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I've been keeping up with the program pretty regularly, although I can no longer reliably hit Robert's target speeds.
For the past year, I've been playing with the same group of guys once a week--they're all old timers, mostly better than me. They don't offer false compliments, to say the least. Last night, the piano player said my chops were getting better.
I should have said, "You mean my SUPERCHOPS?!"Last edited by dingusmingus; 06-20-2017 at 08:54 PM.
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06-20-2017 04:07 PM
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Targeting the 3rd. What a great idea! I think the greatest anchor I carry with me into a solo is playing without intention. It's also closely akin to playing through the fingers. And yes the fingers have got to know the joy and confidence of moving in time, the music comes from design and intention. Finding a note to set an appointment with is a brilliant idea, and one that gives a purpose to every note before.
Do you guys find that upon reaching your target note, you articulate it or treat it differently?
I know it's hard to play rhythm when your assignment is to play steady, but it can be done, rhythmicizing a line even when the notes are steady. I'll just say if you can begin to feel this, it could change everything.
Yeah, dingusmingus, around this time people are going to start finding their wall. That wall that separates "Easy peazy... almost boring..." and "Whoa! I suck!" ha ha. Hopefully working steadily and with individual personal melodic goals in mind, there's an inertia and a relationship you never had with your instrument. That's going to be there for you to build on each time you play.
Too, I have NEVER been an advocate of the weekly deadline (ironic, eh?) so I watch my biorhythms more than I watch my tempo goal. Everyone has their own pace of assimilation and with persistence, everyone reaches the end. At that point, it doesn't matter one iota how long it took to master your facility on the instrument, you're in the club. This 20 week course is just one bus going to the clubhouse.
How's everyone doing on the form? Don't be afraid to shift your positions to follow important key area changes, and let your ear be the guide (despite HR outlining them his way), and feel the joy of the shift. It's a real help in getting strong ideas out, believe me. Tonalities have strong finger positions that bring them out. If this idea is elusive, speak up. We can digress here. Heh heh.
Listen to Charlie Parker's Blues for Alice. Have fun!
David
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This week the changes are similar to week 10's project but we're in the key of G for the week.
The GOAL speed has increased to 120 by the end of the week.
These goals were intended to bring you to a solid speed by the end of the program, but please keep in mind that you set your own goal and really, the goal should always be to improve your own comfort zone and to KEEP PLAYING ON A REGULAR BASIS.
Over the many years I've been playing and enjoying playing guitar, I've met a lot of guitarists on the journey. I've seen SO many different approaches to acquiring skills: The obsessive technician, The theory librarian, The seat of the pants ear player, The semi-serious armchair expert. I've seen people from each category (and more types) achieve great and exceptional things.
All types of people have become really great players. But... maybe only a quarter of those that start get to that point where they're good enough to be happy calling themselves players, and even less have the ability to really employ their imagination with satisfaction.
The biggest factour I see is simply to desire to commit and stay with it. There is nothing that can withstand the power of the human imagination when applied with integrity.
So if the speed isn't there right now, it's not supposed to be. It's you and the guitar. You're on the way.
I've included examples this week too, to take a peek at and see what HR offered. Have fun!
David
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Welcome to week 12. From here on in, all the work we've been doing really starts to show and the things we get in our fingers begin to turn into things we'll notice. This week's changes are relatively easy as far as what we've seen, but the speed is a challenge. Don't worry if the target speed is beyond your "clean playing" speed, it's only a target. Set it as fast as you can to play cleanly and with a sense of thoughtful awareness.
It also might be helpful to strive to have an active list of devices and approaches (pick a shape, a target note, a motiv you've just played and develop it, plan a reverse direction or create and arc...) and practice these things in your warm up.
I'll try to mention some thoughts through the week, and if you have some questions regarding your own challenges in the project this week or any other time, please feel free to post them. I can try to discuss them with some musicians in my town when I see them and hopefully form some kind of virtual round table discussion of topics.
If you're just quietly watching your chops muscles grow, congratulations! I do welcome your affirmations too.
David
Here's week 12:
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Back in the saddle and looking forward to tomorrow.
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What's going on with the C section? Is HR being explicitly prescriptive with using F blues scale? Also, are the second lines of A and C just repeats of the respective first lines?
