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@destinytot
Mike, can you offer any specific exercises regarding what you are talking about? I'd be interested to know what you recommend. Always interested in working on rhythmic stuff.
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06-03-2015 05:53 PM
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06-03-2015, 06:21 PM #52destinytot GuestThanks for the invitation to engage in rational discourse, Christian.
Originally Posted by christianm77
To be perfectly honest, I don't do any exercises at all (except for ears, at the piano). I just stay loose and play tunes - when I feel I know them well enough, I'll play them in public.
But I'll have a think while playing this weekend, then I'll put some specific suggestions in a video. It'll be short.
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06-04-2015, 10:54 AM #53destinytot GuestI'm pretty sure it has more to do with being an arrogant prick. Such persons as you are wise to seek refuge in rationalisation, subjectivity and mediocrity. Adieu. Originally Posted by Nylonstring
But I guess all along it's been because my stuff is a bunch of cornball shit.
Edit: that should read 'arrogant and patronising prick'Last edited by destinytot; 06-04-2015 at 04:30 PM. Reason: addition
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Any luck yet? Try any of my suggestions there? Originally Posted by Nylonstring
keep the peanut gallery posted on the progress!
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My first jazz guitar teacher was a Joe Pass nut...so that's where I started. Though not on a classical guitar. But he had me arranging chord melodies for standards. We rarely talked about improvisation...at least not at the beginning. Just all chord melody arrangements of tunes. The homework was always to find a way to harmonize EVERY note of the melody with a chord (usually the one written above the measure in the Real Book, but not always).
Eventually, after months of that, he had me trying to do single note improvisations...but there were no scales. He just had me arpeggiating out the chord voicings I'd made for the arrangement. So the idea was to be able to see the chord melody arrangement moving on the fretboard without actually playing it. Then to sort of dance around within it as it's moving.
It was really difficult for a while.
It took me a loooooong time to get to the point where I could separate out my melodies and my chords and think of them as 2 different things. Because I learned by seeing them as one thing. But one of the biggest jumps in my playing was when I learned to let the melody have its own life, and the chords their own. For me, this meant not harmonizing every note. I might phrase the melody with single notes, but at key moments (where it felt and sounded right to me) I would accentuate certain notes (or specific phrases in their entirety) with chord movement underneath them.
This process might be backwards from how many other people learn? I'm not sure??? Starting with full chords on every note and moving towards separating them out....rather than seeing them as separate and trying to connect them.
It may be helpful to try arranging chord melodies the way I mentioned, and see if approaching it from a completely different standpoint helps. Once you can play the entire melody where you're playing a chord with EVERY melody note. Then you can pick and chose which chords to leave out and which to keep. Or maybe you can try playing the chords on even quarter note beats, and try and phrase the melody syncopated off the beat so they sound separated, though you're conceptualizing them as one unit.
I agree with someone else earlier in the thread who talking about breaking it down to a small section to work on in the beginning...maybe just 2 bars at first. Then grow from there.
Another thing that really helped me is just forgetting about single notes all together and really focusing down on my comping. I might sit with a tune for 20 or 30 minutes and just comp through it. Focusing on creatively moving through the harmony while keeping the rhythm and groove tight and swinging. The more comfortable I get with this, the more the comping just naturally starts to sound very melodic. Aside from making me a better accompanist for others...I find it helps me think on my feet quicker when I'm playing solo or in trio so that I can really mix and match things more at will by filling in gaps between my melodies with chords. And when I mix that in with the chord melody stuff and the single note playing, it gives me a few different dimensions to work with.
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Uh...dude. How about we dial it down a notch or two? We could start with you not taking yourself so seriously. It's just forum post, man. And what's with the name-calling? Did I call you any names? Or criticize your playing? Wow. Originally Posted by destinytot
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Thanks, Jordan. Joe Pass! Wow! He was the guy, more than any other, who made me want to learn to play jazz, and especially fingerstyle solo guitar. This actually resonates with me pretty strongly as I still primarily visualize the neck with respect to chord grips. I started playing at 11 by my dad and brother showing me the cowboy chords. Dad was the pastor of a Baptist church, so I would sit up on the platform and make the changes when he and my brother did. Most of my early advancement came from getting sheet music to songs I wanted to learn and learning the new (to me) chords printed on the music, and getting chord dictionaries to learn other grips for those chords. I didn't teach myself to read music until I was 30. I've just never been able to break this connection. Most of my approach to polyphonic improvisation has been to either grab the same voicing or an alternate grip for the chord in my solo arrangement, and try and find other melody notes I can grab from there to create a new improvised melody. So far, what I've found helpful is to use my iRealbook app on my iPad, pull up a chart, start the MIDI backing and just focus on playing short simple lines and try and grab a chord now and then. It's just a very simple discipline or limiting principle that makes me think differently. Surprises emerge. And having the chord chart there in front of me helps a lot. I can think more about what grip and position I'll play rather than "what's the next change?" Originally Posted by jordanklemons
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Yeah, thanks, Peter. I've done the chord cycles thing. I actually have a book by Don Latarski (who lives just a few cities away from me in Eugene, Oregon) which has charted out chords this way on diagrams of a neck. I know I need a lot more work on inversions since I always tend to play chords that are in root position--mainly because I tend to identify chords by their bass root note. One thing that I'm considering is taking a tune and mapping out all the changes in just the tritones (3rds and 7ths) a la Lenny Breau's method of self comping while soloing. It seems that it would be a good a way to comp for others as well, when there's a bass player carrying the roots. So far my best results have come from doing the exercise I first postulated: getting a chart in front of me and a simple backing track going and just playing simple lines and impose the rule on myself to try and grab a chord at every change, or every other change, or at least at the natural end of the line I'm playing. I find some sort of limiting rule often bears fruit. What is poetry other than rules of limitation (rhyme, meter, etc.) on prose? Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Oh okay very cool! I will say that in my experience (which is just that - ie certainly could vary with other people) practicing in a way that is a little more fluid like that is a great way to further explore things i already know but new things won't come out. You'll see the short term results with that but the way to work new things in is to isolate them.
