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More than he would about Funky Meters, but that's a horse of another color.
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
John
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12-19-2017 12:44 AM
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A lot of guys I know could get through 20 or maybe 50 standards without needing to peek at a chart.
But, most of the gigs these guys play aren't standards gigs. I'm more likely to hear standards at a jam than at a venue with a band performing.
And, some of the players kind of look down their noses at standards gigs.
When I was a young player, you were expected to know the standards and the pop tunes of the day. Now, not so much, although the pro players usually know a lot of tunes. Part of that is the ability to hear the song in your mind and have your fingers find the right chords without much thought. Probably everybody reading this can do it with blues changes in any key and, likely, rhythm changes too. And, then, it may thin out. But, I've had old pros tell me that if they hear a song once, they know it for the rest of their days, meaning being able to play the changes and the melody.
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Being able to play the shit out of a chart allows me to play with 25-35 guys a week. No way to memorize the diversity required for that. I don't know what makes people believe you can't read and be spontaneous, or in the moment..? If I only played stuff I had memorized, I'd be lucky to play with 10 guys a month. Again I'm not knocking knowing tunes, but I want to play. Unless you live and breathe standards and there's a scene for them, how do you decide what to memorize?
Maybe that's why jazz is unpopular, cats just wanna show up at a gig and play the same tired songs they already know, that even Miles was sick of 40 years ago...
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Le Real Book, mes amis...
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Shibboleth me baby - shibboleth me when I'm down
Shibboleth me baby - shibboleth me when I'm down
The folks all keep saying that you're the shibbolethinest woman in town.
(Blind Fruitcake Aberley 1928)
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Yea... basically, many players who use charts... can't really sight read, they're using the chart to keep track of memorized short sections of tunes or whatever they're playing. So they're glued to the chart. Hell... basically that's how many players play jazz. They memorize sections or entire tunes.
I really sight read.... that means I understand what I'm sight reading. I can look at music and recognize... the form or big picture. I can recognize the changes and understand the organization of the harmony, with relationship to the melody and what are the possibilities for solos. The point, I'm not starting at the chart, I'm free to interact and react to the music and what the other players are performing.
Using charts, or sight reading also takes time to get your skills together. But when you do get those skills together, your totally free to interact and react to the performance.... interact with the audience... entertain etc...
I do have standard gigs where we just play standards and make head arrangement up front... create an arrangement while performing the tune. That also take development of performance skills and understandings of music.
I also just space sometimes.... can't remember or hear a tune. Fake my way through the form until I do.
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Haha that's very true. Originally Posted by Reg
I tell you what though, if someone pops a chart down in front of me for a tune I actually know, I can't help but read the chart. I mean obviously good if it's an arrangement, but it kind of puts me in a different space if it's just a lead sheet to one I know, even if the changes are identical to what I'd normally play.
But for obvious jazz harmony etc, I can abstract the changes very quickly from a realB chart or something. The danger is in not really knowing the ins and outs of the melody if you don't have a lead sheet, which is where you can get into trouble with your voicings. Solution to that is simply - better ears, more listening.
Yeah... I think a lot of it is just experience. Listening to lots of jazz helps too.I really sight read.... that means I understand what I'm sight reading. I can look at music and recognize... the form or big picture. I can recognize the changes and understand the organization of the harmony, with relationship to the melody and what are the possibilities for solos. The point, I'm not starting at the chart, I'm free to interact and react to the music and what the other players are performing.
Using charts, or sight reading also takes time to get your skills together. But when you do get those skills together, your totally free to interact and react to the performance.... interact with the audience... entertain etc...
I do have standard gigs where we just play standards and make head arrangement up front... create an arrangement while performing the tune. That also take development of performance skills and understandings of music.
I'm glad I'm not the only one!I also just space sometimes.... can't remember or hear a tune. Fake my way through the form until I do.
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I think standards can be really boringly played though. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
But for me, the rewarding thing about playing standards as opposed to originals is that there is much more scope for true improvisation. Everything hangs on the melody, whereas if I'm playing someone's complicated originals, it might be great, but I'm going to be playing the chart as written and blowing on a set of specific changes probably, without a melody to guide me.
At least that's been my experience with most original compositions. There are different ways to do it...
Perhaps the reason why those players find standards boring is because they have developed their skillset for originals but not for the standards (beyond being basically able to sound good and professional - play good sounding notes on all the chords, and so on....) Standards don't offer the sort of challenges - challenging non-functional changes, odd time, and so on - that original music is more likely to contain, and if you use that mindset, it's easy to see why they might feel there's not much there.
And of course, the reverse is also true.
The problem is there is a growing disconnect between the two things, especially as the repertoire is aging. Musicians like Brad Mehldau have done a lot to try and bridge it.
