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Originally Posted by NSJ
TBH I wonder if this isn't a classic bit of ebb and flow. You learn lines and language and changes running and then you get dissatisfied with that, and focus on something else for a bit.
The Barry Harris stuff, in the way that I practiced it maybe, can get a bit 'boxy.' I don't blame Barry for this, more my method of practicing the material. But OTOH it does give me plenty of nice licks I can play.
Bernstein advocates flexibility in practice, making sure that you don't just play an idea but also experiment with variations on it. This is not something you can ask of a beginner. You have to be able to play to a high enough level already to do this. Until then licks are far from the worse thing you can do.
That's why internet advice and video masterclasses are kind of useless in a way. There is no advice which generally applies right across the board. Everyone here is simply documenting their own process.
TBH I couldn't imagine a more different jazz player from PB than Tim Miller. Your ears and your own tastes will govern which approach you find more appealing. But I think every top player will emphasise the importance of knowing the tune.
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01-03-2017 09:15 AM
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Ya, one has to go through a long period of initial heavy lifting for a protracted period on the learning front until one finally arrives at a point where it's possible to discern what type of player one wants to be, what fundamental direction to take, what the fundamental approaches should be, how one views music in a discriminating way, et al.
I feel like, for myself, I think I have finally arrived at that fork in the road, where I finally am discovering who I am as an individual playing music. Finally, some clarity: fingerstyle, pianistic, counterpoint, poly-rhythms are not just words, any more.
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Originally Posted by goldenwave77
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Motown... Jamerson played with Barry back in Detroit, you know. :-)
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Originally Posted by NSJ
This is a Sonny Stitt performance that Carol Kaye loves and uses as an example of how great Sonny Stitt was. (She's a big fan.)
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
I think I'm a bit bored with changes running personally ATM. But that's not to say changes running is a bad thing per se. I think I've just got pretty good at it and I'm running into it's limitations as a way of thinking. I don't like the way solos can end up sounding samey in my case. Also, it pushes me a little into running eighths which to me gets old fast.
I've heard a lot of people be a bit sniffy about Stitt, including Barry Harris who played with him quite a bit haha. I've always enjoyed his playing, although I do hear people who describe him as a tidied up Charlie Parker.
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Originally Posted by bako
Melody is king and in some ways rhythm is subservient to it. I love funk and consider myself to be basically a funk player with jazz chops and at times a definite country feel but imo the best funk has got a strong melodic element even if it's just a simple phrase. Being rhythm driven, melody used to take a back seat in my playing but these days I spend lots of my shed time reading and playing heads. It's made a huge difference.
Not that we're trying to be Pop artists here but very few Pop songs that I'm aware of haven't had an interesting melody or been in anything less than perfect time (by human standards anyway).
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Originally Posted by mrcee
Pop as in an ethos rather than a style of music? I'm all for that. What can we do in 3 minutes?
I feel every jazz musician should play a bit of groove music and do some pop work. It's so important. It's not like it's easy to play pop well. Jazzers coming into a pop session for the first time play too busy...
You have to think like a pop musician, not a jazzer. But then taking the pop song/arrangement/simplicity thing into jazz is great. I always think some of the old Blue Note records have a lot of pop sensibility in them. They are coherent statements, good records, not just good jazz.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
This has been posted in several other threads, but what Barry Harris says about guitarists and the scale of chords seems useful here.
I'm talking about the section from 51m17s to 55m10s (though I think the whole video is gold):
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Sticking to melody = good.
Change running using unbroken 8ths to express a harmonic concept = bad.
See, now that you read it like that, you don't agree, right? - and nor do I.
We've all heard soloists who never stray too far from the melody that can sound dull.
We've all heard soloists who run long lines and play everything but the melody, and they can sound mind blowing.
To insist that melody is always king seems as pointless as insisting that playing fast is wrong, and that playing slow is best. Of course it is in some cases. Of course it isn't in other cases.
I sometimes get the feeling when there's strong agreement on these forums it's because many of you guys are striving to be competent players of Standards, playing to what's left of any "jazz circuit" that's left out there.
Sure, the few hundred standards everyone plays remain an important backbone to anyone's oeuvre, but people as early as Parker were taking these well known Standards, and doing their best to hide the original melody!
So just wanted to add that, for some of us, how you swing, or how you address the changes in a compelling way (or not) can be more important than whether you allude to the melody in any way. If you played like Eric Dolphy might have over "Misty" for the weekend wedding gig, it very well may be inappropriate, but it doesn't mean it's bad, or wrong, right?
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Sounds good to me. Contributes greatly to my perception of all that is possible playing a song.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
New Music Society 3 Mid 50s | Charles McPherson
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
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@ bako - Haha! Way to prove me wrong! I actually hear plenty of melody in those excerpts, which probably served to make it a great listen.... Would have felt peeved, if not for the fact that listening to both these was a sublime experience, as it usually is when we listen to Dolphy. What an extraordinary musician!
