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You probably never really run out of stuff to Play...
Originally Posted by christianm77
Except intentionally for mischief ...lol.Last edited by Robertkoa; 10-28-2017 at 05:33 PM.
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10-18-2017 06:21 PM
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Originally Posted by Reg
1. Uh, you do I suspect.
2. Not many. Pros only, most likely.
3. Not many. Pros only, most likely.
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Yea... I can play most things on the spot etc... But I could also cover when I was in my early 20's. It's not that difficult to work out the physical technical BS. There's not much figuring out required.
Develop a basic plan with the technical material ... (not on your guitar), set up some type of schedule or time organization. Start, adjust as you need.
One of the differences to how I approached this process was... I tried to have an understanding of what I was working on. And again would adjust as I became aware of new or different information.
The results were...even if I hadn't worked on something, I could figure it out on the spot. I didn't just memorize things.
I had the physical technique to realize thinks ...
There are many players that aren't pros... that have these skills. The only reason is ... they worked on them.
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I’m not dismissing the importance of all this stuff - I feel I should have worked more on that stuff earlier on, and I advise my students to do this work as it really unlocks the instrument.
I would ask though, and this is in a sense a fairly pointless question, what extent to you think players like Wes, Charlie Christian and Grant Green had this down?
The way I see it jazz musicians are often connected with the craft of music - which is why players who know nothing about jazz are often keen to develop ‘jazz chops’ - but I’m always keen to make a case for the Art side of the music - doing a lot with a little.
Personally while I think knowledge will never do any harm, the Craft side of music is heavily emphasised to the point where people feel they have nothing artistic or personal to offer until they have achieved a certain technical mastery level (which can be constantly shifting.)
I’d like to run those two things in parallel. I’d rather players playing this music found their own voice early on - but individuality isn’t always the thing that gets you booked in the profession.
On the other hand: amateurs have the freedom to develop a personal voice.
Anyway I’m not saying the two things are mutually exclusive so I have no interest in getting into that debate. It’s more a practical issue I've been turning over in my head on how I should be working with students.
What do you think?
(Also American musicians are much more thorough I find than Brits on this stuff, but that’s another thread.)Last edited by christianm77; 11-17-2017 at 08:06 AM.
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Whether one is pro or amateur, I think the personal voice is precisely what distinguishes one from robots.
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I might add a couple of points - despite my apparent position on this thread, anyone advocating the Berklee syllabus does so from a position of authority because this is the syllabus so many pro musicians have passed through and it does do a really good job of teaching people to play (I used to be very cynical about it until I started playing with Berklee grads who speak very highly of it.)
This feeds into the second point which is that there is always more stuff to learn. Someone interested in the Barry Harris approach or the Warne Marsh/Tristano approach is going to have to learn a whole new bunch of patterns and so on.... Can a Berklee grad necessarily for instance use all the BH added note scale formulae or play scales using the cells and two octave scales suggested by Warne Marsh? Probably not if you haven't studied them, although you will find this work easier having gone through the Berklee syllabus.
So, there is really no end to the ways you can practice scales, arps etc, and that's great. As a result I'm a little bit skeptical that there's a 1) a minimum level you have to achieve in order to consider yourself able to play music and 2) point where you can say you know enough of this stuff to stop practicing it. I see scale/pattern etc practice as being flexibility training... And there's always a new way to flex...
I also feel a really important aspect of this is to teach students how to apply material as widely as possible. For instance, you don't just teach them a simple m7b5/m6 arp, but you teach them every application of that material through a blues or Autumn Leaves etc. The same goes for chord voicings....
In this way someone who only knows a couple of shapes can start participating in the music right away and this creates a virtuous circle where they are hungry to learn more to get better at playing the music.
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Given the rise of automation and AI in many areas of work, I think we should be aiming to distance ourselves as much as possible from by rote systems as soon as they are mastered. Originally Posted by destinytot
How long before advanced in AI means that Protools comes with an 'improvising' plug-in that spits out convincing solos in any given style?