3rds and 7ths is great. A lot of the Ed Bickert sort of thing comes from that. get that stuff going on and then add another note to them so you have 3rd and 7th plus one. Then add two ... Cool stuff.
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Oops! "A Joe Pass nut..." I misread and thought you said your fist teacher was Joe Pass. I guess only Lee Ritenour and Larry Carlton have that distinction. Anyway, thanks for your suggestions.
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Yeah, I can dig that. I mentioned in a prior comment that I will stop and work something out when I stumble. But isolating a few bars to work on is a good idea. One could also do something like my friend and guitar coach Mark Stefani does for acquiring soloing vocabulary: a model solo. Just work the whole thing out, learn to play it to the point of internalization. One could also do what Earl Klugh did in his formative years. He learned quite a bit as a teenager from, as he says, "moving the needle back and forth" on Bill Evans records and figuring how to play Evans's chord phrases on guitar. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Ahh man! Never for me but that's a great thing ... Writing etudes for yourself. Very cool. I did have a guitar teacher who made me transcribe myself from time to time. A bit embarrassing, that.
god bless a man who can transcribe bill Evans chord voicings on guitar.
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That would be Sid Jacobs. He's got a collection of Evans tunes which he has arranged as closely as he can get to Evans's original voicings. I bought the thing, all excited, but found they were full of fingerbusting grips like my old teacher John Stowell favors, chords with close minor second intervals requiring a 6 fret stretch--you know, chords that hurt. I gave up on them pretty quickly. I think what Earl did was distill it down and try to get the essence of Evans's phrases and his approach to harmony. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Wow you took lessons with Stowell? I watched one or two of his videos but couldn't stay awake long enough to get anything out of it! Is he more animated when live?
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John's a brilliant player but tends to overwhelm when teaching. And he's a very cerebral guy. So no, he's not more animated in person. I only studied with him a short while. Originally Posted by richb2
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Speaking of John Stowell, here's a video of him playing in a trio. John is amazingly fluid in adding chord accompaniment to his soloing in this context. In watching this closely (and others like it, including the first video of Earl Klugh I posted) I can see how important it is to end your line on say the ring finger of your left hand such that you can grab at least two notes of a chord while letting that line note ring. Well, I guess that depends on what notes you're going to grab in relation to the line note. I see no way around actually working a lot of this out ahead of time and practicing such phrases such that they become internalized. It seem like one must develop a vocabulary of such phrases, at least to start, until it becomes second nature?
Last edited by Nylonstring; 06-06-2015 at 04:53 PM.
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Didn't read through the entire thread, but here are some things that I figured out that helped me when I was practicing this kind of thing a lot:
- It's easier to move from a chord into a line than the reverse. I like to start a lot of lines out with the top note of a chord.
- One easy way to do it is to practice putting chord stabs in the spaces between single-note licks rather than trying to actually play them both at the same time. So, you play a short lick, put the chord in between, then play another lick. Also serves a good function of forcing you to put space between your lines (for the chords).
- It seemed to me to sound best to use the chords to emphasize harmonic transitions. Just throwing a chord in occasionally sounded weak to me, but if you set it up so that you were using chords on the four and then one, transitioning between chords, it had a cool vibe.
- Don't forget that just a bass note under a line can really fill up the sound.
- Also don't worry about always playing the bass notes.
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Agreed, which is the way I've tended to do it. But earlier in the thread someone (who shall remain nameless) ...shall we say "took me to task" for doing that. I recognize that I do that too much. I also tend to always lead with the bass note in my solo guitar arrangements, so I'm determined to work on this. It just seems a daunting task at this point. Originally Posted by ecj
Thanks for your input.
