The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
Reply to Thread Bookmark Thread
Page 4 of 11 FirstFirst ... 23456 ... LastLast
Posts 76 to 100 of 273
  1. #76

    User Info Menu

    He's inexperienced, go easy on him haha. Maybe with any luck he'll get pissed off an alienated and go and do something useful with his time instead.

  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #77

    User Info Menu

    Further on in the thread with Litterick... (This may end up in some godawful essay haha.)

    Re: Chord Scale Theory: Levine's personal experience with the publishers as related by rintin could be understood from the perspective of Marxism in that Capitalism inevitably caused the Reification of the ideas of Chord Scale Theory.

    Put simply: something that started as a human invention ('hey! try this scale on this chord!') becomes presented as a law of nature ('the Db melodic minor parents the C7 altered chord') and aesthetic judgements ('good sounding notes'); even moral ones ('lazy musicians don't use VIm7'). The JTB is highly inconsistent with regard to its language. So, Levine seesaws between saying 'this is not the Jazz Truth book' and making exactly the kind of statements that suggest, it is indeed the Jazz Truth Book.

    (As you don't have Mark there in body to teach you, you have to go from the basis of what he actually wrote, or at least what got published.)

    Reification (Marxism) - Wikipedia

    Contrast this to Reg's understanding (And Levine's) which sees CST as fundamentally Praxial.

    What rintin said earlier is based on that pre-reification understanding of what Levine was teaching. My understanding is based on the post reification understanding.

    I'm really torn, myself. I'm not a Marxist, but I find Marxist ideas have an interesting perspective when applied to cultural matters.

    Ultimately I think I am more a conservative on these matters, many of my views are actually quite similar to Jonah's, even though I debate often from the opposite point of view: I am drawn to the aesthetics of jazz. I would hardly play the way I do if I wasn't. I value tradition and beauty defined within that tradition. But once, the music I love was very new and unfamiliar, just as the modal sounds opened up by CST may have been back in the 70s and 80s.

    (See also: why I moan about playing Gypsy Jazz. Society is to blame!)
    Last edited by christianm77; 06-22-2020 at 08:16 AM.

  4. #78

    User Info Menu

    Yea... sorry broturtel... Have you got to the reharmonization sections yea..13 & 14. They're good. Standard material but very useful for actually playing. Great approach for becoming aware of standard Chord Patterns and where they're created from. What many Jazz players use when performing standards, what they actually play... when playing a tune with vanilla changes etc... I don't remember if Mark got into the Tonal Targets and how to expand changes and have tunes within tunes going on, but that's where it's going.

  5. #79

    User Info Menu

    Having a look through it now. This is the guts of the book, maybe? Maybe this is the book he wanted to write?

    Ah yes - the V locrian chord...I remember taking this to the bank. It's a great sound.

    So V locrian - well this is another example of the category of chords I've come to call 'softened dominants.'

    Some have a #9, some have no b7, ALL have no 3. The main effect is you lose the resolving tritone.

    Very often they can be thought a modal interchange subdominant chord resolving straight to tonic. OTOH,

    So a softened dominant is any chord functioning as a dominant which does not include the leading tone (7 of the key, 3rd of the V chord). This goes - way back... Lester Young, Charlie Christian. So, for instance:

    Fmaj7/G (which of course is the church dominant)
    Fm(maj)7/G

    Jordan likes this sound (as do I)

    Eb/G
    for
    G7#9b13

    I particularly like this as it doesn't have the seventh in either. (See Iris by Wayne Shorter)

    McCoy Tyner uses these sounds a lot.. Db6/9/G is common as well.

    (And of course we have Wes's example of the B/G as a G7 sub. Barry Harris talks about that too. That's not technically a soft dominant, but it is sort of cool with it's F# haha.)

    You'll often see melody lines ignoring the major 3rd of the dominant chord. A good example is Blue Bossa, also Kind Folk by Kenny Wheeler, but it goes right back to Prez etc.

    IN FACT - and this is a point I keep repeating because I actually think it's sort of a big deal, the Altered Scale/Super Locrian is no longer played that much as a source of harmony in contemporary jazz. Why do I say this?

    Because the leading tone (B for instance in a G7b9b13) sounds very conventional. It just isn't COOL. It's too hot under the collar. All those tritones, it's just so sweaty.

