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Lesson in there for sure. Learning the melody properly makes everything easier. But so easy to skip over that step because it can actually be hard at first. Harder than playing a bunch of licks
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07-21-2020 12:25 PM
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I have attended many masterclasses for Classical guitar. However, the music is the written framework and the artist shows players how to breathe life into the black dots in the score. It works. However, for me, Jazz is different. When you muck it up with too much analysis and theory, you loose it's nature, personality, spontaneity, and driving force. Just listen to the kids coming out of Jazz programs today. For the most part, their robotic imitators of great players who were neither robotic nor imitators. They learn improvisation by playing the solos of the greats. In the end, they're talented imitators, not originators. This doesn't mean that one can intuit solos as a savant without understanding the structure of music, but it also doesn't mean that you're a pre-recorded music machine who jumps into pat solos everytime you play. Music education programs have created some great technicians . . . I don't think they produce an abundance of creators as was the case when a musician got his chops on the road by steady gigging with other musicians. And, aren't these the musicians whose solos, technique, and style we study most today? You can sit in your room till your nose bleeds memorizing modes, scales, chords, etc., but you'll never get a personal voice until get into a club/bar and play live with other musicians. We live in an age of instant gratification where as long as you sound like a Jazzer you must be one. The Art Form ,for me, is dying. The world craves the generic. Playing live????? . . . Marinero
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hi all, happy to be here with you.
what is the title of the song in video 3 musicmastercalss of Peter Bernstein
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Do you mean this one? The first tune sounds like There Is No Greater Love. Towards the end he plays Pannonica.
Originally Posted by mikadom
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thx Grahambop, it's a pleasure ...
great moment passed at listen this video on musicmasterclass and
Peter Bernstein - (transcriptions) - YouTube
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This is an interesting comment to me. Do we play to please our ears or do we play to communicate with others? Or both? The only one that'll know if you're true to your ears or what your hearing in your head is you. The listener, the only thing he knows is the melody or what he has made up in his head. You can hear the greatest off melody solo in your head and feel great about playing it out but will the listener have a clue to what you're saying? Originally Posted by coolvinny
I remember soloing over the changes of a standard with a group and at the end the drummer said " What was that?" I told I was playing over the harmony and he said "Where was the melody?" And he wasn't subtle about it either! I was a bit miffed and wrote off his ear but he had a point. How the hell was he was suppose to know what I was playing unless I referenced something of what was in his head, namely the melody? I was playing for me but not communicating. I should have started somewhere near or on the melody and led the listener gradually to what I was hearing.
I suspect we've all been to performances where you hear a solo and think the same thing. " WTF was that? " And musicians you would think would be the one's best to appreciate it.
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Originally Posted by keith
Back when going to gigs was still a thing that was the nightmare that always is luring it's ugly head.
Jazz gigs have this tradition that every single member of the band needs to take a sole on every single tune, so here is where we end:
First comes the head .. cool .. first solo .. and then at least 3 other guys "outline the changes" followed by trading 4ths ... Next song rince repeat ...
And the thing is two fold .. once you hit solo number 2 out of at least 4 the melody is long gone, which can be a problem, but doesn't have to be a problem.
The bigger potential problem is that there is always the risk of every improviser sounding exactly the fucking same on each tune. Sure the notes will be different in principle .. but end of day it's a bunch of ii-V's chained together and on a bad night it's all going to sound the same. So as an audience what you get is the head followed by 4 solos that sound like the 4 solos on the last tune
5 choruses on Love for Sale has grown to be one of my ultimate jazz nightmares ...
... and that night mare is only accentuated by the "performers" making sax/guitar/piano faces like if they where going thru a cavity search ... FFS 
(No offense to the jazz community, but this can be a problem
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Great thoughts. Originally Posted by TimPeak
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Sorry for being out of topic, but I was really surprised how mediocre (I mean nothin special, a canned jazz(y) sound) was the Gibson sound after Peter's.
It is a puzzler, if that is the hand, the amp, or the guitar, or something else
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Anyone who plays classical—ever play Giuliani’s Variations on a Theme by Handel—The Harmonious Blacksmith? Lots of great ideas in that piece, and a model for composing/improvising on a theme.
Fortunately there are so many great models of jazz playing and improvisation.
Important to remember that in the early days of jazz there were a lot of rules, but what stood out was what impressed the fellow musicians so much they followed that path...Louis Armstrong (whose soloing style is the subject of a recent thread here), Sidney Bechet, Fats Waller, Coleman Hawkins.
I have been listening to a lot of Grant Green lately—his style varies a bit from period to period. He ALWAYS emphasizes melody of course, but also focuses a lot on rhythm. He certainly doesn’t get too far out there with harmonic noodlings. It’s interesting to hear the licks that George Benson obviously cribbed from, but embellished with his own more baroque styling. (As he did with Wes as well.)
Anyway, we live in a great age for variety. In the 50’s you could get maybe 10 kinds of fruits at the grocery—if in season—now you can get hundreds from all over the world any time of the year. Same with music. Variety is the spice of life.
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Recently watched an interview with Pete. Very engaging speaker.
Back to OP: this time he talked about being locked out of the house and trying to improvise a way in. I thought of MacGyver. Duct tape, a clothshanger, some spit and you're there. A more light hearted way of thinking about the often overly serious subject of jazz improv.