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Yes. The form is pretty open and take this opportunity to use your ear, think of ways to play over familiar sounds; try different approaches.
Originally Posted by wzpgsr
Because the forms are more open, more like modal vamps than tight changes, you can pay attention to giving yourself an idea over the course of several changes, and again, letting your ear get into the process.
I put the HR example in there this week so you can get some ideas of what might be done, but see what happens with new ideas: make patterns, try thinking of phrases, try small four note groupings that fall outside of the triplet form, try ideas that cross the bar line, make a decision to take a line up the scale to a point and then come down with an arpeggio, make an idea out of a limited group of notes and see if you can develop that given the restrictions you have, take a simple motif (folk tune snippet or something) and see if you can include it; then see if you can develop it... things like that.
There are things now that you never would have gotten to, and things you feel with your hands and the guitar that you never would've reached had we not brought them up through the program. Anybody can improve their abilities on the instrument and you're reaping the benefits of commitment. Now develop your ear along with it and make the instrument your own.
The following weeks after next week will be a process of pulling everything together, so this is really laying a foundation and then putting it together. Exciting times ahead!
David
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Any ideas on what tune this week's changes are based on?
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Here's what I've become aware of. Probably obvious, but hitting chord tones on the strong beats is an entirely different beast with triplets than it is with 8th notes. Probably because I've never practiced it before. Now, I'm no master of this with 8th notes either, but I realized that I have been "superimposing" my normal 8th note stuff into triplets, which means I am not really hitting chord tones on each strong beat. So something new for me to be aware of. This came to me during my time away from the guitar last week, and was easily confirmed once I started in on 6A.
David, you have written a lot in about pick-ups in the Fishman etude thread so I had been pondering this anyways. But while away from the guitar I was reading Hal Galper's Forward Motion. I am now starting to hear the one and three as stopping points instead of starting points, and taking Hal's quotation of Miles as sage advice: "everything is a pickup." I haven't spent enough time with this concept to even start to scratch the surface, but I am now listening to recorded jazz with that in mind, and working on training myself to be thinking ahead instead of behind to the current measure.
My weaknesses are really starting to become apparent, and I have started a list of things to work on outside the 50 minutes. Access arpeggios within scale fingerings and do so without thinking, same with triads, and now, thinking ahead instead of behind, and hearing the target ahead of time, rather than starting with the target and floundering around.
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Woah! That's something that takes years for people to get! Some players go their lives without getting that revelation and there's nothing that can get you there except by immersing yourself in the flow of the creative process and grabbing it. Originally Posted by wzpgsr
Yes. That's amazing. Thank you so much for those thoughts. In my wildest dreams, this is the greatest hope that anyone can get through just playing...just playing. Thank you Howard Roberts.
This concept of breath, of a dominant chord inhaling and then exhaling into a resolution, this idea of ascending flowing into descending, of chords being paired into a balanced line, it seems to come more naturally to horn players than guitarists (in my observation). Well, a trumpet player does have to create a line of urgency and resolve that though because (s)he's got to breathe and the phrase is non negotiable.
I was working with another thread and talking about phrasing, and encouraging some experimentation about imparting meaning and elegance to a phrase.
Think of a line as being made up of a conscious beginning, something that will impart a unique character or at least a character of intention. Follow that up with the substance that makes up the body of the phrase. End it with intention and decisiveness. Well, that's not so easy with steady triplets but once you start to think that way, what's that going to mean to the solos you make?
I'm having a ball digging through this material and I really appreciate the revelations and insights we're all sharing. So unexpected and exciting.
This all began on another thread Commitment, enticement and satisfaction as a key to accomplishment and maybe after the 20 weeks runs its course, we can continue this idea with a tune a week focusing on solo construction from slow to fast through the week.
I don't know. Could be fun. We'll have some chops to work with if we do, anyway...
Cool
David
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Welcome to week 13! At this point, we've been pushing into new territory in terms of dexterity, thought/hand coordination and tempo. There're also be lots of musical ideas that will become assimilated just from the regular process of playing. Please feel free to share ideas with us all.
