The horizontal approach

[christianm77]

Not very clever, in my opinion! Say everybody said that?

Maybe we’d have musicians more willing to trust their ears and didn’t rely on real books and theories to tell them what notes to play.

Ah, exactly. But what is 'correct'? CST? Joined-up chord tones? Key centres?

As in playing on the chords and using the textbook scale choices.

[christianm77]

That said Miles’s solo on Nows the Time is a fantastic example of generalised harmony/not playing the changes

Very horizontal... sign of things to come?

[MarkRhodes]

in this sense it’s actually more like playing on vamps.

THIS is why I liked the first Mickey Baker book (which, IIRC, came out in 1955). He talks about playing 'hot' guitar and rubbing 'against' the changes----it's vamp playing. Good vamp playing. Which is what I've always liked. I still like that. (It's why I still listen to good jump blues.)

Here's Mickey with Coleman Hawkins. I like this sort of guitar playing.

[MarkRhodes]

I think it is very natural approach. Isnt it?

Most people who would hum something over familiar tune would follow the form how the hear it: cadences, general resolutions, key changes and space... it is very natural.

For all his teaching about scales and chords, Jamie Aebersold encourages students to sing (hum) over play-along recordings. His idea is that people doing this rarely sing wrong notes. They're not thinking in terms of scales, either. They're just doing what sounds right to them (and that which they CAN do). If people do this, and then learn to play on their instruments what they naturally sing, they can make music. Over time they get better at it but that's really the germ----that's the music you (or I) have within us. (This is why Herb Ellis was such a fanatic about saying 'play what you sing'. Even if it's a pattern you learn from a book, sing it as you play it and it will come to sound less rote, more natural, more 'you'.)

[ragman1]

Maybe we’d have musicians more willing to trust their ears and didn’t rely on real books and theories to tell them what notes to play.

Which is the obvious answer. But newbies and intermediates probably don't have those ears (yet, maybe). They need a practical kick-off, not just 'use your ears'. That's why so many players copy others.

I think most of our discussions here are about 'How to do it'. But knowledge and technique only take us so far. After that it's in the heart. Without the heart it may as well be computerised.

As in playing on the chords and using the textbook scale choices.

Yes, I know, but that was never completely wrong. The clever stuff needs a bit more on top of that. First the 'rules' then bend 'em. And a lot of the talk here is about how to bend them effectively, not how to invent something completely different.

[christianm77]

Just my fifty cents here. What Rpjazzguitar says and the others too... this is such a wonderful topic

If you listen to the great players, like George Benson, Hancock, Rollins, they move from point A to point B in unexpected ways. I once saw a Kenny Werner video where he used a piece of rope as a metaphor.

The first chord is Cmaj and on the 4th bar there is a Bb7, for instance. You could follow the chords, the rope is straight. Or you could go in all kinds of directions working towards that Bb7 (using turnarounds, cycle of 5ths, Coltrane changes, chromatic downward 2-5’s). The rope is all curly, but still lands on the Bb7.

much as I believe the metaphor is right and this discussion is really nailing it, I find myself in the Rpjazzguitar situation. On modal tunes I can walk out of the harmony and come back at it (bending the rope) but on standards and modern jazz tunes, I follow chords to avoid sounding bad. Rp nails it: only if you can really sing it, you will be able to play it. If anyone followed Matt Otto in the past, he stresses singing too. And that cat goes far...

I recently saw Solar on the y-tube with Hancock and Metheny, Dejohnette and Holland: these guys... I can’t hear the changes. It’s really exciting, but they just take some chords out of the bag and work away from and towards them. It’s really exciting.

