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Hail Xenu
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11-27-2017 10:56 AM
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I've talked about this before, but my big AHA! moment was this:
I had studied theory for a while. I took two semesters of classical theory in college, and had read a ton of stuff. I understood how to construct and harmonize a scale, write basic harmony parts, etc. But there was always something basic eluding me, and I could never put my finger on it. I just didn't understand how the whole system fit together.
One day - I don't remember what I was doing - it was like my mental camera just suddenly "zoomed out", and I realized I was looking at everything too closely. A "wider" view allowed me to see the whole thing, and finally understood what all the theory stuff was getting at.
I have no idea how or why it happened, and nothing similar has happened since, that I'm aware of. It just felt like the biggest discovery ever. I wanted to run and tell everyone, but pretty much everyone I know would have either already known about it, or wouldn't have cared.
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Another big moment is when I was informed that there wasn't any one method to learn how to play jazz, except your own way. If you're playing it someone else's way, you've missed the point.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
I had to read this twice ...Last edited by Robertkoa; 11-28-2017 at 08:38 PM.
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Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
You won't get rich, you won't get laid, you probably won't get much respect either, given that the only people who can appreciate what you do are people who may see you as competition!....
So why are we spending hundreds of hours each year grinding away slowly at one of the most arduous and unrewarding artistic disciplines that mankind is yet to invent??
A / Because the satisfaction of figuring out (on your own) how to play the way you want to is worth every minute.
B / Some other reason(s).
If you picked 'B' then sorry, but we can't be friends...
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Here's one:
EVERYONE is trying get better, including the players we want to be like.
NO-ONE listens back to their playing and is completely satisfied.
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Finding that I'm most at home with a rhythm section that can lay down disco-funk grooves.
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Originally Posted by destinytot
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I think everyone needs a pair of those.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Here's one: I was taking a lesson with a local pro, and I was dilligently outlining all the chords. He stopped and said, "You don't need to be that faithful to the chords." I said, "I though I was supposed to outline the harmony in my solos." He said, "Nah, you can do whatever you want."
Not exactly an earth-shattering statement, but it made me rethink everything I'd been doing.
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Originally Posted by Boston Joe
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Another one: I don't remember where this came from, but:
Don't worry about the root and 5th. The bassist has those notes covered.
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Originally Posted by destinytot
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Originally Posted by Boston Joe
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This is one of those few experiences where something happened in a few minutes which significantly changed my playing.
A lesson in which I started with xx2233, a stack of fourths using notes in Cmajor (same stack occurs in other keys, but that came later).
Then the teacher showed me that I could move each note up to the next one in the Cmajor scale. The next one is xx3455. After that xx5567. And so forth.
The idea of moving a voicing through a scale was one I'd heard before. It wasn't "aha" until the teacher explained that I could use any of these voicings as comping chords in Cmajor, whether they were tonic type or dominant. Meaning I could play them against a Cmaj or a G7.
Yes, some of them give you an F against Cmaj and others give a C against G7, but they can work anyway. You do have to use them with care if you lean on them for too long.
There are 3 shapes for the scale.
It works even better for melodic minor (4 shapes) because there are no avoid notes. Meaning, you can use any grip against any chord in the mel minor scale. All the voicings will work. They don't all sound the same, so they give you options to create different sounds.
Also, for melodic minor, the absence of an avoid note means that you can pick any cluster of notes you want, not just stacked thirds or fourths. Anything.
Aha!
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A big "Aha" moment for me was when I worked out the voicing for the first chord in "Moonlight In Vermont" by Johnny Smith.
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Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Aha!
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It says the Stuff Video is not available in my Country...
The price I must pay for living in a Smaller Country near Canada....( USA ).
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Originally Posted by Boston Joe
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Re. over-playing, I'm going to learn to lay back - and let the music breathe.
A short clip from Tuesday's late-night rehearsal:
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Learning how to use Tritone Substitutions was my latest. It helped me to easily come up with substitutions to blues progressions that still sound very 'bluesy'.
16" 1920s/30s L5
Yesterday, 08:44 PM in For Sale