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This Jocelyn Gould episode has just been released and is quite entertaining.
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12-02-2023 06:40 AM
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The difference in the perspectives of jazz musicians and blues/rock musicians was made remarkably clear when she explained what she did around the 11 minute mark. She was demonstrating how blues can be a great bridge point for jazz and how you can introduce jazz elements to blues with a relative ease. She made the Bb7 in the 4th bar a ii/V (going to the IV chord) and played a classic bebop dominant lick (chromatic descend from 1 to 7 and pivoted maj 7 arpeggio from the 7th) on the 4th bar. But it seems like Mick and Dan perceived it as an example of complex jazz harmony.
I mean, IV V I is in every campfire song, ii V I is just the same thing. What perplexed them was not the complexity of the harmony but Jocelyn's awareness of where she is in the form. She even said she'd be lost if she didn't know which chord she was playing on. A lot of blues guitarist only need to know when they are back on top in the form which is easy to feel especially with a half decent rhythm section. A jazz musician would have to have a higher harmonic resolution to play, for example, #IV diminish going to I on the 6h and 7th chords. Non-jazzers perceive this as theory but it's mostly a trained skill using very little theory.Last edited by Tal_175; 12-02-2023 at 08:34 PM.
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I enjoyed this episode a lot. Jocelyn’s pure, joyful approach to music is very inspiring. She deserved to be there. And TPS’s regular audience deserves to get to know Jocelyn.
I’m a long-time and halfway decent pop/rock/metal player who came to jazz late in life and I’m still struggling with knowing where I am in the form. It would go a lot faster if I could play with others or have a good teacher. That’s a goal for 2024. It’s learning how to drive in a big city I guess, not merely operating the car but mostly dealing with every possible traffic situation. Totally daunting at first but eventually becoming second nature.
Originally Posted by Tal_175
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The endless arpeggio exercise will fix that for you. You have to know what chord you’re on to play the corresponding arpeggio. Originally Posted by Oscar67
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To anyone passing thru the vid, make sure you check out the last 5 mins. That's one helluva singer/guitar player.
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Head of guitar at my alma mater.
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They don't care. They just make music. They don't need to know all that jazz. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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I think you’re on to something there Tal. A big issue for jazz learners tends to be keeping track of the form while improvising.
In fact I think improvisers in different genres do this - i certainly think Jimi did this for example, and great blues players or in a different but analogous way there’s Indian rhythmic cycles that are hundreds of beats long and so on - but you can sort of get away with not doing it when the song is in one key/mode. And of course there’s open ended vamp improv, and free improv where these constraints are lass critical (but soloing in odd time can mess you up if you lose track of the 1)
But in many forms of improvisation you’re improvising over some sort of template and you need to keep the latter in your head while also improvising at the same time. Musical multitasking.
How to develop this skill. That’s an interesting question. I don’t actually know how I developed it. I think I sing the melody in my head while playing, perhaps the bass/chord prog. If I lose track of that I get discombobulated. It does happen sometimes. I can’t hear the song… esp on trad jazz gigs where the songs can be quite samey and often you can play a few tunes in the same key lol.
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Heres one. I’ve been working with third and fourth graders on form stuff and I’ve found that it helps to force them *not* to play. So I’ll divide the class into three groups and have the first play the first four bars of a blues while the others rest, and so on. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I think it helps to force people into situations where they have to use their ears rather than rely on rote stuff and muscle memory.
With older students I’ll break the form up into phrases and put rest into it. Like you have to play three bars and rest one. Or put the rest in the second or third measure or each phrase. Makes people think about how the phrase relates to the form rather than just trying to surf the changes. Because you inevitably miss a change and really don’t want to be lost when you do.
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yeah I’m not teaching jazz in groups atm but could be adapted for one on one students Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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I think what helped me get better at internally feeling the pulse and developing a better form awareness was practicing soloing without an accompaniment or a backing track (but metronome is OK). That's been part of my practice routine in the last 2-3 years. If I can't play a solo unaccompanied for a few choruses without getting lost, then I'm not ready to play that tune with others (that doesn't mean I won't, lol). I can't say I'm rock solid but the mindset of "I shouldn't rely on other instruments to know where I am" helped me a lot. Everybody is responsible for keeping the time and the form when playing together I think.
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Yeah … unaccompanied trading of fours or something even. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Oh man +1 to this. Drumgenius maybe also a nice alternative for this too? Though I’m an old stick in the mud and go with the ole analog metronome. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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What really struck me was the defensiveness of the fellows regarding how she was doing this very fine playing. It arose a few times as something like "...but of course you have to know everything theory to play like that."
She lightly pressed back (as a polite guest who answered every question with
"yes" or "yeah") mentioning the connection of melody to singing and the long hours listening to Jazz to determine what things went well with which changes in harmony, the demonstration of very careful listening of the scale for "evenness"... she even told them that a pedal would overwhelm her because of all the things she's listening to... they never got it and returned to the "must know everything".
When the guy who spent half the time with his arms crossed reached back and pulled out the Strat I was hoping she'd play it for them, just for fun or spite.