There is one tune where I can do this, and want to share it.
Dolphin Dance. In the last four bars almost every musician struggles and there has been a lot of debate over which chords go where, even suggesting harmonic major harmony being used by Herbie. I invariably play Abdiminished or G13b9 for the whole four bars and it sounds great. If you play it with confidence and insert some diminished licks, great stuff. Your fellow musicians will look at you as if they suddenly saw The Light. if it don’t work, either you’re doing it wrong or I ‘ll give you your money back. Guarantee. (Works with Ab/G, Gphrygian, too, guaranteed)

If you hear Hancock, the Master, he plays all kinds of stuff: diminished, wholetone, chromatic descending stuff on those four bars.

So I figure the best way to answer these questions is to listen to what’s on the record and go from there. Anything I say here by the way is based on that.

Players of that era really like diminished from the listening I’ve done. It’s a pretty handy all purpose sound tbh. It’s great on the 7#11 chord... I’ve known that you can do that out of a book for 20 years, but it really takes listening for it to be more than Dungeons and Dragons.

So needless to say there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since Lester Young’s era. Most of those tunes could be more or less busked if you knew the melody and had a good ear (more so for a horn player obviously.)

But with Wayne and so it’s still the case that tunes can often be played with much more of that Lester spirit then you might think if you are conditioned as most of us are to thinking of tunes as how they are laid out on a lead sheet.

And I think it was you who pointed out how often modern players take a generalised view of the harmony and use some exotic scale to play over the more harmonically stable sections.

hell, there are recordings of Prez using Phrygian sounds on rhythm changes in this way in the late 40s.

Conrad Corks thesis is jazz has always been modal - he says ‘song as raga’ but a raga is not just a scale of course - it’s melodic turns and vocab too.

TBH that’s what I mean when I say ‘don’t think melodic minor’; which is to say the harmonic CST analysis misses what’s going on outside its lens. Play lines, not random selections from pitch sets.

[christianm77]

It’s also things like

- using the melody as a guide through tough sections (even Brecker did this!)
- don’t be afraid to compose solutions (Joe Henderson)
- pick your battles with the changes, pick what chords are important to you (everyone?

its all confused by the profound misunderstanding of bebop technique. Which is again - bop players play changes, not the changes.

There’s actually evidence that Bird wasn’t that strong at playing ‘the’ changes. His repertoire of chord progressions certainly reflects that of Lester Young’s era, tunes that are reducible to simple chunks such as Rhythm, Honeysuckle, Lady be Good and of course Blues.

Good jazz instructors know all of this. You will learn this street knowledge if you go to the right colleges (but not the wrong ones.)

It’s just the drive to put products out there - these products give the illusion of a method, and that illusion has a life of its own.

[ragman1]

The Miles Davis transcription video in #27 is 'unavailable'.

[christianm77]

The Miles Davis transcription video in #27 is 'unavailable'.

you'll need to scroll down a bit.

Red’s Bells | DO THE M@TH

good article btw

[christianm77]

Which is the obvious answer. But newbies and intermediates probably don't have those ears (yet, maybe). They need a practical kick-off, not just 'use your ears'. That's why so many players copy others.

That’s the best way.

Dont aim to improvise, aim to play the music. Also learn melodies and learn how to play around the melody.

BY EAR

if you don’t kick that development off right away, when exactly?

otherwise I teach students to do this who have been avoiding it for 20 years. Start simple. Let them know sucking is OK and it will get easier.

Can you learn this riff? That kind of thing.

I think most of our discussions here are about 'How to do it'. But knowledge and technique only take us so far. After that it's in the heart. Without the heart it may as well be computerised.



Yes, I know, but that was never completely wrong. The clever stuff needs a bit more on top of that. First the 'rules' then bend 'em. And a lot of the talk here is about how to bend them effectively, not how to invent something completely different.

the clever stuff was only ever meant to be a suggestion, resources you can use if you want .