Say no to Robo-Jazz :-)
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I think 'automation' also shows up as 'groupthink'. I see it a lot in my day job (teaching and assessing students of languages), and in the local music scene. Originally Posted by christianm77
I see positive aspects - to do with embracing cultural heritage and long-standing traditions.
But I see abdication of individual self-expression as antithetical to the pursuit of 'jazz'.*
With regard to the OP, I think that Bruce Lee's 'Be water, my friend' provides sound advice to the 'jazz' aspirant; it points to a general state of being prepared, without prescription of a specific path (which, imho, might reasonably be called the Way of the Ponzi).
*I've seen the light - and become a born-again blues player, myself
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Doing more with less is a great thing but in instances like below, I question the order of presentation:
X X C E G B ..... Cma7
This chord can also represent:
Am9
Fma9(#11)
D13sus
etc.
But, does it make sense to teach this before said student has learned a few shapes to play all the common 7th chords
which define the functions of these chord extensions.
Would we be better off if we had learned something sooner than we now know now?
Very possibly, but short of time travel I'm not sure what actions to take to accomplish anything meaningful in that regard.
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This thread made me search for book on CST. From what I found there, so far, it's nothing like groupthink on this forum seem to sagest. It's stressed there that context rules the application. Also, avoid notes are mentioned in regard to harmony and their use as available chord extensions. On the contrary, it is stressed, use of avoid notes in lines played over available chords IS what gives the character to the sound. So, I suggest people quit spitting crap assumptions and giving false info. If I go and read something abut BH method, god knows what I would find there.
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Interesting discussion. Took me a while to really understand what reg talks about, but it is pretty different from what I would call "vanilla Berklee". Actually, more streamlined in many respects. Seven positions are the framework from which fingerings are based etc. , but once he gets into arpeggios and vocabulary it's far fewer positions. "Everything in all positions" is a problem in my opinion, at least as a "starting point". :-) Originally Posted by christianm77
But philosophically, it's coming from the viewpoint the guitarists don't have BASIC together the way other instruments do before they get out of high school or whatever. Basically addressing what he sees as a deficit, where guitarists are mostly focused on the parts you're talking about to the detriment of technical. Occasionally he has talked about balance. In the beginning, maybe 50% of what you practice should be technical, until you get basic together. A great many people actually advocate zero technical. I think somewhere between 100% and zero is probably safe. :-)
To hear people talk, you'd think there are a great many 100% or's on each side. Maybe just a little too much Internet hyperbole? Honestly, Barry Harris stuff sent me back to the shed on basic. Came back to it a few months later , and it was much easier. I found the same with everything, basic vocabulary etc. whatever. But it's a specific approach, not simply "everything everywhere".
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I think what Reg is talking about here is pretty fundamental. Also there are more than one way to systematise the fretboard and any system of positions is just a gateway towards knowing the neck in one connected way. Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
In terms of positions, I suggest to the student - right, find a way to play that same scale with the G on the fourth string. Start with your pinky on G. Good. Same scale with the second finger. Same with the third.
Now find the G on string 5. Rinse, repeat.
All one octave scale fragments (influence of Barry) - later, we can join them up into longer scales, some of which can be positions (G starting on second finger, E string, followed by G starting on fourth finger, string 4) or less positional - (G starting on 2nd finger low E, now shift to G starting on second finger, fourth string.)
Probably Reg will tell me this is a shit way of doing things :-)
This is true. TBH a lot of the discussions here about how to learn scales is a bit like - well whatever dude. What you need to do is just practice your scales in lots of different ways, and get a teacher who will bark stuff at you like - Bb harmonic minor in thirds, all positions - GO!But philosophically, it's coming from the viewpoint the guitarists don't have BASIC together the way other instruments do before they get out of high school or whatever. Basically addressing what he sees as a deficit, where guitarists are mostly focused on the parts you're talking about to the detriment of technical. Occasionally he has talked about balance. In the beginning, maybe 50% of what you practice should be technical, until you get basic together. A great many people actually advocate zero technical. I think somewhere between 100% and zero is probably safe. :-)
Until you become that teacher for yourself.
