the huge barrier between scales and arpegios and jazz language

[JazzinNY]

I just think it's all about transcribing. Look at the solo. How much is arpeggios or straight scales? Not much.

I think it's a straight-out myth that jazz "is" playing chord tones.


And as for the self-hate, take a look at "Effortless Mastery", a book I like more and more.

[matt.guitarteacher]

I just think it's all about transcribing. Look at the solo. How much is arpeggios or straight scales? Not much.

I think it's a straight-out myth that jazz "is" playing chord tones.


And as for the self-hate, take a look at "Effortless Mastery", a book I like more and more.

Okay, but chord tone soloing isn't just playing chord tones . The techniques used in chord tone soloing /targeting are easily seen in all kinds of classic solos. Speaking of transcription, you might
check out Bert Ligon teaching material. He takes transcribed lines and analyzes them, reworks them using assorted devices, variations etc..

[MarkRhodes]

Okay, but chord tone soloing isn't just playing cjord tones . The techniques used in cord tone soloing /targeting are Easly seen in all kinds of classic solos. Speaking of transcription, you might
check out Bert Ligon teaching material. He takes transcribed lines and analyzes them,reworks them using assorted devices, variations etc..

Bert's got a lot of good stuff at his site (and in his books). Including transcriptions. (Some that he did, others that have students have done.) His "outlines" teaching has given a lot of people "a-ha!" moments. And in my experience, if you email him a question, he'll answer it.

[Cunamara]

The issue the OP is raising is one of conception. Scales and arpeggios are of limited help with conceiving something to play that isn't a glorified scale or arpeggio.

1. Learn melodies. Soloing is playing a new melody. Getting an intuitive grasp of a bunch of melodies will help unify your soloing. Learn them by ear, not from sheet music.

2. Develop your mental ear by putting the guitar down and scatting solos long with records.

3. Pick up the guitar and simultaneously sing and play a line. A lot of musicians do this.

4. Play a solo over a song, singing and playing it.

[matt.guitarteacher]

The issue the OP is raising is one of conception. Scales and arpeggios are of limited help with conceiving something to play that isn't a glorified scale or arpeggio.

1. Learn melodies. Soloing is playing a new melody. Getting an intuitive grasp of a bunch of melodies will help unify your soloing. Learn them by ear, not from sheet music.

2. Develop your mental ear by putting the guitar down and scatting solos long with records.

3. Pick up the guitar and simultaneously sing and play a line. A lot of musicians do this.

4. Play a solo over a song, singing and playing it.

Ok, but it's not an either/or proposition. The great songwriters and soloists we all look up to played the crap out of arps and scales as well. You're not going to learn to solo by ONLY playing arps, but I don't think anyone is saying that. The above linked Clifford Brown practice session illustrates the kind of work that great musicians do using very specific musical devices, which are basically "arpeggio 2.0" - types of targeting devices. Basic arps are only the beginning.

I don't think you learn to play at THAT level by just practicing melody in an arbitrary way.

[Groyniad]

the great musicians were far too into MUSIC to spend much time playing drills and patterns

0----

but its not quite as simple as that is it?

i'm sure that e.g. bill evans, charlie parker, chet baker, sonny rollins spent most of their time 'on' tunes (i.e. working with a tune in one way or another)

but there's not doubt in my mind that e.g. coltrane spent a very great deal of his time practicing patterns and drills - and then he tried to find musical vehicles for the patterns he had drilled. and he started a musical revolution that way.

i'm not into that thing myself.

----

so if you want to sound a bit like mid-late coltrane then patterns and drills have got to be your thing

but if you want to sound at all like chet baker then maybe not

--- i want to sound like chet baker a lot more than i want to sound like mid-late coltrane

so that is what shapes my views on a topic like this

but it really is very complicated because you could perfectly well describe a kind of practicing which sticks closely to tunes as one which involves practicing patterns and even scales.

on my view you need to be always working out how to make something musical happen - say at a given point in a given tune. so if you find and repeat certain patterns you can immediately put them to concrete use.