[christianm77]

For all his teaching about scales and chords, Jamie Aebersold encourages students to sing (hum) over play-along recordings. His idea is that people doing this rarely sing wrong notes. They're not thinking in terms of scales, either. They're just doing what sounds right to them (and that which they CAN do). If people do this, and then learn to play on their instruments what they naturally sing, they can make music. Over time they get better at it but that's really the germ----that's the music you (or I) have within us. (This is why Herb Ellis was such a fanatic about saying 'play what you sing'. Even if it's a pattern you learn from a book, sing it as you play it and it will come to sound less rote, more natural, more 'you'.)

JA is a case in point. His teaching materials have an existence of their own.

[ragman1]

That’s the best way.

Which?

I've met so many people who have no idea. If you said 'Okay, improvise something' they go completely blank. They've absolutely no idea what to do. Eventually they sort of try going over where the chords are... you know the kind of thing.

I don't think I ever said' Play the music'. I suspect that's the same as 'improvise something'. It would probably be interpreted as playing the tune.

I think it's something one has to work out for oneself, basically. They've got to listen to records and figure out how to play something meaningful with it. Too many are hypnotised by the symbols. Very scary.

I usually started by saying play the tune but add embellishments, fills, different resolutions, etc - i.e. expand on the tune till you're independent of it.

[Tal_175]

When playing horizontally (in functional music) one is still playing changes because melody notes have function. If you just sing a melody then you're very likely implying one of the common progressions (I vi ii V etc). That's because these progressions sound pleasing to us (the ones that come up again and again). The question is what actual progression are you imposing your implied changes over when playing horizontally. If there is a mismatch and it's unintentional it'll sound like scale noodling. But if one is familiar with the tune and aurally aware of the harmony, then they have a lot of freedom as the what melodic devices to employ and sound coherent over the changes. Targeting primary chord tones is just one device not the only one.

The other extreme is if you just pedal on the tonic note over the entire changes. It won't sound like you are functionally clashing with the harmony. It'll sound like you're deliberately bringing out different colors of the chords. You can also do that not just with a single note but with phrases and motifs. I hear a lot of coloristic, motivic playing in Miles's playing.

[Jonah]

For all his teaching about scales and chords, Jamie Aebersold encourages students to sing (hum) over play-along recordings. His idea is that people doing this rarely sing wrong notes. They're not thinking in terms of scales, either. They're just doing what sounds right to them (and that which they CAN do). If people do this, and then learn to play on their instruments what they naturally sing, they can make music. Over time they get better at it but that's really the germ----that's the music you (or I) have within us. (This is why Herb Ellis was such a fanatic about saying 'play what you sing'. Even if it's a pattern you learn from a book, sing it as you play it and it will come to sound less rote, more natural, more 'you'.)

Horowitz was asked what influenced him most.. he said that as a kid he loved listning to the opera mostly and how people sang... and just tried to repeat it.


But as a direct practical guide (as you mention in you post) 'play what you can sing' - there can be some problem to... instrument often gives us more (or different) possibilities than our voices have... this kind of natural limitation with 'singing' is good to cultivate some kind of 'melodic musiculity', 'trust for your own sense and ear'... but eventually one should learn to sing with an instrument beyond own voice limitations - instrument becomes a voice, and expantion of it...

[christianm77]

Which?

I've met so many people who have no idea. If you said 'Okay, improvise something' they go completely blank. They've absolutely no idea what to do. Eventually they sort of try going over where the chords are... you know the kind of thing.

I don't think I ever said' Play the music'. I suspect that's the same as 'improvise something'. It would probably be interpreted as playing the tune.

Not sure if I parsed that right. So playing the tune as in playing the melody?

OK, so we have the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
- This music would be considered jazz - I presume we all agree
- There are no charts on stage
- The band play prearranged parts that swing, are soaked in mood, and atmosphere and are absolutely not improvised, unfolding in delicious harmonies and colours according to the Duke's design.
- Johnny Hodges* plays a soaring solo that's a paraphrase of the song's melody

Right? That's an example the music. It's not the only way to go about it, but it's not the same thing at all as 'improvise something'

And that's the distinction we are not terribly good at making as educators it seems to me. Most school level jazz ensembles use written charts and demand the musicians make 'something up' using chord scales in the solos. It seems democratic and open, but I would argue that it isn't.

