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Now I know why there's so little action on the "jam" threads lately. Everybody's over here telling Lawson what to do and PME what not to do. Way more fun than learning tunes, I guess.
Anyway, regarding the whole advice thing, I mostly don't do that. But when people ask me how I do something or think about something, I like to answer. I don't actually think about playing all that systematically (I say this as a confession not a boast), and answering someone's question is an opportunity to think out loud and formalize things. I suspect I'm not the only one in that boat.
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07-06-2021 08:22 PM
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So to share knowledge and offer advice is to engage in negative behavior?
Alrighty then. Didn’t know that.
And suppressing ones ego is congruous with performing a brash style of music which celebrates and elevates the soloist, as they revel in individual expression?
Absurd to the power of ten.
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Novelists, poets and painters take note
Originally Posted by Donplaysguitar
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Haha you guys.
I have to say many students of jazz guitar I teach day in day out start lessons with exactly the same problem (over articulating the swing and playing on top) and I teach them within a few weeks to articulate and phrase better.
I’m not saying this because I think I’m a great teacher, but rather to indicate that it’s actually fairly easy to sort out with the advice that Jeff et al have given.
It’s not a mysterious or terribly complicated thing to improve basic swing 8ths feel. It does require undoing some habits.
But I didn’t receive this information until quite late on and I feel that was a shame. I want others to get helpful information.Last edited by Christian Miller; 07-07-2021 at 09:05 AM.
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Some great observations here by Christian, Reg, Jeff and others (even when they conflict with each other!). If you don't mind me adding a little to the chorus, Lawson, I'd like to pick up on something Holger mentioned in passing - the 'one' being a point of resolution.
Listening to JP's own recording of his rhythm changes solo reminded me of the introduction to Hal Galper's book, Forward Motion. He quotes Albert Schweitzer's observations on rhythmic phrasing in J.S. Bach's music: "If we follow the principle indicated by Bach's manner of writing his phrases, we see that he usually conceives four consecutive notes as grouped in such a way that the first is detached from the others by an imperceptible break, and belongs rather to the previous group than to the one that follows".
Many of JP's phrases, both in their construction and the way he articulates them, follow the same line of thinking. Two clear instances are the descending line in bars 3-4 that pivots up an octave from the 3rd to b9 (a common Charlie Parker device) and the interplay of registers in bar 14. However, the most obvious of all occurs throughout the bridge:
Notice also, if we expand Schweitzer's 1 [2 3 4] concept up a couple of rhythmic levels (think 'Russian Dolls'), how on a harmonic plane the first group of four notes (Am7/11) contrasts with the D7/D7alt of the following three four-note groups.
This rhythmic concept is a fundamental aspect of phrasing in both Bach and bop and one of the places where so many players come unstuck. Educational convenience - both in the verbal 'counting' sense and regarding the manner in which we notate music - trains us to think of the first beat/attack as a point of departure rather than resolution.Last edited by PMB; 07-07-2021 at 05:57 PM.
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Yea... PMB that's great approach... but isn't the example of the Bridge, kind of just the opposite.
All 4 bars start with a Root. The A-7 is just part of the D7... used as a chord pattern and his phrase chooses to use the D7 as the Target. I agree and love tension release... and musical organization with use of phrasing is ... well obviously a great practice. And I love any device that naturally creates or creates the perception of...I guess in this discussion, the feel of swing... with forward motion.
Getting back to OP...Lawson. As stated by most... yes he needs to get his Pulse together. And I also believe he needs to work on his picking... or whatever technique he wants to use to be able to create better Timing, which will result in better feel and phrasing.... hell maybe even the concept of seeing and hearing phrasing and the general overall shape of what he's playing.
I played a duo gig last night...with piano... we never really had to think about time or phrasing etc... where I'm going is many players have time issues....As I was driving home after gig...I was thinking... there are players who have time and those who are time followers... at gig one of the tunes we played was Dreamsville, old Mancini ballad, anyway... started out rubato...went into time... 2nd time through A section, ( AABA form), he took beautiful solo and when I started I got into a double time feel swing thing... no problems... my last "A" I brought it back down to ballad and yada yada... there were never any problems, audience dug it...typical jazz gig with typical jazz musicians...Tonight's BB gig with my Book, same shit...
I guess lawson has piece memorized ... and it's probable just a little bit above his technical skill level of Performance.
Maybe try just playing The "A" section.... try and get it how you want it. Shorter section should make it so you don't need to think or remember what to play.... concentrate on the performance of what your playing. Just use what you have...
