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Hey guys,
I’ve recently been wondering about how to approach playing over - let’s say - less obvious chord changes. Over the course of time I’ve worked with a couple of piano and virbaphone players that seemed to have no troubles soloing over whatever set of changes I’d provide them with. I started asking myself what exactly it was they did, in order to accomplish that.
In order to sharpen my own skills I came up with a set of 12 progressions that I’ve been practicing in all keys. I’ll show you what I’ve been working on in the key of Ab major:
Ab | Db
Ab | Db-
Bbm7 Eb7 | Ab
Ab | F7
Cm7 F7 | Bbm7 Eb7
C7 | Cm7 F7 | Ab
Gm7/b5 | C7 | Fm
Ab | Gm7/b5 C7 | Fm
E7 | Eb7 | Ab
Db7 | C7 | Fm
Cm7 F7 | Bm7 E7 | Bbm7 Eb7 | Ab
Em7 | A7 | Ab
I’d work on these until I could play about 10 minutes on each of them, hitting only notes that’d sound „right“ to me, that at the same time were part of what i consider strong melodies while repeating myself as little as possible.
This has helped me a lot and at reasonable tempos I feel pretty confident about playing for instance Parker tunes or any music that is more or less structured in a similar fashion. However when I face different, unfamiliar situations I still tend to struggle when I don’t invest a serious ammount of time working on the specific challanges.
At one point I heard a friend, one of the piano players i mentioned, play Bud Powells „Dance of the Infidels“. I was blown away by the fluency he played with and since I liked the song I went home to check it out. When I listened to the recording I realized Bud Powell didn’t sound nearly as fluent to me (you may or may not agree that Bud sounds a bit like he’s having troubles playing on the first couple of bars of the form, as well as with the chromatically decending II-Vs and the bVI-bII-I in the end). Since at the concert I had listened really closely, I realized there was something going on.
It hadn’t been the only time that I had experienced something like that, so I thought about it and concluded that either the vocabulary had expanded so much over time that my friends made use of more material which helped them navigate more freely and fluently through sets of changes or perhaps they had developed a more effective strategy to approach difficult harmonic structures.
What I’ve found out is that nearly all of them like to work with structures they use to create melodies with, that have an „inner logic“, but not necesserly relate to the given chords. Some stuff based on intervalic thinking, tetra chords with approach notes combined with triads etc…
Have any of you worked with concepts like that? If so, do you work on applying these structures to a tune in a specific way? Something like aiming for a target note etc?
Other than that can you think of any strategies one may use to approach navigate through changes that are unfamiliar and appear to be less obvious to you? A piano player once told me he practiced aiming for certain chord tones of upcoming chords starting from different places ("Hit the 3rd of the target chord on 1, starting the line above/below, on 2 and, on 3...")
Since there’s often little to no time to prepare for gigs I’m curious about ways to approach this in a more general way and your opinions on that. Maybe the answer at some point however is to just learn a bunch of songs and go very deep with it.
Cheers
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10-05-2018 09:08 AM
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Yes
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Ii Vs are just V and subs helps a lot with bop
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It's funny, I saw you list and I thought...ok, but what's the SONG?
I do think usually the answer is to learn more songs...look for tunes that have stuff that's out of the ordinary, and practice those musical situations.
I think you need to come up with a game plan as to how to "attack" a whole song. I'm a big fan of reduced melody and writing out a simplified chord chart, nixing anything that's "passing," focusing on tension and resolution. I try to play to targets, not chase changes. Those targets can often be those "tricky" spots as well as regular targets like V's and I's...It's helped me immensely.
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Cm7 F7 | Bm7 E7 | Bbm7 Eb7
Is
F7 | E7 | Eb7
In the grand scheme of things like Dance of the Infidels aren’t very unusual but certainly a challenge.
Conception is another one
I have a concept which is basically ‘irreducibility’ - some tunes like rhythm changes can be reduced to very simple elements. Others such as Moments Notice and Darn ThatDream can be reduced when you understand what’s going on with the side slips.
Other tunes like Giant Steps can’t be reduced enough for it to be massively helpful at the original tempo, and yet other tunes such as Inner Urge have no reduction - in fact when I play that I tend to add bop changes in to the a section.
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Oh yeah, practice TUNES
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Originally Posted by christianm77
I actually think I came across a pretty successful reduction of "Steps" when I did my "gypsy jazz" version last week...but maybe that's another thread for another day...