Thing is you are asking the student to do not one but two unfamilalir things a lot of the time
- play jazz with all the inflection and swing that requires
- make up music on the spot

It's the equivalent of asking someone to converse in Cantonese without learning any stock vocabulary or phrases, or having worked on spree, inflection and pronunciation.

You need to at least prepare them with a couple of set things they can do in situations, and work on making them sound intelligible.

In the Duke example much of the music is orally communicated and played by ear. That doesn't mean it's improvised, but when we don't have notation it's much more organic to go from strict parts into improvisation... A score basically creates a dichotomy between, for instance - playing a set part and playing a solo on written changes.

Notation is a problem in this music. But I think with imagination it could be used better.

I think it's something one has to work out for oneself, basically. They've got to listen to records and figure out how to play something meaningful with it. Too many are hypnotised by the symbols. Very scary.

Yes - but you have to ease some people into it. If their first experience of jazz is that it is some nerdy branch of maths, that's going to attract certain people and repel others. So you get a music scene that's dominated by people who view music a certain way. I'd like more diversity in ways of approaching music.

I usually started by saying play the tune but add embellishments, fills, different resolutions, etc - i.e. expand on the tune till you're independent of it.

Right? So why don't people teach it that way?

*Interesting thing about Hodges is I know classical sax players who have him down but they would not regard themselves as jazz players.

[Jonah]

LINEAR...

I think I do not like the term... becasue the time is not mentioned with it.
when I first hear it I thought it described some kind of modal playing rather than on harmonic melodism... when you have to focus on liniear movement to build up something because there is not much of vertical harmony.. but Lester playing is not like that...

The biggest differnce betwe Hawk and Prez that strikes immidiately is the difference in TIME feel...

For Hawk time moves in circular cycle (and one circle maybe small, big - whatever - it can one within another and exand over the whole tune)... but still he has a sense of the form - famous Body and Soul shows it very well:
- it seems he can play endlessly - the time almost stops because he weaves through every moment of a tune as if he forgets what he just played one moment before (no past no future - just now)
- but still in the second half the intensity increases, he knows that he is getting to the end and we can hear it.
(In classical it is very close to Schubertian time feeling)

With Prez the time is linear, I can clearly hear immidiately that he is heading somewhere and for him it is important what was going on before and what will go on after (Beethoven time really).
But at the same time if we take some moments of hos solos they can sound sometime quite in the moment

I think in some very general sense
- Hawk was an inspiration for modal harmony of the future
- Prez was inspiration for modal melodism of the future

[christianm77]

Charlie Parker represents a synthesis of Prez and Hawk to me. Hawk loved to play with boppers, of course...

[ragman1]

Christian -

And that's the distinction we are not terribly good at making as educators it seems to me. Most school level jazz ensembles use written charts and demand the musicians make 'something up' using chord scales in the solos. It seems democratic and open, but I would argue that it isn't.

Thing is you are asking the student to do not one but two unfamiliar things a lot of the time
- play jazz with all the inflection and swing that requires
- make up music on the spot

It's the equivalent of asking someone to converse in Cantonese without learning any stock vocabulary or phrases, or having worked on spree, inflection and pronunciation.

You need to at least prepare them with a couple of set things they can do in situations, and work on making them sound intelligible.

Quite, that's what I'm saying, you can't just go 'make something up'. They don't know how.

So why don't people teach it that way?

Search me. Perhaps because they don't care enough to be practically helpful.

[christianm77]

Christian -



Quite, that's what I'm saying, you can't just go 'make something up'. They don't know how.



Search me. Perhaps because they don't care enough to be practically helpful.

They do care, they just don’t have another roadmap.

in the case of school bands, teachers are often non specialists.

