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I have to agree. Analysing is one thing, understanding it is something else. No one's really going to get much from endless analytics. We'll never really be Wayne Shorter... and I'm not sure I'd want to be :-)
By the way, you excelled yourself here:
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03-16-2023 05:36 AM
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I don't think it's a good idea to try and condense these guys down to any one approach or particular brain hemisphere. In interviews Wayne was famous for being completely metaphoric, but then I find his compositions and his soloing to have a definite logic. It's just that the logic often defies what is expected.
There's a story from his biography where the author under pressure to finish the book and visits Wayne to get timelines of the Weather Report era. Wayne starts to go off on a tangent about the nature of time itself, but then his wife gets his attention and reminds him that the author is really facing a deadline. Wayne snaps out of his cosmic thoughts and spends the next hour or so giving concrete details about everything. He was out there but he knew exactly what he was doing.
Aebersold made a 2 CD Wayne Shorter volume. Ron Carter is the bassist on the recordings and had input into the written lead sheets. The music only covers the 60s, from the Jazz Messengers, Miles Quintet and Blue Note albums. One could spend a lot of time with it if you're looking to examine his music. Just take a tune and learn it inside and out, learn the chords, the melody, the way it's laid out in time, listen to his recording of it, play it with others etc. Each tune is it's own little universe. Even a tune that appears to just be a blues will in fact have some strange twists that are essential. And it's all from Wayne's first decade; he had another five decades in which he didn't really repeat himself.
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+1
Originally Posted by supersoul
best
Kris
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Maybe theory is just a method for discovering how jazz used to be made, to enable the player to create pastiches.
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Christian's video is not only the basics. The pentatonics over the Cm/Fm, yes, but the triads (G, Bb, F) on the bridge is a little more advanced. And I understand it very well too :-) Originally Posted by kris
I like Shorter a lot, I've played many of his tunes... Iris, Footprints, Infant Eyes, etc.
Can you give me a example of Shorter from 50 years ago? One or two which you think would be a good comparison.
(I wasn't agreeing with Christian to disagree with you. I know, what he said did sound superficial. Just to say Shorter is a 'right brain guy' doesn't mean much.
But what he said later about Shorter being a melody guy is very true. His tunes stick in the head, they're catchy. And it's very difficult to write a really good melody.
Did you see the books I linked to? Shorter is a co-author of the first one. The others contain biographical stuff but also a lot of musical analysis. At least, that's what it says in the descriptions.
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Maybe, but not. The players back then obviously organized their music using theory. There is proof of it. Saying anything otherwise is you purposely revising history to suit your narrative. Originally Posted by Litterick
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If anyone's interested, I like playing Shorter's stuff. Watching Christian's video got me going so here's some actual music :-)
I don't like sticking to plain pentatonics because I find them a little bare. So I did dorian (Bb and Eb) over the Cm/Fm. More notes.
Over the bridge part I dumped the D7/Db7 of the RB and stole Christian's F#ø/F7/Em/A7... except I used Eb7 for the last chord instead of A7.
So triads for those chords because they move quickly. They can go chromatically Am/Abm/Gm/F#m or Am/F#m/Fm/Em, or alternate them, mix and match, etc.
They're basically all melodic minors and, if I wanted to spend enough time with it, I could doubtless come up with something more intricate than those triads.
The first four versions are mine but the last two use Christian's variations with the triads G/G/Bb/F which I think are better than mine.
One I did as written, the other I minorized to Em/Em/Gm/Dm (which I think is the best).
It's quite tricky to get the right sound for the backing but I've done my best. It's not bad considering.
If you're interested in any of this, see what you think.
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Probably the coolest thing about Wayne's music is that you can analyze it like crazy and make sense of it, or just listen to the melody, bass note, and maybe the color tones if the melody wasn't already telling you...and also make sense of it.
It was from the past and future at the same time.
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Well if there is any material pertaining to his compositional process I’d of course love to see it (beyond the lead sheets)
The impression that Wayne gave is that his compositional process was QUICK. anyway the new Adam Neely video is nice, sums up my impressions of his 60s compositions.
I think it’s very easy for people to overestimate the amount of cognition that goes into composition, even in more traditional styles. People sometimes seem a bit threatened by this for some reason. In the case of trad styles there’s a clear process by which the basics of the style are learned but they have to be internalised. You should be able to hear ii V I for instance, before writing traditional harmony. Really very few harmonic options are used in traditional harmony. We use ii V I, but I V ii is rare in jazz and ii I V is rarer still.