Like last week's project, this week will be a more open ended opportunity to concentrate on our playing facility. This will also be the last set of NEW changes in this 20 week program. Starting next week, we'll be using the weekly projects and changes we've encountered up 'til this point and applying more options so we can really explore the creative possibilities.
Included here are the HR ideas he did as a guideline.
Have fun-
David
But first this week's changes:
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One quick observation: in the second measure of the F blues section, the chords move from C#m7 to F maj on the and-of-2. I've found it tricky to make my triplet-based melodies sound good over that rhythmic incongruity. It makes sort of a rhythmic hiccup.
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I'm officially out of the book on this tune the first night. Feels good--a lot more free. I think I will be able to increase the tempo quite a bit this week because I won't be staring at the chart.
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The homestretch and revisiting our past with new abilities.
This week we're taking the kinesthetic (finger abilities) and ear abilities and revisiting project forms we've worked with.
Have fun and share your thoughts and observations. Please!
David
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This has been the most fruitful week for me so far. I started out at 42 bpm and have been able to increase by Roberts' recommended 2 bpm per day through five days. I am starting to be a lot more successful at incorporating some of the work I have been doing outside of this study group with enclosures and approaches, playing ahead towards target tones with pickups, Barry Harris scale stuff, Hal Galper's "forward motion" concepts, etc. I'm hearing more interesting accents on the triplets, making occasional wider interval leaps, moving around the neck a lot more, making less mistakes, and just generally feeling like I'm making some noticeable progress. I'm looking forward to the upcoming weeks in which we get to stretch out a bit with hammer-ons, pull-offs, and mixing triplets and 8ths. Here's two choruses from my second run-through from this evening. Triplets at 50 bpm. Need a string change. Need to learn not to pick so damn hard when I'm excited.
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Wow! Great! I was going to post something during the week about the 14th week review. For all those who've been following the program, and especially those who've been with us but feeling the pressure in finding the time to follow through each week: There is only one way I can see, to become someone who not only knows all sorts of stuff about jazz guitar but can actually play it; that is to play.
Simple as that. Turn off the clutter, the distraction and find the time to make yourself into a really good player. Choose the way you want to do it but for as long as jazz guitar has been around, the lovers are many, the players are few. The difference is in the doing. I do believe that.
In going through the Roberts program, and every time I re-visit it, I'm forced to see just how much my own ignorance and limitations were keeping me from finding a baseline with so much more potential. When my hands can have the choice of playing faster, then all the options that kept me back are revealed and new things opened up: Thinking on the fly, hearing changes and knowing what to do, playing slower with a greater awareness, seeing cliches approaching and making choices not to go there, making musical connections in different previously unknown parts of the fingerboard, building my own vocabulary, discovering instrumental form (those things that are unique to guitar and allow you to greatly expand the ease of expression), confidence to embrace new approaches (playing in fourths, different intervals, breaking up a linear approach with octave transposition, use of non diatonic notes, that kind of thing), and of course just the familiarity that a good ear grows from. Yup, better chops really helped me to hear better. Hard work and a higher threshold of playing, a broader vocabulary helped me to hear real time music in greater detail. I can go see live music and enjoy their musical choices better. Well there's much more but those are just a few thoughts about how facility on the instrument changed me.
Kinda neat, this 20 week package to facilitate one's natural growth. The next few weeks should be a lot of fun. Time to enjoy the hard work.
Have fun
David
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Amazing how much of a fumbling idiot an additional 2 bpm and a key change can turn me into!
I've been focusing on the tritones sub in the harmony and related resolutions the past few sessions. It's pretty cool being able to apply one dominant idea to a tritone sub in the harmony and develop a totally different sound--diminished scales, Lydian dominant, altered scales, half-step resolutions to chord tones in the I or i chords.
This practice regimen is fantastic. It's got me tackling things head-on, which is so much more productive than noodling. Tunes, man, tunes!Last edited by wzpgsr; 07-18-2017 at 10:34 PM.
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Hey dudes, I've returned from my travels and am back with an instrument in my hands. I started back at Week 10 this week, so I'll be lagging a little bit behind you guys, but still in the mix in some capacity.
