How jazz musicians learn hundreds of tunes

[Christian Miller]

Their demise preceded the internet, they were done in by lower priced retailers like Walmart and Target, so we may want to rename it the Walmart bridge (don't think Target ever sold guitars). Believe my first guitar came from Monkey Ward, it was not very good.

Yeah I mean it’s doubly meaningless to me really, being from the UK and the wrong generation, but there’s educators in the UK who teach these terms anyway lol


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[Cunamara]

It strikes me as like learning to play piano on a keyboard with different colours on each key and stickers with note names. It's meant to reinforce the connection but runs the risk of taking us further away from the thing itself.

Any musical pedagogy runs that risk. It becomes like trying to point to the moon and becoming fixated on the finger.

[gvurrdon]

I find that it's not difficult to play a melody I know well in any key. But, try as I might, it's harder for chords. And, if I have to remember something like "It's a Montomery Ward bridge in the key of the IV" I've already lost.

Same here. I can hear the recording of a tune playing in my head but I'm damned if I can work out the chords from hearing them. Memorising them, or looking at the charts, seems to be the only way around it. I have the Lego Bricks books but though they help with understanding they don't assist remembering or working out by ear.
Vocal standards are very hard to remember or hear; playing things like Totem Pole or Juju would suit me as I like them and can remember that sort of chord sequence easily enough, but such tunes are uncommon at jams (a problem at an unfamiliar jam last night).

[ragman1]

I only know one tune and I can't remember what it is :-)

[RLetson]

Not that anybody asks me about playing jazz, but when people who want to get into standards (generally from folk or bluegrass) ask about learning that repertory, I use Tinkertoys as the construction metaphor. (Marks my generation, right?) Or, if they are familiar with a lot of tunes, I point out that every standard they learn will include patterns that they'll find in other tunes. And more than one of my workshop instructors offered lists of iconic tunes that include widely distributed standard components. Those teachers whose mentors were older-generation players would also pass on the Sears Robuck/Montgomery Ward names, which I never could keep straight, though "rhythm changes" and "Honeysuckle bridge" made instant sense. And just about anybody over 40 understands "do-wop changes" immediately. (Not sure about Kids These Days.)

It's interesting that this approach to tune-learning depends on one's listening history--it's ear-driven. When I finally got around to learning to play standards in a band, I'd been hearing them for nearly a half-century, and every familiar tune I got my fingers around pointed the way to tunes that used the same off-the-shelf component parts. ("Bye Bye Blues" was the second standard I learned, and I remember vividly recognizing how its I-IIIdim-IIm-V passage kept showing up in other tunes. Though at the time I didn't think in numbers--in fact, I still usually have to count on my fingers--which nevertheless know where to go on the fretboard.) And I suspect that my familiarity with lyrics also helped stick melodies in my memory--and where changes occur. (I'm often singing in my head. It can get crowded in there, what with the drums and bass also playing along, and my memory of famous recordings leaking in around the edges.)

[Question]

Christian makes many important points, and I think the one that many seem to under-emphasize is the ear.

If you find doing what Christian recommends difficult; maybe try breaking it into two parts. The first is to listen and identify by ear without an instrument, all the basic chord families isolated, (and later optimally also their inversions).

Example:

Triads-Major, Minor, Diminished, Augmented

7th chords: Major 7th, Dominant 7th, Minor 7th, Half diminished, Full Diminished.

Once you can do that well, adding the ability to identify the root movement patterns that Christian explained will become easier.

This can actually be fun! Sit together with a piano player or another guitar player (or record yourself) and alternate playing some single chords for your partner, then reverse and have him/her play isolated (not in a progression) chords for you to identify. Just the "family" not the root name.

Avoid extensions, alterations and inversions until you can really hear this triad/7th chord stuff. This will also make transcribing easier because you won't have to randomly fish for the chords, you might say: that sounds like some sort of minor with an added note.

I am a bass player and since I am not playing the whole chord vertically, this ability-along with hearing root movenment-is essential for following a chord player on a gig playing a song that I have never heard before.

