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I find myself thinking of a phrase I want to play and then have a tendency to come in late. This is especially bad if I was envisioning starting on the beat and I come in off of it or vice versa.
Do others experience this and how do you recover? Just change the phrase in the fly?
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09-20-2024 11:19 PM
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It's not recovering, it's called improvising. I play around with starting and ending phrases early or late all the time.
Originally Posted by charlieparker
My recent favorite sentence (inspired by a James Blood Ulmer line TBH): "Blues is the teacher".
According to the book "Bird Lives" Charlie Parker was busking with an old blues singer as a kid (IIRC, read it 35 years ago).
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I hate to say it but the problem is probably that whole “thinking of a phrase” thing Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Probably is. But not being able to go inside other's heads, what are other people doing in the moment when improvising? Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I hate to say it but the problem is probably that whole “thinking of a phrase” thing
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On a good day, my hands are on autopilot and I’m just listening. On the best days not to myself. Originally Posted by charlieparker
I think there’s this misconception about how you should hear what you want to play before you play it, but that’s a practice exercise (and a good one). When you’re actually playing, that would mean you’re outside of what’s going on … or maybe that you’re hearing what the drummer does, then what you want to do, then playing it. Which seems very cumbersome.
The reason you want to play what you hear, I think, is because it’s the best way to approximate in practice what it’s like when you’re performing … which is to say that you’re not playing what you hear, you’re playing into what you’re hearing around you. It’s just tricky to practice that when there’s no one else there (maybe playing along with recordings?)
Anyway … on a practical level, I sing A LOT while I play to get myself in that space. It’s probably obnoxious. Someone will ask if I play what I sing o sing what I play, and tsk tsk me when I say probably a little of both and a lot of singing what I play. But I don’t particularly care … I think the ear hands thing is more of a continuum than we like to say.
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Yeah, I think when I audiate this happens a lot less even if it is just rhythmic syllables and not actual pitches. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Sometimes I think about chords and pull melodies from them, other times it’s key center noodling. Depends on the song and how I’m feeling. Originally Posted by charlieparker
If it’s a song I really know, I’ll try to remember licks or heads to quote while my brain is improvising on auto pilot.Last edited by AllanAllen; 09-21-2024 at 09:20 AM.
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what happens less? Originally Posted by charlieparker
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Being in the moment. Originally Posted by charlieparker
Bird quotes:
"You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."
"If you come on a band tense, you're going to play tense. If you come a little bit foolish, act just a little bit foolish, and let yourself go, better ideas will come."
"Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you."
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Misplaced phrases. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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It took me many years before I started noticing that if a phrase came into my head that I knew very well (from practicing it hundreds of times), but I started it too late, that I sometimes would be able to modify it on the fly and still make it come out right. This was a revelation I think I needed because I began to start various phrases on every conceivable part of a bar to see if I could wing my way back into something that resolved well. Then I really started noticing how my favourite players on all instruments were doing something similar. Charlie Parker in particular seems to be the king of this.
Not sure if anyone else is interested in this sort of thing, but it took me a long long time before I could feel any sort of control of, say, directing 8ths lines at 240bpm at will, to start and end wherever and still have them sound like I meant it, if you know what I mean. Pretty sure that if this sort of thing was pointed out to me earlier, I might have had a way to practice for it sooner. I call it "concertina-ing" and I described it to someone recently as like running along a sidewalk that has randomly placed cracks - if the name of the game is to keep your running rhythm as you jump over every crack, you need to (ahead of time) adjust your steps so that you meet every crack to jump without tripping or stumbling, or even having to stop. Or something...
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(Yeah, Reg, I know that in the end you have to be able to play fast, so you have to bring your chops up to speed but)
I think the Tristano/Marsh thing of practicing very slowly in the beginning is very good thing.
Because it means that you are not only mechanically moving your fingers but you are able to listen to yourself and follow what you are playing. According to Warne Marsh this is also one of the tools leading to finding your own voice.
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Mostly zooby dooby squiddly bop, and buddely dumba da! Da! Originally Posted by charlieparker
It’s pretty embarrassing. Probably I’m doing it wrong.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I always hope to remember what key I'm improvising in
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The variation of placement position of a phrase into the tempo is "beat width", which in jazz is highly desired to be as "fat" as can be musically controlled - Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Wes Montgomery - all examples of it. Here's good example of Wes for figuring out what he's doing. Listen to the whole thing because it is wonderful, then start about @2:30 to establish the beat tempo and notice how he starts the first two phrases of his solo...
