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Interesting take about some impressive "kids" today, the future of jazz.
Great example of transcribing, appreciation of rhythms, etc.
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02-21-2017 10:59 AM
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Here's a great bebop lesson by Aimee: placing chromatic tones on the beat and chord tones on the offbeat.
As always, she wants you to sing what you play, which I can't, but maybe I suck at it a little less this week than last week, so I'm "gaining on it." ;o)
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It seems to be popular these days (and with snobbish overtones) to bash learning to play tunes and/or sightreading out of a Real Book. I think it's because it's become ubiquitous, a crutch, among the younger generations.
When I was first learning in the 70's & 80's, the Real Book was practically illegal- It was sold like porno, not out in the open, and you had to know who to ask for it. Certainly nobody used one at a jam session or a gig, but now it seems commonplace, at least for the rhythm section. That's kind of lame, but I'd rather have the piano player read it, than fake it and mess it up.
I have a pile of fake books, song books, lead sheets that are just lyrics & chord names- along with the RB, that I use to learn new tunes. But I strive constantly to memorize the tune and quickly wean myself away from sheet music. Some tunes come quickly, others, especially with a lot of changes or difficult key, take a while.
As for jazz history, in the early days the "note men", who could read music, were considered the better musicians. It evolved- with Big Bands, the Basie band had "head" arrangements, but Ellington's music was highly arranged. The first generation beboppers wrote new heads on standard tunes of the day- the next guys (like Sonny Rollins & Clifford Brown) were learning off their records. And you'll see sheet music in photos of famous recording sessions like "Birth of the Cool".
My point is, both written and "by ear" have always coexisted in jazz, the common thing is improvisation- the part that ISN"T written down.
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Learning tunes by ear especially music yhat involves improvisation is probabably the best way to go! That said, there's an awful lot of styles of music and proggresions out there as well.
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Indeed. I found it useful for propping up tables, for instance.
Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Seriously?
I find it useful for sight reading practice
It's great for charts for a band where they might not know the tune. Coming to a gig with Real Book charts for a tune you want to play is actually a pretty cool and organised thing to do. You can use iRealB, but TBH the information on an iRealB chart is just the chords, so it's a bit limited. A lead sheet can give you more such as y'know, the melody as well as rhythm stabs, bass lines and so on.
(I actually really like the lead sheet as a compositional form, there's an elegance to it - a bit of information, but not too much. Many of my tunes fit onto a side of paper.)
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BTW does anyone know when people started using lead sheets? Old popular songs seem to have been in the form of pain arrangement with Ukulele chords, but are lead sheets a recent development, or do they go back a ways?
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When i attended Berklee in the mid eighties some teachers did use realbooks for small band ensembles. Every now and then there would be a reminder from the school management not to use them but real books would always pop up again. They were sold in the street in front of the school by "shady guys" who were always nervously looking around, hoping not to get caught. Originally Posted by JGinNJ
As for Ellingtons music, though supposed to be highly arranged i was told that in many cases the individual musicians made up the parts up on their own. It seems that they carried on with this "tradition". When one of Clark Terry's "space men" groups, (six horn players and p,b,dr, mostly Ellington Alumni) came to play a small swiss tour in 1987 ending at the Bern Jazz Festival, they were supposed to play the arrangements of my teacher from Berklee who wrote for Clark at the time. But as he told me during one of the concerts - the guys didn't play at all what he wrote, they did just that: create their own parts spontaneously.
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Here's another one - Kenny Werner says that it is impossible to pre-hear music ahead of time. Originally Posted by mokapot
I don't think that means don't work on your ears and learn to repeat phrases, transcribe solos etc.
Personally, I work very hard at audition, transcription and ear training, but when I am on the stand I can't always pre-hear what I'm going to play.
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I hear every note that I play as my fingers play them.
It is a skill that takes a lot if time to develop. Anything less is simply wiggling your fingers around on the fretboard and hoping it sounds good. While there is nothing wrong with doing that, IMO, that sort of thing belongs in your living room, not on a bandstand for pay. Too many unskilled jazz players play their wrong note symphonies in public and as a result, jazz is disliked by many.
Jazz is ear music, not eye music. Fakebooks have their place, but if your ears are not big enough to learn a tune after a few choruses of playing it, you are not ready for the paid gig.
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I've had a quick watch of the some of the rhythm changes one... Her singing is really really good. Great phrasing... It's better than the usual perfunctory doo-bops most instrumentalists come out with when singing lines.
It's made me think about how I'm organising my practice at the moment. I should make more time for this type of work, both imitating phrases from recordings, writing and singing lines and so on. I've been focussing on ear training in a more abstract way, but I think it's time to bring it back in contact with actual music.Last edited by christianm77; 02-23-2017 at 05:18 PM.
