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It would be good to know the right chords and not to simplify to a song version.
Originally Posted by ragman1
"Those iReal chords are far too complex for guitar, that's piano stuff."It just looks so scary, but when you analyze it, it's easy.
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03-15-2021 05:57 AM
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Hi Reg, Originally Posted by Reg
Great takes on acoustic guitar.
You have great technique and you play beautiful phrases. I like such expressive sounds on an acoustic guitar.
Jazz playing at the highest level.!
Best
kris
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Hey kris.... thanks. I haven't touched music as a player for almost a year... the covid thing. And it was fun just starting, that 1st tune, work song was rough, started to get warmed up with Recorda me. I'll get a few more up this week and try and be ready for next tune. Need to put strings on one of my jazz guitars.
It's not really that I need to warm up my chops... more of what's in my head. Again thanks. Your approach... an analysis is best way to start a tune.
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Thanks Reg, Originally Posted by Reg
The Covid thing is terrible.
Everyone is paralyzed to some extent.
Hope better times come.
We are all waiting for your excellent productions.
Jazzingly
Kris
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Reg, glad to have you here. Enjoy hearing your playing and approaches always.
Re: beginner tunes
There's tunes that are certainly easier and harder...this one isn't easy, but it has access points. Every tune does...I guess maybe what makes a tune harder is when the access point isn't so obvious.
I still think the biggest thing, with any tune, is getting a good handle on the form. If you're getting lost in a tune, that's where the trainwrecks happen. If you get a brain fart and get stuck for an idea--but maintain your place in the form, then you can pull out of it.
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Yea... It's cool to hear you say FORM. I think I've been pushing The "Form" thing for over 10 years, or whenever I joined the forum. There are quite a few things that have somewhat become part of the discussions that I've been pushing for ever. really good to hear, it's not like their my personal discoveries.
Yea how does one not get lost... in the forest checking out a tree...
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Listening to it, I think I'm going to have to go with Graham's changes
It's definitely D/F for instance, and an E and Eb pedal towards the end...
Also, it sounds wrong to play a prominent Db in bar 2, I think Jordan K's messed with my head lol.
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I think form was definitely one of the first big things you said here that really clicked with me. Originally Posted by Reg
My jazz teacher was a piano player, And he'd say stuff like:
HIM: Ok, call a tune, something you got memorized.
ME: Ok...uh...Green Dolphin Street?
HIM: Great, from bar 9, 1-2, 1-2-3-4
ME: (quietly dies inside)
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So I've been reading the two streams of discussion over what this tune is about theoretically and over whether it's suitable for "beginners" and I have some thoughts.
For all the debate over the correct changes to this and how to approach it, I'd love to see Herbie's actual chart (if there ever was one), and/or how he taught it to the band. That would settle things. The iReal changes sound about right to me; the ones in the original real book with the B pedal instead an E are off in a couple of spots (compared to the original recording), but do work. In terms of analysis, very broadly I think those chords the arguments are all about (is it an AbMaj7b5 or an Ab7#5, is it just 2 bars of Cm or is it Cmin|Cmin/Bb, what are those last 4 bars? etc) are somewhat losing the forest for the trees. The way Herbie plays it, the harmony is always in motion, and he's employing all kinds of devices (e.g., clusters, stacks of 4ths, suspensions) for color and movement. Any chords you see in a chart are at best an incomplete snapshot of that.
But the basic idea I get out of it is the major chords are lydian, the minors are minor 11's, and the dominants are altered. The mood is sort of a hybrid of impressionism and gospel, so there are lots of places to put whole-tone patterns, whole-half/half-whole patterns, and some bluesisms, plus whatever other bag of tricks you've got for playing over dom7 chords. You can't play most of Hancock's voicings on guitar (when comping), so you have to find sounds that approximate them (e.g., move around voicings with a minor second in them, move a triad around on top of the pedal points, harmonize a top line in 4ths, move around the x5666x shape).
