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Hi All
When improvising, how I can keep track of where I am within the progression? I find myself getting lost and end up in a "what chord are we on now" kind of situation.
Any advice?
Thanks
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05-18-2016 07:04 AM
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My high school jazz band teacher would yell at us: "If you can count, you should never get lost!"
I hated him.
Others may tell you, "If you're getting lost, you don't know the music well enough; study the chart!"
Are you talking about "standards," or more challenging compositions? I guess either way, practice using your ears as much as your eyes [and then eventually just your ears!].
Practice with a friend, too, so there's less pressure right away; stop when you get lost and (quickly) analyze how that happened, then jump back into the tune. And have fun!
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Are you playing with beginners?
Not to blame the "other guy" but sometimes working with people who are not clear about where they are can lead to train wrecks. First, find out who's to blame; individually and collectively.
Next, getting to know a piece is an ear thing. So if you can, try to be able to get through the form without the written music. This will also force you to get to know the piece by sections, phrases and by the character of the form.
Listen to the places where these phrases or form segments end. These are often marked by turnarounds, or places where the lyrics of the original song might breathe. And speaking of which, sometimes listening to a vocal version of a song can help you to know it better. The sung version is intuitively natural, apart from the naked underlying harmony itself, and a good thing to get your markers from.
Take a look at the piece and perhaps learn it in sections, so you can say "First 6 bars of All The Things...got it" and recognize the conclusion of that section as you would an old friend. Be able to recognize the transition and what's coming up.
Look forward to the next segment of a tune, and anticipate it. If you lose your way, learn to (by practice) pause and breathe. Learning to get your bearings under pressure is an art unto itself.
Each tune will have characteristic sections or phrases that mark it as unique. Green Dolphin has a descending bass line... Out Of Nowhere steps out of the key for a moment... that kind of stuff. When you know a piece, these are valuable markers. Listen for them. Stop playing, breathe and listen for them.
Listen to the form of the pieces from a recording to enforce your familiarity. Do this without the lead sheet.
Listen for the melody when you're playing chords.
Listen for the harmony when youre playing the melody.
Listen for the melody when you're creating your solo.
Listen for the chords when you're playing your solo.
Practice with patience and awareness.
Sing a solo line and practice playing a solo by making a solo without your guitar.
Create conscious phrases in phrase areas of the song form. Don't ramble through your solo. This is a deadly seduction into finger controlled playing and this will make it hard to hear your relationship with the song and the music.
Just a few things that help me. They may not be of use to you but they seem to touch on a variety of necessary skillsets.
David
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First of all, spend a lot of time playing through the tune. I read that Thelonious Monk would spend an hour playing a new tune over and over again. When he came to the end of the hour he would know the tune by heart.
Secondly, analyze the tune and break it down into key centers. Dominant 7 chords are what indicate what the key is---even more so than the tonic (just think up a 4th or down a 5th from the root of the dominant 7 chord). The ii chord (or ii half diminished for minor key centers) is not nearly as important as the dominant 7. I tend to think of them as a V chord with a suspended 4th since there's only one note that's different from a dominant 9th chord.
Take a tune like Stella---key centers are:
Dmi for the first 2 measures, Bb for the second two, Eb for the next 4 measures, and so on. Doing this will free you up so that you don't get bogged down with all the chords as they go by. You will notice that in the first four measures, the V chords do not resolve to a tonic. Even so, the dominant 7 chords are still the indicators of your key centers.
An easier tune to analyze is Autumn Leaves. The Real Book key is G. Key centers go between G major and its relative minor key of E minor. This would be a good tune to study if you don't know it already.
Have fun!Last edited by jbucklin; 05-18-2016 at 09:35 AM.
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I keep the tune running in my head and I listen to the bass player.
but it takes time and a lot of listening to jazz. I remember when I was a kid just starting out, when me and my best friend were listening to jazz on the radio, Sam could recognize the tune while the solos were going on without needing to hear the head. I had to hear the head, or I had no idea. I was really kind of in awe of how he could do that.
What my friend was doing was listening to the changes and recognizing the progression was a certain tune
so listen to a lot of jazz, but in particular listen to recordings of tunes you are going to be playing
then when you play, listen to the bass player and play off of what he's doing. Then if you keep the tune in your head, you know when the bridge and top of the form are.
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play the written melody interspersed with your improv eg 2 bars improv , 2 bars written tune , 2 bars improv etc
Originally Posted by JazzGuitar
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Learn the melody and lyrics. Never let them go; you'll never get lost, and you'll know when somebody else is.
It's that simple, according to Lester Young. All of this "thinking" and "analysis" will basically guarantee that you do get lost.
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Study the root progression and try to hear it inside your head while playing!