(Probably someone's written an app for that which will tell you what to practice in the voice of your favourite TV actor.)
Sure. BH made me feel like that. I came in understanding how scales worked on my instrument, yet absolutely unable to run 1-7-1 on chords, just knew this big 2 octave positions. So I had to relearn the major, minor and dominant scales to be SIMPLER, lol.To hear people talk, you'd think there are a great many 100% or's on each side. Maybe just a little too much Internet hyperbole? Honestly, Barry Harris stuff sent me back to the shed on basic. Came back to it a few months later , and it was much easier. I found the same with everything, basic vocabulary etc. whatever. But it's a specific approach, not simply "everything everywhere".
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I have a couple of good reference books - one by Barry Nettles and another (scales) by Dan Haerle - but they aren't anywhere near as useful as recordings I actually (and actively) like. Originally Posted by Vladan
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If you see any false information in what I have posted, please bring it to my attention. I do not believe I am misrepresenting anything, but I am always interested in correcting mistakes where they occur. Originally Posted by Vladan
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Yeah I think that's kind of a specific thing to bring up if it was in response to the rather vague and general post I put up.... I mean of course a student should learn how to form all the three and four note arpeggios on the fretboard. And they should learn all 4 main parent 7 note scales, etc etc. Originally Posted by bako
In any case general, I say, here's the major scale and major arpeggios. They can sing this and therefore hear it because it's familiar.
DO RE MI FA SO LA TI DO (or 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1)
DO MI SOL
DO MI SOL TI
Find that on the fretboard. Find positions that are comfortable (guidance given on technique and fingerings, of course.)
Then - work out all the other shit from there.
It's a bit slower, but it's how I did it, and it teaches something very important which is how to work stuff out on the fretboard. That's the raw knowledge. I call them 'primitives' after computer design people who call things like squares and triangles 'primitives.'
Rhythmic primitives - those found in the Bellson books for instance are also part of this.
In terms of applying that knowledge as an improviser - well that's a totally different area of study because it relates to actual music rather than just fretboard mapping.
There's a trade off between listening and analysis, building language from patterns and structures based on the 'primitives', ear training and theory work... It's all interlinked, you can't have one without the other. And this balance will vary from person to person.
Because of this, the theoretical aspect is lead by the music. Someone interested in post-bop jazz is going to get a lot of CST from me (probably more in the background to start off with, we'll start with arpeggios and so on.) Someone interested in Gypsy Jazz is going to focus on triadic arpeggios and embellishments, someone interested in bop is going to get a lot of Barry Harris....
But all of them will eventually cover the same ground in terms of the primitives. You should be able construct any given scale or chord on your instrument even if it might not lie under the fingers completely.
It's not rocket science or anything remotely original, but a combination of technical development and theory in with actual music seems to me the most effective general way to learn. I doubt anyone would disagree with that.
Obvious stuff really. My main job as a teacher is to itemise the information in a way which is bite-sized, non-overwhelming and keeps the student doing music. It's not to impart any special knowledge or insights, because I don't have any.
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From a kind of "meta" standpoint, I've found it helpful in thinking about this kind of stuff to replace the word "theory" with the word "explanation."
The notes are the notes, and the chords are the chords. (Which I think is the idea at the heart of Reg's "get your chops together on your instrument" dictum). Chord scales are one explanation for how they relate. It's not the only explanation, and depending on the situation, it may or may not be the best explanation. But when you hear "Chord-Scale Theory" it sounds like something official and formal that you have to master before you can make music.