For soloing, honestly almost anything goes as long as you keep with that impressionism/gospel esthetic, keep it together rhythmically, have a shape to your line, and resolve a phrase or line to something that sounds consonant with the chord of the moment at least occasionally; referencing fragments of the head helps. I don't quite know how to explain how I manage that (to the extent I do, which is partial at best). All I can say is I've played it a lot and practiced it a lot, without necessarily thinking through it a lot and I hear stuff that works and play it as a matter of familiarity and trial and error. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. I don't know if that's the right approach, but to me it beats stressing out over whether I've got it nailed down in my mind before even trying to play a note.
OK to the question of whether a beginner "can" play this tune (or any other hard tune). So I'm not exactly a beginner (I've been playing a long time and I'm pretty serious about it), but there's just a whole a lot of stuff I do not know how to do that is routine to real jazz musicians, and there are big gaps in my muscianship/chops. I think that is quite obvious from what I played on this. Honestly, every tune is a challenge and I almost never feel as though I'm fully on top of what I'm doing. But I don't worry about it. I keep playing, and keep trying. The worst that'll happen is I'll play something that doesn't sound very good, and if I put it on soundcloud or youtube, some people will think it's kind of lame. The alternative is to not try, and not expand one's palette and repertoire. Play it, don't play it, your call, but I lean to playing stuff I don't know and taking the risk of not quite getting it. Check out: This is at such a creative and advanced level -- as if Art Tatum had absorbed all the harmonic ideas that happened after he died -- that it's absurd to even think about matching it. Herbie plays his way, and that's incredibly brilliant and inspiring. We do it at our level, however we can. But not doing it means not doing it, which is inevitably a lesser thing than doing it, but failing to be Herbie Hancock at it.
JohnLast edited by John A.; 03-15-2021 at 01:27 PM.
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D/F or F7b9#11 ? Originally Posted by christianm77
in bar 2 is Eb7sus
pedal E and Eb are great but at the top it can be simpler:
E7sus I C / E I E7sus I C / E
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Another great pianist/ nice chords/:
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Listening to Herbie Hancock or Ahmad Jamal, we should all feel like beginner musicians.
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Since this is a "jam" session of sorts, I think it's important to keep what John said in mind when you play an "in-person" jam session.
Sometimes there will be jerks at a jam. Happens, that's okay. The jerks aren't the ones that you grab a drink with afterwards.
Everyone. EVERYONE. I mean EVERYONE is still practicing, still learning. Music is beautiful because of it's infinite nature. There will always be something to study.
Peter Bernstein will say he's still working on certain aspects of the music and his playing. Pasquale Grasso will say he's still practicing.
No one really "masters" jazz. Even the masters of yore--Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery--they haven't "mastered" jazz because music knows no master. Music just is.
Not being poetic here, though I am listening to Sonny Rollins play with bongo accompaniment as I write this. Just to say, we are ALL practicing something. Respect the journey and don't crap on those at different points in the journey. Real musicians don't do that at jam sessions. Recording sessions where money is involved, yeah that happens. But a jam... just have fun. If C19 has taught me anything, it's that life is short. Embrace the joy. Save judgement when you are getting a fat check out of it. Otherwise, just play. Find people who challenge you musically, but DON'T belittle your humanity if you aren't "at their level"
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Yeah, Ahmad Jamal is amazing. You can listen to stuff he did in the early 50s, and that esthetic and approach to harmony that sounds quintessentially modern and post-bop was there already, a decade before everybody else started playing that way. And when he picks up a Herbie tune, it fits perfectly. Originally Posted by kris
John
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Yeah, not so much a question of hard or easy, more time available to work on an unfamiliar, harmonically complex piece, then throw most of it out and start impro-ing and make it pretty/interesting. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I personally wouldn't sweat "exact" chord voicings as composers often chase impossible colours and, in so doing, chop and change quite a lot. Other guys go crazy trying to "figure them out"
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Exactly. We aren't pianists who've got ten fingers and seven octaves to play with. Bang your hands down and come up with god knows what. Originally Posted by Peter C
I personally wouldn't sweat "exact" chord voicings as composers often chase impossible colours and, in so doing, chop and change quite a lot. Other guys go crazy trying to "figure them out"
There aren't any 'right' chords. Even the Hancock versions by professional transcribers differ. And Jamal's are different too. So are Bill Evans'. We don't even know whether Hancock played it the same way each time he did it. When he solos on the album the stuff he's comping in the background sounds a lot simpler than when the head was playing.