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From watching the threads here, I see that what I do ... meander between being absorbed in the "under the hood" technical part of something for a while, then eventually getting out of that narrowly focused period to a wider view ... then back to some other details view ... is rather common. Originally Posted by christianm77
Reassuring to know my meandering is "normal". ????
In the end, for most people ... music is a listening experience. Even for those playing.
So making *beautiful* music should be more important than making the most technically "advanced" sounds we can produce. Um, right?
Well ... it seems at times yes, and at times ... there's this really cool way to think through this passage if I can just get it right ...
She does a good job in all (through some meandering) of explaining some of the basic ... "heart" ? ... of jazz.
Stumbling fingers still need love ...
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Getting to beautiful Jazz is a long and complex process. The discussions here often include a lot of the solid directions of playing the scales/tonalities of the changes as they go by, which is technically the Correct Thing To Do. Originally Posted by Stringswinger
But not because it's *correct technically*, but because it *sounds* better.
I hear her talking to that difference here. A college (classical) analysis and composition prof would demand we sing, hum, whatever noise we wanted to make ... but on the pitch of our composition to introduce it to him and the class. Don't show him the page of written notes until he heard various parts.
"How can you compose anything worth listening to if *you* can't hear the discrete pitches when you're composing?" That was his mantra. For performing, he demanded a student know their instrument (whether voice or "mechanical" instrument) such that by ear they could hear a pitch and immediately reproduce that on their instrument.
He also demanded excellent sight-reading skills.
Different ones of us tend to prefer ... or find easier ... various parts of those. They're all good to have. Whatever type of music one does.
Wish I could remember who it was ... quite a few years back I heard a jazz guitarist talking on a PBS program, one of the guys who came up in the 50's. The talk got to the different scales and modes and arpeggiation used in improv work, and he was good at explaining the different paths one could take.
Then he was asked about how he thought about things while playing and he just laughed a while, came back with something like "Man, I don't think of anything while I'm soloing ... I do that when I practice. When I'm in the lights, I just make pretty sounds!" And laughed a bit more.
I've never gotten to that place for more than a few ... rare ... seconds, where I could just make pretty sounds. That takes more mastery ... absorption ... of the sound making tools of the instrument than I've ever been able to master.
Stumbling fingers still need love ...
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I think it's good to get obsessed with one or two things for a month or two, then change. Originally Posted by R Neil
Although I have been obsessed with upbeats for almost 6 months.
I think there's also an interesting interplay been reductionist and holistic practice activities. Transcription/ear learning and singing lines are very holistic practice activities. Doing ear training exercises on your phone, say, is very reductionist.
Both have advantages and disadvantages, and complement each other, I think.Last edited by christianm77; 02-23-2017 at 06:12 PM.
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' Originally Posted by christianm77
Good question. I have no idea about the answer. I read about Tune-Dex cards---3x5 cards w/ chords and lyrics on them, a bit of other information, that one could get via subscription and many working players used them inf the '40s and '50s---but they were a long way from lead sheets.
I bet Jamey Aebersold knows the answer to this. Let me send him an email and see if he's around the office.
[The email has now been sent. Jamey's good about responding but for all I know he's off doing a workshop or something.)Last edited by MarkRhodes; 02-23-2017 at 06:37 PM.
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Here is a video that interested me as a non-pianist. In the video, Aimee is talking about an exercise her daughter was playing in another video. While going through it here, Aimee talks about voicing chords on the piano and it is interesting----again, to me as a non-pianist---to see how she visualizes certain chord forms on the piano. I can't say I'm shocked that pianists may do that, but I've never seen a demonstration. And the exercise is a good one.
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Just heard back from Matt, who works in the Aebersold office. He pointed me to the following book (which Aebersold does not sell, though Amazon does): Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
The Story of Fake Books: Bootlegging Songs to Musicians (Studies in Jazz): Barry Kernfeld: 9780810857278: Amazon.com: Books
From a blurb at Amazon:
>>>This volume follows the history of fake books from the Tune-Dex subscription service used in the 1940s to the Real Book series now popularly used (the latter described in part by musicians Steve Swallow and Pat Metheny). Kernfeld details how chord symbols and the first fake books originated, the first copyright infringement case against bootlegging, and when authorized fake books began to appear. In addition to the general index, title and song/show indexes are also provided. Kernfeld is a saxophonist, editor of The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz and author of What to Listen for in Jazz. (Reference and Research Book News, November 2006)<<<<
Thanks, Matt!
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I think we instrumentalists can learn a lot from this.
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Sight singing, solfege, hand signals... Fascinating.
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Another lesson from Aimee on handling rhythm changes. Here, sequencing motifs (or motives).
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