Mike Neer
From:
NJ
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Posted 10 Aug 2024 11:58 am |
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I’ve been failing at jazz for 40 years but the music never gave up me. It never failed to inspire me to become a better musician. But on my own, trying to come to an understanding of jazz could not have happened. I had to get out and play music with people who were really excellent at it and could make it a learning experience. Luckily, I had something they needed: I could play guitar and sing a wide variety of music well. I worked with outstanding musicians most of my career, amazingly!
The first jazz record I ever fell in love with was Miles Davis’s My Funny Valentine. It’s such an incredible collection—the ballad Stella By Starlight with Herbie Hancock is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. That’s where my love of jazz was born and that’s where I wanted to start my journey! What an idiot I was. 😂. Give it a listen, it’s like listening to Ravel.
https://youtu.be/YI7qPHJ6tjA?si=UBzKRch49fctGylX
Upper structures are really cool with dominant chords. There are so many ways to think about the same information, and some of it can be confusing. My way of simplifying things is thinking of chords as combinations of triads, so it makes it more feasible on lap steel. I’ve had to adjust my way of thinking about these things. But when you think about some of the basic tricks of harmony, especially the diminished chord’s movability and the fact that a dominant chord could be treated the same way….it starts to really open things up.
Having a great teacher can really help you cut through the bull. There’s is so much overthinking if we try to do it on our own. A piano or jazz guitar teacher, or any other instrumentalist, can really teach us so much.
Ps: still failing at jazz. But I’m starting to hear things my own way. Some stuff I play is jazzy and harmonically interesting and that gives me pleasure. It’s a long process, a lifetime even, but when you start to hear it, you’ll know.
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Links to streaming music, websites, YouTube: Links |
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Tim Toberer
From:
Nebraska, USA
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Posted 11 Aug 2024 7:51 am
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I had to go back to JD's original post, because I sort of forgot about how we got here  Since Mike joined the conversation, I remembered an amazing teacher - player he (Mike) steered me towards. Joe Diorio !!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xofnobw2Rg
Starting about 5:00 he describes perfectly the challenge of being creative within a complex structure, like a jazz tune. His techniques are probably the most effective tool I have found for dealing with going BLANK! He starts very basic and expands it out into creating motifs and structures within the music like a rich primordial soup. Kind of like the early universe, where maybe Robert Johnson would be some sort of multi celled creature with certain evolutionary advantages over single celled creatures and Jelly Roll Morton would be like some fish crawling out of the early ocean. I guess a Miles Davis album would represent some sort of evolved planetary system with advanced intelligent life! (I like to get carried away) Best quote! "You don't know that you are creating when you are creating, because if you knew that you were creating when you were creating you wouldn't be creating."
JD, I enjoyed reading your earlier thread on upper structures! It took reading through twice, but I think I know what you are explaining. And yes fun to see the light go on  I have been having some similar moments about the same subject matter. Actually in the Music Theory thread I was trying to explain a similar moment I had a few nights prior. You asked me to explain my pencil diagram I posted a picture of and I didn't do a very good job. The way I am thinking about this stuff I found is very similar to the way Rich Cochrane illustrates thinking of chord superimposition. In chapter 3, he describes these complex things in a very elegant way. I just found the link to his free Ebooks which are just mind blowing. The chromatic diagram is on the cover, but it is chapter 3.7 specifically where he covers all the basic chords, including the diminished. His chart looks almost exactly like my full chart.
https://www.theguitar-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Arpeggio-and-Scale-Resources.pdf
Here are his other Ebooks, all free! https://cochranemusic.com/node/106 |
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J D Sauser
From:
Wellington, Florida
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Posted 11 Aug 2024 5:58 pm
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| Tim Toberer wrote: |
I had to go back to JD's original post, because I sort of forgot about how we got here Since Mike joined the conversation, I remembered an amazing teacher - player he (Mike) steered me towards. Joe Diorio !!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xofnobw2Rg
Starting about 5:00 he describes perfectly the challenge of being creative within a complex structure, like a jazz tune. His techniques are probably the most effective tool I have found for dealing with going BLANK! He starts very basic and expands it out into creating motifs and structures within the music like a rich primordial soup. Kind of like the early universe, where maybe Robert Johnson would be some sort of multi celled creature with certain evolutionary advantages over single celled creatures and Jelly Roll Morton would be like some fish crawling out of the early ocean. I guess a Miles Davis album would represent some sort of evolved planetary system with advanced intelligent life! (I like to get carried away) Best quote! "You don't know that you are creating when you are creating, because if you knew that you were creating when you were creating you wouldn't be creating."
