basic skill for jazz, rarely discussed

[rpjazzguitar]

It seems to me that a fundamental skill is the ability to hear a melody and play it, starting at any fret, any finger - the first time, without mistakes.

If you can't do that, how can you think of a melody in your head and expect it to come out of the speaker?

Can start with a random fret and random finger and play Happy Birthday without making a mistake?

And yet, I rarely see this discussed. I can't recall ever reading about an exercise designed to build this skill. I do recall on player saying he'd watch tv and try to play along with everything, which may be a pretty good idea.

Is this something everybody can already do, so it isn't even worth mentioning?

[ott...@hotmail.com]

Well,
I can Hear my chord voicing, and voice leading, and I can even hear most of my blowing repertoire, licks, scales etc. I know what they'll sound like before I play them!

But I'm Really Lousy at faking melodies and hearing intervals properly. I hear intervals just fine in Chording but not when faking melodies or heads.
I'm not talking about playing tunes like My Romance, All things, No grater etc.

I'm talking about being on a Gig and having to play a melody that I've never played before, but have heard many times. I'll hear the changes, but I don't retain melodies very well it seems.
Bg

[patmp...@gmail.com]

I think it comes naturally when copying a lot of music from recordings, which is what you should be doing.

[rpjazzguitar]

>
> I'm talking about being on a Gig and having to play a melody that I've never played before, but have heard many times. I'll hear the changes, but I don't retain melodies very well it seems.
> Bg

I can play a melody, one that I can sing, at least recognizably the first time, with the occasional slide from a clam to the right note. Not necessarily accurately, but sort of in the ballpark. But I struggle with chords -- so, even if I know the tune, in the original key, unless it's pretty simple, I struggle to transpose on the fly. I can hear the right chord in my mind, but I don't know what to reach for. I don't have that problem with single note lines. It has improved a bit over time, but it has felt like a slog -- whereas other things have come far more quickly.

I've wondered what would happen if I had to do it all the time. My guess is that it would improve laboriously one song at a time, but I wouldn't get to where some guys are, i.e. if they know the tune they can just play the chords and don't care about the key. Pianists may have an advantage, because they may not grab an entire chord at once -- more like try to hear a root and then determine if it's major or minor -- at that point, they've got a couple of notes to play, and, for a major, they can put in a 6 or a 9 without too much fear. Then, if they can figure if it's dominant, they've got most of it. But, with m7b5's in shifting keys it quickly gets past where I can do it comfortably.

I've told this story on here before --- I was in a class with two pro players. One is a name you would know, the other maybe (that one is a professor of guitar). The teacher started playing Stella, but in F, not the usual Bb. Neither one got it on the first or maybe second chorus. I think the guy you'd know got it in 2 or 3 and the professor a chorus later.

Any Wedding musician of my New York youth could have done it changing key every chorus by a 4th around the cycle without giving up his bored expression for a second.

[rpjazzguitar]

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 9:25:31 PM UTC-8, patmp...@gmail.com wrote:
> I think it comes naturally when copying a lot of music from recordings, which is what you should be doing.

I agree with that. I resisted it over the years because I'm really slow at it and find it frustrating. That said, I think it's the best way to learn. I think that theory heavy approaches have supplanted it a bit -- which I don't see as that good a thing. People feel strongly about this for some reason.

For some reason, the quickest way that I tend to incorporate new things into my playing is seeing and hearing them done live, often in a lesson. That is, I hear the sound, not too fast, and see exactly how it's made. Some sounds stick in my mind more easily than others, but, a lot of the stuff I actually use, I learned that way. And, I can hear it and do it without thinking.

[Gerry]

I think these are very different things:

Hearing an line (e.g. a recording) and being able to find it
relatively on the neck.
Playing a note randomly on the guiar and then proceeding through a
known melody.
Singing a phrase and replicating it on the guitar.

There are others, many of them sit in different parts of my aural world.

[Mr. Maj6th]

I learned a trick in collage about hearing intervals: Memorize a
song's starting notes by intervals, example, Over The Rainbow and
Happy Trails' starting notes are an octave, Maria, (from West Side
Story) is a major seventh.....etc.

