no respect
get...@gmail.com
jammed with once before. And once again he made a disdainful remark
offhandedly about guitar players. He said he had to warn his students
and teach them to play in the only keys guitar players play in...E, A
and D. He had said something similar last time I played with him. Is it
a joke? Where's the respect man?
Ken Willinger
http://homepage.mac.com/getken/guitar/
Pat Smith
learn to follow guitarists. At least he understands the pecking order
;)
Dave Stephens
I also play trumpet and I know where this cat is coming from. Mainly in rock
and soul the trumpet is constantly playing five sharps because so many of
those songs are in "guitar keys", as we call them in the horn section. It's
no big deal for those of us that constantly play those keys, but "classical"
style trumpeters don't run into it that much. Just yesterday I was in a
section sight reading a piece in five sharps and I was the only one cutting
it.
It IS a valid warning to horn players of all stripe that they need to learn
"guitar keys", particularly if they're going to play rock, funk, soul and
blues. I don't think of it as a diss to us guitarists, just something that
horn players need to practice. There lots of good reasons for playing
"guitar keys" like, for instance, there are some good sounding open voicings
that can't be duplicated in other keys without retuning the guitar, etc.,
etc.
If you're sure he's dissing you, then kick his butt. Tell him it's a fact of
life that horn players have to learn to work with if they want to play all
the music. Of course, if you can't play in other keys, then keep your mouth
shut and learn to play in some "horn keys" (Bb, Eb, F, Ab). ;-)
Dave
<get...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1136825681.3...@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
pmfan57
Call Blues in B (or any other key) and modulate through all twelve
keys. A snap for guitarists. Not so for sax.
get...@gmail.com
lumping all guitarists into one lowly place, really the unschooled,
unclean neanderthals of musicians. I show up to these informal jams to
have fun and play music...in any key. There is no impetus for remarks
such as these. I don't hear remarks about any other instrumentalists.
There are plenty of horn players who can't play...period. I think there
is just this festering disdain among horn players for the guitar
playing masses in general. We're all lumped into one category whether
we can play circles around them or not. Where is the justice? :>}
Ken Willinger
http://homepage.mac.com/getken/guitar/
Joey Goldstein
If he's a trombone player tell him this joke:
What's the difference between a dead trombone player lying on the side
of the road and a dead skunk lying on the side of the road?
The skunk was on his way to a gig.
Don't know any dissing trumpet, saxophone or piano jokes off hand.
But....
A man was on safari in deepest Africa with his guide.
Every night as they made camp he heard drumming off in the distance.
One night he asked his guide: "What does the drumming mean?"
And the guide said: "Not know. But when drums stop, verry bad."
The man asked: "Why? What happens when the drums stop?"
The guide said: "Bass solo."
--
Joey Goldstein
http://www.joeygoldstein.com
joegold AT sympatico DOT ca
Joey Goldstein
Oh yeah...
What do you call 2 flute players playing in unison?
"A min 2nd."
bob r
nos...@nowhere.net wrote on 1/9/06 12:39 PM:
> Don't know any dissing trumpet, saxophone or piano jokes off hand.
What do trumpet players use for birth control?
Their personalities.
How many sax players does it take to change a light bulb?
Just one. He holds the bulb still while the world revolves around him.
Piano player's working with a singer; she gets a request for "When Sunny
Gets Blue" from a big tipper. She turns to the piano player, says, "Gee,
it's been so long... I don't know if I'll remember it..."
Piano player says, "Don't worry, darlin'; I've got you covered."
They start out well enough. She sings the first line, "When Sunny gets
blue..." and has an instant brain-fart. Panicking, she turns to the piano
player, who smiles and says...
"B-flat minor ninth".
--
Bob Russell
Web - http://www.bobrussellguitar.com
CDs - http://www.cdbaby.com/all/bobrussell
Soundclick - http://www.soundclick.com/bobrussell
George Prager
"Joey Goldstein" <nos...@nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:43C2A07B...@nowhere.net...
What do you call a trombone player with a pager?
An optimist!!
G.P.
juru...@aol.com
It'll probably show up after you run the cycle on him on something
like Confirmation or Cherokee. See how he likes 'em in B and F#.
Most jazz players don't have much trouble with modulation, I don't
expect, but if any of 'em do, it's the non concert pitch instruments
most often in my experience.
Clif
Mike C.
Wow, Joey. Your posts are certainly in the top 10 of most informative, but
your jokes are a few years behind.
That said:
Q: What do you call a building full of guitarists?
A: Prison
RickH
He should have been nicer, he was probably referring to many rock
guitar players who rarely play flat keys. But as a former woodwind
player I can tell you that transposing on sax/clarinet/flute is very
difficult compared to guitar. With guitar you can just move what you
already know up or down the neck up to 12 frets, and if you run out of
neck or dont want to move over 6 frets because of the tone change, you
only need to learn one other transposition that is moveable again for
the other 6 keys. So in the end 2 distinct fingerings are usually
enough.