That's a specific skill... One I'd like to learn....When I was a young player, you were expected to know the standards and the pop tunes of the day. Now, not so much, although the pro players usually know a lot of tunes. Part of that is the ability to hear the song in your mind and have your fingers find the right chords without much thought. Probably everybody reading this can do it with blues changes in any key and, likely, rhythm changes too. And, then, it may thin out. But, I've had old pros tell me that if they hear a song once, they know it for the rest of their days, meaning being able to play the changes and the melody.
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If I'm bored playing a standard, it ain't the song that's the problem...
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Ha, thanks for boiling that down so succinctly :-) Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Originally Posted by whiskey02
This is something that I was always kind of afraid of. I don't want to become so dependent on having the sheet music, or whatever aid I might be using, in front of me such that I am forever dependent on it.
Still, after reading through this thread, I guess one has to know their limits. I need the charts at this point in my playing. I may never be able to wean myself from them. Or, I may not have it in me to put in the effort to wean myself.
But for now, to heck with it. I am going to play with charts and sheet music. I just want to be able to get comfortable and be able to play well enough to meet my standards. I will worry about breaking the addiction at a later time.
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I try Originally Posted by christianm77
Seriously though...if I'm in charge, and I'm bored...problem is ME. There's still LOT of stuff to be done with a good melody and an interesting set of changes.
But the problem can be playing environments too...I've come to realize how little real jazz I've played with others over the years...I've played a lot of cocktail music, really, stuff that conforms to an expectation. Sure, I improvise, but there's a standard I'm living up to, a set of parameters I didn't break (cuz that's how you lose the gig, right?)
Ah, well.
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Thought of this thread last week when a flute player handed me a bunch of chord charts on a function gig. I'd been working very hard at my day job, and I wasn't about to sacrifice my principles for the gig money (and especially not at an altar of schmaltz/cheese). So, at the risk of messing up, I stuck to my guns. Because standards are easy to busk - if you like them enough to have listened to them.
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Tbh I think you just end up being good at the stuff you do the most.
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Every couple of months I go to a standards gig by some people I know. They play at a local hotel lobby/bar.
No guitar.
The piano/bass/keys and singer playing some percussion, really groove. Very strong rhythmic feel.
The saxophonist is one of the best in the area. Lots of chops, melodic and harmonically sophisticated -- but never beyond what works for the song he's playing.
The music simply feels good. Toe-tapping, delightful. Some older people dance.
Do that, and a standards gig will work great.
As far as the reading issue -- it depends on what percentage of your brain is simply trying to decipher the chart. If you're struggling to count bars, read rhythms, decipher tiny chord symbols, track a complicated roadmap and so forth -- and you don't even know what the tune is supposed to sound like, well, in that situation your interactive element is probably going to suffer. And, what may be worse, that may be true for the rest of the band trying to deal with the same chart, unless everybody else knows it.
But, if you kind of know the tune and you're using the chart as a reference to make sure you're playing the same arrangement as everybody else, and you're an experienced reader, then your brain isn't going to devote a high percentage of capacity to reading.
I think the evolution to more reading is the product of several trends
One is that, back in the day, there were fewer tunes to know and less variation in the harmony. A lot of the old standards are pretty simple harmonically.
Another trend is that, back in the day, it was much harder to attain the level of proficiency to get gigs. There was no Real Book, there was little information in print about how to play jazz, no written guideline I ever saw about which 100 or 200 standards to know. So, the guys who ended up on the stand had to have either some connection to the music (like their brother was a player) or significant talent. Nowadays I see guys on gigs who have used all the modern tools to maximize their ability, but I don't hear the old level of talent. And, I number myself among them. It's not all bad, there are things people can do, but playing a great standards gig without a book may not be one of them.
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Me too. For the past 25+ years I've been getting together once a week with a very seasoned guitar player who is now in his 90's. He spent most of his life in studios, playing in radio and TV orchestras and doing gigs, the upshot being that he knows the melody and changes to any standard I've ever heard, or heard of (and many that I'd never heard of), and will play them in any key and throw a chord solo intro in to boot. He keeps real books around for people who come over to play, but I've never seen him look at music for a standard (he's a crack reader, but that's another story). Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
The combination of starting young, spending your life working at it and being incredibly talented is not something to take lightly. Maybe I'll get lucky in the next life, but making do with what I have in this one, I set a few rules for myself when I play with Joe:
Don't look at music. Ever.
Play the tunes he calls.
Play in whatever key he calls the tune in.
If I've never heard the tune before, ask him to play through it (chord solo) once. Listen.
Go!