    Take those notes out and modally, things often end up just as a diatonic or pentatonic mode of some type, even if they think they are playing altered. It's very interesting. Lage Lund is an excellent example.

    Perhaps I should call them cool dominants, or chilled dominants, as opposed to hot dominants with the 3 in?

  6. #80

    User Info Menu

    yea... it's basically just how we played back in the 70's and 80's. The only change I've noticed in the last 30 years is the expanded use of harm. Maj. and the use of more complex Tonics and Functional references, where Chord patterns have become expanded references as compared to camouflage. EX.... a II V chord pattern use to still have a single diatonic harmonic target.... the II-, the V7 or the implied target, I or whatever one wants. Where as now... well 20 years ago we started actually combining references... expanding the harmonic reference.... so the Tonic could be the actual chord pattern, nothing new, but from grooves or vamps, function isn't just simple voice leading or single note resolutions.... think expanded Function. Again this isn't new... but as the masses begin to hear and use yada yada..

  7. #81

    User Info Menu

    Although the originals thing has moved on, in terms of playing on standards? Maybe you’re right.

    I think some jazz common practice has stagnated. As I say 60 years of post modal. That’s longer than the whole prior existence of jazz.


    There’s probably many forces driving this, but I wonder if one them isn’t the way we teach now

    by and large standards playing jazz guitarists are a pretty homogenous bunch with similar influences and approaches, myself included.
    Last edited by christianm77; 06-22-2020 at 02:16 PM.

  8. #82

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    by and large standards playing jazz guitarists are a pretty homogenous bunch with similar influences and approaches, myself included.
    A distinctive voice is not the most common thing among jazz guitarists I've heard recently.

    I often hear a lot of the same vocabulary and harmonic concepts. And, most often, great chops.

    I am reminded of one definition of individuality: your mother can recognize your playing on the radio.

    In recent years, I've been increasingly drawn to the player's time-feel even more than harmonic sophistication. The players with great time-feel (and I consider Reg one of them) are very distinctive to me.

  9. #83

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    A distinctive voice is not the most common thing among jazz guitarists I've heard recently.

    I often hear a lot of the same vocabulary and harmonic concepts. And, most often, great chops.

    I am reminded of one definition of individuality: your mother can recognize your playing on the radio.

    In recent years, I've been increasingly drawn to the player's time-feel even more than harmonic sophistication. The players with great time-feel (and I consider Reg one of them) are very distinctive to me.
    Well my missus recognises my playing cold. I'm not entirely sure if that's a good thing per se, but I'll take it haha.

    So despite what I said above - actually I think there's lots of strikingly original voices in jazz guitar now. It's great.

    Kurt, for instance, is utterly unmistakeable to me, I know him cold, anywhere, no-one sounds like him try as they might. Julian Lage, yes. Lage Lund, yes, Nir Felder too, Reiner Baas, no one sounds like him, Wayne Krantz, are you fucking kidding me? Campilongo? Can't miss him. But perhaps many of these guys aren't 'striaghtahead players' per se, although Kurt, Lage and Lund all do the straightahead thing. (Mind you, Julian Lage on archtop sounds less identifiable to me than on solid body.)

    There are some slightly generic players, too who are also great. They are more like character actors.

    I don't think the education system promotes that as well as it could, but some people are just always going to have their own voice. There's a lot of jobbing jazz guitarists who sound very alike and basically have the same approach, dark sound, soft attack, bit of reverb, lots of eight notes. There's safety in sounding generic though. And gigs....

    TBH often I find older players harder to place, in fact. I often find myself thinking - 'who is that 1950's MF on guitar, what a great guitar player who is it?' and it's always Johnny Smith.

    The great individual geniuses of course; Wes or Grant Green, or CC, or Benson for that matter, I'd recognise, although Barney gets super close to CC on his early recordings.
    Last edited by christianm77; 06-22-2020 at 05:35 PM.

  10. #84

    User Info Menu

    Mark Levine's 'Jazz Piano Book' is a must read. I read it in the early 90's, applying everything to piano. It's not the end of piano study, but a very good beginning. If you desire to study keyboard, I heartedly recommend it first over any other book.

  11. #85

    User Info Menu

    I must have a proper look at the Piano Book; seems very highly recommended on this thread... Could a non pianist hack through it on a keyboard do you think?