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yes, that sort of thing Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Yes. I think backing tracks create a mentality where people ‘lean’. We all do it. But while some rhythm sections like to play very clearly and simply, when you start playing with more interactive and modern rhythm sections for example you can’t simply expect them to mark the form for you. My first experience decades ago was when the bass player on a jam decided to pedal V on rhythm changes. I remember it vividly, I felt I’d been dropped down a lift shaft at the time, but of course it’s a very simple and common way to open up the changes and create tension. Originally Posted by Tal_175
But Aebersolds or band in a box don’t do that sort of thing, only real players, and you can’t rely on the usual clues to keep track of the form. You have to be feeling it yourself… so being able to feel eight bars while soloing is a basic skill….
Similarly, many drummers like to hide the one a bit. One obvious and simple technique is when they put a dotted quarter accent over the time. This is not crazy out there stuff… it’s fairly common.
Obviously, beyond the basic level, this can be especially challenging in odd time. If you are playing a tune in 7/4 it’s so easy to lose track of the 1. You have to develop the ability to keep track of it yourself… not natural to us in this part of the world, famously they had to keep bashing out the 123 123 12 12 rhythmic pattern on the original ‘take five’ to keep the band together haha. But things have moved on somewhat in the decades since to say the least.
I rarely practice with backing tracks myself. Usually just the metronome, maybe set to some ‘big beat’ like a click every two or four bars. If I record comping it’s afterwards.
Sometimes I record soloing with no click and then comping afterwards. I can really see if I’m leaving space and keeping track of the form and not adding in beats and stuff.
I got this idea from Lage Lund who practices comping this way.
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The funny thing is I listen to her playing and it’s straightforward classic jazz guitar (done to a very high level) and yet it’s like she dropped in from Mars to these guys. Originally Posted by pauln
I forget what a rarified little bubble I live in as a player… but to me it’s just playing songs, and you learn the same way as you do for any style of (non classical) guitar playing
’must be theory’
Yep, definitely not hours and hours working out Wes Montgomery by ear, and learning hundreds of old Tin pan alley songs. Couldn’t be anything to do with that right?
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
What really struck me was the defensiveness of the fellows regarding how she was doing this very fine playing. It arose a few times as something like "...but of course you have to know everything theory to play like that."
They gave Jocelyn an hour on their show, which is a very popular one, exposing her and jazz guitar to a huge crowd that otherwise might have stayed oblivious. Glass half full from where I’m sitting. They were out of their depth regarding the music but I never once felt they were being disrespectful. On the contrary.
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I think we should big ourselves up, e.g. tell everyone ‘yeah this jazz stuff is really complex, you need the intellect of a chess grandmaster and a nuclear physicist to solo on rhythm changes’ etc.
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no I didn’t feel that either. Originally Posted by Oscar67
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The former is probably more true than the latter, if I understand things correctly. Originally Posted by grahambop
EDIT: with maybe some quantum physics thrown in. If you get stuck you just invent a particle, pardon, chord
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Yes! I've used the chess analogy. I'm crap at chess btw, and I studied some nuclear physics at uni.
In terms of how much it's like music - well, physics types always try to get out of the grunt work and see it as having no value (rather aristocratically). In the era before electronic computers, physicists delegated repetitive calculation to human computers - mostly women... see the story of Harvard Stellar Classification for example, or the computational pools at the Manhattan Project for example. Very interesting...
There are a LOT of STEM people interested in jazz guitar. So this info may important to a lot of learners...
One of the biggest conceptual problems I had to overcome as a STEM type going into music is that there is virtue in doing very repetitive things. In the STEM world you would do anything to not have to do that stuff because we think we are too good/clever for it. As we know as a musician, we have to repeat one thing a LOT for it to be reliable and fully internalised. I still struggle with that.
In contrast - I do know a chess master. He said that chess is about repertoire (openings for example), learning specific situations and playing (and losing) a TON of games and reflecting on why you lost.
Sounds much more like music to me. It's graft and craft.Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-04-2023 at 07:37 AM.
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Stop bullying the particle physicists, it's tacky. Originally Posted by RJVB
The former is probably more true than the latter, if I understand things correctly.
EDIT: with maybe some quantum physics thrown in. If you get stuck you just invent a particle, pardon, chord
(If you want to bully an astrophysicist, just point out astrophysics isn't really a science. It's basically sociology with stars.)
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My point exactly. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
? You make it sound as if I make a habit of it on here and as if I wasn't clearly speaking tongue-in-keyboard. The physicists I grew up among could appreciate a joke like this. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Want something really tacky? The title of this thread keeps reminding me of a cartoon evoking a local meaning of "pedal" that I saw just before (and that annoys me about as much as having a Rieu earwurm)
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Nah, you're always at them. So mean. All they want is several more billions of euros to build a machine the size of Germany. Originally Posted by RJVB
My point exactly.
? You make it sound as if I make a habit of it on here and as if I wasn't clearly speaking tongue-in-keyboard. The physicists I grew up among could appreciate a joke like this.
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