-
Here is something very practical hands-on by Peter Farrell that he learned from George Benson. (I know that what he charges for his educational materials has astronomic dimensions, but you can really draw a lot from the free material on his Youtube channel as well if you get beyond maybe not liking the type of presentation, his grin or the fact that English is obviously not his first language.) What he reveals in this video is gold IMHO and something I am definitely gonna integrate into my practice routine.
-
06-14-2023 04:31 PM
-
If I were starting over there are some things I'd place importance on. In unedited sequence:
1. Applied Ear training.
This is to accomplish a few things.
A. Be able to hear, or imagine, changes and immediately find them on the instrument. If you can play any tune you know in any key without much thought, you're probably there.
B. Hear, or imagine, a line and be able to play it.
C. For extra credit, if somebody plays a wrong chord, you know what it was and what it should have been.
How do you get there? Probably a combination of formal ear training, focusing on these skills (like forcing yourself to play tunes in 12 keys and not just sliding up a fret) and time on the instrument. Transcription is a tried and true way to learn vocabulary while training your ear. Everybody advocates it, but not everybody actually does it much.
2. You need to be able to think of an interesting line to play, at which point B, above, comes into play. If you can't think of an interesting line to play, or you get bored with your own playing, you can listen to recordings or read (if you know how) different things for ideas. Some copy licks, but not everybody. Some just try to get the gist of it in their ears.
I'm aware that there is an approach to the instrument that involves applying a lot of theory to finding lines you wouldn't otherwise think of. For example, cycle an idea through Coltrane changes -- even though you could never sing that to yourself. If that's what you want to do, this post isn't going to help you.
3. You need certain skills, or at least a workable approach, to playing with other people, if that's something you want to do. This requires time in group settings and some pointers when you screw up.
Do these abilities require any specific bit of theory or any particular approach to learning? I think that virtually all of the avenues suggested in various posts can contribute, to differing degrees depending on the natural abilities of the player.
-
It is probably cos I am a bit thick. Just tell me something simple that I can practice for ten years.
-
Bach.
-
The One Note Samba would like to have a word with you lol
Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
I’m working with a couple learners who’ve been getting the Jimmy Bruno lessons. We all know Bruno can light it up, but his lessons are not translating into well constructed solos for these learners. They find themselves lost in positions, chasing chords…. but the moment I get them out of their own way, with the simple directive “choose target notes, and play your way to them using rhythmic phrasing” they can suddenly play solos that sound good.
So yes, everything is important. But as the aphorism goes: when everything is priority one, nothing has priority. And it’s just overload for many players to hold everything in equal importance, and in overload they cannot play.
-
My prescription for players on the cusp of improvising:
Learn some basic tunes really well. A blues. Rhythm Changes, All of Me, Autumn Leaves, Blue Bossa, Out of Nowhere.
Be able to play them in multiple keys, which will take some work.
Irealpro is a fantastic tool for this. Set it for 13 repeats with a key change by a fourth every chorus.
Strum the chords and scat sing. When you create a line you like, preserve it. Write it down, record it or memorize it. Play it in different keys. Try to figure out if you can use it in a different song -- by sound.
If you can't create a line you like, or you want to expand your vocabulary, find a version by a player who doesn't play a lot of notes. Paul Desmond, Hank Mobley, Jim Hall. Learn to sing some excerpts and figure out how to play them. Preserve them.
This leads to a question -- should you only be soloing stuff you can sing, or should you go beyond what you can sing? I don't know that there's a right answer. For me, I like the stuff I can sing better than the stuff I generate from any kind of theoretical idea.
Organize a rehearsal band and when you're ready, hire a pro to come in and coach occasionally.
This is one way. There are a multitude of other ways.
What this way avoids, to take a very extreme example, is things like trying every possible pair of triads (maj, min, dim, aug) against every possible bass note, in every key. And, whenever you're done with that, you still haven't played a song.
-
Decided to reply again. I agree with most of what people are saying. That video just peeves me. False info peeves me.