Lately, when I think about scales (which isn't all that often), I think of the notes as having different weights/sizes, etc. For example, a C major scale (in the context of a CMaj7 chord) might look something like this:
C D E f G A B
The different type styles here don't really denote anything specific. Just the fact that some tones have more weight than others. Attaching concrete meaning to them would be something you'd have to do by ear. And it would change depending on the context in which the chord is sounding.
Anyway. Kind of a half-baked idea, but that's how I'm seeing things at the moment.
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I'm not talking anyone in particular. General sentiment in discussions, among opponents, seem to be that CST somehow teaches to play certain predetermined scales over certain chords while avoiding certain scale notes in lines being played ... which is restrictive, unmusical ...
From what I read in The Book, CST teaches something very different. I do not pretend to be a teacher. People should read the book, not false interpretations, including mine.
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I'll say it again...a scale is just a 13th chord arpeggio.
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Yeah, I dunno.... I will teach vanilla CST to students if they need to know it. But to be honest most students who come to me need to spend their time getting really basic stuff together before we can even venture into that type of thing.
Things like - do you know the major scale in all positions? Can you play the arpeggios of these chords? Can you sight read this simple chord chart? Can you count the beat and clap on the and's?
Often they know quite a lot of theory, actually, and what they really need is ... well... practice!
As an improviser, and a musician there are certain specific elements of CST that I find pretty cool... The intervallic use of chord/scales that do not contain avoid notes on isolated chords within a progression, for instance is a bit of contemporary jazz cliche, and with good reason - both in voicings and in lines.
There is a synthesis to be found here.
The use of avoid notes to create dynamism in scales is described in the Nettles book.... Avoid notes (as several commentators have notes) is a shit name for them... I would call them tensions, but that name is used (irritatingly) for upper extensions by some writers, so it would be confusing to call them that, and you need to adopt the general nomenclature.
The handling of melodic scales within the Barry Harris system on the other hand is more developed for developing convincing sounding jazz language (by which I mean bebop) - which on the basic level you can kind of think of as a large number of ways of using the mixolydian scale to create bebop lines and then learning how to resolve them in to target chords. (There's more to it obviously.)
A big problem with talking about BH is that the nomenclature is not the same, but actually you could see it as applying the obvious CST/Nettles scales on dominant chords to create really good sounding bop lines without resorting to licks couched from transcription. The Nettles book, needless to say, doesn't cover this.
BH fans often see this as a good thing citing the fact that these names are very thought through - which they are - but at the same time it can create a barrier for someone interested in dipping in.
My friend, the Berklee scholar, said it like this - bebop is on the dominants, fusion is on the major and minor chords... modern applications of CST can be seen as extending the sound of traditionally static chords such as major, minor and so on. In fact non functional progressions will often tend to favour these sounds.
In general what we would all be looking for is a balance between someone who plays only language (i.e. what we've heard on records) and someone who plays no language and only sounds couched in theory (i.e. this scale/chord/structure sounds cool here). Both extremes are somewhat unsatisfying to me.
I'm not sure how the motivic approach ties into this, but it seems a good way to generate language from simple elements on the fly
And as always, rhythm is far more useful in this quest than the small amount of discussion of it would suggest - and probably much more useful and creative than thinking about pitch choices. After all even in the Western tradition Beethoven span a whole symphony out from a rhythmic idea and one interval.
Anyway, just riffing.... Thinking as I type really :-)
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Matt Warnock does this as well, and I agree that is much more straightforward than traditional two octave approach. But again, that's a pretty big distinction in the first place, re "reg v Berklee". Traditional two octave pattern in William Leavitt modern method is: lowest root to highest note in position, back down to lowest note in position and then.... back up, ending on the lowest root again. The result is that The rhythmic reference basically changes with each position, in addition to physical reference tostarting note/string etc. Originally Posted by christianm77
Reg's reference is a third option versus these other two: literal two octave scale or arpeggio "inversions", regardless of "available notes" in position, and always starting from the same finger. That's the starting physical/rhythmic reference for each position. Categorized as basic "technical".