But, you know, they like doing this kind of thing :-)Last edited by ragman1; 03-15-2021 at 05:18 PM.
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yea... I also would agree with John... post. who cares, really. I've hosted a few different Jazz Jams, hosted at different venues... some lasted for years. Always had great players in House bands and made sure amateurs never got lost and still entertained.
I would say that eventually we get to a level of playing where....you can play any chart etc... The music becomes easy.
You read the chart and if something else is played... you adjust and make it work. The sight reading thing and playing bye ears becomes the same thing.... It's like counting to 10, you don't need to figure anything out.
There is an implied harmonic reference, generally implying root with organized notes above. How we voice or arrange the notes etc... is what we as jazz players do. If there's an arrangement, you play it and go from there.
In the tune... Dbma/Eb or Dbma7/Eb or Bb-11 or Eb9sus etc.... they are all the same thing.
The Dbma/Bb is Db lydian Bb-11 or Eb9sus are all same collection of notes
Personally the differences are how one wants to label the chord movement, the Function of the Music. Is it just diatonic voicings with camouflage or subdominant motion.
Doesn't make much difference until you start creating new relationships, you expand the changes. Different Functional relationships open up different chord patterns and subs...which setup... different licks, notes, embellishments etc.....all of which means nothing unless you understand or even care to.
Enough BS, sorry I'll post another tune.... maybe Yardbird in really straight simple slow swing style. yea I'll get on it.
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I'm thinking about why this might not be a good tune for a beginner.
Maybe it would be a good tune to show a beginner where he's heading. It might have an impact on the direction of learning.
The tune can be played without a lot of chops. It demonstrates why you need to have a foundation for improvising over unfamiliar harmony.
There are some very different approaches to doing that.
I'd suggest emphasizing the importance of
1. Knowing the melody. The player should be able to sing it.
2. Getting the flow of the harmony to sound so familiar that you always know what's coming next.
3. Finding notes that work with each part of the song. Start with chord tones, then extensions. Don't worry about tensions yet.
4. Realizing that making a melody requires linking things in different keys. Working on doing that by scat singing or playing a scale until andof4 and then switching to the nearest note in the next scale. Or some other way. The idea is to understand what it takes to play something that doesn't sound disjointed.
5. Understanding that not all songs have predictable, functional harmony. And, that, if you want to be able to play this kind of song, you're going to have to get some basic skills together, e.g. knowing which notes will sound consonant over each chord and where they lie on the fingerboard.
Seems like a good song for a lesson.
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Could be a good tune for a study group to sit on for a month. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Here's a acoustic version of Yardbird.... sorry, just a one take thing. Maybe later another one... or I guess I'll look at the other tunes...
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John A, great post (#139). After listening to a couple more versions (which didn't necessarily move me) and especially Herbie's solo piano rendition (which most certainly did), I personally see no way of winging it with this one; you have to go in deep. That's JMO.
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Hey Peter... I checked out you compositions... cool, thanks.
Music really doesn't need to always be deep, it rarely saves the world. If you want to actually play jazz... you need to play it.. I thought that was John's point, we are what we are, not what we think we are. This gig is as easy as it gets, right. It's like a big family, you may get thrown to the lions etc... but for the most part, we all have each others back.
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Real jazz 100% Originally Posted by Reg
Best
Kris
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Herbie Hancock. Originally Posted by Peter C
It would be good to say the whole name out of respect to the greatest jazz musician of all time.
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It is very good that we can analyze different performances here, and I have been doing it for over 40 years.
I check the chords of the tunes and often see how differently you can treat harmony.
It is the best school for jazz musician.
Besides, if it's going to be 'Virtual'JAM then you have to set the chords first ...
I can't imagine real jam if the participants play different versions and in different keys ...
Best
krisLast edited by kris; 03-16-2021 at 04:04 AM.
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