[Groyniad]

i find there's a big stagnation point when i did my scales and arpegios home work , i was disapointed there was some big GAP between the theory knowledge , intervals and the real jazz language , and this GAP isn't filled by any academic curricula , it's something each one should find out on his/her own.
i think it could be very inspiring if we share how we overcame that GAP between scales arpegios and the language . i personaly still haven't , i struggle jut follow the harmony and in the same time express myself within the framework of the tune , including some chromatisim and target strong chord tones did emprove my phrasing just a tiny bit , but i'm still uncoherent , my phrases make up a frankeinstein at the end , no meaning whatsoever , i sometimes hate myself and think of taking a break to change my ideas .

i get this man - i really do

the best thing i've done is learn to sing lots of the solos that i love. mostly bird - but also e.g. rollins and wes and evans

i did this mostly without realizing i was doing it - in the car - on my own so no-one could hear me (though they could see me at times and i bet i looked seriously insane)

after months of playing the same bird solos the whole time in the car i could sing through pretty much all of it

[Groyniad]

i think that bird's blues heads and choruses are by far the single most important source of musical ideas for jazz musicians that the tradition offers

you can focus just on his blues heads and the odd 12 bars of improvising

learn to sing it all first

[matt.guitarteacher]

God help any newcomer reading threads like this one. For the sake of proving a point, we make extreme statements which sounds a lot like, " don't practice arpeggios. you don't need them. " Or , "don't practice scales. you don't need them". If that's NOT actually what we're saying, maybe we need to tone down the hyperbole.

The fact that great players didn't play two octave arpeggios or two octave scales IN SOLOS is beside the point. I'm pretty confident they could all play the crap out of arpeggios and scales!

Are we saying that Clifford Brown was an aberration? In the above example, again, he's working melodic patterns IN ISOLATION......PRACTICING.... and not just playing melodies or someone else's solo its entirety.

[MarkRhodes]

Shawn Wallace talks (with a student in a practice room) about how he uses patterns. Used to play through Oliver Nelson's "Patterns for Improvisation" cover to cover every day as a warm-up.

And here he is playing a very tuneful solo.

I'm inclined to think that he would say his mastery of the former helped him realize the latter.

[MarkRhodes]

This is a large, detailed, and widely acclaimed study of how jazz musicians learn to improvise:

Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, Berliner

>>>>....The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world, Thinking in Jazz combines participant observation with detailed musicological analysis, the author's experience as a jazz trumpeter, interpretations of published material by scholars and performers, and, above all, original data from interviews with more than fifty professional musicians: bassists George Duvivier and Rufus Reid; drummers Max Roach, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Akira Tana; guitarist Emily Remler; pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris; saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Lee Konitz, and James Moody; trombonist Curtis Fuller; trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Art Farmer, Wynton Marsalis, and Red Rodney; vocalists Carmen Lundy and Vea Williams; and others. Together, the interviews provide insight into the production of jazz by great artists like Betty Carter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker.....<<<<<<

[goldenwave77]

Look, I'll respond here because it's possible my earlier comments are being misconstrued.

I don't think anyone is really saying---don't learn/practice arpeggios and/or scales.

But what CAN happen is that people start in on the jazz journey, and they are told "learn arpeggios, and "play chord tones" or sometimes they are using instructional materials that do this.

Then they start drilling and after about 3 months of drilling (or sometimes more), they wonder ...when does the music start, and why do I sound so mechanical?!

Mark, our moderator, has relayed his experience with a teacher that sounds a lot like this.

Other people have started in on the Joe Elliot "Introduction to Jazz Guitar Soloing" book/training protocol, and they draw an incorrect conclusion---namely....this intermediate state of affairs, the "use of the training wheels" is how you do it, for all time....now Joe Elliot in that book is pretty clear that the arpeggio "connecting game" is a first step, and not the whole process...and that the goal is to come up with your own phrases (licks), and the initial use of strict arpeggio tones can be relaxed, once the chord tones are learned.

That is the point. But I think there are probably a fair number of people who fall by the wayside, either with instructors or more commonly, if they're trying to work on their own, because the interim "training wheels" approach is given a status it doesn't deserve, and never deserved.

And it sounds like the OP was maybe at that point, and he probably wasn't the first to think that. Instructors don't commonly say, though maybe they should, "YOU need to get this stuff under your fingers, and into your ears...but it is just the beginning of becoming decent....and certainly not the end...but it is something that probably every competent improviser had to learn at some point or another. So for a while, dig in and learn this stuff, but also be working on other stuff...learning tunes, analyzing licks, transcribing, etc."

