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Here Tim Lerch has some very wise + thoughtful words to say and hopefully they reach an equally wide audience :
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01-10-2022 06:05 PM
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Tim's a great player and teacher. Great guy too. The trifecta!
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Thanks for posting that video. It's good to hear and also good from someone who knows/cares. My simple achievements, in getting what I hear out, sometimes takeover since I can play them OK. I need to record them and listen to really hear my lines. That's not exactly what Tim was saying but it is something need to look at.
Getting back on track, playing music, is the message I'm taking away with.
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I've been saying don't play memorised licks for years here and got shouted down every time! Can't win :-)
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When I read, and I say read because this topic hasn’t come up in person, in person or on stage you just need to sound good, by any means possible.
I’ve sidetracked myself, when I read “don’t play memorized licks” I assume the poster is complaining about some player who is quoting lick after lick for an entire solo with no embellishments, but even that is an achievement and as long as they don’t stop there and keep studying they’ll be fine.
Let’s not forget Wes Montgomery starting off playing memorized Charlie Christian licks.
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Hearing and copying well known players' licks and lines isn't a bad way to learn the 'language', if you will. But there comes a time when the whole object of jazz playing is to improvise, right? Improvise means exactly that, make it up on the spot. Obviously we don't really do that, it's a mixture of all the stuff we've practised, learned, and played before. But there has to be an element of spontaneity, which is called creativity. That's denied if all we're doing is using pre-learned licks/lines to make the solo.
I know all the arguments for and against it. Start with copying and gradually go beyond it. I'm not saying there's anything drastically wrong with that, only that it's imitative, not creative. But, of course, in order to compose lines on the fly one has to know how to do it, where to get the notes from, how to produce the effects we need, and so on. Plus a ton of experience.
One question is what sort of audience Tim Lerch, or anyone like this, is speaking to. Those who can play already and don't need his advice? Or those who do? And if they do, won't they say they have to copy? It becomes a vicious circle, or a conundrum.
So probably let each one find his own way. We all have our ways of learning and finding out.
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Every player has licks...the trick is to have them be "malleable," not set in stone. A lick is an "idea."
Learning to play (and tweak) other players ideas is a great way to learn. If you spend enough time with a player, you'll start to see how they tweak and change their own licks/ideas to fit situations.
There's a lot of pressure to be original, but most of that players put upon themselves. The real goal is to sound good.
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I’m not sure the video is really about ‘playing licks’ as such. I think his main point is that whatever you play, it should be directed by musical feel, rhythm, phrasing, etc. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of notes, even if you made up a totally original line.
At the end he says he learned a lot of this stuff from Charlie Parker, not by reading things out of the Omnibook, but by ‘living inside the music’, i.e. really using your ears to learn all the additional elements of what makes the lines sound good, in other words all the things which are not written on the page (or easily teachable).
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For me, the matter is obvious.
Every serious jazz musician must complete a school of playing licks.
What are these licks for?
In order to hear better ... then, having some basics, you can think about phrasing.
Who makes music?
Those who have talent and skillfully use the language of jazz.
Hear Chet Baker play - all the music is there.
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Originally Posted by grahambop
I understood these remarks in the video like this:
Don't play even eights - play music.
How many percent of Charlie Parker is in the style of Tim playing.
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Originally Posted by ragman1
are you playing jazz?
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Originally Posted by grahambop
Originally Posted by kris
This is it. I mean, in order to play jazz, you have to be able to hear jazz lines in your head. Otherwise, it's just connecting the dots with the right scale or arpeggio. It's painting by numbers.
And there's no better way to learn how to phrase jazz lines than to "live inside it."
Think of how many licks you can "sing," without maybe ever even trying them on guitar. Like even. if you've never learned it on your instrument, can you sing most of Miles' solo on "So What?" If you love jazz, I bet you can. That's the real value. A lot of times I think the biggest value in transcribing or copping another player's lines is NOT to be able to play them, but the process of deep listening it requires to do so.
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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Yes absolutely agree re. transcribing. I think I only ever transcribed about a dozen solos, and I never really memorised them or played them much afterwards. The real benefit was being forced to listen over and over again to each phrase, at a really deep concentrated level, in order to write them down. I learned a massive amount just from doing that, all about tone, phrasing, dynamics, rhythmic nuances, accents, etc. All the things you can’t write down!
It was like having free lessons from Wes, Joe Pass, Bird, Chet Baker and Dexter Gordon (they were some of the people I transcribed).
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Originally Posted by grahambop
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There’s a lot more to the video than that though.
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Originally Posted by ragman1
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Originally Posted by pcjazz
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
Frankly, I see the licks thing as a, perhaps necessary, stage one goes through. And hopefully transcends.
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One of my teachers (group lessons) would yell "No licks! Make melody!",
I was with him for years and heard him play a lot. Yes, he repeated himself. He had some licks.
It's a goal.
After all this time playing with other people and BSing on line, I still don't really know how other players construct solos.
I believe that Warren Nunes started with a short phrase (sometimes not so short) and recycled it through the harmony. That is, a phrase, then, when the chord changed, the same phrase transposed with minimal adjustments to fit the harmony. His phrases were typically scale based. Other players who use this sort of approach tend to do it with arpeggios.
One great player I've heard a lot is highly melodic (no indication of licks) until he starts playing really fast. Then, you'll hear stuff you've heard before. He touches the harmony at critical points, but, in between, he might play anything. Berklee grad, master of theory but also tremendous ears and a lifetime of listening. When I've transcribed him, sometimes I can't find a scrap of theory that fits. Other times, I'm surprised to find that it's the same sort of thing everybody else does, he just does it more melodically.
I'd be curious to hear how others do it. How do you decide what note to play first and, then, what to play next?
My approach: the goal is to scat sing silently and play that. I can do it if the tempo is slow enough and I know the song well enough. If those two conditions don't apply then it's picking an interval of the first chord (for my first note), being aware of chord tones and making melody as best I can. I can't really explain it better than that, because it's not the product of conscious thought.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
I mean, they may not sound that good all the time but at least I'm not regurgitating something or just playing mechanically.
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I believe that Warren Nunes started with a short phrase (sometimes not so short) and recycled it through the harmony.
I read someone else talking about “components”, which they said were short musical phrases and not in any way licks…. Okay if that helps you go to sleep at night.
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Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Since there's no accepted definition of what is, or isn't, a "lick", it's a hard thing to talk about.
When my other teacher yelled "no licks" I guess he heard something he thought was overplayed and hackneyed, but, actually, I'm guessing at his meaning.
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Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Really, the real reason not to "just play licks" is if you resort to licks on everything, what happens when you screw one up? Can you recover?
Peter Sprague & Leonard Patton "Can't Find My Way...
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