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and its the capacity to produce genuine rhythmical surprises that makes armstrong great and prez and holiday - as well as sonny rollins, dexter gordon and bill evans
love that fact about dizzie's dancing - fantastic
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05-16-2016 10:44 AM
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am i right that birds very absent dad was - at least sometimes - a tap dancer?
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Yes, but that's not to sell short the very certain fact that all those players (and others as well) had genuine melodic surprises as well. Must be a preferential thing, but I disagree that rhythm is everything, or even more than 50% of the art of improvising. Good time certainly, swing, feel, groove, dynamics definitely. But I'd rather hear a Martino-esque line played in groovy unbroken straight 8ths, than someone "tap dancing" on a single note. Must be just me...?
Originally Posted by Groyniad
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you can plan an hour of talking in your head in a matter of seconds - if you know what you're going to talk about well enough
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
Yes, but that's not to sell short the very certain fact that all those players (and others as well) had genuine melodic surprises as well. Must be a preferential thing, but I disagree that rhythm is everything, or even more than 50% of the art of improvising. Good time certainly, swing, feel, groove, dynamics definitely. But I'd rather hear a Martino-esque line played in groovy unbroken straight 8ths, than someone "tap dancing" on a single note. Must be just me...?
no its not just you - and that's a nice argument to the conclusion that rhythm isn't everything
but no-one would say it was
it could certainly be true that the best way to make melodic surprises happen is to focus your ear on their rhythmical shape
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Re: pre-hearing solos--I can, sort of, but it's a very general idea, not a note for note transcription. Originally Posted by princeplanet
I bring "jam of the week" up here a lot because I want more JGF-er's to join, but this little weekly "assignment" has helped me think this way. So basically, i try to always record "cold," learn the tune basically, get the melody and changes, and then post a first impression as far as a solo goes, one chorus only.
So when thinking of just ONE chorus, I can get a virtual shape and think about where I want to play, register wise. Have sort of a framework in mind. No actual notes, just an outline.
It leads me to believe with more practice I'll be able to hear more detail.
Re: Can't hear it if you can't sing it--I agree with you completely. I can hear waaaay better than I can sing.
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As for just hearing something and playing it, I am reminded of perhaps the most famous transition into a solo in bebop history, Charlie Parker's "Famous Alto Break" in "A Night in Tunisia." Word has it that the band just couldn't sync with Bird on this and Miles Davis actually had to conduct.
It's hard to imagine just hearing this and saying, "Sure, I can play that..."
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Yeah, I may get back to singing whole or half note outlines (a la Bert Ligon) for a chorus at a time, then "filling in", first in my head, then sung, then played. If the ideas are slow and simple enough, I'm sure you'd get better and better with practice. Or sing the melody, and do the same, ie, fill in and around it. Pretty sure the average bebopper could do this in their sleep (probably literally !) back in the day... Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I think so... That reminds me that Barry Harris often compares playing piano to tap dancing.... Originally Posted by Groyniad
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Well you'd have to be quite thick to think that, no? :-) Originally Posted by princeplanet
Yes, but that's not to sell short the very certain fact that all those players (and others as well) had genuine melodic surprises as well. Must be a preferential thing, but I disagree that rhythm is everything, or even more than 50% of the art of improvising. Good time certainly, swing, feel, groove, dynamics definitely. But I'd rather hear a Martino-esque line played in groovy unbroken straight 8ths, than someone "tap dancing" on a single note. Must be just me...?
I would say even drummers are melodic to some extent.
Rhythm + pitches = melody.
Melody + bassline = 'harmony' :-)
It's kind of funny, I feel like this reductionist way of thinking - 'oh I must learn more language', 'oh I must study harmony', 'oh I must go and work on my time/feel' - the sort of things that jazz musicians say these days (including me) are kind of a bit stupid. As if you can separate, say Pat Martino's, harmonic sense from his rhythmic sense.
One guitar teacher once said to me - you can listen to all this old jazz, blues, swing - you will never hear any rhythmic weakness... He is right. It's pretty startling. They would rather play out of tune, fluff a note, stop playing... Anything but make a rhythmic mistake.
I do sometimes hear rhythmic weakness from current musicians, even well known ones.... It has to be something to do with education, the process by which we learn music now...
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I am reminded that Mozart transcribed the music to Miserere--a sacred song famously unpublished with the threat of excommunication--after hearing it once (per Wiki):
Three authorized copies of the work were distributed prior to 1770: to the Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold I; to the King of Portugal; and to Padre (Giovanni Battista) Martini. However, none of them succeeded in capturing the beauty of the Miserere as performed annually in the Sistine Chapel. According to the popular story (backed up by family letters), the fourteen-year-old Mozart was visiting Rome, when he first heard the piece during the Wednesday service. Later that day, he wrote it down entirely from memory, returning to the Chapel that Friday to make minor corrections. Less than three months after hearing the song and transcribing it, Mozart had gained fame for the work and was summoned to Rome by Pope Clement XIV, only instead of excommunicating the boy, the Pope showered praises on him for his feat of musical genius and awarded him the Chivalric Order of the Golden Spur.
He could also improvise like a demon.