We just try to not end up like MacGruber in the old SNL sketches.
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I love his interviews. I dont think anyone does a better job of combining ways to describe music and his approach...not too analytical, nor technical, nor spiritual, nor complicated. Etc. Ha, when a beginner like me can get almost as many things out of it as a well experienced player, that's pretty special. Originally Posted by ccroft
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I can’t pretend to know exactly what Peter means for himself about using the melody as the material for improvisation. I do enjoy his improvising, and that of Paul Desmond, Jim Hall, Chet Baker, John Abercrombie, Bill Evans, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon and Ed Bickert, among others. There are many jazz “greats” whose improvisations I just don’t care for at all. Many of their solos seem disconnected, incoherent and directionless.
I subscribe to the idea that you should use the song’s melody as the basis of your improvisation, but not in the sense where you are embellishing the melody as it lies, chorus after chorus, but rather taking notable melodic and rhythmic elements of the melody and developing those in your improvisation. For instance, “Days of Wine and Roses” opens with an ascending sixth, beginning on a short note to a long one. In the second phrase the melody descends a third and then a fifth twice, augmenting the descending fifth interval the second time. You might improvise by developing one or both of those small fragments, moving them to other locations in the progression and adjusting for the harmony and building longer lines from them. You might practice by finding all the little distinctive elements in the melody and trying to create a whole chorus from each little kernel.
I don’t know if any of those people I mentioned above did that consciously, but I hear it in their improvising and it lends a certain integrity and coherence to their improvised statements. A lot of players sound like they’re just rambling along, though sometimes some very fine and impressive rambling, to me.
To my way of thinking, I shouldn’t play the same notes (licks, lines, vocabulary?) over a ii - V7 - I in “Wine and Roses” as a ii - V7 - I in “There is No Greater Love”, because they are different songs. That’s just my way of thinking; I know lots of players, even great ones, who play otherwise.
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To extend the idea of my previous post, I offer one of the finest jazz solos I have ever heard, Hank Jones’ single chorus on Cannonball Adderly’s “Autumn Leaves”.
Hank’s solo starts at around 6:39
Now, the progression of “Autumn Leaves” is just a bunch of ii V7s in major and minor, but clearly Hank is not playing licks or vocabulary over ii V7s - he’s playing “Autumn Leaves”! You can analyze it if you like, but you can just hear it.
To be fair to Miles, his solo just before is also very melody based, though a little more sparsely and elliptical.
This, for me, is my favorite kind of jazz improvisation and the approach I prefer to work towards with each tune I learn.
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He says play the melody ten times in a row and improvise on it as you get bored with it.
Works. Stops one from noodling and also makes sure you actually know the melody.
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Thanks for posting this transcription. Originally Posted by BickertRules
To extend the idea of my previous post, I offer one of the finest jazz solos I have ever heard, Hank Jones’ single chorus on Cannonball Adderly’s “Autumn Leaves”.
Hank’s solo starts at around 6:39
Now, the progression of “Autumn Leaves” is just a bunch of ii V7s in major and minor, but clearly Hank is not playing licks or vocabulary over ii V7s - he’s playing “Autumn Leaves”! You can analyze it if you like, but you can just hear it.
To be fair to Miles, his solo just before is also very melody based, though a little more sparsely and elliptical.
This, for me, is my favorite kind of jazz improvisation and the approach I prefer to work towards with each tune I learn.
Bar 18 is worthy of notice. He on the D7b9 in the middle of a iim7b5 V7b9 im. On the D7b9, he begins with a quarter note C# on beat 1.
Strong beat, gives it plenty of time and, if the transcription is correct, he plays the major 7 against a dominant chord. He's, arguably, in the tonal center of Gm, in which case that C# gives the flavor of m7b5 which would resolve differently. But, the theorists will be able to explain t away as nothing unusual. He then plays an Fmaj triad followed by an Ebm triad. Those triads provide several nice altered tones.
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Those guys are all masters at playing around the melody. Originally Posted by BickertRules
To extend the idea of my previous post, I offer one of the finest jazz solos I have ever heard, Hank Jones’ single chorus on Cannonball Adderly’s “Autumn Leaves”.
Hank’s solo starts at around 6:39
Now, the progression of “Autumn Leaves” is just a bunch of ii V7s in major and minor, but clearly Hank is not playing licks or vocabulary over ii V7s - he’s playing “Autumn Leaves”! You can analyze it if you like, but you can just hear it.
To be fair to Miles, his solo just before is also very melody based, though a little more sparsely and elliptical.
This, for me, is my favorite kind of jazz improvisation and the approach I prefer to work towards with each tune I learn.
I am not an expert on Hank Jones, but that is a pretty spare piano solo—just single notes, and in such a narrow range. Very similar to Miles’ solo or certain guitarists like Kenny Burrell.
Miles sounds like a vocalist in that piece—in the manner of Stan Getz—very much emphasizing the tone and breathy quality of the notes, and the space between the notes. Lots of diminished phrases there—wistful feeling. Classic miles solo.
Also classic Cannonball solo, which is blues-based but filled out with little baroque bursts of energy.
Beautifully recorded—I assume a Van Gelder job? It doesn’t get any better than this.
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