Interesting you mention "Urge," I agree...It's like I'm constantly looking for ways to take chords out of tunes with a lot of chords and add chords in to tunes that have long stretches of one chord...simplifying the complex and complexifying the simple...or something. (Not that "Inner Urge is SIMPLE!)
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What exactly is 'less obvious' about those chord progressions? Play them in tons of standards all the time.. what am I missing?
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Actually one hack for steps is: Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
First 3 is a ii-v-I
Fm7b5 Bb7 | % | Eb | D7
C#m7b5 F#7 | % | B | Bb7 etc
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K cool so you’re working on how to play on bread and butter turnarounds, but to your ear Bud Powell struggled with Dance of the Infidels (which he wrote). Originally Posted by Philidor
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One approach:
Know the chord tones and "inside" extensions of each chord in the progression. Stated another way, know which notes that aren't going to sound like clams even if your improvised line sucks.
Then, look for the guide tone lines or any other logic that connects the chords.
Then, strum them and scat sing.
In fact, strumming and scat singing will work even if you don't know any of that other stuff.
But, if you have to do it instantly having never heard the progression before, knowing the notes in every chord is a good start. It's instant, doesn't even require thinking through key/scale/mode/juxtaposition etc.
Of course, you can take it further with a full-blown analysis of every scale choice and so forth, but the above will get you over the hump of not-sucking for the moment.
If you always know in advance what you're going to have to play over and you have time to puzzle it out, there may be better approaches. But, if somebody drops something weird on your music stand and counts it off before you've even figured out the roadmap, knowing all the chord tones and inside extensions is a good safety net.
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Here we go...
I call this the Wonderman complex. How to do complex things without practice and just, brilliantly, with a wave of the wand, pull rabbits out of hats. I don't believe in it.
Then don't do it. Why put yourself in a position where you're expected to play stuff you haven't had a good look at first? Why should you?Since there’s often little to no time to prepare for gigs
Immature and/or inexperienced peoples' idea of 'professionals' is that they can do anything brilliantly, out of the air and off the cuff, just like Wonderman, at the drop of a hat. It's not true.
The most professional people I've ever worked with did the most homework, practised the most, and worked the hardest. The best band (American) I ever worked with set up in the venue then ran through every song at the soundcheck to familiarise themselves with the place, the stage, and get their musical juice going. Parker did eight hours a day. When making an action film the stunt and FX people check and check and then check again. Einstein once said 'I don't think I'm smarter than other people, I just worry at it longer'. Etc etc.
'Professional' does not mean unprepared, it means very thoroughly prepared. Otherwise it's unprofessional. It jeopardises the players' confidence, the show, the band's reputation, and lets the audience down.
So - good familiarity with any chord. Reduce chords where necessary (Gb7#5b9 is Gb7), ii-Vs where necessary, definitely know the tune, etc etc. Before the gig, not at the gig!
Sorry, I get worked up on this subject! I don't like cowboys!
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Well I think that’s normal for a lot of musicians. Not having time to look at stuff. It’s not something that is desirable or the ideal, but sometimes you have to read tunes on the gig.
My approach to this is still to work on the tunes I have to play on the gigs, when possible and when I have a heads up on them, because the way I see it if i don’t have time to learn all the tunes all the time, then I certainly don’t have time to muck around with other stuff. I know there’s this idea that you should be ready for everything, but I think from my own experience practicing along these lines is not actually as good an idea as it seems.
You can put the material you are practicing - voicings etc - through the lens of that tune.
If you are so busy with gigs that you are finding yourself short of practice time, I daresay your playing is good enough, at least for now. Now your goal is to be a pro and be prepared. That’ll impress a bandleader.
A pianist I knew described not actually practicing the stuff that you play on gigs - parts, rhythm patterns, written lines etc - as a particular disease of guitarists lol.
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Absolutely. Originally Posted by christianm77
To bring it slightly closer to home, when Jeff Matz did his Laura-In-Two-Keys vid someone said 'Wow, how do you do that!?' he didn't say 'Because I'm Wonderman', he said - I quote - 'It's probably not an exaggeration to say I've played it a thousand times'.
Et voila.
I would have said because I'm Wonderman
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But you can also go the other way, of course, and become a myopic nerd... :-)
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I don’t see why those two things are mutually exclusive lol.
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Learn how to analysis music....probably not going to happen, so simple version.... all chords fit into "Chord Patterns".
In any collection of chords... there is always a tonal center... the basic reference that connects and make those chords work together. Even if just for a short period of time... there is a tonal target.
