Jazz, where to start?

Jack Aldrich · Post by **Jack Aldrich** » 21 Mar 2012 11:06 am

wrt to "Green Dolphin Street", I play it all the time as a solo piano piece in Eb. The first phrase is plyed over an Eb pedal - Eb Ebmin F E Eb with a latin beat, and then it goes over the old circle of fifths in one form or another straight ahead jazz. Way too much fun! - Jack

Paul Sutherland · Post by **Paul Sutherland** » 21 Mar 2012 11:37 am

Christopher Woitack: I am interesting in the 50 Bebop Licks for Saxophone. The first ten have caused me to want the other forty, but I can't find the book on line. Where did you get it? How can I get it? Thanks.

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 21 Mar 2012 1:55 pm

In the interest of "turning you on" (ahem) there is a great site on Cannonball Adderley with quite some bits of transcriptions:

http://www.cannonballjazz.com/Cannonball.htm

My favorite Miles Davis record* of the late 1950's was actually a Cannonball recording in 1958 called "Somethin' Else." Miles did the arranging, stealth motivating and played very, very well; it's a typical Alfred Lion/Rudy Van Gelder recording, i.e. sublime, i.e. shut up and play. Doc Stewart used to have all the solos up, including Miles'; now it looks like you have to buy some. Little devil. However there's still enough of "Autumn Leaves" to keep you twisted for a very long time. If you to "1958 Recording Sessions" and dig out "Cannonball's Five Stars", there you are.

http://www.cannonballjazz.com/Cannonbal ... _index.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2xx3YTu2ac

*(Kind of Blue is merely second. Seriously. "Somethin Else" is the record I play for people who believe "da blues" are only playable on guitars.

)

Herb Steiner · Post by **Herb Steiner** » 21 Mar 2012 2:09 pm

I often wondered if the band students at that high school in Florida, where Mr. Adderley taught, ever realized that one of the icons of jazz, alto saxophone, and simply immaculate hipness was their instructor.

Some of them MUST have!

Jack Aldrich · Post by **Jack Aldrich** » 21 Mar 2012 3:14 pm

David Mason wrote:In the interest of "turning you on" (ahem) there is a great site on Cannonball Adderley with quite some bits of transcriptions:

http://www.cannonballjazz.com/Cannonball.htm

My favorite Miles Davis record* of the late 1950's was actually a Cannonball recording in 1958 called "Somethin' Else." Miles did the arranging, stealth motivating and played very, very well; it's a typical Alfred Lion/Rudy Van Gelder recording, i.e. sublime, i.e. shut up and play. Doc Stewart used to have all the solos up, including Miles'; now it looks like you have to buy some. Little devil. However there's still enough of "Autumn Leaves" to keep you twisted for a very long time. If you to "1958 Recording Sessions" and dig out "Cannonball's Five Stars", there you are.

http://www.cannonballjazz.com/Cannonbal ... _index.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2xx3YTu2ac

*(Kind of Blue is merely second. Seriously. "Somethin Else" is the record I play for people who believe "da blues" are only playable on guitars. )

It is a great album, with Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums - hmmmmm. I love the intro to "Autumn Leaves" and "Waltz for Debby".

Chris Reesor · Post by **Chris Reesor** » 21 Mar 2012 5:32 pm

....is a must have album for aspiring jazz players, according to a brilliant jazz guitarist and instructor I had the opportunity to take a workshop with. I agree 100%.
I'll not forget my first listen to Autumn Leaves; Miles is playing the head,and when he gets to bar seven he plays E natural over the Gm harmony instead of Bb and leans on it. I leaped to my feet, grabbed my guitar, to figure out what he just did that stood me right on my ear.
Kinda says something about the importance of "that one note".
You can download this album for about $0.99.... Do it!

Chris

Christopher Woitach · Post by **Christopher Woitach** » 21 Mar 2012 5:42 pm

Paul - I sent you an email.

If anyone wants the other pages of the 50 Bebop licks, just send me an email

Butch Gardner · Post by **Butch Gardner** » 21 Mar 2012 6:21 pm

So many great jazz musicians being mentioned here. Many of them played together and learned from one another, and challenged each other to push the envelope. Learn what you can, then find some "Cats" and start playing.

Look for an album by Sonny Stitt, "Constellation". He is Ferocious... Fast, Clean, and Articulate, and these guys did not overdub. Stitt never got the credit he deserved IMO. Think he's still living in St Louis. I'd love to meet him.

In the old days you could take a 33 1/3 speed album and slow it to the 78 speed which is about half, and follow the lines a little easier for transcribing them. I also believe there is a printed book with many of Birds recordings. I'll look now.

Butch

George Redmon · Post by **George Redmon** » 21 Mar 2012 9:32 pm

Julian Tharpe.... Even his country stuff sounds like a jazz mix. If stealing licks were a crime, i'd be doing life without parole. I listen to tharpe, jernigan, anderson, emmons, chalker, over & over & over & over & over & over....

