the huge barrier between scales and arpegios and jazz language

[christianm77]

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 .

Well as Mr Predictable, there is an academic course of study: Barry Harris is your man - check out his improvisation stuff here (I'm not talking about the chord/harmony stuff - that is completely separate before anyone starts talking about the major 6-dim scale.). At least if you like bebop. The David Baker books are good too. Used in combination with transcription I find this stuff incredibly powerful.

Roni Ben-Hur has some good starter lessons on this and his book Talk Jazz is good. The real gold is in the DVDs though.

You go from simple patterns to fully fledged bop lines in clear steps. It's like magic. All based on a few simple scales. Rhythm is very important here.

In terms of modern stuff - well a lot of it can be pretty random (several high profile modern players advocate practicing scales at random rather than in patterns alone) and the other side is strict intervallic patterns through the mode etc. Very often you get intervallic patterns sequenced through the scale. Usually sits on top of a good command of conventional bop language, so I'd start there. Most modern style players to me sound like a fusion of bebop and more modal concepts.

[christianm77]

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....

Yes... The best jazz was produced in the era 1920s-1970. To me that's as near an objective fact as anything in music.

If someone disagrees with this (usually to say there's loads of people who are really good at playing jazz and doing new things with the music, which is true) it doesn't alter the fact, and anyone who argues against this knows this in the pit of their stomach. Much of what made that music GREAT was the social situation and the era in which it happened. That can't be recreated by even the most talented musicians. If Louis came back today and played how he played in the 20s, it wouldn't be the same (I disagree with Wynton here.)

We all form our complicated relationships with this music formed by that knowledge.

[dingusmingus]

Well as Mr Predictable, there is an academic course of study: Barry Harris is your man - check out his improvisation stuff here (I'm not talking about the chord/harmony stuff - that is completely separate before anyone starts talking about the major 6-dim scale.). At least if you like bebop. The David Baker books are good too. Used in combination with transcription I find this stuff incredibly powerful.

Roni Ben-Hur has some good starter lessons on this and his book Talk Jazz is good. The real gold is in the DVDs though.

You go from simple patterns to fully fledged bop lines in clear steps. It's like magic. All based on a few simple scales. Rhythm is very important here.

Christian,
Sorry if this is a side track, but could you say a little more about this? When you talk about "simple patterns to fully fledged bop lines in clear steps. It's like magic. All based on a few simple scales" are you talking about the Baker books? The Ben-Hur books? Harris videos? All of the above?

I've checked out the Baker books, but only at a superficial level.

[joe2758]

I can vouch for the barry harris stuff. when the pasquale grasso masterclass came out I got super into the chordal stuff (6th dim scale etc), so I got a subscription to jazzschoolonline which specializes in barry harris methods for guitar (our own alan kingstone) and piano. But anyway, today I'm watching the improv/single note stuff and it's legit

[christianm77]

Christian,
Sorry if this is a side track, but could you say a little more about this? When you talk about "simple patterns to fully fledged bop lines in clear steps. It's like magic. All based on a few simple scales" are you talking about the Baker books? The Ben-Hur books? Harris videos? All of the above?

I've checked out the Baker books, but only at a superficial level.

I was talking about the Barry Harris stuff. It's all stuff like 1-7-1, 7-1, play the arpeggio up, then come down, scale in thirds, scale in traids, scale in chords, start on the off beat, and so on using the added note rules, etc. All very rapid fire..

Best way to learn it without being there in person, I think, are the DVDs.

[dingusmingus]

I was talking about the Barry Harris stuff. It's all stuff like 1-7-1, 7-1, play the arpeggio up, then come down, scale in thirds, scale in traids, scale in chords, start on the off beat, and so on using the added note rules, etc. All very rapid fire..

Best way to learn it without being there in person, I think, are the DVDs.

Ah, got it. Thanks!

[ESCC]

While I don't think many of us will ever be satisfied with our playing, the best we can hope for is to hate our playing less and less with each passing year. We need the patience to trust that years of heavy lifting (arps, scales etc) is the foundation we need to build upon, but also the realisation that there is a helluva lot more work to do once we "know the alphabet"....

My own journey has been something like:

- learn every scale in every position

- learn every arp in every position

- learn to combine them in etudes (eg, arp up, scale down against tunes like ATTYA, Cherokee etc)

- Tell myself I'm a loser for wasting my life (failing at sounding like a Jazz player) ....