  12. #86

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    I must have a proper look at the Piano Book; seems very highly recommended on this thread... Could a non pianist hack through it on a keyboard do you think?
    Sure you could. Take your time. It begins with 3 note voicings. You can play 3 notes can't you?!

  13. #87

    User Info Menu

    OK I started reading the Piano Book. It's the same stuff, but tighter. But I can't help it, there's so many teeth grinding generalisations and inaccuracies in it, even if you buy what it's trying to do... It's probably a good read when you don't know anything about the music.

    For instance, I really wish people would stop talking about early jazz when they haven't checked it out. So Levine says that pre war jazz musicians played the 4th on a dominant purely as a passing tone. (This relates to those 'soft dominants' I was talking about above, but no-one gives a shit about.)

    Again, below is the Lady be Good solo by Lester Young, look at bar 7.

    In fact you know what, he plays that G while avoiding the F# on D7 EVERY TIME in the first chorus. In fact he does it across multiple versions.

    I choose this because if you only know one pre war solo, it's probably this one. I could have chosen a dozen more going back to the 20s. Charlie Christian has loads of examples, Django and Louis too. And later, Parker and so on.

    So, some people will say - ah but that's not his focus, he is teaching post-bop harmony. To which I say, yes that's true, so why EVEN MENTION THE HISTORY AT ALL?

    So it's a small thing really, but it does betray a cavalier something you see a lot in material of this vintage when talking about the older music. And I don't do this to discredit Levine in particular. But people will believe you because it's in a book, and that's a problem.

    Know the limits of your knowledge, be honest about them.

    And may I have the wisdom to know that for myself. That's what I learned from Mark Levine. (And people correcting me on YouTube.)

    THE TEXTBOOKS ARE THE RECORDS. Check everything.
    Attached Images Attached Images The Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine-jazz-solo-transcription-jpg 

  14. #88

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    OK I started reading the Piano Book. It's the same stuff, but tighter. But I can't help it, there's so many teeth grinding generalisations and inaccuracies in it, even if you buy what it's trying to do...
    Hesitate to give advice...for a fool won't heed it, and a wise man won't need it.

  15. #89

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
    Hesitate to give advice...for a fool won't heed it, and a wise man won't need it.
    Huh, that's not wrong :-)

  16. #90

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Huh, that's not wrong :-)
    Christian, one gets the sense from your posts that your cup is completely full. You're so full of your own stuff that you've no room to take anything else in...from anyone, let alone Mark Levine. There's an old saying "Absorb what is useful, discard that which is not." Perhaps this could be applied to how one should interpret The Jazz Theory Book. Well, it's just a thought...

  17. #91

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by 2bornot2bop
    Christian, one gets the sense from your posts that your cup is completely full. You're so full of your own stuff that you've no room to take anything else in...from anyone, let alone Mark Levine.
    Yeah don’t try that zen thing on me baby haha.

    I learn stuff all the time. I’m constantly learning stuff about music and teaching.

    Let me be clear: none of this stuff is mine. I can tell you where I learned all of it and from whom.

    Look, I’m not the target audience for Levine’s books. I read them when I was 21. I thought I’d get something out of rereading them... there is info in them for sure... But now I just find them annoying, and I need to go read other things. And listen to more music.

    I was reading a fascinating paper about the links between the harmonic systems of African music and jazz today. It might take me a long time to assimilate that info. I’m going to need to immerse myself in African music to get an idea. That’s not a journey of a few days....

    Or Paul Berliners Thinking in Jazz which is just the most revelatory book about jazz. Do read it if you haven’t checked it out.

    There's an old saying "Absorb what is useful, discard that which is not." Perhaps this could be applied to how one should interpret The Jazz Theory Book. Well, it's just a thought...
    I think that’s what he intended. That’s not what he wrote.

    I think at the end of the day, I got and get more out of listening to the music directly than any book.

    In this sense my journey has been a steady realisation that most of the jazz theory I learned when I was 21 is a work of fantasy. That’s where I’m coming from really.

  18. #92

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77

    In this sense my journey has been a steady realisation that most of the jazz theory I learned when I was 21 is a work of fantasy. That’s where I’m coming from really.
    I don't think we come from the same perspective, but I've continually wondered something similar.