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 21 Mar 2012 9:36 pm

I play a lot of styles, and don't claim to be a great jazz guitar player, but I do play jazz guitar. I studied with a really fine jazz guitarist named Dave Klein off and on, starting in the late 80s. On our first contact, just to see where I was at, he put up sheet music of On Green Dolphin Street and Autumn Leaves, played them, and then asked me to play them, with a "Doesn't everybody know these?" kind of look. Let's just say, I could deal with the second, but failed on the first. But it's a great tune for jazz guitar, into the woodshed I went. There is such a vast repertoire of great jazz tunes - I wish I had about 10 lifetimes to explore it.

I agree with most of what's been said here. Listen, listen, listen to all kinds of jazz, don't restrict yourself to one instrument like guitar or steel - pay attention especially to the great horn players. Learn everything you can about intervals, melody, harmony, rhythm, and chord progressions. Play different types of melodies and chord-melodies over every kind of chord progression you can and learn how they sound against each other. The blues is a good place to start - all my favorite jazz musicians play great blues. Robert Kramer's list of Emmons influences is great - let me add Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, Jimmy Raney, Jim Hall, Tal Farlow, Howard Roberts, Joe Pass, Bill Evans, Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker (obviously), Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, Cannonball Adderly, Art Blakey, Max Roach, Charles Mingus, and (for people still alive) don't miss a chance to see people like Martino, Joey DeFrancesco, and Joe Lovano if you get the chance. I also really like to hear vocal versions of jazz tunes by singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Carmen McRea, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, and Dinah Washington if I really want to hear great melodic phrasing on the pure melody that was written for a tune.

btw - Sonny Stitt died a long time ago. I agree, a great player who, however, tended to walk in Charlie Parker's shadow.

Russ Wever · Post by **Russ Wever** » 21 Mar 2012 10:55 pm

Think he's still living in St Louis.
I'd love to meet him.

Sorry, but Stitt's long, long gone.
~RW

Frank Montmarquet · Post by **Frank Montmarquet** » 22 Mar 2012 9:04 am

n the old days you could take a 33 1/3 speed album and slow it to the 78 speed which is about half, and follow the lines a little easier for transcribing them. I also believe there is a printed book with many of Birds recordings.

The Book is the Omni book: http://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Parker-Om ... 0769260535

To slow down for transcribing you take a 78 and play at 33 1/3, or record on tape and play back slower, but the pitch changes. Those with some technical savvy knew you could take an Ampex video recorder and put independent speed controls on the transport and spinning heads and if you left the heads at the right speed, slowing the tape will make the music play slower but at the right pitch! Zappa did the opposite but I'm sure he knew this, maybe Abersold knew it too.

Gary Lee Gimble · Post by **Gary Lee Gimble** » 22 Mar 2012 9:38 am

challenged each other to push the envelope.

I've been challenged alright, but my post card has short changed me.

David Mason · Post by **David Mason** » 22 Mar 2012 12:06 pm

I think it's an irrefutably-splendid idea to listen to enough jazz to pick out a few artists who resonate strongly with YOU - and then listen to them, very, very carefully. As Chris Reesor says, grab your guitar... There's a danger in listening non-critically, promiscuously, just "letting it wash over you", it's like trying to learn a foreign language by reading their dictionary.

I have never been able to like or dislike an entire musical genre by a label or an instrument, I always get the tingle from individual artists.

Miles Davis - Yay!
Chuck Mangione - Bhlarrgh!

And I think it's perfectly acceptable to acknowledge that there are great artists - whom you don't particularly like. The reasons that we resonate with certain artists are pretty simple, I think. Their general emotional "center point" on the happy/sad scale, their range across that scale (Q width) and how it matches yours, your very early listening experiences - the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 6th symphony is what they ALWAYS played when Bugs Bunny is strolling around the forest bucolically, just before Elmer shows up with his gun.

But then when you pick YOUR guy, or a few of them, boil it down further to just a few albums and WORK on just them mightily for a while, because you can get totally scatterbrained trying to "do it all." I also tried this approach of listening to, and burning a CD of, just one particular song* by many different artists, and I couldn't make heads or tail of that approach - jazz is so individualized, still (and that's GOOD thing!).

When I decided to BE a "jazz guitarist" several years back (oh sure), I bought up a bunch of chord DVDs and books, from Danny Gatton and Scotty Anderson to Joe Pass and Martin Taylor. And I found out that even when approaching something really straightforward like a IIm-V-I progression - they all did it in completely different ways! Not a single thread of continuity across different artists - the scatterbrain gremlin awaits...

*(Autumn Leaves was one, surprise surprise)

Jack Aldrich · Post by **Jack Aldrich** » 22 Mar 2012 12:15 pm

I poked around trying to figure out why most of Miles' quintet are on the Cannonball album, and I found that it was really Miles' gig, but he was on Columbia, and he couldn't be the leader, so it was put out in Cannonball's name. - Jack

Post by **Dave Mudgett** » 22 Mar 2012 4:32 pm

Dave M. - maybe you're not saying this, but I don't think it's a good idea to filter artists or styles early on. You don't know 'em if you've never heard 'em - how can one possibly make an educated choice what moves you before you've heard a wide range?

