes such as: the greats could literally play any single idea they hear from somewhere (inside their head or externally), and never ever repeat themselves while improvising - If some people's views are more veered to that side of the spectrum, IMO that's a long way off understanding what it's actually about.
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Thanks for the reply. Birelli (and the gypsy players I really like such as Angelo de Barre), Rosenwinkel and Stern sound very vocal to me, so we'll have to disagree. Originally Posted by Reg
Green, McLaughlin, diMeola, Martino, I am with you on. I think they sound more like drums.
So you are either a voice or drums?
Now what about horn players and piano players? Hit me!
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Sounds like the 'debunking' thing is in response largely to pretentious people. Pretentious people will be pretentious about anything. If your man in the OP was a self-styled 'great reader' or 'theorist' he would probably need debunking on that.
On the other hand, if he was just sharing something that had worked out for him, I think that's totally fair. That said, why share it unless you were teaching it or giving advice to a colleague who solicited it? Sounds like what we in the UK call 'defensive bollocks' to me.
I don't think anyone is arguing that learning to play (at least largely) by ear is a bad thing.
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