[princeplanet]

....
I'm inclined to think that he would say his mastery of the former helped him realize the latter.

I'm inclined to agree!

[pkirk]

This is a large, detailed, and widely acclaimed study of how jazz musicians learn to improvise:

Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, Berliner

I didn't think so much of this book. Jazz is too deep and broad a subject for any one book to even scratch the surface, and I didn't get the impression that the author knew that much about jazz, and so took as gospel whatever tidbits the people he interviewed told him. It reminds me of the Ken Burns Jazz series in that way.

I think Ethan Iverson's blog contains a lot of the best writing and analysis of jazz, and Ted Panken's site has some of the best interviews which often shed light on how the music evolved.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Look, I'll respond here because it's possible my earlier comments are being misconstrued.

I don't think anyone is really saying---don't learn/practice arpeggios and/or scales.

But what CAN happen is that people start in on the jazz journey, and they are told "learn arpeggios, and "play chord tones" or sometimes they are using instructional materials that do this.

Then they start drilling and after about 3 months of drilling (or sometimes more), they wonder ...when does the music start, and why do I sound so mechanical?!

Mark, our moderator, has relayed his experience with a teacher that sounds a lot like this.

Other people have started in on the Joe Elliot "Introduction to Jazz Guitar Soloing" book/training protocol, and they draw an incorrect conclusion---namely....this intermediate state of affairs, the "use of the training wheels" is how you do it, for all time....now Joe Elliot in that book is pretty clear that the arpeggio "connecting game" is a first step, and not the whole process...and that the goal is to come up with your own phrases (licks), and the initial use of strict arpeggio tones can be relaxed, once the chord tones are learned.

That is the point. But I think there are probably a fair number of people who fall by the wayside, either with instructors or more commonly, if they're trying to work on their own, because the interim "training wheels" approach is given a status it doesn't deserve, and never deserved.

And it sounds like the OP was maybe at that point, and he probably wasn't the first to think that. Instructors don't commonly say, though maybe they should, "YOU need to get this stuff under your fingers, and into your ears...but it is just the beginning of becoming decent....and certainly not the end...but it is something that probably every competent improviser had to learn at some point or another. So for a while, dig in and learn this stuff, but also be working on other stuff...learning tunes, analyzing licks, transcribing, etc."

I agree with most everything said here, but that's my point: that IS the conversation to be had . I think it's actually what people are trying to get at when they say " just play tunes , and quit with all the scales "or " you never hear the greats playing an entire solo of arpeggios/scales", but I don't think that's what's inferred by people who haven't played for 30 years.

In the last seven or eight years I've read these kind of statements hundreds of times. They're intellectually lazy bombs just dropped off in threads like this; points made by extreme hyperbole without filling in the unspoken bits that others may not be aware of. Guitar players are the only ones who talk about this idea that "you don't need to know scales".

I've spent some time studying material from noon guitarists, and what I'm struck by the most is that there's an assumption that you already KNOW your scales and arpeggios. Many of the ideas presented in the works of Bert Ligon, Jimmy Ahmadi etc. actually sent me back to the woodshed to firm up fretboard knowledge on certain scales and arpeggios.

Again, I think horn players already know all of these, just like reg is always saying . We just don't have our basic stuff together as guitarists. I don't think we're crippled by TOO MUCH time spent on fundamentals. Maybe a lack of application, but again, that's a separate conversation.

We need to be having more conversations in the vein of what Goldenwave is saying here , but NOT in PLACE of fundamentals.

[dingusmingus]

I didn't think so much of this book. Jazz is too deep and broad a subject for any one book to even scratch the surface, and I didn't get the impression that the author knew that much about jazz, and so took as gospel whatever tidbits the people he interviewed told him. It reminds me of the Ken Burns Jazz series in that way.

Hmm, I got an awful lot out of it, though I haven't gone back to it recently. I especially appreciated the discussion of how learning vocabulary, or licks, can eventually lead to creativity.

I think Ethan Iverson's blog contains a lot of the best writing and analysis of jazz, and Ted Panken's site has some of the best interviews which often shed light on how the music evolved.

