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Alter -
I liked your thing. The Kenny Drew reference... was that because he played with Coltrane and had to master the tunes brought into the studio more or less immediately? Or something else?
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04-26-2022 04:06 AM
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I do have an even more pluckier version up my sleeve...
TBH, I liked this tune (which is actually rather sad if you slow it down) till I realised it was circular because then it became an exercise. I mean, some tunes and songs need to zip along, it's the right thing for them, but exercises become just that, technicalities, or possibly etudes, the heads merely being an excuse for the rest of it.
The problem then is they become a bit of a challenge and rather competitive, seeing who can get round it quickest. To my mind that defeats the object of music. I prefer to feel my stuff, I like it to have some meaning. But that's just me, I suppose. Not that I mind a challenge but I think I'd rather not.
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We are not all the same. Some people are musical, some are not. Some people can do languages easily, some cannot. Some find mathematics easy, many do not. Of course, anything can be improved with practice, that's beyond dispute, but it won't change that person's basic nature.
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Thank you. Yes, given how they used to record these days, and what I've read about Trane's group, can you imagine someone bringing these changes at a recording session and you have to play them? Same for the other soloists
Originally Posted by ragman1
All this multitonic thing was still unheard of at the time.
Here's the original recording personnel:
John Coltrane tenor saxophone
Paul Chambers — double bass
Kenny Drew — piano
Curtis Fuller — trombone
Philly Joe Jones — drums
Lee Morgan — trumpet
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When I listened to the clip without reading your preface I thought, 'wtf, is this a fugue?!' Lol that was awesome! Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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grahambop, I wanted to point out something I noticed that you do which makes you sound authentic that the pros do. You mix short and long motifs, the long motifs have good 8th note feel, and here's the sneaky part that I've noticed about the pros: they let the short motifs ride, sometimes even truncate lines, but it propels the overall feel of the solo because there's no stumbling. Kind of subtle. Have you guys noticed that in the pros? Hopefully I explained myself adequately.
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The guy I felt sorry for was the pianist Tommy Flanagan on Giant Steps. I believe Trane practised it for at least a year before recording it, but as far as I know, on the day he just put the chart in front of Tommy (who’d never seen it before) and expected him to play it straightaway. Originally Posted by Alter
Thank you. Yes, given how they used to record these days, and what I've read about Trane's group, can you imagine someone bringing these changes at a recording session and you have to play them? Same for the other soloists All this multitonic thing was still unheard of at the time.
No wonder the piano solo is rather tentative. It’s amazing that he could play it at all.
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Thanks, to be honest I think I sometimes do that out of necessity more than anything, especially at this kind of tempo. My ‘inner guitarist’ probably wants to play endless lines of flawless 8th notes like Pat Martino, but I can’t, so I end up playing little motifs and bits of ideas in between the longer runs. It kind of annoys me while I’m playing, but as you say, it seems to come out ok and does create a bit of variety. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
Repeating a motif and changing it to fit the changes (and maybe changing its rhythm as well) can be very effective though, I’ve been looking at some Jerry Bergonzi video lessons where he constructs whole solos this way, so maybe I’ve taken a bit of that on board subconsciously. I don’t really practise it much, but perhaps I should!
Also I think good time trumps anything. You can just repeat a simple 2 note phrase over and over, and if the time is great, it will sound better than the most fancy line played with bad time. So I think when I’m flailing a bit and grabbing those little bits of ideas, I at least try to keep them in time.
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Actually I just found this, I never heard about this before. So possibly Tommy had sight of it beforehand, but didn’t expect the lightning tempo! Originally Posted by grahambop
John Coltrane: Giant Steps - Complex & Logical
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Just as well, I haven't found a single explanation yet that has made sense and I wouldn't trust the people who wrote them one bit. However, if it means what I think it means, it's something I worked out a long time ago for myself... so that's that :-) Originally Posted by Alter
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You're welcome. Solos might be optimized if players could improv fully contoured continuous lines. And yes, probably most players play the short bits because of overload. I do notice the phenomenon on records a lot though, and I think it sounds good. I think the benefits are it provides a contrast with the longer lines, it allows the player to pause or regroup for a moment, it propels the solo forward with little bits rhythmically or impressionistically adding to the whole, and it doesn't end up sounding contrived like an attempt at continuous lines could. Originally Posted by grahambop
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Yes, in fact I’ve read some stuff by Jimmy Raney where he discusses various ways to break up a solo and make it more interesting, such as motifs, irregular note groupings, rhythmic displacement etc. (all things to be found in his solos of course).
Chet Baker is another good example of someone who alternates short ideas and spaces with some amazing long lines, I’ve certainly listened to him a lot.
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And then there’s Paul Desmond, whose solos are a model for all. Many are so beautifully integrated that he could have written each on the score paper in his head just before he played it. Talk about spontaneous structure! Originally Posted by grahambop
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A long time ago, Miles Davis pointed out that guitarists play too much - densely. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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He also said (allegedly - I can't find an actual quote of this) that the music is in the space between the notes. And he seems to have gotten over his concern about guitar players by the time Bitches' Brew hit the stands. Originally Posted by kris
A long time ago, Miles Davis pointed out that guitarists play too much - densely.
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To me it's like speech, it needs pauses.
Also, it's a bit like those people who post large, dense blocks of text without paragraphs. Useless :-)
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I’ve often followed the advice that Miles gave to John Mclaughlin: ‘Play like you don’t know how to play the guitar!’
Not on purpose though...
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The exception is Pat Martino, who I love.