In West Side Story all of the songsl start with different intervals by
design.

Sing these starting notes constantly to yourself, you will soon hear
the intervals.

Maj6thI

[rpjazzguitar]

I use this trick to name intervals. Curiously, I can play intervals with ease and then struggle to name them. It helps me to imagine a fingering and sort of read it back to myself in my mind. Since I didn't learn it linguistically it seems like I can't easily apply language to it. But other people can, so maybe that's not it.

[ott...@hotmail.com]

> I've told this story on here before --- I was in a class with two pro players. One is a name you would know, the other maybe (that one is a professor of guitar). The teacher started playing Stella, but in F, not the usual Bb. Neither one got it on the first or maybe second chorus. I think the guy you'd know got it in 2 or 3 and the professor a chorus later.
>

Yeah, there are many tunes I can play in most keys, I might have to think where the Bridge goes to, but I'm reasonably OK at it, BUT Stella is one that I cannot do unless I have a moment to think it thru, another tune that I won't be faking in another key is Lush Life, in fact I won't be faking it at all :-(

Bg

[Steve Freides]

rpjazzguitar wrote:

> It seems to me that a fundamental skill is the ability to hear a
> melody and play it, starting at any fret, any finger - the first
> time, without mistakes.
>
> If you can't do that, how can you think of a melody in your head and
> expect it to come out of the speaker?

Every music school I went to had a course called Dictation - the teacher
plays, you write it down without any instrument in your hands.

> Can start with a random fret and random finger and play Happy
> Birthday without making a mistake?

Dictation is a two-part skill; the first part is hearing something and
remembering it, i.e., being able to sing it back, while the second part
is understanding and figuring out that tune in your head.

You have to have the skill of dictation, and then know your instrument,
to be able to put them together and play something you've heard on your
instrument, but for most people, it's actually easier with instrument in
your hands. you can, e.g., have a little hunt-and-peck,
slide-up-a-fret, action and, so long as you're getting most of it the
first time, it's OK. OTOH, when you're sitting at a desk in music
school, it can happen that you miss a note and then you're off for the
rest of the melody.

> And yet, I rarely see this discussed. I can't recall ever reading
> about an exercise designed to build this skill. I do recall on player
> saying he'd watch tv and try to play along with everything, which may
> be a pretty good idea.
>
> Is this something everybody can already do, so it isn't even worth
> mentioning?

It's very worth mentioning; some people play their leads with their
brain and not their ears - they know the chord changes, they know the
notes and scales that work over them, and they're not hearing in advance
of their playing. How many people that is in the big, wide world of
people who improvise isn't something I have a clue about.

Your idea of playing Happy Birthday is good. I often suggest to
students to work on songs they know at home this way; in our lessons, we
do "playback dictation" where I play something and they have to play it
back.

FWIW, this has been taught at conservatories (Juilliard, Curtis, etc.)
the same way for 100 years, and it's how I learned it at Mannes College
in NYC, a school that shared a lot of faculty with those places but had
a much lower performance level. (I later taught at Mannes.) The
approach hasn't been bettered, in my experience.

-S-

[Joe Finn]

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 8:47:08 PM UTC-5, rpjazzguitar wrote:

I was a tv play along guy as a kid. I had a Les Paul and would sit in front of the tv w/ the family night after night for years. They said the amp was too loud so this was the only option. This continued until I was off to college at age 18. I got to where I could play just about anything pretty much immediately. I don't think this had anything to do w/ jazz in particular; but in terms of ear training it was huge. My college ear training classes were a breeze in comparison. .......joe

[Joey Goldstein]

On 2015-12-09 8:47 PM, rpjazzguitar wrote:
> It seems to me that a fundamental skill is the ability to hear a melody and play it, starting at any fret, any finger - the first time, without mistakes.

An even more useful skill is to be able to play that melody with a good
fingering.
Certainly, studying every possible fingering for a given melody will
help to learn the possibilities of the guitar and will also involve a
certain amount of ear training on the guitar.
But when performing an improvisation the way you phrase/execute/finger
your melody is just as important (or more) than the notes themselves.