Most of what I see and hear from Lawson's posts, (and many other post's)... is just technical issues. I'm nobody and suck... can't play changes, have an ego that has no end and many other problems... I should just retire... Have no idea why I gig all the time... get called back over and over. There all deaf...
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Originally Posted by Dutchbopper
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The orange cover I call it Joe Pass Book is available on Amazon Kindle for about 7$, this way you can obtain it almost instantly and have it on your computer screen nicely lit up. Its a classic with lots of good material from one of the true Giants of Jazz Guitar!!!
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A good summary of what I think I'm hearing from all the advice. I am really thankful for all the substantive comments and reflections. I have a solid sense of what I'm doing well and where I need to focus. I think in my own improvising I lose the pulse because I'm really worried about note choice. One thing I like about memorizing a good solo is that once I have it mastered in terms of fingering, etc, I don't think about note choice and I start thinking about how I'm actually playing it. I hope to get there with these, and maybe some of the right feel will come over to my own improvisational efforts. Originally Posted by Reg
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The feedback "you're too on top of the beat" would be most helpful in the context of a demonstration of the difference. Originally Posted by djg
There are youtube videos which do this. A line done on the beat, in front (aka "on top") and behind.
To make the leap, you have to be able to hear the difference.
For me, "make it sound like this" with a demo tends to be more helpful than a verbal instruction.
But, that's just my experience. Everyone has his/her own path up the mountain.
And, at the risk of belaboring the point. I got something important from Reg's videos.
With regard to Lawson, he's on the right track. I think his swing feel could be a little more modern -- and, as he jams with other players, that will happen.
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I wasn't condescending. I"m a professor with 35+ years in the classroom and I have had very sharp students who did not know the basic logical fallacies and still thought "beg the question" means "makes you ask the question." Some the smartest people I know don't know these things. Originally Posted by Irishmuso
Also... it's not condescension if the person you are talking to has taken a low road. You have to talk down to them just to connect. That's where they have positioned themselves.
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FYI, Reductio ad absurdum, essentially means proof by contradiction. It's doesn't mean "logical fallacy of falsely summarizing someone's position in a way that ma look ridiculous.". It's a legitimate inference technique. I studied math at the Phd level. It's used quite often to prove theorems. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
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Euclid’s proof of the infinity of the primes is a classic reductio ad absurdum IIRC.
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The phrase has a totally different meaning in logic and philosophy, where it features among "fallacies of informal logic" and the definition is as I stated.Just for fun, though, your comment about studying math at the PhD level involves 2 fallacies, one is the appeal to authority and the other is begging the question. First, we don't know why your having done this makes you any authority on logical fallacies, and second, we don't know how successful you were in your studies such that you'd have that authority. Originally Posted by Tal_175
For what it's worth, I've have a PhD from Yale and publish in scholarly journals where the peer review process often flags logical fallacies, which I have from time to time, I'm sorry to say, committed. Gratefully, alert reviewers caught the error.
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That’s interesting; although I would be surprised if formal logic would have a different usage of the term? Originally Posted by lawson-stone
But I don’t know very much about philosophy. I’m in the humanities now though, so it’s good to know there’s a different definition.
See also ‘positivism’ lol.
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I seem to recall spending some time in college.
Whatever it was that I studied, jazz guitar has been harder.
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No offence but I'm not convinced you use the word "fallacy" correctly here. I wasn't establishing myself as an authority. I was sharing my relevant experience in the subject as the basis of my opinion. That means I have seen and used this inference technique in mathematical publications. It's up to the reader what they make of it. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
Also you might like to check out:
Reductio ad absurdum - WikipediaLast edited by Tal_175; 07-07-2021 at 04:37 PM.
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Actually I don't know. The connection to math and some other things is through the principle of non-contradiction. So someone can try to prove that "Q" is true by showing that every situation "non-Q" leads to contradictory outcomes. So if one can generate a comprehensive or all inclusive opposite to "Q" (i.e. non-Q) and show that it is impossible, it makes the proposition "Q" acceptable. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
But the Latin expression I cited means, literally, "reduction to the absurd" and is most often a fallacy of argument that is a kind of circular reasoning. The "reductio" usually involves a strategy of paraphrasing a position by trimming it down to something assumed to be essential or basic, and then showing that it is absurd. But the fallacy is in the paraphrase, of course.
"Informal" logic is not in any way less logical, it simply means logic as applied to the realities of rhetoric and argument, especially verbal argument as opposed to symbolic or mathematical argument.