- Do a ton of transcriptions, mostly horn players from Hard Bop era

- Decipher my favourite devices that players are using (language)

- Learn to use devices instead of scales and arps

- Realise that scales and arps help me to discover my own devices

- spend several years incorporating chromaticism around chord tones and extensions

- simplify my strategies by dividing material into Tonic and Dominant classes

- Solid work on substitutions and inside/outside playing

- Solid work on picking techniques (alternate and eco), working up all my etudes up to 300 bpm

- Apply all that I know to tunes that I like

- Tell myself I'm still a loser, but getting better....



It's been a wild and wacky ride so far and I'm addicted to the ongoing challenge, so I don't mind that I've learned certain things out of order. After all, they say there's more than one way up the Jazz mountain...

PrincePlanet, you must be 120 years old by now to have made that journey!

[Boston Joe]

PrincePlanet, you must be 120 years old by now to have made that journey!

Most people (myself included) don't have very efficient practice routines. Clearly PP does, and therefore he's left the rest of us in the dust.

[Reg]

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 .

Hey...mooncef,

It's not that complicated... 1st you need to have separation between practicing technique and Performance.

They both need to be practices. There is no gap between technique and "language", (not really my choice of words)... but who cares.

Performing doesn't have any relationship with technique, except, lack of technique to perform, or speak whatever Language you want to speak through the guitar etc..

Your expressing yourself within the frame work of Tunes, generally needs to have organization, by that I mean you need to be aware of different approaches of creating solos, there are many.

A simple approach to start is to have target notes. That can be organized, again in many ways, but there is lots of standard usage. Generally that's all melodies are.... collections of target notes, with reference to harmony, a chord and then connected.

Take any short chord progression, create a lead line on top of each chord. Don't even worry about the organization of why you like what ever notes you like.... just make some choices and be able to repeat those choices.

Pretty simple.... have a chord progression with lead line from top notes.

Now start filling in the space, again don't worry about the organization yet.... just fill.
Hint... think of possible chords that can connect the dots,(lead line notes). Use arpeggio patterns to approach and connect the notes. The point is your going to create an approach for creating relationships, (the leadline and the arpeggio filler)... then develop those relationships.

The big picture... your becoming aware of references and relationships... and how to develop them, that's a huge part of what playing jazz is about, the next and almost more important detail.... the spatial thing. The FORM of what you play fits within the space your performing in....The better you organize the spatial thing, the better your performances will groove, feel etc...

So your technical practice BS... your skills need to be practiced, you need a level of technical skills. And then when you practice Performance, using different skills, more of what I guess you call language(s), anyway, you need to practice the technical aspects of performance. I gave you one simple approach or technique for performance...

Another... be aware of the difference between.... memorizing performance and being able to perform. The last 20+ years...there is way too much memorizing performance. And is shows.

[princeplanet]

Most people (myself included) don't have very efficient practice routines. Clearly PP does, and therefore he's left the rest of us in the dust.

No! I haven't been efficient at all! Practically no-one as self taught as myself could be! Plenty of wasted time obsessing over unimportant stuff (and probably still am!). I'm not 120 years old, but even if I was, there'd be plenty left to learn, that's for sure....

[princeplanet]

.... memorizing performance and being able to perform. The last 20+ years...there is way too much memorizing performance. And is shows.

Interesting observation Reg. Can you expand? Maybe point some fingers?? (not at us!)

[targuit]

I think that the ears are getting short shrift here. Isn't part of what you do when you play a standard to try to communicate the song in terms of melody, harmony, and rhythm? In that sense you attempt to create a coherent representation of the song. One's ears are critical.

In performance or recording, I'm leading with the melody in a harmonic and rhythmic context. Because I sing, I use my voice often for the melody part. The guitar covers the bass and rhythm. Arpeggios are one way of playing an accompaniment, hopefully with some sophisticated voice leading. One issue is being technically able to execute on guitar what you anticipate in your mind.

What happens in the woodshed includes playing scales for dexterity and evenness of tone, analyzing chord progressions, and for some voicings. I qualify that last part because at a certain level voicings become 'second nature' in terms of voice leading.

But scales are only tools to develop your technique to enable you to play what you hear or at least anticipate. Scales are not playing jazz anymore than shooting practice hoops from the foul line are playing basketball. But if you can't shoot half decently, you're not ready for the NBA.

[princeplanet]

I think that the ears are getting short shrift here. Isn't part of what you do when you play a standard to try to communicate the song in terms of melody, harmony, and rhythm? In that sense you attempt to create a coherent representation of the song. One's ears are critical.