So this skill is something to work towards but not something that
anybody I know has actually mastered at least not in the exact way
you've detailed it.
For one thing you have to be more specific about what you mean by
"starting at any fret, any finger".
Does this mean that you also have to stay strictly in the same position
that your initial starting note puts your hand in?
Or are you allowed to shift to other positions?
E.g. If I start a Cm triad arpeggio on my 2nd finger on the G string
would your method/exercise/skill require me to stay strictly in 4th
position or could I also use my 2nd finger to play the Eb on the B
string down in 2nd position, etc., etc., etc.?

> If you can't do that, how can you think of a melody in your head and expect it to come out of the speaker?

The point is that by working on that "skill" the way you've outlined it
you will also develop the ability to intuit a *good* fingering for those
things you already hear in your head, not just any or every fingering.

> Can start with a random fret and random finger and play Happy Birthday without making a mistake?

That a good exercise.
It's mentioned in my book somewhere towards the end of the chapter on
single string playing.
My exercise puts no limitations on the fingering though.
Pick a string, pick a note, use that note as the first note of Happy
Birthday, Mary Had A Little Lamb, Twinkle Twinkle, etc.
At first the idea is to just stay on one string and to develop the
faculty to know when the next note in the melody is higher or lower than
the note you're on presently and then, of course, to find that note.
[A common snafu with this exercise can happen if you pick a starting
note the puts the range of the melody you want to play outside of the
range of that one string you want to play it on.
When this happens you have to start fishing around on another string of
course.]
With the initial version of this exercise the fingering doesn't really
matter.

> And yet, I rarely see this discussed. I can't recall ever reading about an exercise designed to build this skill.

See above.

>I do recall on player saying he'd watch tv and try to play along with
everything, which may be a pretty good idea.
>
> Is this something everybody can already do, so it isn't even worth mentioning?

Having the ability to play a melody you already hear in your head is a
prerequisite to being an improvising musician but it is NOT what
improvising IS IMO.
It's not the entirety of what "playing what you hear" IS either.
Sometimes I don't "hear" a note until that microsecond just before I
pluck the string.
Sometimes I don't "hear" it until after I've played it.
In this case, if it turns out to be a note I'm not particularly fond of
then a big part of my skill set involves having various strategies that
can help to make that note "work" in ways other than the way I
originally intended it to work.
IOW Playing that wrong note will force me to "fix" it (usually by
resolving up or down a 1/2 step).
Hell, sometimes I'll play "wrong" note on purpose just so I can react to
them and thus come up with something *I've never heard before* in the
heat of the moment.

IOW (Going out on a limb here....) *I* happen to think that there's far
too much emphasis in jazz ed circles on "hearing things in your head
before you play them", as if that's what improvisation really is.
It isn't.
It's just one of many skills that someone who is really improvising
needs to have.
W/o those other skills, "hearing things in your head before you play
them" is just stealing.
IMO



--
Joey Goldstein
<http://www.joeygoldstein.com>
<http://music.cbc.ca/#/artists/Joey-Goldstein>
<http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/JoeyGoldstein>
<https://www.facebook.com/JoeyGoldsteinMusic>

[339]

I don't think you need an exercise to build that skill. Try playing a melody from a jazz standard in time, expressively like you mean it, in different positions, maybe in a few keys, 8va etc. and maybe comp for yourself to fill in some spaces. Then do it on another tune and another and another and another. That will develop your ear and your melodic vocabulary, while also developing awareness of intervals and how melodies lay out on the fingerboard. The more you do this the more the melodic ideas will become part of you and they will come out when you improvise if you practice a lot.

[Stringswinger]

Rick, the wedding musicians of your NY youth did not "suffer" from too much jazz education. Playing what you hear, and being able to hear chords are tools that most top level jazz players have. Some are gifted enough to have those tools come easily, others of us have to work very hard to get there, and some will never get there. Life is not fair....