The first day or two was a bit rocky, but soon I was back more or less where I left off. I found it hard to keep the discipline for straight triplets -- I kept wanting to blast off into different rhythms -- but I persevered. These 10 minute segments are still by no means easy, but the course is really making a shocking impact on my fretboard awareness and overall comfort with melodic possibilities.
I'm absolutely down for this. (Though of course I'll be a few weeks late starting.) Originally Posted by TruthHertz
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Welcome back! I was recently practicing lines without the guitar, partly inspired by your guitar fast, and I've got to say it's a great exercise. Originally Posted by Jehu
Let us know your progress!
David
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Here's the part we've all been waiting for! So it doesn't matter how close you are to the program maximum (150), we're working on your own personal clean upper end limit.
We're going to go to the chord forms we've covered before and were going to keep to steady eighths or triple groupings. You mix 'em up and let the lines combine both types of notes as you please.
Yes, it's back to challenging changes that'll really give you serious standards negotiation skills. Hang in there and really push yourself to make the changes. And I'll be honest, at this point, I'm not necessarily using the voicings in the book but my own choices are basic and open for soloing possibilities.
Our work up to this point has been laying a lot of foundations in your fingers and you've pushed your kinesthetic abilities to this speed. Now let's see what we do with it!
David
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Jehu
Hey dudes, I've returned from my travels and am back with an instrument in my hands. I started back at Week 10 this week, so I'll be lagging a little bit behind you guys, but still in the mix in some capacity.
The first day or two was a bit rocky, but soon I was back more or less where I left off. I found it hard to keep the discipline for straight triplets -- I kept wanting to blast off into different rhythms -- but I persevered. These 10 minute segments are still by no means easy, but the course is really making a shocking impact on my fretboard awareness and overall comfort with melodic possibilities.
Originally Posted by TruthHertz 
This all began on another thread Commitment, enticement and satisfaction as a key to accomplishment and maybe after the 20 weeks runs its course, we can continue this idea with a tune a week focusing on solo construction from slow to fast through the week.
I don't know. Could be fun. We'll have some chops to work with if we do, anyway...
I'm absolutely down for this. (Though of course I'll be a few weeks late starting.)
Hi guys, I have been following this thread and have been using the HR "concept" in my practise. My approach has been a bit different from the start, but I do see the benefits of really practising 8'ths and triplets this way. I would also be interested to continue with this idea for tune a week or something similar. A week might be too little time for me though. Also after summer I have more time to practise.
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I wanted to mention something that could really change the way you hear and approach these weekly sessions, and that's acquiring a good swing sense. I was waiting for the week when we began combining the eights with the triplets.
These projects can be done with straight eights and they can also be done with swing eighths (in the broadest terms, that's like a triplet with the first two notes tied into one longer note and a shorter note). For me, once I acquired a swing feel in my eighths, the note choice and even the way I heard notes and movement changed. That's all Ill say, but give this a try, epecially if you've been using straight eighths. The transition between triplets and swung eighths might reveal something profound that can change your playing.
Just something to keep in mind.
David
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Sounds like a plan, David. The straight eighths are rather mind-numbing after 14 weeks.
Tonight I hunkered down and focused on thirds again. Adopting an exercise from early in Hal Galper's Forward Motion, for the first several choruses I just sat on the third of each chord, in triplets. Then I added chromatic approaches from a half-step below. Then a diatonic approach from above.
For the second ten minutes, I targeted the thirds of each chord on beat 1 of the measure, and approached with whatever I felt like. There were a lot of long double chromatic approaches from above and below as I adjusted on the fly to make sure I would hit the third of the upcoming chord on beat 1. Interestingly, I seem to be able to do this at slow tempos without much effort. Not sure if this really counts as hearing ahead because it's so damn slow, but it's a good start.
Third ten minutes I just let 'er rip.
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I'll also note that even though I was essentially noodling my approaches to the thirds, just targeting this one tone seemed to add a bit of structure and logic to my improv. I can see how hearing more chord tones ahead will only add to this feeling of structure.
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I'll note that if you're going to try the exercise with a swing feel, set your metronome to half of what you would for the quarter note value, so a 150 target would be a 75, and hear this as 2 and 4. Practice this until it's absolutely unshakable. If you haven't done this before, it'll take getting used to. If you get this, it'll change your life.
David
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