On woodwinds, playing a tune in multiple keys is not easy at all,
because the whole concept of moveable forms just does not exist at all.
You are rather playing a completely different set of fingerings for
each key, that it may as well be a completely different song
difficulty-wise. It has nothing to do with the range of the horn or
sax, but with the fact that these are not "linear" instruments where
you simply move the forms you already know over a string. For this
reason, I have a lot of respect for any horn player that can transpose
at all. Usually blowing a new improvised solo in the new key is no
problem to the sax, but re-playing the head straight in the new key can
be.
It is so incredibly frustrating to chage keys on horns that this person
might be projecting that frustration into a joke about guitarists in
general, as a defense mechanism. Best thing I guess is to joke back
and keep it light.
Max Leggett
A. A tatoo.
----------------------------------------
I have had to be diligent. Anyone with equal diligence would have done as much.
Johann Sebastian Bach
Biffy the Elephant Shrew
>I also play trumpet and I know where this cat is coming from. Mainly in rock
>and soul the trumpet is constantly playing five sharps because so many of
>those songs are in "guitar keys", as we call them in the horn section.
Well, just put a capo on your trumpet, man.
Your pal,
Biffy the Elephant Shrew
Joey Goldstein
"Mike C." wrote:
>
> "Joey Goldstein" <nos...@nowhere.net> wrote in message
> news:43C2A07B...@nowhere.net...
> >
> > Oh yeah...
> >
> > What do you call 2 flute players playing in unison?
> > "A min 2nd."
> >
> > --
> > Joey Goldstein
> > http://www.joeygoldstein.com
> > joegold AT sympatico DOT ca
>
> Wow, Joey. Your posts are certainly in the top 10 of most informative, but
> your jokes are a few years behind.
More than a few!
So are my licks!
>
> That said:
>
> Q: What do you call a building full of guitarists?
>
> A: Prison
--
RickH
For some reason that one always cracks me up, just thinking of a dozen
15 year old girl piccolo players in high-school band doing their big
solo on Sousa's "Stars And Stripes Forever"; define beat frequency.
Max Leggett
wrote:
Q. How do you get two flutes in tune?
A. Shoot one of them.
oasysco
>and teach them to play in the only keys guitar players play in...E, A
>and D.
Ken, can you really play in three keys? I wish I could :)-
Greg
Joey Goldstein
Well, yeah, it's usually applied to piccolo.
But I was trying to give the OP ammo for his jam session and it's
unlikely he'll ever see a jazz piccolo player there. He probably won't
see a flute player either, but he'll be prepared if he he does.
RobSm
<nos...@nowhere.net> wrote:
>
>Oh yeah...
>
>What do you call 2 flute players playing in unison?
>"A min 2nd."
LOL....I love it....more LOL...I played the flute for a while....LOL
RobSm
wrote:
It's not only Sax players...our guy plays an alto Eb so he has to add
3 #'s to any key we use.
we play in Cmaj he's in A maj.
We indulge him quite a bit...for example we play Nardis and Black
Orpheus in Cmin...and there are other examples...
WELL!!!....we went to a local 'jazz club jam' and when Ed (our alto
guy) got up with a few other guys one of whom was the local piano
guru..when the talk came to choosing keys...this piano dude spat the
dummy at Ed on mike in public...No one plays Misty in THAT key..ad
infinitum
While it was basically harmless it did jar the audience who
understood...and fer Christ's sake it was a JAM session not a GIG.
So beware piano players who are set in their ways...
Mike C.
I don't know if I'd say that. At least Mike Varney doesn't think so. Wait,
that is a few years ago, isn't it...
;-)
--
Mike C.
http://mikecrutcher.com
Teaching: http://findmeateacher.com/contact.php?id=1107
"As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I
sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking
and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way."
- Jack Handey
Joey Goldstein
"Mike C." wrote:
>
>
> I don't know if I'd say that. At least Mike Varney doesn't think so. Wait,
> that is a few years ago, isn't it...
You saw that. Oiy.
Gerry
> At a jam session yesterday there was a sax player there whom I've
> jammed with once before. And once again he made a disdainful remark
> offhandedly about guitar players. He said he had to warn his students
> and teach them to play in the only keys guitar players play in...E, A
> and D. He had said something similar last time I played with him. Is it
> a joke? Where's the respect man?
This is just where some people go. Doesn't sound like he was kidding so
much as trying to irritate you. Ask him why he's trying to irritate
you. I don't know your situation but if you've been through the Real
Book (or similar) you have probably played more in Bb, Eb, Ab and Db
than any sax player will in the next 20 years.