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Yes, some of the greats had great "elastic time" . Cannonball Adderley comes to mind, a transcriber's nightmare, what seemed commonplace for him was to be able to squeeze in something like 17, 18, 19 or more notes in a phrase where you'd expect 16, 16th notes or something. Originally Posted by pauln
In this respect and perhaps even some others, he probably even out Parkered Parker!
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Yea Bop... having chops... rhythmic chops helps.... but you still have to play LOL.
personally... I like to interact and react to what's going on. Sure I have way too many licks... but the thing about licks or phrases... is your able to play and listen at the same time. Part of improv or soloing is interacting with the ensemble and developing .... you actual Music.
The obvious answer is to be able to speed up or slow down through subdividing... and make the target notes of a lick or phrase work... within the context of the space. Kind of like what prince was saying about Cannonball... very fast and Was... medium speed.
Nothing wrong with slow... it just gets boring quickly. I generally play Chord solos for slow.... well kind of slow.
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What else would you do but interact? Playing together is a sort of communication. For me it is something that happens on an intuitive subconscious level, e.g. reacting to and interacting with a drummer and a bassist no matter whether it is jazz or funk or reggae. Originally Posted by Reg
I was not saying that Warne Marsh (I hope we agree that he could play) was suggesting playing slow but practicing very slow at the beginning to achieve what you call "is your able to play and listen at the same time" in your post. Originally Posted by Reg
EDIT: When you are already "there" it is very easy to forget that you were not there from the beginning and had to invest something to get there (which is something I sometimes should take to heart more, too, for certain things).Last edited by Bop Head; 09-23-2024 at 10:47 PM.
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I’ve been trying to think about what things to practice slow and what to work up to speed and I’ve ended up working on scales and bebop heads really really slow (though I don’t work tons on scales these days) and then using licks from transcriptions (Jim Hall mostly right now) to work up to tempo.
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I've been relearning Bird tunes to play with my thumb instead of pick. The thumb is only downstrokes, so I have to rely on hammer-ons/pull-offs, and use different fingerings. I practice the heads slowly, and I have to make sure I practice all the slurs at the slow tempo, because as it speeds up I can no longer pluck every note. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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To be able to play slow... you need to be able to subdivide mentally.
The less free space between the notes or chords etc.... the better chance what your playing slow will be in time and have "feel". ( mentally subdividing organizes free space and helps imply "feel")
Feel is created by rhythmic implications, not just what your actually playing. (obviously melodic and harmonic implications also)
What one plays generally.... implies "Targets". It's kind of like how Analysis works... your simplifying and organizing space.... a section of music, and deciding on the most important physical locations.
Where this is going is .... sometimes just learning something slow, or working on a phrase and getting up to speed misses the point of what your playing.
Sometimes understanding what's implied by a section of music and how that section of music is related to the rest of the music is more important that just getting the notes out.
Bop... I'm not trying to disagree with your point... more in the direction of developing an understanding of what your playing implies within larger sections of space or time.
No right or wrong... good, bad etc... but different.
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This I think is a good argument for working slow. Originally Posted by Reg
When I work with students I tell them basically that we won’t work on playing “fast” and that that will just come with time as the chops develop and there’s not really a shortcut there, but that we can work on playing fast tempos. Which doesn’t necessarily mean playing a lot of notes in a small space.
In general, for example it’s much easier to play at 200bpm if you’re feeling it at 50bpm. But feeling that long of a chunk of time takes practice. So I do a lot of work with like … playing guide tones on the and of 2 with the metronome clicking only on beat one of the measure or whatever.
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There's a difference between playing and practicing slow. I'm just working on a new technique, the thumb, and a lot of what I'm practicing is purely mechanical. And it actually works, because I can play a couple Bird tunes at his tempo now. Just had practice them slowly and get them up to speed. Originally Posted by Reg
You've talked in the past about having to have your technique together, and this is that.
But yeah, PLAYING slow in a performance is a completely different thing.
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Yea supersoul.... there's a big different between just playing and practice. There's technique practice and performance practice. Originally Posted by supersoul
Very cool your working on using your thumb.... I love playing and the sound of using thumb.
Thumb octaves are great way to solo in ensemble setting or when backing up vocalist etc... Beautiful sound. Very natural with Jazz Box performance.
Also, lol I can't remember how many times at gigs, even larger venues when I would drop pick and smoothly go into wes style without droppin a beat.
I have time the next few weeks... maybe get into thumb sounds and technique, vids etc...
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