    But, I can't tell if you're dismissing only the books you read at age 21, or the whole idea of a useful theory(ies) of jazz.

    I have heard, in an entirely different context, the notion of "scraps of theory" which may be helpful in a particular situation. I've heard some master players talk about using theory -- and I've heard at least one other dismiss the notion that theory, as it is taught, has any value. I've had others simply ignore it, even though they may have known some things about it. So, in my small corner of the world, the expert players are all over the map.

    I vacillate. I am at least equally likely to think of it as an abyss one enters at risk vs. something that can help one be a better player.

    What I end up working on is being able to play what I scat-sing to myself and trying to improve my time-feel. I will occasionally think about theory, but that time spent is rarely profitable. I say "rarely" because there have been a few significant exceptions. Just a few times, a theoretic notion has changed the way I play, in one case, more or less overnight. That was moving 4th stacks through a scale and using them interchangeably within a tonal center.

  19. #93

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77

    I was reading a fascinating paper about the links between the harmonic systems of African music and jazz today. It might take me a long time to assimilate that info. I’m going to need to immerse myself in African music to get an idea. That’s not a journey of a few days....

    Or Paul Berliners Thinking in Jazz which is just the most revelatory book about jazz. Do read it if you haven’t checked it out.

    Christian, Derek Gripper is doing African guitar classes on a somewhat daily basis (tomorrow there's 2 + a bach class) on zoom. The price is stupidly reasonable and he's an amazing teacher. It's a lot of his Kora transcriptions and some Ali Farka Toure. I've been at it since March with him. I've learned a ton. It's sort of proto-guitar music.

    Anyway, highly recommended.

  20. #94

    User Info Menu

    I've decided to go back and read the book...after I can play well enough that I don't need to read it.

    Seriously though. I think at some point it might be valuable. I think it would be better titled "A Jazz Theory" book. In fact I think all of these books should say specifically who they are geared to, what you should have together before you approach it, and what the end goal is. It's not everyone's jazz theory book.

  21. #95

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by sully75
    Christian, Derek Gripper is doing African guitar classes on a somewhat daily basis (tomorrow there's 2 + a bach class) on zoom. The price is stupidly reasonable and he's an amazing teacher. It's a lot of his Kora transcriptions and some Ali Farka Toure. I've been at it since March with him. I've learned a ton. It's sort of proto-guitar music.

    Anyway, highly recommended.
    Thanks! Time is limited, but I've been meaning to get into this stuff for a long time.

  22. #96

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by sully75
    I've decided to go back and read the book...after I can play well enough that I don't need to read it.

    Seriously though. I think at some point it might be valuable. I think it would be better titled "A Jazz Theory" book. In fact I think all of these books should say specifically who they are geared to, what you should have together before you approach it, and what the end goal is. It's not everyone's jazz theory book.
    Ah, but it is everyone's jazz theory book - at least everyone under 40ish - because jazz education is now a basic fact of life, and I've seen so many jazz educators teach chapter and verse out of these books - the 3-9 voicings, the II-V analysis style and so on. It was true when I was starting, and it's still true now. That's what I mean.

    It's 100% not what the author intended, but there's a whole generation that's grown up on them. You get the JTB, the Real Book and a copy of the Omnibook and that's how you learn jazz.

    I don't think older people not in jazz education quite get this... It's not like you see the book in the shop, pick it up on a whim and maybe get stuff out of it. This thing has become a bit of a monster. This probably tells us much more about how knowledge gets sort of frozen and stereotyped within formal education, more than anything about the book itself, of course.

    If someone says pre war jazz musicians don't play 4ths in some crappy book no-one's read, fine, but this book is 1) not crappy and 2) has such widespread circulation that I think these myths and factoids need to be addressed pretty clearly so that people realise what they are: bits of bad information.

    OTOH, that many in that generation are also rejecting the books, sometimes angrily, when they get in contact with the actual music. I'm a case in point I suppose. don_oz too, although he's much younger than me. I can think of many more in my own circles.

  23. #97

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
    I don't think we come from the same perspective, but I've continually wondered something similar.

    But, I can't tell if you're dismissing only the books you read at age 21, or the whole idea of a useful theory(ies) of jazz.