I fell on my face on gigs before I learned this so that you don't have to!

My 2 (euro) cents.

[AllanAllen]

I don’t think Satin Doll is a Honeysuckle Bridge.

It’s ii V to the IV then ii V to the V.

[Christian Miller]

I don’t think Satin Doll is a Honeysuckle Bridge.

It’s ii V to the IV then ii V to the V.

Yes that’s basically the same thing


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[Christian Miller]

Not that anybody asks me about playing jazz, but when people who want to get into standards (generally from folk or bluegrass) ask about learning that repertory, I use Tinkertoys as the construction metaphor. (Marks my generation, right?) Or, if they are familiar with a lot of tunes, I point out that every standard they learn will include patterns that they'll find in other tunes. And more than one of my workshop instructors offered lists of iconic tunes that include widely distributed standard components. Those teachers whose mentors were older-generation players would also pass on the Sears Robuck/Montgomery Ward names, which I never could keep straight, though "rhythm changes" and "Honeysuckle bridge" made instant sense. And just about anybody over 40 understands "do-wop changes" immediately. (Not sure about Kids These Days.)

It's interesting that this approach to tune-learning depends on one's listening history--it's ear-driven. When I finally got around to learning to play standards in a band, I'd been hearing them for nearly a half-century, and every familiar tune I got my fingers around pointed the way to tunes that used the same off-the-shelf component parts. ("Bye Bye Blues" was the second standard I learned, and I remember vividly recognizing how its I-IIIdim-IIm-V passage kept showing up in other tunes. Though at the time I didn't think in numbers--in fact, I still usually have to count on my fingers--which nevertheless know where to go on the fretboard.) And I suspect that my familiarity with lyrics also helped stick melodies in my memory--and where changes occur. (I'm often singing in my head. It can get crowded in there, what with the drums and bass also playing along, and my memory of famous recordings leaking in around the edges.)

Quite a few of the modules in jazz tunes show up in Bluegrass rep


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[AllanAllen]

Yes that’s basically the same thing


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Woah…

[sgosnell]

I never thought of Sears/Ward terminology being related to guitar sales as such. Sears and Wards were the two big players in mail-order catalog sales, and at least where I grew up everybody had one catalog or the other, and usually both. The small town stores just couldn't afford to stock so much merchandise, and we got much of our clothes, tools, and whatever else from the catalog. The closest city with anything close to comprehensive shopping was more than 2 hours drive away, and we might make one trip per year for shopping, for back-to-school clothes, records, or whatever. The only place to buy records in the county seat was at the drugstore, which didn't have a huge selection. So everyone knew about Sears-Roebuck and Montgomery-Ward, and their catalogs were in almost every home.

[ragman1]

Quite a few of the modules in jazz tunes show up in Bluegrass rep

Do they? Most ones I did are usually I45 with an occasional III7. Not many minors except in minor tunes and obviously they go V - i. Unless there are much more modern tunes I don't know about. There's folky stuff given a bluegrass treatment (Tony Rice sang a lot of Gordon Lightfoot).

What had you in mind? I may be wrong. Or I don't know what you mean by modules.

[Christian Miller]

Do they? Most ones I did are usually I45 with an occasional III7. Not many minors except in minor tunes and obviously they go V - i. Unless there are much more modern tunes I don't know about. There's folky stuff given a bluegrass treatment (Tony Rice sang a lot of Gordon Lightfoot).

What had you in mind? I may be wrong. Or I don't know what you mean by modules.

Beaumont Rag, stuff like that

Bluegrass rep is quite eclectic. You do get old jazz standards in there too, and a lot of the basic moves in jazz are reducible to I IV v

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[rpjazzguitar]

I recall Warren Nunes talking about Sears Bridge and Montgomery Ward bridge.

I think that the rhythm bridge was what he labeled as Sears but I can't recall which the Ward bridge was.