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I’d go further than that. As far as I can tell it’s true of basically all Western Music. Originally Posted by PMB
Some great observations here by Christian, Reg, Jeff and others (even when they conflict each other!). If you don't mind me adding a little to the chorus, Lawson, I'd like to pick up on something Holger mentioned in passing - the 'one' being a point of resolution.
Listening to JP's own recording of his rhythm changes solo reminded me of the introduction to Hal Galper's book, Forward Motion. He quotes Albert Schweitzer's observations on rhythmic phrasing in J.S. Bach's music: "If we follow the principle indicated by Bach's manner of writing his phrases, we see that he usually conceives four consecutive notes as grouped in such a way that the first is detached from the others by an imperceptible break, and belongs rather to the previous group than to the one that follows".
Many of JP's phrases, both in their construction and the way he articulates them, follow the same line of thinking. Two clear instances are the descending line in bars 3-4 that pivots up an octave from the 3rd to b9 (a common Charlie Parker device) and the interplay of registers in bar 14. However, the most obvious of all occurs throughout the bridge:
Notice also, if we expand Schweitzer's 1 [2 3 4] concept up a couple of rhythmic levels (think 'Russian Dolls'), how on a harmonic plane the first group of four notes (Am7/11) contrasts with the D7/D7alt of the following three four-note groups.
This rhythmic concept is a fundamental aspect of phrasing in both Bach and bop and one of the places where so many players come unstuck. Educational convenience - both in the verbal 'counting' sense and regarding the manner in which we notate music - trains us to think of the first beat/attack as a point of departure rather than resolution.
When I get a beginner students to play, say, bar 1-4 of their simple guitar pieces for example, it never sounds right, because they aren’t playing the phrase. They have to phrase across the bar line. In basically everything but the very simplest open string exercises. It’s necessary to understand most musical phrases to go through the bar line and into the first beat of the next bar.
I don’t teach FM to them, but I probably should.
limitations of notation.
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I have a mere BA in philosophy from not-Yale (and I do not claim that or my course in formal logic makes me right, I just happen to be right), but I'm with Tal_175. In philosophy and logic, reductio ad absurdum is a mode of argument that leads from a premise to a contradiction via a chain of deduction, typically used to expose the untenability of the premise. If someone follows your premise to an extreme conclusion that is nonetheless not an absurdity*, and claims this proves your premise to be untenable, this is a fallacious appeal to extremes, not a reductio ad absurdum. If they do so by a faulty chain of reasoning, this is what is known as "bullshit". But good catch on "begging the question". Most people misuse that term these days. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
"philosophy (and/or theater) of the absurd" aside, in logic and philosophy "absurd" nearly always is meant as a synonym for "contradictory" or "illogical", not "ridiculous" (something can be both ridiculous and logical, but not both absurd and logical).
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The fallacies of informal logic are a sub-field of philosophy. In that sub-field, and in much common philosophical discussion, the phrase means what I said. Mathematics is not a field in which the fallacies of informal logic are encountered. I'm not saying your use is wrong, I'm saying that the use I made of it is also correct and a staple in discussions of debate, rhetoric, and verbal disputation. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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I was hoping to leave things where they were having said my piece because I respect the journey you are on Lawson, along with all of us, to learn jazz. I'm inspired by a lot of what you do and hope to follow in your footsteps on the instrument. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
But, in my mind it is "lower" for the better players to demean the playing of others. I would describe that as mean-spirited. Especially, given the fact that the person just offered some innocuous suggestions.
We can all form are own opinions on what advice is good or not. But it is unnecessary to call someone out because you don't think they are good enough to offer advice.
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No, reduction to the absurd does not mean that, and is not a form of circular reasoning. "Absurd" (literally, "out of tune") in the context of philosophy and logic means "contradictory" or "illogical." It's a means of exposing a contradiction between someone's premise and conclusion (not to be confused with the absurdity of Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion discussing how long it takes to bury a live cat). People do make false arguments that are superficially in the form of a reductio ad absurdum, but that's a different story. Originally Posted by lawson-stone
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I googled "begs the question". Two meanings showed up. One is calling for the question to be asked. The other is to assume a propostion is valid without arguing it. Originally Posted by John A.
Reductio, I thought, was disproving an argument by demonstrating that it leads to absurd conclusions. That will work fine in math. In the humanities (say, economics and anything further south of science), that's irrelevant -- since the winner of an argument is decided by strength of intellectual dominance, not logic. But, perhaps I disclose too much about my biases <g>.
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Formal logic (and less formal logic a la Plato and Aristotle) does not use reductio ad absurdum differently from the the mathematical logic sense (except that those two said it in Greek). The mathematical logic sense is a formalization of the classical sense. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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