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I think plunking around on the piano definitely helped with my bop language.
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06-29-2019 04:52 PM
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Originally Posted by Babaluma
Playing by ear means, I think, that you can imagine (or pre-hear) the line you want to play, at which point your fingers find the notes on a kind of auto-pilot.
So, the question is, what is the best way for an individual player to achieve that?
I think that you have to get so comfortable with the fretboard that you can play what you hear in your mind, without thinking about it.
My guess is that you can get there by drilling scales and arps. Also, you can get there by copying solos or maybe just noodling solos a lot. Sooner or later your mind hears an interval and your fingers find it. On a conventional tuned guitar that includes accounting for the one string tuned a third above it's lower neighbor. That would probably be easier an instrument where all the tuning intervals are the same, but it is absolutely possible with conventional guitar tuning.
Then there's the question of how you train your mind to conceive more interesting lines. I think you can get there by drilling scales and arps (which is the way I did it). But, in hindsight, I'd emphasize copying solos from recordings. You could develop your ear either way, but you can only build jazz language by studying jazz language.
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Originally Posted by Babaluma
I read that later in life he studied composition. That, of course, means he had to learn theory. But, when he published his 1st book I don't think he knew much theory. This is pretty obvious by the explanations he gives (the few times he explains anything), the way he names chords, calls arpeggios "scale runs," etc..
However, he had a high level of understanding of what worked where, even if he couldn't explain it in proper music theory terminology. He knew that this chord could substitute for that chord; this arpeggio sounds good over that chord; these chords using these voicings in this progression sound good together and can be used in this situation. In other words, he knew how music worked, but he had his own way of understanding it.
John Pizzarelli says his father, Bucky, would show him "one of these" or "one of those" and tell him they could be used all over the place. Bucky started playing professionally when he was like 17 and, as far as I know, never studied music formally. John Pizzarelli says that he himself doesn't know much music theory, but he knows what sounds good.
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Originally Posted by Jack E Blue
I think Bucky got his first gigs at 17, while still in high school. (I don't think he was old enough to be in some of the places he played in.)
That approach, learning tunes and learning what works when soloing over tunes, is a sound one. As Robert Conti likes to say, once you can play something, it's a lot easier to understand. Trying to understand first and THEN improvise is a stumbling block for many.
But I'm a decidedly old-school jazz fan...
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
It helps (me anyway) to think of the guitar as a fretless instrument. "That next note is about this far up (or down) the fretboard." ...by estimating pure analog distance, not by counting frets. The frets are just there to help you cheat, like a pitch-corrector for singers. One string exercises are good for this.
Also ditto on the equal tuning intervals idea. I've experimented with tuning to all thirds. That way, you can play the entire chromatic scale (and thus any other scale) in a single position without stretching or shifting, just one finger per fret. And any phrase or chord you play in one place on certain strings, you can play exactly the same way in any other position on any other strings.
Of course you have to learn all new ways of forming chords and playing melodies and harmonies. But it's consistent everywhere. At least all of the g-string/b-string dyads still apply, haha.
I'm surprised there isn't a whole school of guitar playing based on this. It does reduce your, and the guitar's, range, though.
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Ralph Patt was a great player who really explored the Major 3rds tuning The Major 3rd Tuning
PK
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If one thinks of music as a language, separating theory from actual use becomes relatively easy. With language we first learned intuitively and then we learn to analyze grammar, separating words into nouns/verb/pronoun/adjectives/prepositions; we learn how those elements are linked into phrases; we learn how phrases become sentences; how sentences become paragraphs, etc. Grammar teaches us how the language is put together but it does not give us anything to say. Music theory does the same thing. It helps us understand how musical passages might be assembled but it does not tell us what we should play. That part comes with the development of hearing music and relating what we hear to the underlying emotional expression.
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Originally Posted by paulkogut
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Originally Posted by ruger9
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Originally Posted by strumcat
Great post Btw :-)
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Originally Posted by Babaluma
I've done a lot of reading on jazz greats, and have been able to talk, take lessons with, and go to clinics by quite a few of people I think you're referencing: McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, Barry Harris, Billy Taylor, Joanne Brackeen, etc. One anecdotal observation I would make is that many of these folks can play things that they would have trouble naming very quickly: I once remember Joanne Brackeen correcting a student for playing something incorrect on the 4th measure of "It could happen to you" and she played something that fit correctly much quicker than she was able to spell out to the student what chord she'd play. A common thread I would note: I can't ever remember hearing one of these masters get a melody to a standard "wrong". It's clear to me that the way most of these folks learned the tune is the melody, and a good grounding in western harmony is all about harmonizing a melody.
My perception on here sometimes is that occasionally I run across people that think that knowing a standard is knowing the chords and melody, and it's really more about knowing the melody cold, and knowing how to harmonize a melody. People that know lots of standards have shorthand ways of remembering how tunes go, and these devices rarely involve rattling off chord symbols for any of thousands of tunes. David Berkman's book on Jazz Harmony describes this process the best, but it's something like:
"for 'the man I love', the tune stars on the tonic goes to tonic minor, then to a bVII-ish thing that walks down to the V and resolves. the bridge goes to the relative minor".