    I have heard, in an entirely different context, the notion of "scraps of theory" which may be helpful in a particular situation. I've heard some master players talk about using theory -- and I've heard at least one other dismiss the notion that theory, as it is taught, has any value. I've had others simply ignore it, even though they may have known some things about it. So, in my small corner of the world, the expert players are all over the map.
    Ooh, can I do my Blake quote again:"To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit"?

    So yeah, I am dismissing the idea of there being a useful theory of jazz.

    I could do well to remember that, as the impulse to theorise is so strong for me. To be a Horse of Instruction, as Blake would put it.


    • In that vein Levine's books are at their best when they are particular; breaking down a voicing or a reharmonisation.
    • They are at their absolute worst and just plain wrong when they attempt to encapsulate the music and explain its historical development. (BTW he does this even in the Piano book.)

    So 'scraps of theory'; yes, I like that. Useful rules of thumb, ideas that can be applied - this is the important stuff. It's hardly even theory in a sense, more like practical advice. The theory seems like it's important, but actually the learning is in the thorough application of specific ideas. There is a system to it, but it's not an attempt to explain music or frame its aesthetic in theoretic terms...

    I vacillate. I am at least equally likely to think of it as an abyss one enters at risk vs. something that can help one be a better player.

    What I end up working on is being able to play what I scat-sing to myself and trying to improve my time-feel. I will occasionally think about theory, but that time spent is rarely profitable. I say "rarely" because there have been a few significant exceptions. Just a few times, a theoretic notion has changed the way I play, in one case, more or less overnight. That was moving 4th stacks through a scale and using them interchangeably within a tonal center.
    So this is what I think of as the 'resources' approach to theory. You have a resource and you use it. It can actually take a long time to apply a resource fully, to get everything out of it, or it can change your playing instantly. Most of the top jazz musicians I've been in contact with seem to have this approach, actually.

    In my view, CST should be considered in this vein.

    Anyway, that's a framing change. Levine's framing is consistently - "this is what it is; this is how jazz developed; this is a rule; the Db melodic minor parents the C7alt." That's when he's on shaky ground, because the text of the Introduction is quickly forgotten.

    Better framing would be 'this is how I understand it; this was a fashionable sound in the 60s; here's a guideline; see how C7alt relates to the notes of Db melodic minor' and so on. None of the actual information has to change...

    Maybe something about writing a book makes you adopt that authoritative tone? But - the editor could have changed this...

    Or, perhaps they already did, the other way? Hmmmm.

    It's good to be aware of as reader and writer.
    Last edited by christianm77; 06-23-2020 at 05:56 AM.

  24. #98

    User Info Menu

    Berkman’s theory book is better at ‘framing’ and at illustrating alternative approaches than Levine’s. There is no comprehensive unified theory of jazz, though. There probably could not be such a thing and if there were it would not be useful to the practicing musician. Observational accounts like Berliner’s and practical approaches like Barry Harris’s are more immediately useful (in my opinion). It does help to have a common language with which to discuss what we are doing, but discussing is not doing. If it was I would be a better musician!

  25. #99

    User Info Menu

    I received this book from Billy Taylor. He did not just recommend it to me; he actually handed it to me, and said, "This will be useful." That was a good enough recommendation for me.

    I didn't read it cover to cover. I have taken stuff out of it that was useful to me at the time, the same way I do with any instruction book.

    And about Barry Harris and the giants not being aware of what they were playing: I seem to remember that somewhere, in one of his videos (or maybe more than one, for all I know) he says something to the effect that one should always be able to repeat an improv, if one is aware of the harmony underneath it.

    I don't imagine I have ever improvised a line that I could actually repeat, unless it was only a measure or two long.

  26. #100

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77


    (As you don't have Mark there in body to teach you, you have to go from the basis of what he actually wrote, or at least what got published.)

    Whoa now you're rocking LITERARY THEORY? What does a text mean? How does it mean? Is it mean? What is the mean among all these mean-ings? Is the text a message from a sender to a receiver via encoding, transmission, decoding? Is it solely the executive means of the author's intentions? What about the author's motives (as opposed to intentions)? Or is it merely a linguistic artifact shorn of any strictures or settings? Can it be negated? Is it merely an instrument of power to marginalize some by imposing an orthodoxy?

    Sorry, just woke up from an Ambien stupor. Sitting on the toilet in another part of the house. No idea how I got there... gotta stop with the sleep aids...