How to Scat Sing (Aimee Nolte)

**MarkRhodes** · 03-30-2017, 10:15 AM

(Warning: for those of you who freak out when Aimee records while driving, please do NOT watch this video. Just listen with your eyes closed.)

The first in a series of videos on how to scat sing.
Chet Baker is her favorite.
This lesson---the first one---focuses on jazz rhythm exercises she learned from Hal Crook and Ray Smith.

(For those who do not know her, Aimee plays piano, sings, and teaches. She makes a lot of YouTube videos that many fine players here have found useful and entertaining. I like 'em too.)

**MarkRhodes** · 03-30-2017, 10:26 AM

I listened a late-night jazz show for years that used this for its closing theme. Love this tune.

**oldane** · 03-30-2017, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by MarkRhodes

I listened a late-night jazz show for years that used this for its closing theme. Love this tune.

"Lil' Darling" is one of my favorites. The story goes that Niel Hefti originally wrote it as a medium tempo swing tune. During a rehersal (mostly lead by the first alto) Basie had been sitting in the corner of the studio studying some horse race magazine. After some time he put down the magazine, rose from the chair, fronted the band and said: "Let's try this as a ballad with soft subtones and all." The rest is history.

By the way, I have for years wanted to hear a big band give "One for my Baby" the same treatment. It would sound "like mice pissin' on cotton" (to quote Benny Carter).

**MarkRhodes** · 03-30-2017, 02:05 PM

Originally Posted by oldane

"Lil' Darling" is one of my favorites. The story goes that Niel Hefti originally wrote it as a medium tempo swing tune. During a rehersal (mostly lead by the first alto) Basie had been sitting in the corner of the studio studying some horse race magazine. After some time he put down the magazine, rose from the chair, fronted the band and said: "Let's try this as a ballad with soft subtones and all." The rest is history.
.

I'm finishing up Alfred Green's biography of his father, Freddie Green ("Rhythm Is My Beat") and it makes the same point: that Hefti wrote the tune as medium but Count wanted to slow it down. Good call, Basie!

**Marty Grass** · 03-30-2017, 02:48 PM

Every once in a while a completely unforeseen gift falls onto your lap. Aimee's video series is one.

She's just what I needed at this point to help translate internal melodies to the guitar.

Thanks, Mark

**rob taft** · 03-30-2017, 05:14 PM

Mark, Thanks for hipping me to Mrs Nolte's youtube channel. Thoroughly enjoyed her discussions plus she has a really sunny disposition which carries over into her vids. The one with Phil Mattson nearly had me in tears.

**MarkRhodes** · 03-30-2017, 06:03 PM

Originally Posted by rob taft

Mark, Thanks for hipping me to Mrs Nolte's youtube channel. Thoroughly enjoyed her discussions plus she has a really sunny disposition which carries over into her vids. The one with Phil Mattson nearly had me in tears.

You're welcome. I chanced upon her about a month or so ago. (Several here already knew of her work and YouTube channel.) She does have a sunny disposition. She has a quality my other favorite teachers have: love for the subject / work that generates enthusiasm in students. She doesn't sugarcoat the need for work but reminds students, "Yes, YOU too can do this."

**jasaco** · 03-30-2017, 11:21 PM

I've been enjoying her vids now for several months. A really good teacher! And I didn't mind her recording while driving until she started clapping out the rhythms! Yikes!! On the LA Freeways?? Good heavens!

**MarkRhodes** · 03-31-2017, 09:05 AM

Originally Posted by jasaco

I've been enjoying her vids now for several months. A really good teacher! And I didn't mind her recording while driving until she started clapping out the rhythms! Yikes!! On the LA Freeways?? Good heavens!

Aimee and I laugh about that because she knows some people freak out when she's driving. She doesn't do it in order to freak people out----I think she spends a lot of time in her car, and being a mother of several kids (-three? four?) it may be the only place she can collect her thoughts uninterrupted!

(A neighbor with seven kids once told my mom, "I haven't finished a meal---or a sentence---in fourteen years!" That still cracks me up.)

**MarkRhodes** · 03-31-2017, 05:49 PM

I've been practicing (-on the guitar more than with my voice) the suggestion here to----when playing eighth notes---to hold off on (or delay) playing the second one for as long as possible. "A millisecond before beat three" is how she puts it in the video. It changes the feel for the better, I think.

Anyone else spent time working on that? Thoughts?

**stringsalive** · 04-01-2017, 12:59 AM

Thanks for sharing. The driving is a little unsettling, but she's great!

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

**grahambop** · 04-01-2017, 05:02 AM

Inspired by Aimee, I have taken to practising my guitar while driving.

On a serious note, she is dead right about Chet Baker. When he was on form, he could scat sing anything that he could play on the trumpet, with equal facility by the sound of it. That is pretty unusual.

**MarkRhodes** · 04-01-2017, 09:13 AM

Originally Posted by grahambop

Inspired by Aimee, I have taken to practising my guitar while driving.

