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So to set the scene. I can play pentatonics all over the neck (in any key); I know all of my 'big' arpeggio shapes (and again can play them all over the neck).
What I'm struggling with is actually beginning to apply that to tunes. Someone recommended the Bert Ligon book on Connecting Chords, which has been really useful for starting to 'get' the idea of playing through changes, but it all still feels quite mechanical.
I've heard good things about the Christiaan van Hemert System?? But I don't want to spend that much money if I'm not going to get much out of it.
I guess my question is: for anyone who remembers being at this stage - what's the next step? I'm not afraid of hard work, so I'm happy to put the hours in, but I'm just not sure how to actually practice - what should I be working on?
Thanks
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03-19-2024 08:05 AM
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How much transcribing/copping things from recordings have you done?
How much jazz do you listen to?
Have you ever tried composing a solo over a jazz tune?
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Sorry for an indirect answer…but I have found my answer to be…learn the melody and then alter and expand upon it. There is the basic concept of 7th moving to 3rd of next chord and the idea that anything works as long as you resolve the line.
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1. Not as much as I should have
2. Every day
3. Not a full solo, but I've composed lines over a ii-V-I progression
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There seems to be broadly speaking two camps when it comes to learning to play the changes:
o The chord shapes and licks approach (that no doubt produced many great players).
o Maniacal mastery of the fretboard first where you can voice lead 8th note chord-scales (one per chord) at high tempos. Then work on more interesting phrasing using various line building devices (which becomes very easy once you're not held back by the fretboard). Also no doubt produced many great players.
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The next step will be to learn heads, like 100 of them, over the next year or two. One a week at first, then as you can learn faster add more. Don't rush this, and don't set goals like obtaining Maniacal mastery of the fretboard first. Maniacal mastery of the fretboard is a lifelong pursuit, not a next step.
Originally Posted by jamiehenderson1993
Last edited by AllanAllen; 03-19-2024 at 10:13 AM.
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You have to practice the raw material - scales, arps, and I think intervals should be included - over chord patterns ad nauseam until you can connect them freely. Only then you'll be able to phrase adequately. Phrase by developing / sequencing short motifs, like 4 notes, and longer lines. A 4 bar chord pattern I like to practice over is 2 / 5 / 1 / 3 6. Then do a jazz blues, then do a few tunes. You have to shed this stuff continually and get comfortable with it to be able to play freely. Originally Posted by jamiehenderson1993
Aside from the raw material side, there's the learning real world melody side, you need both. Real vocab understanding can come from heads and it should also come from picking up licks or lines from solos. You don't have to transcribe a whole solo, it's more important that you pick up ideas and actually learn to use them.
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Yeah, tunes, listening, transcribing (do heads if solos are too hard) more listening, singing solos, more tunes...and definitely try writing out some solo etudes. Take some of those lines you've written out, adapt them, string them together, mess with the rhythm. And then more listening...and more tunes...
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Learning tunes is good because that's what musicians do, they play tunes. Whether you play Japanese folk music or children's rhymes or classical repertoire, you learn tunes. That sounds wise, but make no mistake you're not gonna suddenly solo over the changes because you learned tunes which is what this thread is about. You need to learn your instrument.
This is one of the most instructive videos on improvisation on youtube. Especially the part where Gary Burton gives feedback after student performances. One of the most essential thing he expects is for students to be able to outline the chords by creating good phrasing using the correct chord-scales. That's a good starting goal, you got to get good at each chord. (Go to 1:39:17 in the video for example)
I put link to one of these moments (10 or so seconds after the video starts) but it's good to watch this video in its entirety.
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Yes I remember. Originally Posted by jamiehenderson1993
I was familiar with many jazz standards having played bass in that 'genre' for probably 20 years prior to attempting jazz guitar. I was (and still am) a rock, country and pop guitarist. A fellow band member (guitar and banjo) suggested the two of us formed a duo to play a few standards and delve into the Django thing.
So I guess I started using mostly the major pentatonic licks from playing country. To me that seemed the most melodic approach I had under my belt. I was used to following basic chords changes doing country and I started to research and develop a more structured approach to the blues - not just playing the same 5 notes over a 12 bar! Worked out a few Django transcriptions (off cassette tapes!) but never could do them justice but learned a lot from them. That was in the 90s. TBH my learning since then has been very undisciplined so can't really offer any advice but I get by! Have fun.
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True, but tunes provide context. Originally Posted by Tal_175
I had an exercise when I was younger, I'd play a ii V I in every key, moving through the key cycle. Great exercise. Still couldn't improvise on a tune though, because I wasn't practicing improvising on a tune!
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Of course. I wasn't disagreeing with you. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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The Gary Burton video represents one approach to jazz pedagogy:
o Get good at each chord (and its scale) and connecting it to other chords.
o Deeply learn the tunes (however many of them). Get inside of them.
o See what comes out when you solo.
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I have a question about this. Over a ii V I, are you thinking dorian, mixolydian, then ionian? Isn't this over complicating things? Originally Posted by Tal_175
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If you are practicing guide tone embellishments then you might outline all three chords. If you wanna use a funkier dominant than mixolydian then you might outline ii V. But I generally don't separate ii V because ii arpeggio is something I also play over V or half diminished from the third of V is something I also play over ii. It's hard to separate the language of ii and mixolydian type of dominant. You can also mix different dominants in the space of ii V (dominant and some form of alt dominant or tritone). Originally Posted by AllanAllen
But I do separate ii-V from I mentally.