If your going to spend your life trying to memorize and beat the music into your head and playing.... your always going to have the same problem.
It doesn't take that long to actually understand music, or at least to learn basic chord patterns and what they imply...
It does take more that a few lines on this thread... but it does get somewhere as compared to asking the same questions over and over. And your playing to sound likewise.
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I for one would love to , hear you're thoughts Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
on simplifying Steps , Mr B
I like to simplify too , but im having
trouble simplifying Steps !
No pressure , only if you've the time man ...
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Would love to hear some insight on Moments Notice. Love that tune. Originally Posted by christianm77
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Sure.
So if I was blocking down the changes of the tune, I would remove the II chords, leaving us with this (second half is an exercise for you.)
A7 | Bb7 | Eb | Db7
G7 | Ab7 | Db | G7b9
Cm* | Eb7 | Ab | Db7
C7 | Db7 | Gb | Bb7
I've put the key centres in bold. They are our landmarks and destination points for learning to navigate this tune.
OK one chord a bar, not so bad.
(* I like Cm here, but Barry people would outline F7)
So in terms of those dominant chords, I'm not saying literally 'play Bb7', but rather play any of the usual subs for Bb7 according to taste, so Dm7b5, Fm7, Do7, E7, whatever.
The sideslip ii-V's
If I was to say that the Em7 A7 | Fm7 Bb7 is essentially a sub for Eb A7| Fm7 Bb7 would that seem terribly obvious?
Melodically, the melody is on G, the third of both Em7 and Ebmaj7 and the seventh of A7. These chords share the same guide tones... The main difference is the bass.
(With that in mind, you might want to think about substituting other songs with a melody that sits on the third to see how it works. An example might be the turnaround of Misty's first A section, or Jingle Bells lol. This is a good sub for I, because quite honestly returning to I is BORING.)
Soloing wise the target chord here is the following Eb chord. It's really up to you whether you want to put in the half step motion or not, but functionally any line that you play that resolves into the Eb chord will work here. The sideslip is just a more colourful way of doing it.
I'm going to remove the embellishing lower half step dominants, leaving us with a functional outline. You may feel that the half steps are an important feature of the tune, so keep them in, but it's really nice to know there is a bit of space there.
Bb7 | % | Eb | Db7
Ab7 | % | Db | G7b9
Cm | Eb7 | Ab | Db7
% | % | Gb | Bb7
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Well I think we can agree that it's a good thing to practice II-V-I or I-VI-II-V if you're trying to get familiar with the jazz language. You do that in order to get the basic harmonic motion down, right? When done properly and in depth you can apply that to all sorts of tunes and build from there.
One of my former teachers, Allan Praskin, used to say "I hope your D-7 in [insert tune] doesn't sound like your D-7 in [insert another tune]." I totally believe in that, but imho that does not contradict with working on the very essence of for instance a certain cadence. The idea is to work on that basis and build from there, then connect with the song... I figured I'm much more effective by doing that as opposed to working on whole tunes all the time without dissecting them.
I know many people stick with II-V-I and the turnaround, I just wanted to take it further and tried to extract the most common progressions I'd run into. In the beginning I put quite some work into that but now this will only make 30-60mins of my daily 6-8hrs of practice time.
I'll try to come up with a couple of examples. Just a week ago I played a gig with one of the piano players I mentioned. 4 days earlier we had decided on 30 songs to play. Most of them I had already played at some point but essentially I had to catch up on two thirds of the repertoire. Not enough time to learn all of the music in depth.
I remember some harmonic situations that I didn't feel completely comfortable playing...
Insensatez: F7/C -> E7/B
Never Let Me Go: Ebmaj -> D7#9 -> Dbmaj7
On Green Dolphin St: C -> Eb/C -> D/C -> Db/C
It's not that I was unable to play anything or that I'd play "wrong" (like really unintended) notes, but I just wouldn't really hear how to lead through the harmony and build strong/convincing melodies. My friend on the other hand didn't know half of the songs and had just listened to the recordings. He still played everything by heart and some of the songs I just taught him minutes before the gig by singing the roots to him. Of course he fucked up some times (he even played organ and was responsible for the bass, haha), but whenever he was certain about the changes he'd play seamlessly through them.
I'm interested in building a strong foundation like that. I feel like once you get to the point of being able to link basically any harmonic situation to another, you have much more time to work on the interesting stuff.
Perhaps there's something about working on approaching certain target notes to train your ear to be able to anticipate chords you normally wouldn't expect..
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