JD, I enjoyed reading your earlier thread on upper structures! It took reading through twice, but I think I know what you are explaining. And yes fun to see the light go on I have been having some similar moments about the same subject matter. Actually in the Music Theory thread I was trying to explain a similar moment I had a few nights prior. You asked me to explain my pencil diagram I posted a picture of and I didn't do a very good job. The way I am thinking about this stuff I found is very similar to the way Rich Cochrane illustrates thinking of chord superimposition. In chapter 3, he describes these complex things in a very elegant way. I just found the link to his free Ebooks which are just mind blowing. The chromatic diagram is on the cover, but it is chapter 3.7 specifically where he covers all the basic chords, including the diminished. His chart looks almost exactly like my full chart.
https://www.theguitar-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Arpeggio-and-Scale-Resources.pdf
Here are his other Ebooks, all free! https://cochranemusic.com/node/106 |
Thanks for the kind words Tim... and Fred too (I rushed outside to check on them lights!  ).
My mother would go run errands once a week. She had a note pad on the wall in the kitchen and would add things she needed to procure as they became needed.
I usually went with her to town, and sometimes I noticed that she had not taken the note with her. Nevertheless she always pretty much brought home what was needed and once I asked her how she remembered and she said:
"I WROTE it down!"
College students still today are expected to write down lessons or at least take notes. We draw things before we build them... not always a precision drawing... a mere concept can get us going at it with saw, hammer and nails and do a good job.
The fact that we sit down and write or draw, creates a lasting impression in our brains.
I believe it's the same with music, for those which aren't "naturals" which just "take off" and leave everybody behind wondering what just happened.
I can show someone how to "organize" their C6th neck for days on for weeks, or sit them down with a blank neck-chart and tell them to "paint" it on it while I tell them... Have them do that 2 or 3 times and it's "IN there". Done!
This is why I am BIG on making charts... meaning "neck"-drawings, and work on them with color markers. Every step of "figuring" out the neck, I charted out.
Did I used them? Rarely! The mere fact of having concentrated and drawn patterns was usually enough.
I just recently found a whole stack of these sheets and some I really had to sit and wonder WHAT the heck I was brain storming about on some of them.
Likewise I made up some "chromatic rulers" (I posted them Decades ago on this forum), which I'd cut up and slide agains each others.
The first one I made was in the mid Nineties after a Jeff Newman seminar (E9th) where Jeff said "if you need a miner, just play any Major 3 frets up. I raised my hand as I had to be the one not just happy enough to learn about that "trick" but understand WHY. Being keen on keeping the class going, he told me "jest play it, trust me".
I went home determined to find out why a major could be a minor and I drew and cut up my first chromatic rulers and quickly figured out what was going on.
I was trained a precision mechanics engineer in Switzerland... a long time ago... but it's still in there deep down. It's the only way I know to understand and explain, and thus Tim, I think there is nothing wrong about making charts and playing with numbers... as long you can learn from it, get up, ditch it and make music from it.
Watching Joe Diorio's videos, I come to think how much the Internet, namely youTUBE has changed how music is being taught. Even in it's early days, the best one could catch was a "Master-Class". Today we see theory in a more palpable way over just forcing boring scales and mysterious modes on students. We also seem to hear more about scale-and chord-DEGREES, intervals and functional harmony than just "this" or "that" note.
Finally, let me say this, and I think that's also the goal of an ear player and improviser: The more you know (comprehend) the less one needs to know it.
When BE evasively answered the question of "what are you thinking" with a certain uncertainty about if he even was thinking at all... I don't think that it meant that he didn't "think" at some point. And evidently, he re-studied some aspects of theories throughout the different phases of his musica journey.
... J-D.
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Was it JFK who said: Ask Not What TAB Can Do For You - Rather Ask Yourself "What Would B.B. King Do?"
A Little Mental Health Warning:
Tablature KILLS SKILLS.
The uses of Tablature is addictive and has been linked to reduced musical fertility.
Those who produce Tablature did never use it.
I say it humorously, but I mean it. |
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