I always assumed that there were two oft-used bridges and that Sears/Ward was a prominent duopoly, so the naming worked with a certain sense of humor applied. Rhythm Bridge and Honeysuckle Rose Bridge would be more clear now.

[ragman1]

Beaumont Rag, stuff like that

Bluegrass rep is quite eclectic. You do get old jazz standards in there too, and a lot of the basic moves in jazz are reducible to I IV v

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Beaumont Rag is a fiddle tune adopted by bluegrassers and they do like Georgia and Summertime. I'm not sure that because jazz chords can be reduced that it makes the two styles very similar!

What did you mean by jazz modules? I thought modules were study packages. Or things you got cream for...

[Christian Miller]

Beaumont Rag is a fiddle tune adopted by bluegrassers and they do like Georgia and Summertime. I'm not sure that because jazz chords can be reduced that it makes the two styles very similar!

What did you mean by jazz modules? I thought modules were study packages. Or things you got cream for...

See op


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[Christian Miller]

I recall Warren Nunes talking about Sears Bridge and Montgomery Ward bridge.

I think that the rhythm bridge was what he labeled as Sears but I can't recall which the Ward bridge was.

I always assumed that there were two oft-used bridges and that Sears/Ward was a prominent duopoly, so the naming worked with a certain sense of humor applied. Rhythm Bridge and Honeysuckle Rose Bridge would be more clear now.

I always get them confused. They are probably the two most common ones


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[RLetson]

FWIW, every time Augusta's Swing Week shared the campus with Bluegrass Week, the hot pickers from the "other" side would come over to the evening swing jams. They were pretty hip players, too. Maybe it was the influence of all that Newgrass stuff, but they also dug Django and Steff and Louis and seemed quite at home with our gang. (And of course there had always been Bob Wills and such.)

[Mick-7]

Yeah I mean it’s doubly meaningless to me really, being from the UK and the wrong generation, but there’s educators in the UK who teach these terms anyway lol

So you Brits never did the "department store that carries every type of merchandise under sun including electric guitars" thing?
What is wrong with you people?!

[ragman1]

So you Brits never did the "department store that carries every type of merchandise under sun including electric guitars" thing?
What is wrong with you people?!

Oh yes, we did, but the guitars were made in Timbuktu. And came in little cardboard coffins.

[Irishmuso]

Bought my first little electric guitar for £14 in Woolworths in Northern Ireland. (I'm British but also Irish - it's complicated).

I've never come across a Woolworth's bridge.

[AllanAllen]

Bought my first little electric guitar for £14 in Woolworths in Northern Ireland. (I'm British but also Irish - it's complicated).

I've never come across a Woolworth's bridge.

Should we make this Shearing bridge the Woolworth's? I don't know if it's actually Shearing who changed the tune to this, the original recording repeats the A melody up a 4th for the bridge, but the Realbook matches Shearing's version with a different bridge.

[Christian Miller]

Woolly’s is long gone


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[PMB]

Should we make this Shearing bridge the Woolworth's? I don't know if it's actually Shearing who changed the tune to this, the original recording repeats the A melody up a 4th for the bridge, but the Realbook matches Shearing's version with a different bridge.

That's Benny Carter's original melody and set of changes. The version you're referring to is probably the one by Miles in 1951, released 15 years after Carter's first effort.

The late Australian jazz pianist, Julian Lee lived in L.A. during the '60s and '70's (producing for Billy May, arranging for Peggy Lee and recording with Joe Pass among others at Capitol Records). He met both Benny and Miles at a party in jazz critic, Leonard Feather's home and quipped, "Ah, it's very nice to be in a house with the two composers of When Lights Are Low". It was said that you could cut the air with a knife!

Coincidentally, George Shearing was at that same party. Shearing set up Lee with Capitol after meeting him on a Sydney tour. The connection was no doubt made stronger by the fact that both pianists were blind.

[GuyBoden]

Woolly’s is long gone

This is how I remember it in the 1970's.

Teenagers were well practiced in the art of Pic'n'mix or Grab'n'run counter.