The one octave scales à la Barry Harris are more like vocabulary and categorized as "performance skill". There's a philosophical division always regardingtechnical and performance skills.I didn't get this for long time andsomewhatdisregarded,but it's been personally helpful to me. Again, I'm not a teacherin regards to the stuff, just a student. But those things helped me.
Being honest, it was really the Barry Harris one octave scale patterns and their strong rhythmic reference which kind of opened up my understanding of what reg has always talked about with physical reference in these two octave patterns. When I started to look at them that way, i really saw that they were basically the same type of thing, and in a way the literal-2-octave inversions were a simpler starting point. When something breaks down with my fingers or my brain, I can go back to the 2-octave 2nd, finger-reference and find another way to visualize/think.
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Yep I totally agree. As always you can find exceptions and other approaches, but I find it useful to separate the two things.
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Aahahahahahaha Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Not necessarily true (and I totally understand if your response to this is who ****ing cares you total wierdo nerd?) in that not all scales represent (IMO) an extension of the basic chord sound.
For instance - Maj13#11 and Min 13 (Lydian and Dorian) are extensions of the base chord so can be used to enrich the basic major/minor chord tones.
Maj13 or Min b13 will have some notes that won't sit - they will be interesting sounds in their own right, but they demand resolution in the usual run of things.
This in my head is related to the idea of avoid notes.... Only problem is that it doesn't quite line up, at least not to my ears.
For instance, to me, dominant 13 arpeggios are not governed by this. My reason for saying this is that in general if you find an example of a 4th/11th on a major chord in tonal music including jazz, it will in general resolve, usually downward.
In classical theory this is called an appoggiatura. Good examples include the first line from Parker's Chi Chi or in Stella - 'the murmur of a brook...'
This falls out of the acoustics of a major and minor third in equal temperament. Basically you can keep stacking things in fifths - C E + G B + A F# etc - and it will blend. (You are not limited to 7 notes BTW.) You won't get an F that way any time soon.
However, the same restrictions do not appear to apply to dominant chords. In fact, you can find numerous examples where the 11th is left by leap and not resolved at all over a dominant chord. And the reason for that is clear - the F blends nicely with the Bb in a C7 chord, for instance.
The same is true (by tritone substitution) of the allegedly heinous use of a natural 7th on a dominant 7th. Barry Harris actually sees this note as a thing of beauty in its own right. This note blends with the third in a dominant seventh chord.
What I draw from this is that dominant chords are not bound by any particular harmonic rules, and all 12 notes are available. I think a lot of jazz musicians understand the principle that basically dominant harmony is a bit of a free for all.
As a result I see dominant extensions not as a product of some sort acoustic 'stacking up' but actually a product of voice leading. (That said a dominant scale like altered or lydian #11 etc can obviously convey a mood.)
SO - you can't tell me that the 11th is an avoid note on dominant chord in the same way as it is on major or that the b2 is an avoid note on half dim (I REALLY can't hear that) in the same way as a b6 is on minor.
(What I can hear is that the natural 2 is something some musicians like to add to a half dim chord for colour.)
Basically I see avoid note theory as a bit of an oversimplification. Again, CST tends to conflate harmonic and melodic choices if approached in too much of a naive mindset...
None of this may matter that much though, so long as you use your ears.
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I am not sure I even understand what this discussion is about.
Of course, that won't stop me from participating <g>.
For me, it's all about creating interesting melodies - melodically, harmonically and rhythmically.
CST can help address the harmonic aspect. It seems to me that it's useful to help find new sounds in the practice room and, in some situations, to avoid clams on the bandstand. If it's more than that, then I'm missing something, which is always possible.
It also seems to me that it can have a downside in the following way. It's seductive. For example, I have seen posts in another forum by a CST proponent which detail dozens, or more, options for creating different sounds in a single post, and this individual posted multiple times. Perhaps totaling hundreds of options. It's tempting to try to work though that material, but my experience is that it can take hours to incorporate ONE sound into my playing -- dozens or hundreds could be years of work. And, at the end of those years, I still would need to work on melody and rhythm. It's seductive because it makes you feel like you're working hard and making progress, but, ultimately, the theory is easier to learn than how to make interesting melody on the fly.