Ears, ears, ears.... If you play Jazz, you get ears. It starts when you practice scales and arps, it's where we learn to predict intervals. Some like to practice ear skills independently from "finger" skills, but I've come to realise that you can't divide them in determining what you are as a musician. If you can scat sing great, but can't play what you scat, does that make you a great guitar player? Conversely, if you can play technically dextrous things but cant sing along (at least in your head with real "control"), that doesn't make you a great guitar player either.

So it's where the ear intersects with the fingers - that's the Venn diagram that represents the musician you are. But it's even more subtle and complicated than that because of the circular influence they have on each other, the ear influences the fingers, and in turn the fingers influence the ear. In much the same way that language influences thought as much as thought influences language.

It's this mysterious symbiosis that we can never fully understand, and as artists we don't really need to, just trust that it happens and look forward to it's fruit. It's not the "ears" alone, just as it's not the "fingers" alone, it's the symbiosis of the two, it's the, now get this - the "Fing-ears"!

[Jazzism]

Think a lot of the pedagogy for practice is sometimes not linked to performance. Take some well meaning advice like ,play a scale in 12 positions all over the neck. Ok great! Now that kind of practicing might be ok for a one chord vamp but how do you transfer that to playing on tunes where the harmonic rhythm might be a new chord every 2 beats. That type of practice does not prepare you for the demands of these tunes. So practicing in isolation can be a bit time wasting.
Other well meant advice. Practice scales around the circle of 4ths. I find this type of practice lazy, in that every time you change keys only 1 note changes each time. It might be more beneficial to practice going round the cycle with combinations of Maj 3rd/ Min 3rds as each time you change keys 3 or 4 notes change each time.
Another one: Play from the root of the scale on the 6th string or 5th string up to the root 2 octaves away. Again do you play like this when you perform. If so, its going to sound lame. how does this type of practice prepare you for performance? I think there is a lot of merit when playing on chords, starting a line and then changing to the appropriate note as the chord changes. Melodic voice leading, i guess!
Cheers

[princeplanet]

... I think there is a lot of merit when playing on chords, starting a line and then changing to the appropriate note as the chord changes. Melodic voice leading, i guess!
Cheers

Yes, I'm sure I "wasted" thousand of hours just running scales and arps in arbitrary orders, when practicing the same things, but within musical contexts (tunes) from the get go would have ingrained better habits (for the ear and the fingers)...

[dortmundjazzguitar]

Yes... The best jazz was produced in the era 1920s-1970. To me that's as near an objective fact as anything in music.

i call BS on that one. this is a statement that is either based on an agenda (wynton) or a complete lack of knowledge of 70s jazz. the fact alone that woody shaw recorded his first album as a leader in 1970 proves this statement wrong.

surely you must have heard of people like eric kloss, paul bley, pat martino, michael brecker, jerry bergonzi, chick corea, keith jarrett, pat metheny, steve grossman or labels like cobblestone, muse, etc pp. not to mention the european scene and labels like ecm. elvin's live at the lighthouse is from 1972, rememberance is from 1978 ffs. can you say with a straight face that this stuff isn't up there with the "best" jazz?

i see this as actual attempts to alter history. the "jazz died after 1970" was initally used to discredit miles' electric phase. denying people like woody shaw their proper place in jazz history seems to be an added bonus for the revisionists. plz do not parrot that shit.

[christianm77]

i call BS on that one. this is a statement that is either based on an agenda (wynton) or a complete lack of knowledge of 70s jazz. the fact alone that woody shaw recorded his first album as a leader in 1970 proves this statement wrong.

surely you must have heard of people like eric kloss, paul bley, pat martino, michael brecker, jerry bergonzi, chick corea, keith jarrett, pat metheny, steve grossman or labels like cobblestone, muse, etc pp. not to mention the european scene and labels like ecm. elvin's live at the lighthouse is from 1972, rememberance is from 1978 ffs. can you say with a straight face that this stuff isn't up there with the "best" jazz?

i see this as actual attempts to alter history. the "jazz died after 1970" was initally used to discredit miles' electric phase. denying people like woody shaw their proper place in jazz history seems to be an added bonus for the revisionists. plz do not parrot that shit.