Yes, Iverson's blog (until recently called "do the math") is great! https://ethaniverson.com/

I dont' think I know Ted Panken. Thanks for the recommendation!

[pkirk]

i find there's a big stagnation point when i did my scales and arpegios home work , i was disapointed there was some big GAP between the theory knowledge , intervals and the real jazz language , and this GAP isn't filled by any academic curricula , it's something each one should find out on his/her own.
i think it could be very inspiring if we share how we overcame that GAP between scales arpegios and the language . i personaly still haven't , i struggle jut follow the harmony and in the same time express myself within the framework of the tune , including some chromatisim and target strong chord tones did emprove my phrasing just a tiny bit , but i'm still uncoherent , my phrases make up a frankeinstein at the end , no meaning whatsoever , i sometimes hate myself and think of taking a break to change my ideas .

Part of the problem might just be your goals are not precise enough. What "real jazz language"? You want to sound like Wes? Al Dimeola? or maybe Derek Bailey? Early Miles or Late Miles? etc.

Knowing scales and arpeggios are important, knowing how chords are built and move is important, knowing lots of chord voicings and smooth voice leading is important, but without a solid command of the history of the music and thousands of hours of careful listening they don't get you that far: your lament appears frequently on this forum in various guises.

Assuming your goal is to blow convincingly over standards in the style of jazz in the 50s, then having a serious command of the blues side of the language is critical, in particular weaving blues cliches in and out of "chord tone improv." You also need a solid command of using altered notes on V chords, one easy approach is to think tritone sub.
And of course, without the proper rhythmic feel *no* perfectly crafted sequence of notes will ever sound like jazz. and any tentativeness will also sound lame: you have to have forward motion in your soloing, and this includes strong and accurate rhythmic ending of your phrases.


And then, there is the issue of putting coherence into your solos. Mechanically calculating the "right notes" in steady 8th notes, i.e. being a computer program that plugs the scales/arpeggios into the harmony is just one small part of what it takes: but you need all the other things that make music interesting: loud/soft, fast/slow, tension/release, melodic/mechanical, metronomical/floaty, 8thnotes/triplet/doubletime, etc, and of course, the hardest of all: "telling a story." Another important aspect is addressing different tunes differently. How many players can play changes "accurately" in the sense of hitting all the right notes but still sound boring after a while because they use the same devices on every tune?

I'm just thinking out loud here. I thought I had the arpeggio/scale/language thing down 30 years ago. I still hate my playing sometimes, but it is less because I don't like my note choice and more that I don't address these more subtle items to my satisfaction. But I can hear things much more deeply than I used to, and so I have some moments that I think work well.

So rest assured that if you are like me, the longer you go at it and the better you get, the more you will realize how lame your playing is ;-)

[pamosmusic]

i think that bird's blues heads and choruses are by far the single most important source of musical ideas for jazz musicians that the tradition offers

It's funny --- whenever I run out of ideas to practice I go back to just turning all my technique work into Bird heads. I just recently did that again. Sort of a "reset" button. I work on them really slow in all positions and keys. Transpose them to different chord types or change the interval spelling of other chunks. I've been checking out Barbados and Steeplechase lately.

[pkirk]

I dont' think I know Ted Panken. Thanks for the recommendation!

here's the link

https://tedpanken.wordpress.com

[princeplanet]

I didn't think so much of this book. Jazz is too deep and broad a subject for any one book to even scratch the surface, and I didn't get the impression that the author knew that much about jazz, and so took as gospel whatever tidbits the people he interviewed told him. It reminds me of the Ken Burns Jazz series in that way.

I think Ethan Iverson's blog contains a lot of the best writing and analysis of jazz, and Ted Panken's site has some of the best interviews which often shed light on how the music evolved.

Iverson and Panken are just 2 of a great number of contemporary writers (and players) that write lucidly about the current scene, as well as reflective pieces where the past is re-evaluated through contemporary goggles. But it's not fair to compare these guys to what Berliner was trying to achieve with "Thinking In Jazz". Diff'rent strokes, no?

And for all the hatemail it generated, I still think Ken Burns' series was worth the price I paid for it. You can't stop people's fascination with the Golden Era, 1930 to 1970 was INSANE! Even though it's a slap in the face to all of us trying to find meaning through Jazz in 2016....