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Pianist Brad Mehldau wrote the liner notes for a Peter Bernstein CD, "Heart's Content". He also played on the CD. He wrote that Bernstein, even if he knew a standard, would go to the New York Public Library and get the original score of the tune, to make sure that he was playing it like the composer wrote it. It can be difficult to learn standards from recordings. You always end up playing someone's version of someone else's version, of someone else's version, ad infinitum. Of course most of don't live in New York and our public libraries probably don't have all those scores. But, what can be learned from this is that we need to hear and learn the original melody, and chord progression, of a tune. Some singers, such as Nat King Cole, usually sang the head the way it was originally written. As much as I love Billie Holiday, she rarely sang the melody. So, instead of scatting, she improvised by singing whatever came to her in the moment. Great ears!
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yes, knowing the lyrics can definitely save you Originally Posted by ronjazz
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Lots of good advice here.
I think it's very important to hear tunes and feel them as four or eight bar phrases, not chord to chord to chord.
This way, if you do get lost, there's a "movement" coming up for you to latch on to.
We all get lost sometimes. And anybody who says they don't has never played "So What" with someone who's taking too many choruses.
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I found this activity helpful for internalizing the form of a given composition in an organic way.
Using the software Transcribe, I would loop the theme from an mp3.
I would use this as a backing track to practice soloing against.
Also, I would reverse the process, loop a chorus of solo and practice playing the melody against it.
It can be particularly challenging when you can find full chorus drum solos.
This of course works only when the solo form matches the song form.
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Thinking in 4–8 bar phrases really helps a lot , especially in forms which have one chord for a long time, like that one. Beyond just hearing it though, you can establish rhythmic patterns/grooves which simply CANNOT be satisfied in one or two bars. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Listen to the old blues riff chorus tunes from back in the day. The simple riffs they use for heads are rhythmic patterns which do exactly this. C-jam blues has a lot of one chord most of the time, but is hard to get lost if you feel that basic riff. You can use the same ideas for comping and soloing.
Most of us tend to think one measure at-a-time at the beginning.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 05-18-2016 at 12:13 PM.
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A good bass player can really help here. A wee hint of a turnaround every four bars. A little bit more of a turnaround every 8 bars. A full turnaround at the end of the form. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I just make sure I know the form, if not, I like a chart to look at.
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regarding getting lost....remember that it can happen to the other guys too, so if you feel like a soloist is fishing around, that is the time to throw them a rope and help them out. Play simple and try and feed them an idea of where you are.
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Good point.
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Listen to the drummer too. Drummers tend to indicate upcoming changes in a section.
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If you are reading off a paper lead sheet, one can use a yellow highlighter to mark transitional passages such as the beginning of "B section" or chorus, or repeat signs. I also sometimes highlight key words in lyrics on the sheet music as a guidepost if I 'get lost' momentarily. It does happen.
Of course I agree about keeping a lyric going in your head if you are not singing aloud and thinking in terms of four or eight bar phrases rather than measure to measure. This is important because it is important to anticipate where you are going. Things go much smoother.
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Tune is a tune is a tune. You have to know the form, which usually equals couple 4 - 8 bar chunks. Each chunk has own dynamics, so usually you can know something's to repeat, or to change. You can always memorize in simplest possible version and improvise from there, no need to memorize complicated, pre-arranged versions, unless it's agreed within the band to do so, in which case you can write it down in a comfortable manner, or you can use some book, but then you'd have to learn to read it and to edit on the spot, so to match other band members books, if needed.
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Just play one note for 32 bars. Works like a charm.
John
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I'm not that particular Sam but I am Sam and I approve this message! Originally Posted by Nate Miller
There's a lot of good advice here. My point is, "Go broader and go finer." Feeling the tune is about feeling the 16th notes and feeling the eight-bar phrases; feeling the choruses and feeling the entire piece from intro to end. If you're getting lost on the beats or bars, the chances that you are building a coherent, musical solo in whole are slim.
The forest, the trees. The grass, the continent. The 16ths, the stave. The chorus, the piece, the set, the concert. On a certain level it takes countless milliseconds. On another level it's all one big unit. Both are truth -- feel them both!
We now return you to, "Neck pickup height -- side-adjusters or string-pole screws?"
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Internalizing the melody and chord roots helps pull me through if I'm getting lost (or if a bandmate seems lost). I'll sometimes practice humming or singing the melody while playing just the roots of each chord. Then I might practice humming roots while playing the melody. Practicing just roots and melody on guitar (without the rest of the chords) can also help lock them together.
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I don't have any concrete advice that hasn't already been given, but I have found that getting lost is something that really subsided when I started going to jam sessions regularly. Just the experience of playing through unfamiliar tunes week after week gets you good at feeling four- and eight- bar "chunks". (Of course, someone may call a tune like "Infant Eyes." In that case you need to count or follow VERY closely.)
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