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Originally Posted by Vladan
I also think there's a Jazz tradition that expects the learner to be able to play certain exercises, for example - unbroken 8ths against a common Jazz tune where you play nothing but chord tones on down beats and embellishments (diatonic or chromatic ) on the off beats.
It takes years to sound good at just that, and I think I can tell which players have put in the hard yards there, not because they always play like that, but because they can slip in and out of playing like that whenever they wish.
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11-01-2016 10:05 PM
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
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Originally Posted by Vladan
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Right.
The concept of practicing lines so that chord tones fall on strong beats is the silliest thing I've ever heard. And the resultant ridiculous "bebop scales" that aim to make your playing do that...Listen to good players, sing in your head.. Hear good lines. More often than not, a good line sounds good because of this. But you have to hear it. It has to be the music that plays in your head.
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Originally Posted by princeplanet
This is true. Sonny Rollins is often cited as an example of this---and he has performed solo and demonstrated this---but pretty much any good jazz soloist playing a jazz standard is going to imply the changes.
Here's a great example by Herb Ellis, playing with bassist Dave Maslow. (The solo starts around the 2:00 minute mark.) This shifts from "It Might As Well Be Spring" to "Things Ain't What They Used To Be."
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
This, I think, is the main reason noodling sounds like noodling and why Charlie Parker never sounded like noodling. He knew where he was heading and stopped (or paused) when he go there. Then he started off for somewhere else.
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
I see the lines people talk about that use this, And I hardly ever think of them as coming from a scale. But if it helps folks to analyze it that way, it's all good.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Bert Ligon insists that, when practicing lines of any type, that you practice it starting ON, BEFORE, and AFTER the beat. I'm always struck by how a good line sounds good when displaced , often better. You can play them on triplets , and they sound great as well. That being said, he doesn't really emphasize the scale thing on the strong beat as much, either.
Anyway, good melody is basically it's own the reference , and can handle much reworking, rhythmically. Rhythmic displacement is about 90% of playing a simple melody in a jazz style anyway. Isn't it? The strong beat thing is an exercise not a rule, and is one of the most misunderstand elements of beginning jazz pedagogy IMO. Its importance is inferred by beginners and jazz passers-by as being much more than it should be, for whatever reason.Last edited by matt.guitarteacher; 11-02-2016 at 11:01 AM.
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Agreed about the placement of the line.
Sometimes when I transcribe I'll just jot down the rhythm of a good line, won't look at pitch at all.
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
Good melody is good melody . I still think much of that stuff sounds great displaced or played on triplets or whatever. It's ok to learn things one way first , and I'm cool with that.
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Originally Posted by matt.guitarteacher
When I listen to the the greats (past and present), that is what I think I'm hearing. You can't sound like that without first practicing the "rules" for a long time. Sure, you can find original ways to play that eschews these rules, but it won't sound like Bop based playing, which for many of us, is still the real basis for most kinds of "Jazz".Last edited by princeplanet; 11-02-2016 at 12:38 PM.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
I never say things to get a rise out of people, ever ;-)
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Vis 'bebop' scales.
A bebop scale can be an ordinary scale where you just start the first note on the offbeat of 1, or hold the first note for a quarter note, or go 1 6 b7 6 5 3 2 1 or sommat.
It's not necessarily about the chromatic. It's about thinking of a rhythmic phrase and making the frickin' notes work. You might question the need for a fancy set of rules to guide this, and you might be fine doing this without....
Anyway, I see very few examples of classic example #1 of the How to Play Bebop David Baker bebop scales in the music of Bird. The obvious example is Donna Lee, which I do think was a Miles composition. There's something inherently square about the concept that seems alien to Bird, although I find it helps to know how to be on the beat with your chord tones if you then want to play around with that expectation.
The Clifford I have transcribed tends to use the tactics I have described above rather than chromatics
I confirm that too much practice of added note scales on the beat made my up tempo playing a little foursquare for my liking. It's important to work on things that start and finish on the upbeat. Needless to say, Barry has a thing to work on that, too.
Barry Harris is about turning scales (well the dominant scale) into music. He has guidelines to do this. Many guidelines. YMMV. But, I find that one of his patterns can keep me in practice for a month or two. In a sense it's no different to any other pattern work, except of course that BH's patterns can be chopped up and melded into idiomatic bop phrases that are not simply cliches or licks ripped off records.
A good alternative approach that would lead to very similar results (among others) would be Galper's Forward Motion concept.Last edited by christianm77; 11-02-2016 at 01:46 PM.
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Originally Posted by Guitarzen
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Originally Posted by Vladan
But you'd drive a really nice car and live in Malibu.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by Guitarzen
I see this as more of a modern tendency. If you look at Aristotle's Ethics, there are no commandments in it. It's about habit rather than rules. (Almost every modern who picks it up soon sets it down in frustration crying, "Just sum it up in something I can jot down on an index card, for godsake!")
And if you look at the actual ten commandments, they're very general (don't murder, don't steal, respect your parents, hands off your neighbor's spouse...) The musical equivalent of: listen to the other members of the band; if you don't know what to play, lay out; learn tunes; show up on time, and sober; don't mess with the spouses of bandmates---it never ends well.
Stephen Toulmin wrote about the modern obsession with certainty and exactness in his book "Cosmopolis." The ancients and medievals were not obsessed with those things. (They may have had other obsessions but not those.)
Moderns are the first people in the world to think they should be able to read a short article and really understand something it takes serious students decades of study and experience to master. It's like teenagers talking about what they'll name their band and what to put on their first album even though they can't play a single song from start to finish. Maybe they haven't even gotten to the part about having instruments at all yet...
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the improv line is like gymnastics ...
Its nice to be elegant when flying though the air but you can pull some weird shapes and thats ok
But you sure better land good
Ie intentionally ...
or you got a problem !
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Originally Posted by pingu
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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Originally Posted by ragman1
Rev. Norman J. O'Connor, 81, 'Jazz Priest' - The New York Times
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Scales are just theoretical, I think to just make it explainable.
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Tiago Lageira TV
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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