[princeplanet]

Part of the problem might just be your goals are not precise enough. What "real jazz language"? You want to sound like Wes? Al Dimeola? or maybe Derek Bailey? Early Miles or Late Miles? etc.

Knowing scales and arpeggios are important, knowing how chords are built and move is important, knowing lots of chord voicings and smooth voice leading is important, but without a solid command of the history of the music and thousands of hours of careful listening they don't get you that far: your lament appears frequently on this forum in various guises.

Assuming your goal is to blow convincingly over standards in the style of jazz in the 50s, then having a serious command of the blues side of the language is critical, in particular weaving blues cliches in and out of "chord tone improv." You also need a solid command of using altered notes on V chords, one easy approach is to think tritone sub.
And of course, without the proper rhythmic feel *no* perfectly crafted sequence of notes will ever sound like jazz. and any tentativeness will also sound lame: you have to have forward motion in your soloing, and this includes strong and accurate rhythmic ending of your phrases.


And then, there is the issue of putting coherence into your solos. Mechanically calculating the "right notes" in steady 8th notes, i.e. being a computer program that plugs the scales/arpeggios into the harmony is just one small part of what it takes: but you need all the other things that make music interesting: loud/soft, fast/slow, tension/release, melodic/mechanical, metronomical/floaty, 8thnotes/triplet/doubletime, etc, and of course, the hardest of all: "telling a story." Another important aspect is addressing different tunes differently. How many players can play changes "accurately" in the sense of hitting all the right notes but still sound boring after a while because they use the same devices on every tune?

I'm just thinking out loud here. I thought I had the arpeggio/scale/language thing down 30 years ago. I still hate my playing sometimes, but it is less because I don't like my note choice and more that I don't address these more subtle items to my satisfaction. But I can hear things much more deeply than I used to, and so I have some moments that I think work well.

So rest assured that if you are like me, the longer you go at it and the better you get, the more you will realize how lame your playing is ;-)

Great post. Cheers.

[Boston Joe]

This is a large, detailed, and widely acclaimed study of how jazz musicians learn to improvise:

Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, Berliner

>>>>....The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world, Thinking in Jazz combines participant observation with detailed musicological analysis, the author's experience as a jazz trumpeter, interpretations of published material by scholars and performers, and, above all, original data from interviews with more than fifty professional musicians: bassists George Duvivier and Rufus Reid; drummers Max Roach, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Akira Tana; guitarist Emily Remler; pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris; saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Lee Konitz, and James Moody; trombonist Curtis Fuller; trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Art Farmer, Wynton Marsalis, and Red Rodney; vocalists Carmen Lundy and Vea Williams; and others. Together, the interviews provide insight into the production of jazz by great artists like Betty Carter, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and Charlie Parker.....<<<<<<

Terrific book. I'd recommend it to anyone. A bit dry but full of great perspectives.

[Boston Joe]

And for all the hatemail it generated, I still think Ken Burns' series was worth the price I paid for it. You can't stop people's fascination with the Golden Era, 1930 to 1970 was INSANE! Even though it's a slap in the face to all of us trying to find meaning through Jazz in 2016....

I enjoyed the series, but I do tend to think of it as "The Gospel According to Wynton."

[Boston Joe]

For me, there was a significant milestone in realizing that arpeggios and scales, while valuable tools, are just ways of organizing collections of notes. Understanding this allowed me to stop thinking about the collections, and focus on the effect that individual notes have in specific contexts. This allowed me to understand how substitute chords and scales can be used, and to be able to hear them in a musical (rather than purely mechanical) way.

I probably could not have come to this understanding without a period of being hyper-focused on scales and, later, arpeggios, but it was necessary for me to "come out the other side" of that focus as well.

[Groyniad]

It's funny --- whenever I run out of ideas to practice I go back to just turning all my technique work into Bird heads. I just recently did that again. Sort of a "reset" button. I work on them really slow in all positions and keys. Transpose them to different chord types or change the interval spelling of other chunks. I've been checking out Barbados and Steeplechase lately.

that sounds like a fabulous method - super-musical and very very effective i'm sure.

its all so rhythmically satisfying - every idea is like a new tap dancing move (or something)

they're so rhythmically perfect that you can slow them down indefinitely and they maintain their identities and appeal