If we unpack what was said in the video where Adam made an example of people who know their theory and can kind of run the material but aren't happy with their level of play, yes focusing on rhythm is great advice. I even chatted with Adam and Peter during a live podcast where they reconciled the meaning of that video.
However the idea that jazz is all rhythm, or mostly rhythm, or defined mostly by rhythm is false. Jazz is defined by all 3 aspects of rhythm, melody and harmony. That's how it was birthed. Where the phenomenon was created of harmonically fluid, improvised melody over the tune, to the pulse, usually but not necessarily swing.
To illustrate: say someone is average at everything, rhythm, melody, and harmony. Then yes, focusing on rhythm is a good tactic. While if someone is inept at melody and harmony, focusing on rhythm will never lead to jazz, outside of drums. Ideally, you'll want to be on point at every aspect if you expect to play well..
No. I was being succinct because I didn't want to have to unpack the definition of jazz and create another argument. I wasn't purposely pushing false info with no intent on clarifying. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Jazz combines all 3 to the nth degree and a musician who wishes to play jazz must be adept at all 3 aspects. The notion that focusing on rhythm only will lead to good playing is misleading. Originally Posted by John A.
The a section to 1 note samba has 2 notes, and the bridge has several - scalar sequences no less. Originally Posted by coyote-1
Last edited by Bobby Timmons; 06-14-2023 at 10:55 PM.
-
How does this relate to the question of the importance of the rhythmic aspect of jazz? Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
-
Here’s page 34 of book one of Alfred’s guitar course for kids. We all know this song has a more elaborate melody… I guess no child who begins their guitar life with Alfred’s stands a chance of ever becoming a jazz guitarist. You know, because the book at this point is focusing exclusively on rhythm when it should be focusing on every aspect of playing simultaneously. Children are well known for their ability to maintain that kind of focus Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
-
If you take that approach, it all comes together and you don't need to parse it. Originally Posted by Bop Head
-
They won't if they never advance past rhythm only lol. Originally Posted by coyote-1
-
Who said this?
"Bebop wasn’t developed in any deliberate way; it was just what happened when musicians got tired of playing chords and melodies that had been done to death… We were searching for new harmonies and rhythms – ‘the pretty notes,’ we called them."
-
Here’s a thing I’ve done a few times - take a bop head and sing only the rhythm, and see if someone (who knows jazz) can recognise it.
in general they can.
There’s a Sonny Rollins quote ‘if you can play one note and play it with rhythm you can play jazz’ (maybe forum members can criticise Sonny for his rhetoric or something)
it’s not literally true of course but it is true in spirit. the truth is that it’s quite striking the number of people who can’t do this simple exercise at all. Try it now - fire up an 12 bar blues in F backing track (for the love of god not an iRealb one haha) and see how long you can go just on the note F.
Actually I think you have to borrow rhythmic phrases to start off with. If you can’t do it, you can’t do it so repeating the exercise won’t make you better at it. You need to start with some material because most will just play really square stuff (every so often you get someone with naturally good rhythm) when you internalise this stuff and can improvise it to some extent, your playing will start to move beyond the ‘jazz workshop noodling on chord scales’ phase.
If you get this together you are going to get a lot of out simple stuff like blues scales and triad notes. Otoh you can know all the theory in the world and still sound terminally unhip if you don’t have this together. I like most, learned the hard way.
In terms of seeing how notes and rhythms go together there’s the music itself. I don’t recall seeing it in any books, but it’s apparent when Bird for example uses a lower neighbour tone on the ‘and’ at the beginning of a phrase, or a chord tone on a push, and so on.
And guess what? There’s far less advice and ‘educational’ material on how to do the rhythm bit. So good luck.
-
What's all the fuss about? If you don't have rhythm then it's mush. But we know that... don't we?
-
This is what you need....