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Listen to a little kid try to talk and all the pauses, because they are having to think of even the filler words, due to age and only short time talking. You plan points to make and order, but you don't plan every word a lot of that is just automatic filler words, same with driving you don't think of every move and look you just do them, and playing music a lot is automatic developed from years of playing and practice. Originally Posted by Groyniad
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How did Mozart learn music? Now there's a question that isn't asked much. Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
a lot of my horn playing friends talked about that sort of thing. Now don't get caught up in the language into thinking that means that you hear your whole solo from start to finish before you start blowing.
what it means is that they are conscious of the entire solo and want the entire solo to be an organic whole
yes, players do that. When Reg talks about "shapes" of solos, this is what he is talking about. A "Shape" is a method that can be applied to a tune. My word "method" is not precise, I'm just using a word to represent the idea that a "shape" is something that can be applied to a tune, rather than being specific to that tune.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Pretty much the same way all the old Jazz legends did too.
As I said in another thread people tend to look at thing thru current 2016 eyes and don't think about what things were really like for the person or some document was created. Something I read recently I found interest that when looking at the progress made in classical music over each hundred year period, jazz made similar leaps in progress, but in ten year time periods. So many environmental factors, but I think having records and radio are biggest factors.
Time for more coffee 2 get the synapses firing on the quest for nu paths thru changes.
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So, kinda OT, kinda not: A few years ago, I was diagnosed with ADD. They put me on Concerta, which is basically time-released Ritalin. For about a week, I felt AMAZING, and I had that experience of being able to see the whole solo before I played it. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Then I built up a tolerance and didn't feel it any more. I didn't react well to an increased dosage, so I ended up going off of it.
(I'm not suggesting you do speed to get this happening. It just fascinates me how weird the brain can be sometimes.)
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I don't think tal farlow put rhythm before note choice
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Mozart learned the rudiments of composition from his father. Since he surpassed his dad as a composer early on he probably did what most composers did---studied the scores of other composers. There's a great story about Bach. As a kid, he would bug his older brother to let him study the many scores he had in his possession. Of course his brother would not let him near them. So at night, while the brother was sleeping, he would sneak into his bedroom, lift the scores, and then proceed to copy them out, note by note by candlelight, then return them before his brother awoke. That's how Bach learned to compose---very much like jazz players transcribing solos. Incidentally, pretty much all of the great composers of the 18th and 19th centuries were incredible improvisers. Originally Posted by christianm77
Last edited by jbucklin; 05-16-2016 at 02:05 PM.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
rhythmical infallibility - nothing short of that - is what i get (like, in the face - i mean it totally blows my mind) when i listen to most great jazz musicians (and especially when i get to hear them in the flesh so to speak). it really feels like being in the presence of something out of this world. i.e. there's no such thing as perfect anything in the real world - so to come across people making music with perfect time is like coming across the impossible. its intensely thrilling.
i saw billy higgins for over two hours with cedar walton at ronnie scots - etc. etc. etc.
they cannot go wrong - oscar could not 'fall off' if ray brown pushed him (as he undoubtedly did one way and another quite regularly) etc. etc.
it can be compared to people who can speak really clearly - and perhaps wittily or exuberantly etc. - without faltering, on engaging and important themes. these people are never going to stammer or repeat themselves pointlessly or use obviously tasteless modes of expression etc. etc.
it is very rare in the world of talk (if you ask me)
but in jazz it is the norm - johnny griffin, and blue mitchell and kenny drew and jim hall - the question is whether you can find anyone who does not have perfect time (in the classic period)
the deal is - given you have perfect time, do you have a distinctive way of making it feel extra-good?
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tal farlow? still love him though Originally Posted by Groyniad
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Not sure, really. I heard him a couple of times in Dallas, and to be honest, the impression I got was that he had not really studied bebop. That's been 20 years, however. Maybe he realized later that there was something missing in his playing, and would explain why he insisted on his students becoming immersed in bebop. It's kind of like Stravinsky. Everyone was SO impressed with his early ballets, Firebird, Rite of Spring, etc.---everyone but Stravinsky. He felt like his pieces lacked form and structure, so he retired for awhile to study Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven and emerged from that study as a neoclassical composer. Dumbarton Oaks and Symphony in C are examples of that period. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Coffee! My favorite and only drug (now, anyway). And probably the safest and most effective motivating substance to use for practing hours on end. Who needs heroin? Originally Posted by NoReply
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I'd suggest you ask about Vyvanse. Amazing medication. Originally Posted by Boston Joe
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when i started i was playing just
fretboard shapes around the changes....
and was getting by but it was uninspired
now I can pre-hear a bit , a few things
so i can pre plan a couple of seconds ahead
sometimes ....
this is sooo much better cos you can shape
things , do hits accents etc ....
so i can imagine getting further ahead
with this stuff ....
I bloody love Reg's quote on this stuff ....
"if you're in the moment , you're late"
so true Reg
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Not sure I'd agree. You don't cut all those records with drummer-less trios without having very strong time. Also, if you study Tal's lines, he has an ability to anticipate changes, and start phrases within longer lines which are frequently launching off different beats within the bar, and yet always resolve, and express the changes perfectly. Originally Posted by joe2758
Furthermore, the oft-repeated criticism of sloppy execution in his later years is vastly exaggerated. Take a close (and objective) listen to the "Chromatic Palette" record to hear what I mean.
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