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
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I enjoy trying to 'nail the changes' at tempo like anyone else (and I dig Sonny Stitt!) , but I also found Peter Bernstein's advice in his masterclass interesting. So I have been trying to improvise more around the melody (or at least with some reference to it). It's actually quite refreshing because it stops you playing your usual lines, and it makes you think more in shorter 'motifs' and maybe put more rhythmic spaces etc. into it. I got some nice ideas out of it and at times I was getting a bit of a 'Jim Hall' vibe which was cool.
So definitely a worthwhile exercise for me, has added something else to my playing I think.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
"""You have to think like a pop musician, not a jazzer. But then taking the pop song/arrangement/simplicity thing into jazz is great. I always think some of the old Blue Note records have a lot of pop sensibility in them. They are coherent statements, good records, not just good jazz."""
I couldn't agree more with the above paragraph.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Interesting about Carol Kaye, Christian. She talks about "patterns" and "phrases" a lot, not so much about running changes. She has a ii-V-I sheet (around 24 bars, I think) that she asks students to play 2-3 times a day, but I don't think I've ever heard her use the phrase "guide tone" or give an exercise like the "connecting game" (in Joe Elliott's book) where you link one arpeggio to the next by the nearest available note, which is a great way to learn the arpeggios in a given position (or from a particular scale fingering) She's pretty dead-set against analyzing things. (!) "Play, don't analyze" could be her motto. (Yet she definitely knows her stuff.) But yes, she is very much a pattern player. (At the same time, she created her most famous basslines---they weren't written and given to her. For one session with Quincy Jones, the direction was "play E minor" and she played what seemed good to her, and it turned out very well indeed.)
My own sense---not of Stitt or Carol Kaye, but of what I like in jazz---is that I tend to prefer "linear" players to "harmonic" (or "vertical") players. Perhaps more to the point, I like those players who (as Jack McDuff taught George Benson) "put a little blues in everything."
You know, I think Coltrane was a more dazzling horn player than Miles, but I would rather hear Miles play. His solos fit the tune. Coltrane tended to put everything he could play over a set of changes into every solo. I find it exhausting. Yet his tone thrills me. I feel it. I love his sound. But his solos go on too long for my tastes. (My favorite record of his for the past decade is the one with Johnny Hartman singing. Beautiful stuff. Their "My One And Only Love" is among my Top Five jazz performances of all time. Perfection.)
Here's a nice bit of Benson with Jack McDuff. I love this vibe.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
There's a world of difference between listening to a skilful, hip variation of the tune and a player waffling because they don't know how it goes....
* also singers often embellish the vanilla tune too. First time round, I mean.Last edited by ragman1; 01-03-2017 at 02:22 PM.
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Play it like a good singer, I was told. Not Christina Aguilera.
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Sounds like throughout the thread we're talking about maybe a couple of different things at times? There's "melody" and then "THE melody".
As for the maths, I'm actually really glad to have learned some of the mechanics of developing my own melodies with enclosures, chromatics, pulling from other key centers etc.etc. Creating melody is not as much of an elusive , artistic, soft science as I used to believe, where you're arbitrarily putting notes together however they seem to sound good.
I don't know. I don't think knowledge of the mechanics of it makes me necessarily LESS creative or melodic. You still have to do something with all of our of course.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 01-03-2017 at 03:29 PM.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Scenario: Wayne State Univ. in the 50's.
OLLIE: "Hey, I hear there are some pretty good musicians down at the college...wanna check them out?"
STAN: "College...huh....how good can they be?..I mean really...what are you trying to get me into, Ollie?".
OLLIE: "Now, Stan...education is a fine thing. I hear they have a specially talented group...the New World Music Collective...so perhaps you should consider it."
STAN: "Do these college students have names...and what do they play?"
OLLIE: "Well, I am glad you are not close-minded...let's see...some guy named Burrell on guitar...and some guy named Donald Byrd on trumpet....and some guy named Jones---that's Elvin Jones on drums....and some guy named Lateef on sax and flute, ...peculiar name...Yuseef is his first name...and oh yes, fellow by the name of Adams on baritone sax...calls himself Pepper."
STAN: "Well perhaps they're worth a listen...I hope this is not another fine mess you're getting us into."Last edited by goldenwave77; 01-03-2017 at 07:07 PM.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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The basics are of the utmost importance. I was hanging out at the house late one night with a young cat in his twenties who was a decent player on a number of instruments. His dad was a pro. He was focusing on the keyboard and had some chops and theoretical knowledge. We were just hanging out and tossing some things around. I showed him a very basic scale exercise that he wasn't familiar with. He was a humble guy and said that he really should have known that and said that he'd learned more in a half hour with me than he had in years. And I'm not even a teacher. It was just that he'd never focused on the basics. I talk to people every now and then that are interested in taking lessons. I'll ask them how long they've been playing. If they say a month I'll tell them that I'm not great with rank beginners. If they say a couple of years or more I'll ask them if they know the names of the notes on the fretboard. If they don't I'll tell them to learn them at least up the seventh fret and then give me a call.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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