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You use a lot of notes in Hammond so I generally separate all 3 unless I want to simplify for time or concentration. The main reason I usually don't use dorian to mix to major is that's way too vanilla lol. I want to use some chromaticism and at least put some altered notes on the 5. The most basic 2 5 1 my teacher does is dorian to diminished to major. There's a host of sub scales for the 5 and a couple for the others as well. Like melodic minor to whole tone to pent on the 3 or 7. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
Last edited by Bobby Timmons; 03-19-2024 at 03:23 PM.
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I still don't think this is a good next step. You guys are both saying to learn the scales to the chords, but also substitute them and cut them except for this and that.... too complicated for what OP asked.
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So is learning a hundred tunes! Originally Posted by AllanAllen
I would agree with the spirit of this, with the caveat being that a tune a week can be quick. I’m maybe marginally quicker than that even now. Beginner, don’t be afraid to spend a little more time on a few tunes.
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By arpeggio shapes, do you mean the chord tones of the chord progressions? - e.g., in C Major, IIm7 = D-F-A-C, V7 = G-B-D-F, I Maj.7 = C-E-G-B. Originally Posted by jamiehenderson1993
Can you play the chord tones over the changes in real time? The next step is to connect them, one way is to find the closest note from the last one you played.
For example: D-F-A-C >> B-G-B-D >> C-B-C-E --G-B-A-G (the A note is cheating but you get the idea).
Try to develop melodies playing just the chord tones with a few passing tones, like the last phrase above. This will develop your musical ear.
Once you've mastered that, you can include more scale tones, use altered chord arpeggio tones, etc.
The altered version of my first example could be something like: D-F-Ab-C (Dm7b5) >> B-Ab-B-D (G7b9) >> C-E-B-A--F#-E-G-D# (CM7#11) >> D - etc.
You may want to compose and practice your own etudes based on this concept, the goal being to make the lines sound musical.
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I generally agree with what's been said. Listen as much as possible to things that you like, learn tunes you like, transcribe, try writing out your own lines over chord progressions of tunes, try singing lines over tunes. Do as much as you can to get the sound defined in your head and then figure out how to get it out through the guitar. Trying to think in scale and arpeggio shapes on the fretboard isn't an intuitive way to learn how to improvise music at first. Eventually it gets baked in as the sound in your head becomes more connected to the guitar.
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If you're talking to me, post 16 wasn't directed to the op, it was directed to you. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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all the above approaches are great
for learning to improvise
adding my 2 cents
1 slow RIGHT down
2 hear a couple of notes in your head
3 sing them out loud
4 find them on the guitar
5 play them truely on the guitar
6 do not let your fingers play their automatic thing
7 don’t judge what you did
8 repeat
keep doing that
ie only play what you already heard
in your ‘head’
you will play less but it will be true
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I typed up a big long reply, but…. I think I’m having a strawman argument with myself. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
This is all good advice for OP.
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This stage is characterized by encountering chord change harmonies that may no longer support representation through melodic lines derived from a static source. The usual advice of the old jazz players was to learn tunes, because everything you need to learn to do is in the tunes that you want to be able to play... but that's not much to go on. Some have made some lists of the most important ten or dozen tunes to learn (importance based on how often they are called or based on what particular things they hold and offer to be learned). Originally Posted by jamiehenderson1993
All anyone can really do is try to describe what worked for them. My approach was to learn tunes, but I did it kind of backwards from what might be the usual way. What I did was to listen to tunes and figure out the chord possibilities that still sounded like those particular tunes. I tried all kinds of chords including ones I made up resulting in multiple possible chords all of the "lush" variety - as big and extended and altered as the tune could bear, including extra chords and patterns of chords inserted into the tune, passing chords, rootless chords, inversions... my intent was to capture a very harmonically rich collection of the tune's possibilities from which in actual performance I might only use shells or triads. The motive was to have a chord tree of harmonic branches growing on each change in the tune from which I could explore vocabularies of melodic and improvisational ideas.
I think of a tune's "chords" as trees of branches (possibilities) because within the harmonic context of a tune the melodic representation of the change is not so directly attached to the chords, but to the song - the identical chord change appearing in two tunes may not be supported by the same melodic line or phrase; that is, you can't depend on the idea that a chord is a chord and what works as a melodic representation in one tune must always work in all tunes with that same chord. A chord tree of harmonic branches in one tune may be different for the "same chord" in another tune. This might be clear for most people with regard to melodies, but maybe not so clear regarding improvisation.
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Lotta good advice above. There may be as many ways to proceed as there are players.
I'd add this.
I think it's hard to take some arps or scales that you learned in isolation and suddenly make a good solo out of them. The info will help you avoid clams but making melody is something else.
So, MrB's recommendations regarding listening and figuring stuff out makes a lot of sense to me.
To that, I'd suggest trying this. Strum the chords of a tune you want to solo on and scat sing over them. When you sing a line you like, put it on the guitar. If you can't get anywhere with that, sing the melody, but try to enhance it, like Sinatra might, or some other way. Keep at it until the original melody is substantially replaced by the improvised part.
For pure technique I suggest working on hearing a line in your mind and playing it instantly. You can use any snippet of melody you know. The goal: play Happy Birthday (or Donna Lee), starting on a random fret/finger/string, without making a mistake. The more time you have on the instrument, the better this will get.
If you can think up a good line (scatting) and you can play what you hear in your mind, you'll be able to solo, probably pretty well.
It's important not to be seduced by the Dark Side, but there's probably no agreement on which side that is. I think the Dark Side is when you're paying more attention to theory than tunes and recordings thereof.
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