I haven't attended Berklee, so maybe this isn't fair. I'm actually confident that they teach it in a way which makes it useful and avoids the pitfalls.
Also there are great players who know it and use it and equally great players who don't.
In my cynical moments I think it's both a great tool for ear training and a means to compensate for a poorly trained ear.
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Yep. Again, people never seem to go with this, but to me Parker - in common with his idol, Lester Young - was primarily a melodic and rhythmic improviser and a lot of the 'advanced harmony' was emergent through use of line cliches, scale ideas, superposition of common harmonic formulae on top of each other Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Bear in mind this was a time when jazz music was based heavily around tunes that didn't modulate too much, and the ones that did could be blocked off into chunks of one key in manageable units. He wasn't trying to play Wayne Shorter tunes, of course, or anything too far away from the popular music harmony of the 1930s. From what I've studied I don't think he was even too keen on playing on non dominant function dim7 chords (like bIIIo7) - he kind of ignored them a lot of the time.
So I hear Bird's playing as 'generalised movement with a key' rather than micromanagement of harmony over chords. And yet Birds playing often gets analysed as the latter.
Actually as a theory for avoiding clams, I actually think (and I speak for myself from personal experience) it can create a lot of stress when used in a naive way.CST can help address the harmonic aspect. It seems to me that it's useful to help find new sounds in the practice room and, in some situations, to avoid clams on the bandstand. If it's more than that, then I'm missing something, which is always possible.
Being able to outline a progression in triads and 4 note arps is the real first step, and then it's easy to add any of the extra fun stuff on top of that as icing on the cake... 7 notes is a lot of notes.
But - intelligently applied, well you can do things like pull 3 or 4 cool notes out of each chord, or relate each chord to something familiar and easy and gain access to the upper structure. So here's a good one:
C minor pentatonic - use on Fminor, Dbmaj7, F7, A7alt etc
Of course it doesn't sound like jazz in the bebop sense, but it does sound really cool....
(BTW again notice how the V altered chord is acting as a type of voice leading, here with very simple side-slip parallel motion which playing the scale in interesting intervals breaks up a bit.)
Get good at that and you'll be able to get through things like Wayne tunes sounding halfway decent. TBH anything where the changes are moving fast, you are kind of best of outlining the harmony in a pretty obvious way (think Trane on Giant Steps), or latching onto a simple figure in the upper structure like a triad or something.
7 notes is far too much to be worrying about. At least for me, but I'm quite stupid at music. See also Jordan and his tetrads...
Indeed.....It also seems to me that it can have a downside in the following way. It's seductive. For example, I have seen posts in another forum by a CST proponent which detail dozens, or more, options for creating different sounds in a single post, and this individual posted multiple times. Perhaps totaling hundreds of options. It's tempting to try to work though that material, but my experience is that it can take hours to incorporate ONE sound into my playing -- dozens or hundreds could be years of work. And, at the end of those years, I still would need to work on melody and rhythm. It's seductive because it makes you feel like you're working hard and making progress, but, ultimately, the theory is easier to learn than how to make interesting melody on the fly.
Ha! Well a well trained modern jazz ear should be able to recognise CST sounds as a composite. I have to say as someone who has mostly transcribed functional era jazz, I find some of the CST composite sounds hard to recognise... Working on it though...I haven't attended Berklee, so maybe this isn't fair. I'm actually confident that they teach it in a way which makes it useful and avoids the pitfalls.
Also there are great players who know it and use it and equally great players who don't.
In my cynical moments I think it's both a great tool for ear training and a means to compensate for a poorly trained ear.
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The older I get, the more I think that the essence of jazz is to get your playing to where you can address every chord in a tune with your solo....and then, don't EVER do that.
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