If and when you move into stuff that is less familiar. There may not be a road map for this.
Obviously if you can put any two chords together you have a million options. Your choices also become less automatic, which is interesting. Not all of those combinations will sound good to you and you may develop a preference. You are now making a very definite aesthetic choice rather than just going with the flow. This may not be guided by a cognitive theory but it is not random. I think this is where Wayne is coming from a lot of the time.
There’s also a melodic logic. bIImaj7 and Im7 fit minor pentatonic melodies well, so Wayne uses that more than once… and so on.
If there is a clear logic to Wayne’s harmony it’s simply making interesting choices about how to harmonise melody notes often in the upper extensions. His basslines tend to be strong too, even they don’t always follow the obvious routes.
Anyway this doesn’t really touch on what the late Quartet was doing. I have my theories based on listening but I’d be keen to hear anything more substantiated.
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The Ron Miller books do a very good job at analyzing and explaining Modal composition...
But of course, Ron's explanations do not mean this is the way the actual composers were thinking...
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I doubt it. But there may be value in it? Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
it’s analogous to analysing Mozart and Bach as Functional Harmony.
I think for a composer, chords out of a hat (the Kenny Werner method) is not to be laughed at. You can always send them back haha.
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The discussion of theory in jazz education is mostly limited to the categorization of harmonic devices used in standards and pitch collections available in these harmonic contexts.
The irony is even though the big part of jazz performance is about constructing melodies, there is very limited theoretical discussion about melodic composition other than the use of generic structures like guide tones, triads and pentatonics etc. The melodic language and sensibilities are mostly developed by listening, transcriptions and experimentation, not by theory.
I don't know if that's a good thing because compared to classical composition, most non-master level jazz improvisation is just noodling 80% of the time. There are drastic differences among individual jazz musicians in terms of melodic artistry and sophistication.
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good point. Most jazz theory is focussed on harmony (even more so than classical) and yet it’s a small slice of what we do as jazz players. The main reason it gets talked about a lot is because it’s easy to talk about. Originally Posted by Tal_175
I notice than the masters by and large have an interest in the song beyond its chord structure. That’s a start. I find playing the song more or finding things in the song is a good way to get less bored of my own playing, and presumably it helps the audience too.
On the flip side, composers need to provide material beyond a chord structure for improvisers, most obviously a melody. Wayne was a good example of how to do this beyond the GASB (and how to use these melodies as a way to improvise on his tunes) as was Kenny Wheeler.
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it sounds strange, like if it was out of tune, or out of the harmony. where did you get this recording? Originally Posted by ragman1
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Am I saying otherwise? No. You have missed the point. The point of learning theory is to uncover the methods used by the greats, so as to create pastiches of their works. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
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You said the exact same thing about some of my playing. I deferred to you then, but this time I really don't think it's true. Originally Posted by JimmyDunlop
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this sounds even more stranger than yours. I am beginner so I asked to a friend who is professional musician and works in mixing studio and told me the same. For me looks very clearly and for him too. I didnt ask him about yours, I can if you want? Originally Posted by James W
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I dont know who recorded it, I think the recordign isnt from Ragman, maybe he found it somewhere else? Thats why I am asking where did he got it. Originally Posted by kris
I wouldn't publish my performances of Shorter's tunes here.
....what is it for?
We're talking about Shorter's music.
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I didnt know it was from him, I wouldnt have commented that if I knew it Originally Posted by kris
I see...:-)This is a Ragman's recording...He loves to record.
I'm not going to comment on it because it's going to be a big fight.
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That isn't true. People are just too dumb to figure out how to teach melody theoretically. Practicing scales, arps, intervals, and chromatics of the changes individually then combining them into short and long phrases developed on each other, based on your intuition from listening plus some vocab from transcribing results in authentic jazz solo language. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Exactly my point. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
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He said the same thing to me lol. Originally Posted by James W
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My point is, I wouldn't characterize a pedagogical approach theoretical if it pretty heavily relies on developing intuitions by listening and transcribing.
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The theoretical component isn't deficient. Models are.
The other components are what you said.
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How can an organ be out of tune? Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
Sorta trollish comments I'd say...
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