-
It's a progression of the mad at theory movement. Now it's mad at notes. If you don't have note organization down somehow it sux too. Everything is essential. Originally Posted by ragman1
-
:-) Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
-
Ahhh, now we are getting somewhere! You are acknowledging that it can be possible, in a given moment, to prioritize a component of music instead of devoting the Nth degree of attention to every detail all at once! Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
Thank goodness. Because I was about to rewrite the entire jazz curriculum, with Harmony 101 day one focusing on this:
-
For someone on the 'cusp' what do you think are the main differences between learning A song in multiple keys verses learning a different song in another key? Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
The question relates to the use of one's time.
Thanks
-
How about using rhythmic skills when comping... in general we as guitarist suck when playing chords... comping.
Not worked out backing track like playing... actually play changes that reflect what's going on in context.
Your going to need to understand styles, which have rhythmic starting points and where they can go.
I would also say you need to understand the harmonic concepts... but as with this thread, you need the rhythmic skills 1st... where to play whatever harmonic concepts your hearing.
-
So far as I can tell no one has actually said that on this thread (certainly I haven't). The clip in the OP is very explicitly addressed to people who have devoted most of their focus to melody and harmony, but who "still suck". Even though it repeatedly states "notes don't matter", it's quite obviously doing that for effect in order to grab the attention of people who don't pay enough attention to rhythm. I know from tons of real world experience listening to and playing with people at jams and performances that there are a lot of people in that camp. There definitely are people who can play a ton of voicings and hit the right notes (and sophisticated alterations/extensions) over changes, who nevertheless sound bad for rhythmic reasons. Many of them have been at it a long time and don't get better because they keep neglecting the rhythmic dimension of playing jazz. I think the video (its click-baity-ness aside) is making a solid point and is targeted toward addressing a real-world musicianship issue. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
-
Yup. Lately I've been consciously, deliberately listening to the keyboardists I jam with. Just the little things, such as which beats to comp on and how to build short counter-melodies, make a huge difference in how good comping sounds. Originally Posted by Reg
-
My idea is that it's possible to learn a song in one key by memorizing the chords or the grips. But, if you want to be able to play the song in any key, you have to learn the sound of chord changes. That is, the same way you can pre-hear or feel (whatever you want to call it) when it's time to change to the second (IV) chord in a blues, you can hear the changes in other kinds of tunes. Originally Posted by jameslovestal
So, the 12 key exercise forces the ear development. Once you've got it, learning new tunes is a snap. All you have to do is learn them the same way a non-musician can hum a song -- and you can fill in the chords on the fly. You find your hand moving to the next chord without conscious thought.
On the bandstand, when you hear another player change the harmony, you'll know what they did.
At a jam, you can listen to the first chorus of a tune you don't know and then play the secondc chorus.
When you're soloing, you'll be able to hear more of the passing chords and be able to outline them if you want.
It's basic muscianship and my idea is to try to build it in early.
The impetus is that I didn't do this until pretty late in the game and I'm still playing catch-up. I wish I was better at it almost every time I play.
-
Maybe it is important to stress again (as you did above) that it is of no use to move the same chords up and down the fretboard when playing in another key. I have developed my ears already since years so hearing (at least functional standard) changes is no big problem for me but I learned a lot about the guitar when I limited myself to a range of five frets and played "All The Things You Are" in all 12 keys in that range (almost exclusively) with all possible inversions of drop 2 and drop 3 chords within that range while also trying to include substitutions like tritone subs and passing chords. Later I repeated the exercise with 1-3-7, 1-7-3 and 5-3-7 shell voicings. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
-
That depends on how far along you are. If you’re just beginning your jazz journey, then knowing just one jazz blues chord pattern that you can move up and down the neck can get you through any blues that a session leader might call. Then you add another, and then another. In the space of a few months, you’ve learned not only these automatic patterns but also a number of inversions. Which you can then begin to integrate and exchange to taste, as the idiom becomes more and more familiar to you. It’s like memorizing some ii V7 I patterns. IMO they need to become automatic. So that in your jam sessions or performances, if you find yourself in a place you don’t want to be (it does happen), you can let your fingers just go where they know to go. Originally Posted by Bop Head
Reply With Quote
Pete Escovedo & Sy Smith - Let’s Stay Together
Today, 03:46 PM in The Songs