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Hey Don, I checked out Alone Together on your youtube channel - nice playing man, and on nylon that's no mean feat. Originally Posted by Nylonstring
The chord melody solo you did after the single line solo was really good IMO but I think I see what you're saying in that you want to seamlessly move between the two modes of single line and comping rather than overly relying on - how should I put it - chordal playing with ornaments? Which is good for unaccompanied playing but doesn't take full advantage of the freedom you get with a trio?
I'm a pick player (straight ahead) and recently had a breakthrough with the 'comping while soloing' thing by increasing my rhythmic awareness by strongly internalising an 8th note feel rather than quarter notes. I don't mean for this to sound overly simplistic but here goes: most swing comps (think big band chord stab cliches) line up on a grid of 8th notes, as does the majority of single line playing. By internalising that eighth note feel in an uber obvious way I could more easily switch between single line and comping in a natural manner without having to think stuff like "Should I put a chord at the end of this phrase?" etc. It just 'happens', providing you can both comp and play single line separately and fluently.
Another aspect of transitioning from solo fingerstyle to trio would be knowing when to give up using your right hand thumb as an independent bassline/bassnote, and get comfortable with comping more like a pick player would (or Wes!) and let the rhythm section do the work while you free up your left hand more.
My2c
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Thanks for the compliment. And I think I know what you mean about giving up the reliance on my thumb. The more I play with the drums and bass backing tracks the more I'm seeing the opportunity to leave more space, both with the use of more staccato phrasing and not playing all the note of a chord, or leaving chords out. Originally Posted by 3625
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Thanks for the compliment. And I think I know what you mean about giving up the reliance on my thumb. The more I play with the drums and bass backing tracks the more I'm seeing the opportunity to leave more space, both with the use of more staccato phrasing and not playing all the note of a chord, or leaving chords out. Originally Posted by 3625
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Thanks Don. More than a cursory reading may have actually revealed some suggestions within my comments. And could have opened up the way for more dialog and perhaps some more ideas from my experience. Originally Posted by Nylonstring
I have taught for over 50 years. Had breakfast with and jammed with Charlie Byrd and others. Henceforth, I will burden you with my irrelevance no more.
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Just spent the whole afternoon with Band In A Box playing through some of my repertoire, blowing through the changes and focusing on making those chord punches, trying to let the last note of the line ring as I add those punches. It was a great exercise. About an hour into it I was really getting the hang of it. Having the chord changes there and highlighted as they progressed by BIAB was a big help and let me focus on the line and grabbing the chord. The last hour I was really starting to have a lot of fun with this. I appreciate everyone's suggestions...even (he who shall not be named) who left the thread by insulting me...for some reason I still haven't been able to figure out. But he nevertheless had some good suggestions which I am trying to incorporate in my practice.
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I'm sure you're right. And I didn't mean to dismiss you as irrelevant, if that's the way it seemed. I confess I was getting a bit frustrated as it seemed I was getting a lot of comments that appeared to be telling me that what I was trying to learn was unnecessary. I apologize for my clumsy way and poor manners. Originally Posted by rsclosson
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Great thread topic. This is stuff I think a lot about. Kind of obsess over it. Always want to have more of a feel of pianists comping with Melody in the right hand. To start, I'd have to agree with Jordan re. starting with fuller CM and peeling it back to being more sparse. The CM stuff teaches a lot of the lessons.
Personally, I think the easiest and biggest bang for your buck item would be to do more with planting and picking the melody note first in your CM voicings. 2 voices agriculture separately But really just one chord. It's a purely mechanical exercise in which you can make any tune you already know an étude of sorts. Plant/play the melody note finger and then comp the chord afterwards. Until you get used to hearing it , you can play the melody slightly before the beat with the chord following on the beat , but eventually you want kind of an offbeat , left-hand-piano trio sound.
You already do an excellent job of the reverse : planting the bass notes on & and then swinging into the rest of the chord on the beat. Really helps with getting an un-arranged sounding legato for CM. Some of these can be awkward and you have to kind of back into them, playing the preceding note or two in the context of the target chord.
Seems almost counterintuitive that this would help with improv, but like learning rote scale fingerings on the piano, eventually you learn to do them on the fly . Also like the piano, once you learn them it's pretty easy to break the rules and play things more just anyway you kind of can come by in the moment.
I'm really just a hobbyist, but I've played this way pretty much exclusively for three or four years. I hear a ton of players who actually play better than me in most respects , but can't articulate Jazz in a convincing way in the style you're talking about. I honestly think it's an independent skill regardless of your ability otherwise. I think most of the problems are with the articulations, which CAN be worked on.
Practicing everything separately is not going to get you there IMO. Anyway, good luck!Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 06-08-2015 at 06:33 PM.
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