It's certainly appreciated when a sax player doesn't turn into a deaf
mute in the key of A. I'm guessing: I don't recall playing in the key
of A with any sax players since 1972.
Funny a sax player would carp about the sharp keys--they NEVER play in
them. Outside rock guitarists, it's really them that have the key
limitations.
I've played so long in horn keys that, honestly, playing in F is much
more comfortable than E. Which sorta sucks.
--
What a day this has been, what a rare mood I'm in.
kevin...@gmail.com
A flat miner. (better when said out loud...)
Formerly Sideways
jazz band about 4 years ago. He was one of the finest by ear players
I've known, and made the transition to playing jazz fairly smoothly
once he got used to reading chord charts (the first few times through
the tunes, anyway).
The one thing that was the toughest for him was getting used to all the
flat keys. His signature line was, "the way I figure, the dots on the
neck are there for a reason."
Tone
I think the concept of "hard keys" comes from learning mostly by
reading music. A lot of teaching methods start you reading in C, then
F, G, Bb etc. adding another sharp or flat once you have the previous
one down ok. Which seems like a problem with the method not anything
inherent in particular instruments or keys. I it would be an
interesting thing to test. Try learning a new horn w/o reading, just
playing by ear, once you know the fingerings for a chromatic scale. I
doubt you would have a problem with any particular key. Not a good way
to learn classical but this is a jazz news group ;-)
But you have the those problems reading on guitar too. Sure you can
move your hand to a different position but transposing something with
lots of accidentals from say B or C# to C isn't all that easy on guitar
if you can't read in the original key pretty well.
On piano playing black note keys is actually easier and some classical
teachers start kids off playing that way... all those little beginner
tunes in C are just started up or down a half step so the kid is
dealing mostly with the much more obvious groups of 2 and 3 black
notes.
Dave Stephens
Most horn players start out training for classical gigs, reading music in
common concert keys. A great weakness in this style of training is that ear
training doesn't start until high school and then only for those in jazz
band. Too bad that a Susiki-style teaching method isn't used for wind
instruments, mixing ear training with reading.
Roy Hargrove started on trumpet listening to his dad's records in the sixth
grade and learned to read later. For a jazzer this is the ideal way to
start; however, it's the exception rather than the rule in today's music
education system.
I play trumpet and guitar and I'm way, way better as a trumpeter. Playing
the C# scale on trumpet is much harder to do than on guitar. It's also much
easier for me to read an odd key on guitar, all I do is change my position
and watch for accidentals. On trumpet every scale has a totally different
finger pattern.
I've played a lot of rock trumpet and orchestral pit work with five to seven
sharps or flats on trumpet (the keys are often selected to suit the original
Broadway performers) so it's not an issue for an old hand, but kids can go
all the way thru college in on trumpet and seldom, if ever, play in
performance more than four flats or sharps. When they get out a rock or
blues gig they're suddenly hit with something that's very foriegn to them.
Dave
"Tone" <a.ko...@computer.org> wrote in message
news:1136908220.6...@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
RickH
With guitar you can read in the as-written key and just re-position
your hand. We've all done this by accident many times especially when
switching between 2 guitars with different neck lengths and dont check
where the hand was and wind up playing it in B instead of C but you
read it in C. Nothing could be easier, with horns it's hard. Most
horn players learn early how to do their "concert key" transposition
but not the other 11. For example a tenor sax player learns early how
to read an as-written chart in say Bb and play it in C, or read a chart
in A and play it in B, etc. but if you asked them to read the Bb sheet
in D because you want to play it in C it would be a foreign
transposition. It isn't so much that there are "hard keys" it's just
that nothing is moveable on horns, so any prior knowledge of fingering
the melody is no longer applicable and the song has to be re-learned.
Jeff
accomplished pianist. I called "Impressions" in Am (is that a strange
key for that?) and he looked at me funny. He knew it in Dm. He said
(in a very joking way) "And I don't have a capo!" So we played it in
Dm.
I am not fluent in all keys and I read poorly, but I am surprised when
I hear that real pros are not equally fluent in all keys. I think
there's a mental block created by thinking of, say, C# in two steps
(take C and sharp it) rather than as a unique point on the chromatic
continuum.
ott...@hotmail.com
Bg
Roger Houston
"RobSm" <fan...@bigpond.net.au> wrote in message
news:dvi5s1peqf7felava...@4ax.com...
>
> LOL....I love it....more LOL...I played the flute for a while....LOL
Me, too. Strangely enough, I never had to instruct the audience to hold
their applause until I had finished.
RickH
Those 2 keys share a lot of common modes anyway. I think every jazz
musician is fluent at blowing their solo in any key, but when asked to
play the head in the new key it's a different story.