On a serious note, she is dead right about Chet Baker. When he was on form, he could scat sing anything that he could play on the trumpet, with equal facility by the sound of it. That is pretty unusual.

I remember Chet saying in an interview that he didn't play anything on the trumpet he couldn't sing. I believe him! That guy made many beautiful records.

Aimee's talk about another teacher---"I don't know what your notes are"---made me think of something. Herb Ellis was known for 'singing what he played' and for encouraging students to do that too. (Oscar Peterson did it and you can hear that on many of his recordings.) On Herb's instructional material you can hear him doing it; on live performances you can see his mouth moving in a way that indicates he's doing it---but it was more about rhythm than pitch. Herb wasn't hitting the pitches with his voice that he was playing on his guitar. (You'd have to have a wide range to do that. I certainly don't.) I don't think he was trying. But there is a connection and that may be the main thing.

Herb thought this was the difference between playing memorized patterns and phrases and playing music 'that comes from you.'

I think guitarists tend to think of 'singing what you play' as more about rhythms than pitches.

How do you guys (and girls) think about that?

There's a great shot of Herb doing this that starts at the 0:35 mark of this video.

**MarkRhodes** · 04-02-2017, 02:06 PM

For those ready for the second installment in Aimee's series on scat singing for beginners.

(Me, I haven't watched the first one a bajillion times, so I'm not ready for this.)

**acornet** · 04-04-2017, 04:47 PM

playing and singing

Boulou Ferré (playing guitar and singing on Bluesette - 1964 (he was 13 I think)
solo guitar/scat starts around 1:01

**MarkRhodes** · 04-04-2017, 05:15 PM

Aimee with a guitarist (Paul Pieper) she's never met in person but collaborates with via the Internet.

**fep** · 04-04-2017, 08:25 PM

Originally Posted by MarkRhodes

I remember Chet saying in an interview that he didn't play anything on the trumpet he couldn't sing. I believe him! That guy made many beautiful records.

Aimee's talk about another teacher---"I don't know what your notes are"---made me think of something. Herb Ellis was known for 'singing what he played' and for encouraging students to do that too. (Oscar Peterson did it and you can hear that on many of his recordings.) On Herb's instructional material you can hear him doing it; on live performances you can see his mouth moving in a way that indicates he's doing it---but it was more about rhythm than pitch. Herb wasn't hitting the pitches with his voice that he was playing on his guitar. (You'd have to have a wide range to do that. I certainly don't.) I don't think he was trying. But there is a connection and that may be the main thing.

Herb thought this was the difference between playing memorized patterns and phrases and playing music 'that comes from you.'

I think guitarists tend to think of 'singing what you play' as more about rhythms than pitches.

How do you guys (and girls) think about that?

There's a great shot of Herb doing this that starts at the 0:35 mark of this video.

I try to sing pitches and I do this better than I think I should be able to.

By that I mean that if you take the guitar out of my hands I completely fall apart when trying to sing lines.

I've concluded that I don't play what I sing, I sing what I play. And, I think there is a difference between those two. Playing what you sing is a higher level skill and is "playing what comes to you". But for it not to suck you better be able to sing good lines. To do that you need to, without the guitar, develop vocabulary, ears, and vocal pitch.

Singing what you play is fine for what it is, but it doesn't result in better guitar playing.

All just my opinion of course.

**Veritas** · 04-05-2017, 09:04 AM

Sounds nice, Destiny, apart from the recording gain being too high and a little harsh. But nice singing and scatting.

**MarkRhodes** · 04-05-2017, 09:45 AM

Originally Posted by fep

I try to sing pitches and I do this better than I think I should be able to.

By that I mean that if you take the guitar out of my hands I completely fall apart when trying to sing lines.
]

Interesting, Frank. I try to sing pitches too but I'm not so good at it. I suppose a lot of work would expand my range, though I don't know the range of my voice could ever include the full range of the guitar. (Even the full range that I actually play, not the full range possible on a guitar such as mine.)

I've done a lot of work lately on playing songs (that I sing) in different keys in order to find the best key for me. (This is how I stumbled upon Aimee Nolte, looking for help with how to find the best key to sing a song in.) As I improve at that, I get better at 'singing what I play.'

On a somewhat related note. When I was a kid, I heard the familiar parental complaint that the rock music I listened to didn't have real melodies, it was just yelling. That was overstated but a lot of the songs I liked didn't have definite melodies. I didn't even know singing was about hitting definite pitches the way that playing a riff on a guitar was. (I know how dumb that sounds. What can I say, I was dumb about this. As Will Rodgers put it: "We're all ignorant, just on different subjects.") I started singing better when I got into Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. (Not that I sing that well now, but it's a wide step up from caterwauling.)

**destinytot** · 04-05-2017, 09:46 AM

Originally Posted by Veritas

Sounds nice, Destiny, apart from the recording gain being too high and a little harsh. But nice singing and scatting.

Thanks. The pianist is the one to watch - fantastic, and a real 'team player'.

That was recorded with the owners' camcorder on mini DV tape. I'm waiting for footage of another gig with her (recorded on a better camera).