So I think that, early on, it is, in fact, a good idea to just listen to a very wide range and "let it wash over you". In computer science, which articulates the science of searching (it doesn't matter what you're searching for), this is called, "Breadth-First Search", as opposed to "Depth-First Search". Breadth-First is great when you don't know much, and you want to avoid missing things you might never have thought of. Then start to filter and dig deeper as you start to get a clue.

I, myself, have definite favorite approaches, styles, and players - and conversely, approaches, styles, and players that don't move me as much. But that's only after giving a lot of stuff a chance. And, in retrospect, I'm still surprised at some of the stuff that I've gravitated towards as I've moved down the line.

My take.

George McCann · Post by **George McCann** » 22 Mar 2012 8:03 pm

My favorite and everyday listening Jazz artists.

Miles

Bill Evans
Oscar Peterson with Herb Ellis on Guitar.

Lionel Hampton

Art Pepper
Stanley Turrentine
Coleman Hawkins

Wes Montgomery
Lenny Breau
Kenny Burrell

Any of these guys will give you ideas and are easy to listen too.

Buck Reid's PSG album has some great Jazz tunes on it.

Carl Mesrobian · Post by **Carl Mesrobian** » 9 May 2012 9:10 am

Jason Rumley wrote:I've been listening to Buddy Emmon's jazz cds and I'm really liking them. I've never played jazz before and wouldn't know where to start for chords/scales, etc. I'm trying out Herb's C6 instruction for Western Swing and they're working out great but after that I'm not sure where to go. Thoughts?

Wherever you want to go. I have played regular guitar for a long time and in the late 70's got into listening to Benny Goodman stuff with Charlie Christian on guitar, then started listening to Zoot Sims on tenor sax, Joe Pass, Kenny Burrell, Chuck Wayne, Wes Montgomery.

Get the Real Book, the one that's under the counter, if you know what I mean. Then I took lessons from many jazz guitar players and learned stuff they'd just scribble down each week - jazz blues form, rhythm changes form, Latin, scales (diatonic, modal, bebop, blues),IIm-V7 riffs, intervals, voicings, etc., etc. I learned tunes, listened to the players I like, learned phrasing from different instruments, not just the guitar. Make the instrument sing the way you would sing the tune! Learn to swing time, don't play dead on top of the beat! It kills the feel totally.

I just started learning PSG last winter and it's totally frustrating for me not to be able to do what I can do on guitar. I pretty much threw the 6 string fretboard out and kept the theoretical knowledge and now have all this hardware to figure out

Love the C6 neck and have thought about having a single neck C6, if there is such an instrument. C6 is all right there, and I think would be easier to learn jazz on than E9. Guess I could take an S-10 and convert it and add 2 pedals.. People have always commented on my solos as being lyrical - I hope so, I sing the song in my head and improvise over the melody. I think your best bet is to find a pedal steel teacher that's hip to jazz. They're out there

Carl Mesrobian · Post by **Carl Mesrobian** » 9 May 2012 9:22 am

Christopher Woitach wrote:Um, Green Dolphin street at 220 isn't very hard, if you can play jazz.

Do I hear any bids for "Donna Lee" at 220?

Jim Cohen · Post by **Jim Cohen** » 9 May 2012 11:23 am

Carl Mesrobian wrote: Do I hear any bids for "Donna Lee" at 220?

Yeah, Buck Reid has already done that and recorded it on his CD.

Carl Mesrobian · Post by **Carl Mesrobian** » 9 May 2012 1:09 pm

George McCann wrote:My favorite and everyday listening Jazz artists.

Miles

Bill Evans
Oscar Peterson with Herb Ellis on Guitar.

Lionel Hampton

Art Pepper
Stanley Turrentine
Coleman Hawkins

Wes Montgomery
Lenny Breau
Kenny Burrell

Any of these guys will give you ideas and are easy to listen too.

Buck Reid's PSG album has some great Jazz tunes on it.

Definitely a top shelf list. Lenny Breau, Wes, Kenny? Yeah, man!

Quentin Hickey · Post by **Quentin Hickey** » 9 Feb 2016 4:58 pm

I've read but haven't had the chance to explore Coltrane's 1 2 3 5 approach. I believe he uses it on four and giant steps.

John Alexander · Post by **John Alexander** » 9 Feb 2016 6:48 pm

Quentin Hickey wrote:I've read but haven't had the chance to explore Coltrane's 1 2 3 5 approach. I believe he uses it on four and giant steps.

Similar are the eighth note scale fragments given by John Mehegan in Volume 1 of his four volume work, Jazz Improvisation, as follows: 1235, 3457, 5672, and the reverse pattern, 5431, 7653 and 2175.

I don't know why he used "2" in the description of these instead of "9" since the note designated is in the next higher octave. Anyway these fragments can be practiced over various scales/modes and rhythms, and used as raw material for learning to improvise.

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Jazz, where to start?

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Re: Jazz, where to start?