[MarkRhodes]

But as a direct practical guide (as you mention in you post) 'play what you can sing' - there can be some problem to... instrument often gives us more (or different) possibilities than our voices have... this kind of natural limitation with 'singing' is good to cultivate some kind of 'melodic musiculity', 'trust for your own sense and ear'... but eventually one should learn to sing with an instrument beyond own voice limitations - instrument becomes a voice, and expantion of it...

Yes, there can be some problems. Herb would always say, 'sing what you play or play what you sing, whichever way you want to put it.' Our instrument can do things our voices cannot. But building that connection between ear and fingers is helped by adding the voice. (Even if it's just a hum---it will be rhythmic, it will have accents, it will be in time, and there will be a sense of where the end points are. The phrasing seems more natural.) Eventually one can do things one cannot sing, though many players continue to 'sing what they play' even though this wouldn't be thought of as singing in the professional sense.

Oscar Peterson can be heard doing it on many of his records. Herb did it on his, though you can't always hear it because the mic would be facing his amp, not his face. ;o) He can be seen doing it in live footage. He said Wes did it too, and so did Joe Pass.

[Jonah]

Charlie Parker represents a synthesis of Prez and Hawk to me. Hawk loved to play with boppers, of course...

I remember Trane said that everyone was about Prez and he was more into Hawk and that he did not pick up his solos or licks but he just listned a lot, he said that he listned that Body and Soul record many times... and when Trane says 'listen' I can imagine it was very intensive and structural listening

If you speed up Body and Soul a bit it sounds much like mature Trane solos

[ragman1]

They do care, they just don’t have another roadmap.

But they're not stupid. If we can think of ways and means, so can they.

in the case of school bands, teachers are often non specialists.

Same answer. It's a good job the teachers of academic subjects are so-called specialists!

Sorry if I'm dismissive but it all sounds a bit lame and excusatory. Not from you, naturally.

[lawson-stone]

Yes, there can be some problems. Herb would always say, 'sing what you play or play what you sing, whichever way you want to put it.' Our instrument can do things our voices cannot. But building that connection between ear and fingers is helped by adding the voice. (Even if it's just a hum---it will be rhythmic, it will have accents, it will be in time, and there will be a sense of where the end points are. The phrasing seems more natural.) Eventually one can do things one cannot sing, though many players continue to 'sing what they play' even though this wouldn't be thought of as singing in the professional sense.

Oscar Peterson can be heard doing it on many of his records. Herb did it on his, though you can't always hear it because the mic would be facing his amp, not his face. ;o) He can be seen doing it in live footage. He said Wes did it too, and so did Joe Pass.

I don't know of an example of Joe Pass doing this. He did talk about singing, but I don't recall seeing or hearing any example. Can you point me?

[Reg]

There was a chord, then we realized there were chord tones, wait there are also extensions. My point... that is an analogy for what most think of CST. They don't get past the first few levels of understandings of examples... they don't understand the Concept. Who cares... maybe try and think of CST as just suggestions for helping to organize what you hear.

A musical system for helping you have an..... organized method of coordinating musical elements into Harmonious efficient relationships with References. There are many choices of any situation and context.

When you eventually get your sound... you don't need the help. (but you can still be aware of others)

The other point which has been brought up before.... Changes just like Melodies can have different musical understandings which create different results.

Like I've said for years.... you have Tonal Targets.... which shape and control what and how you play.

Any melody usually has a few different possible harmonic or tonal possibilities for analysis or Improv. Just like Chords also have possibilities for analysis.

A simple chord progression...I VI II V, can be or have different tonal references... You can call each chord an element by it's self... or call them all a Chord Pattern... which means they're all functioning a s ONE Chord. One Tonal reference, one Tonal Target... or how ever you choose or are told they are going to function.

It's all going on all the time... we just decide or are told....what and how...we want to hear.

[cosmic gumbo]

This is my horizontal approach...