Please reread my post carefully.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Think a lot of the pedagogy for practice is sometimes not linked to performance. Take some well meaning advice like ,play a scale in 12 positions all over the neck. Ok great! Now that kind of practicing might be ok for a one chord vamp but how do you transfer that to playing on tunes where the harmonic rhythm might be a new chord every 2 beats. That type of practice does not prepare you for the demands of these tunes. So practicing in isolation can be a bit time wasting.
Other well meant advice. Practice scales around the circle of 4ths. I find this type of practice lazy, in that every time you change keys only 1 note changes each time. It might be more beneficial to practice going round the cycle with combinations of Maj 3rd/ Min 3rds as each time you change keys 3 or 4 notes change each time.
Another one: Play from the root of the scale on the 6th string or 5th string up to the root 2 octaves away. Again do you play like this when you perform. If so, its going to sound lame. how does this type of practice prepare you for performance? I think there is a lot of merit when playing on chords, starting a line and then changing to the appropriate note as the chord changes. Melodic voice leading, i guess!
Cheers

Of course it's not linked solely to performance. Otherwise, it's NOT practice! It's just playing by yourself. Working things in isolation, and with repetition, is the best way to improve individual elements of anything involving motion basically. This is backed up by generations of anecdotal evidence , as well as real hard data, in things like music and athletics.

Are there people who never get around to APPLYING things to the real world contexts? Sure. But that doesn't mean they should spend all of their time "performing only".

Simply playing music (or scrimmaging in athletics) is NOT necessarily the most efficient way to practice, and it's definitely not more efficient. There's a huge fallacy in this idea, which pops up all the time, that you should ONLY practice things exactly as you would play them in the real world.

[Jazzism]

Nope, I never said people should spend their time just performing. You either did not read my post carefully enough or your just making stuff up. I do think that performing gives you valuable feed back about what you should practice and to how to tailor your practice to meet the demands of what you are trying to do!

[dortmundjazzguitar]

Please reread my post carefully.

seems like i mis-interpreted you? probably due to my english and the fact that i do think that there are quite a few objective facts in music. certainly historic ones, which the wynton camp got quite wrong.

[christianm77]

seems like i mis-interpreted you? probably due to my english and the fact that i do think that there are quite a few objective facts in music. certainly historic ones, which the wynton camp got quite wrong.

Cheers, thanks for that.

I felt I could spend a page re-explaining, but it seemed like you were responding to the statement 'jazz is dead' (which TBF, I have made on occasion) rather than the statement '1920s-70 jazz is culturally the most significant' which is probably how I should have phrased it.

I would think the second point is less controversial and if you do happen to disagree with this, you are kind of arguing against this statement to start off with.

Anyway, I don't think the music can be completely separated out from the historical/social context that it occurred in... Duke Ellington, Bird, Louis etc were who they were because of the time and place they lived in as well as their musical genius.

Assuming the level of musical talent hasn't declined (presumably there are more geniuses now then in the 20th century, because there are more people) the fact that we don't seem to have figures of that stature any more in jazz must have something to do with other factors.

Anyway, I'll start a new thread.

[dortmundjazzguitar]

Cheers, thanks for that.

I felt I could spend a page re-explaining, but it seemed like you were responding to the statement 'jazz is dead' (which TBF, I have made on occasion) rather than the statement '1920s-70 jazz is culturally the most significant' which is probably how I should have phrased it.

i responded to the statement "the best jazz..". which, you must admit, does not equal "culturally most significant".

i don't think i'm equipped to enter a debate about cultural significance, but that probably wouldnt stop me from arguing that the muscial activities of jazz musicians like stevie wonder, quincy jones or nile rodgers were culturally more significant that the total body of john coltrane's work.

[guitarplayer007]

Yes that Bebop site teaches how to approach the chord tones all different ways, he also analyzed some of John Coltrane solos and see how he uses chord tones.

[christianm77]

i responded to the statement "the best jazz..". which, you must admit, does not equal "culturally most significant".

i don't think i'm equipped to enter a debate about cultural significance, but that probably wouldnt stop me from arguing that the muscial activities of jazz musicians like stevie wonder, quincy jones or nile rodgers were culturally more significant that the total body of john coltrane's work.

Could you do me a favour and repost this on the other thread? I want to answer your post properly but don't want to totally derail this thread. Thanks!

[mastodonovan]

If i could do it again I'd have spent the first year really getting inside birds blues and rhythm changes. Slowing them down and being aware of the harmonic rhythms and what alterations to the chords they are implying(and applying). Then taking that through multiple keys. All by ear.

Transcribing: who's feel do you like the most? Who phrases melodies on the guitar in a way that you really love? There's no perfect player, everyone has something to offer. These questions will help you understabd yourself. For me it's Grant Green and Wes Montgomery if i had to pick just two. GG's Idle Moments is what really knocked me on my ass.

Jam sessions: go to every jam session and play as much as you can and hang out, leave your ego at the door and don't get discouraged by unwelcoming people. write down the tunes being called that you don't know, you dont have to learn them all right away but start listening to them.

It seens like you've done all the technical home work. Maybe just focus on getting inside the music now.