I've learned some old chestnuts and some crazy tunes I never knew existed this way, and listening to him play changes, developed some understanding of how jazz players looked at changes in the days before everything became a II-V. It's been a very valuable experience and made me a much better player than I would have been otherwise, but damn, that talent thing...Last edited by unknownguitarplayer; 12-20-2017 at 05:29 AM.
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Honestly, this is a big reason I've always valued (and worked at) knowing a lot of standards and being able to play them in various keys. Looking back, I think the biggest change I made to my approach was that early, I'd use a chart to memorize a tune. I often forgot tunes that I learned this way, and would need to re-learn them. Originally Posted by AlsoRan
The more successful approach I've taken is to never use a chart when learning a tune. This was pretty painful when I first started learning tunes this way, but it's resulted in a much higher rate of retention for me (according to the trello board I keep, I know a couple hundred standards). I almost always use a couple different reference recordings when learning tunes, so it's also helpful to hear where people play different changes, and this develops my taste: I can then decide which changes I personally prefer, etc.
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\ Originally Posted by pcsanwald
In my NYC youth in the 60s the wedding musicians knew every song in any key. I think they remembered songs the way anybody else remembers what a song sounds like. The difference was that they could feel the chord relationships and find them without conscious thought. I can do it with melody. If I know the melody, one key is as good as another. But, I'm still dependent, in large measure, on the charts for chords. Somehow, it seems to be a different skill. I have learned to compensate a bit by playing single notes (even when I'm comping) until I can find a few notes that fit.
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I know exactly what you mean! for me, once I switched to primarily playing bass, and started learning tunes on the bass, and playing them in all the keys, I got to where I can do the same thing for most "standard" harmony. Not Joe Henderson tunes or anything, but, common progressions. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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What seems 'douchey' to me is taking solos on tunes one doesn't know. Originally Posted by christianm77
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This is common for classical concert players... violinists and pianists have to know all the common repertoire when they begin their career to be able to substitute on first call... and their common repertoire is huge Originally Posted by darkwaters
In May, my wife and I were holidaying in Bristol, England. One night we went to Colston Hall to see the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra under Yuri Simonov with pianist Freddy Kempf guesting on piano. An hour before the show, Kempf gave a meet and greet. At the end he answered audience questions. One question was how he prepared for the pieces he would be playing that evening. He seemed a little puzzled by the question and explained that, since he'd played these pieces in the past (sometime years in the past), he didn't see any point in doing any preparation or practice since he already knew them well. That evening he played flawlessly......with no sheet music; entirely from memory !!!
BTW, the evenings pieces were:
Shostakovich Festival Overture
Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No. 3
Mussorgsky Pictures at an Exhibition
Me, I like charts.
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It's too bad people are using digital technology as an excuse not to learn tunes. I can understand if you're just trying to get through a pickup club date. I know a rock player who can tear up Allman Bros, etc., obviously never uses charts . But he does jazz gigs too, with a real book. Lame. When it comes to jam sessions, though, it completely misses the point to use charts.
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Again, for special gifted (as my solfege teacher used to say before playing a melody dictation one extra time), it's not about an excuse not to learn tunes, it's about getting through a gig in a most efficient way. As pro, you find yourself in tons of different situation, and no one, and I wanna say again, no one knows ALL the tunes in the world. You know most jazz standards? Good for you! Do you know Italian songs too? How about German polkas? Can play any on of it on the spot, no charts, on a gig where you are the only chord instrument? Originally Posted by JGinNJ
I mean, this debate is funny in a way, because in the end of the day some will play a better solo reading charts and playing a tune for the first time, then some who memorized and play that same tune hundreds of times.
Playing a rehearsed concerts, jazz or classical, is completely different thing altogether! If you have time to rehearse a gig, I'd say no excuses to read on stage, memorization of material is not an issue, right?
Pickup jazz gigs, last min calls for people you never played with before, even jam sessions, reading charts once in a while should be no issue! It is no issue here in New York City at least, but what do we know about jazz ?
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That's the key! Sometimes, and very often, it takes just one chorus to read through to 'get it', and then you don't even need to look anymore. There are different levels of reading a chart, that's somehow overlooked when discussing it. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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So, if I ran into the rare opportunity of assembling a combo for a one shot, no rehearsal gig that would pay $1000, I could afford to hire all great local players that were free that date.
Do you think I would do a couple sets of the usual standards that everyone has memorized, or, would I jump at the chance to have great players venture out on newer or different material that they had all heard, but needed charts for reference? What do you think the audience might prefer?
Just trying to create a real world scenario. I truly think lots of people underestimate how well good musicians besides guitarists can read charts with little struggle at all.
How many times do you think sight reading musicians run through a new previously unseen chart at a rehearsal?
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