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I don't think he was listening to Miles after all. Originally Posted by grahambop
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It was in the context of that slow intro McLaughlin did for ‘In A Silent Way’. I think the tune initially had all sorts of fancy chords written out, but Miles told them to ditch all that and keep it really simple. But it is quite possibly the most restrained thing McLaughlin has ever done! Originally Posted by kris
I don't think he was listening to Miles after all.
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To each his own. I have nothing against taking the tempo at whatever tempo one feels it, and wasn't saying anything out of a sense of competition. My own was too fast for my tastes and comfort, but it wasn't for the sake of exercise. I'd have preferred to play it a bit slower, but of the backing tracks I found on youtube, it seemed the best and most natural performance. I had a very short window to get a recording down (about an hour), so rather than hunt something else down, spend the time slowing this one down, or recording my own, I just took it as it came in the spirit of jamming (and getting one's butt kicked by horn players calling insane tempos). I played a few takes within that short window, picked one, and called it a day before the honey-do list rained down on me. My comment on your tempo was just kidding around. Originally Posted by ragman1
I do have an even more pluckier version up my sleeve...
TBH, I liked this tune (which is actually rather sad if you slow it down) till I realised it was circular because then it became an exercise. I mean, some tunes and songs need to zip along, it's the right thing for them, but exercises become just that, technicalities, or possibly etudes, the heads merely being an excuse for the rest of it.
The problem then is they become a bit of a challenge and rather competitive, seeing who can get round it quickest. To my mind that defeats the object of music. I prefer to feel my stuff, I like it to have some meaning. But that's just me, I suppose. Not that I mind a challenge but I think I'd rather not.
That said, I think if one takes a "fast" tune slow, that also risks coming off as an exercise. To me, a ballad is an opportunity to explore -- articulations, pulling at the time (e.g., via rubato and double time), different harmonic palette's, long/short tones, dynamics, etc. Absent that sort of exploration, slow is just slow, and the meaning one finds in that as a player is maybe not so obvious to the listener (whereas it's a lot harder for a listener to miss the energy of fast playing).
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Hey, easy! No offence taken whatsoever. I know what you meant. The pluckier bit was for you (!) but I wasn't thinking of you when I wrote the rest, it was just one thought following another. In fact, your post got me chuckling! I've done plenty of fast stuff, used a pick for decades, all that. But still got the same number of fingers... Originally Posted by John A.
But these days, just sitting quiet with the computer, I suppose I just like to feel my way through things, I get more out of it that way. Anyway, I know audiences like stuff with a bit of life to it. Speed is associated with virtuosity. Too much speed bores me (McLaughlin bores me) but I love watching Bireli weave his magic.
But, you know, when it's a fast tune on here and everyone's doing their best with it, I wouldn't want to be the guy who breezes through it. That would make me very uncomfortable. Luckily it's not going to happen, not now, no way. But I think there are players who like to show off and it's never impressive. Not to me, anyway.
So when a fast tune like this one comes up I just revert to medium-ish and do something I hope satisfies. Anyway, we just had Round Midnight and that was very slow so we can't complain.
Here's my favorite pick of yesteryear. Dunlop 1mm. Doesn't look that worn but it is. Never let me down
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I'm not much of a reader. I've had periods of doing more of it, and get a little better for a while, but I've never really been able to read more than a very basic line cleanly at first sight. Chords symbols are not a problem, but reading a line (or fully notated chords) is always a stumbling slog for me. I generally pick up melodies quickly by ear, and use charts to fill in blanks I can't figure out that way (or to learn stuff I don't have recordings of handy). Recently, I've been playing with a couple of guys (bass and guitar) who read everything. They both did Broadway gigs and other pro reading gigs for many years, and they're throwing tons of new tunes at me. My reading is maybe a little less sclerotic, as a result of playing with them regularly, but I don't think I'll ever be proficient at it, unless I do something like go back to school and really tear my playing down and rebuild it from scratch. But these guys are the opposite of me in terms of reading vs ear. If I call a tune I know from memory, if it's not in their book (and in the book's key), they're stumped (and neither had even seen iReal until I showed it to them). But if it's in their book they get it right away. The guitar player especially is like a machine. He can read anything. It's a novel experience for me. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
That's how I've gotten by all these years. But I' ve always wanted to be able to sight read a complex chart and hope someday to be good enough to do it. I get by because I know so many tunes that I rarely need a score, and it helps to be fronting my own group For example, I was able to back 11 vocalists I've rarely worked with using their charts a few weeks ago at a concert, only because I knew a lot of the tunes and the originals were bare chord sheets and very simple.
I don't think a full time music career was ever in the cards for me. Love playing, love performing, don't love the business of music at all. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
Last edited by John A.; 04-26-2022 at 05:28 PM.
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Tough tune. At fast tempos I can sort of hear the logic of the changes, but probably won’t be able to play anything meaningful intentionally. At slow tempos, it’s harder to hear the logic of the changes and they start to sound arbitrary.
For me, it’s an exercise, but I think a very beneficial one given the presence of non-resolving ii-Vs in a few different keys. I’ve found these to be really challenging in some of our previous tunes. I’m starting to understand things like repeating lines in a parallel fashion over these chromatic non-resolving lines thanks to Wes’s handling of the Bm7 E7 Bb7 Eb7 in his version of the melody of Round Midnight. Trying a little bit of that in my 80 bpm runs through Moment’s Notice. Even at that tempo, nailing the changes is a chore. I think you’d have to think reductively about the changes at tempo.
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I've definitely noticed Chet do that. Originally Posted by grahambop
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