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Originally Posted by pcsanwald
Re: classical. This is an important and overlooked point.
Coleman Hawkins studied composition formally, for instance.
However remember the fact that one can play classical music does not mean you necessarily have any instruction on how it was written. That comes from a curious mind of a person that wants to create music.
Barry Harris is a case in point. But being immersed in harmonic music is probably more important than being spoon fed harmonic theory.
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I think theory comes after the music, trying to document it and explain it to people who can't grasp it yet. The great players could hear it and play it, and of course communicate it amongst each other, so they knew it.
In language analogy, when someone speaks their native language perfectly, but never went to language school, would you say he knows grammar? Or years after school when they have forgotten the rules. Maybe he doesn't know them, but can still speak perfectly and also teach, in a more practical and probably less theoretical manner.
I'd say hearing and singing/playing a major scale is more knowing it, than being familiar with its intervals theory.
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Originally Posted by Alter
Django did not read music or know any theory, nor did he know the names of the chords he played. The Rosenbergs live around the corner from where I live. Same thing there. They don't even know the names of the chords, let alone theory. Bireli plays the hippest stuff possible without knowing what he does. They simply play guitar from age 4 all day and copy each other by ear. They are all strictly ear players.
You can speak a language fluently without knowing any grammatical rules.
Birds can fly without knowing the theory of aerodynamics.
It can be done. It's just that most prefer going the theory route, especially in the world of jazz, which has become highly academic.
I could play the blues well when I as 18 without knowing what the heck I was doing. I just played what I heard on records.
DB
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Originally Posted by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog
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Originally Posted by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog
Too many people see theory as prescriptive when really it’s descriptive, or just a box of toys.
People worry about silly stuff. And they think too much about what’s a wrong note. There are no wrong notes.
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Originally Posted by Roberoo
Yeah it’s interesting isn’t it the extent to which many jazz people have this idea that jazz developed harmonically somewhat like Western European music.
I suspect this is often an artefact of jazz educators making generalisations and assumptions about pre war jazz because, frankly, they don’t know very much about it or like it.
Quite a few people have pointed out the problems with this. Wynton has a good one - since you mention Bix, who was Bix checking out? Well Debussy.. and Schoenberg was doing his thing back then if you want to go to the extreme. Jazz musicians were checking out the classical music of the time which had already gone way past conventional tonality. Do you have stuff like Red Norvos Dance of the Octopus.....
Conrad Cork (LEGO bricks guy) calls this HATE or ‘harmony as the engine’, and argues instead that jazz’s development has been more towards more rhythmic freedom. I mostly buy this, with the caveat that jazz colleges have heavily effected the development of recent jazz.
Harmonic style HAS changed though. It’s not that simple. I actually think the main thing that has changed is the harmony in the comping - I think of the left hand of the piano getting more integrated with the right, going from Jelly Roll to Bill Evans via Bud Powell....
I can analyse Django’s harmony and find all sorts of things that were supposedly invented in the post war era - altered scales, triad superpositions, sideslipping, non functional modal progressions, pentatonic modes, harmonic major scales and so on. If you want to analyse his music that way, it’s all there.
In many ways his music is more harmonically adventurous than many contemporary manouche players (Birelli nonwithstanding)
Django loved Debussy and Ravel ...
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Originally Posted by christianm77
DB
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Originally Posted by DB's Jazz Guitar Blog
I think that is the best way to learn, really. (Not everyone starts out with that good of an ear, of course, so that option isn't open to them.)
That's how my mom learned to play piano. I could make up songs without help but I had a very hard time learning off of records when I started out. (I think that's why I started writing songs!)
Jimmy Bruno talks about the purpose of teaching the way he does: so that the student gradually develops his (or her) ear and doesn't have to think about anything, just play what they hear in their head.
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Originally Posted by MarkRhodes
DB
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Originally Posted by christianm77
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Originally Posted by pcsanwald
Thanks this looks very interesting!!
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The question often comes up in my chosen field, my "day job."
"Are Engineers mathematicians?"
The answer is, "not really. We only use the math as far as it helps to get the engineering job done."
I see the same with music theory. It exists only to make the music better, or more accessible. It's a tool, pure and simple.
It is NOT the music itself.
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Theory, technique, playing by ear, reading music, it's all elements of good musicianship. It also helps to communicate.
I was A+ student in theory in college. It was a basic theory, not specifically jazz though. Now, 9 years later I forgot most of it. Very little of it I need in my musical life. But Im sure it helped me in some way.
But I get it, it could be boring and tedious, and you think oh such and such great player can play without it, let me bypass it. Well, it could work out for you fine, or may not. Smart thing is to filter the theory and take what you need for your music.
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