[rpjazzguitar]

On Tuesday, December 15, 2015 at 9:35:36 PM UTC-8, Stringswinger wrote:
> Rick, the wedding musicians of your NY youth did not "suffer" from too much jazz education. Playing what you hear, and being able to hear chords are tools that most top level jazz players have. Some are gifted enough to have those tools come easily, others of us have to work very hard to get there, and some will never get there. Life is not fair....

I think it was part of the skill set expected for musicians who were playing those sorts of gigs back then.

The leader would call a tune and hold fingers up or down. Fingers pointing up were sharps. Fingers down were flats. Fist was key of C. And, the guys who would get those calls had no trouble with that. I recall bands where an audience member would start singing in a random key and in a couple of beats there was full accompaniment.

I agree. It comes easily for some, not so easily for others, and never for some people.

I did think it was interesting that some top guys took a couple of choruses to get Stella in F. And, the teacher of that class probably started at some random note and just played the entire tune without thinking. Stella is an interesting tune to transpose because there's no easy shortcut. You might have some sort of memory device for parts of it, but, mostly, you have to hear where the chords are going. I wonder if they'd have struggled similarly to get the melody?

[Tom Pandel]

> The leader would call a tune and hold fingers up or down. Fingers pointing up were sharps. Fingers down were flats. Fist was key of C. And, the guys who would get those calls had no trouble with that.

I was in the NY wedding scene for 20 years. Keys, in the orchestras I played with, were designated fingers up for flats and down for sharps. So, for example, three fingers up was Eb. It was counter-intuitive to me so I asked early on why. I was told that most tunes were in flat keys and it was easier to point up rather down. Key of C was designated by forming a C with your thumb and pointing finger. You never knew what tune was going to be played. In fact you never knew who you were going to be playing with. You'd see many of the same leaders but the players would change. Soon I started seeing the same people with different leaders sort of mix and match. It depended on which office you worked with. There was very seldom a bass player as it was always left hand bass on the keyboard. Most of the music were standards with a smattering of rock thrown in, usually not played that well. There was no such thing as rehearsal. Playing with different keyboard players presented various harmony takes on the same standards you'd play elsewhere. Club Dates, as we called them, were a great education.

Tom

[clevelandjazz]

way more important and a better first step to learning to play jazz is to actually hear jazz lines over changes. No amount of ear training or perfect pitch can change that. I've known dozens of cats with perfect pitch that couldn't play over changes. It goes without saying that a basic skill is to be able to play what you hear but if what you hear is crap, it doesn't really matter.

Before you jump all over my sh!t, Barney Kessel told me that almost word for word.

[John Galich]

As BK himself states herein between 1:20 and 2:01:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QBVN6GMx4yE

John Galich

[Steve Freides]

"Way more important" is to work on whatever one needs to work on - for
some, that'll be coming up with better ideas; for some, it will be
improving their ear; for some, it will be having better chops on the
instrument; I'm sure I'm leaving out a few more possibilities, too. One
size doesn't fit all for becoming a better musician, and it's why good
teachers at any level teach what they see and hear in front of them and
not just what they think is "important."

I've known non-musicians with perfect pitch who couldn't sight-sing
worth a d@#$ because they didn't read music well.

-S-

[clevelandjazz]

I have to disagree. Transcribing and learning the language is the most important step. After that, you can leisurely figure out what you want to work on but if the language and sounds over chord changes are not in your head, no amount of teaching or working on ear training can help. Also, I'm not real big on "teachers" teaching jazz. Every great jazz player learned to play by transcribing their favorite players. Not by studying with a teacher. I know this will rub a lot of people the wrong way but it's true. Martino, Wes, Coltrane, Montgomery, Bird, etc.

Yes, they may have had teachers but that's not how and why they became great. They became great by transcribing and playing and practicing all the time.

[clevelandjazz]

On Friday, December 25, 2015 at 7:49:29 AM UTC-5, Steve Freides wrote:

>

> I've known non-musicians with perfect pitch who couldn't sight-sing
> worth a d@#$ because they didn't read music well.

Also, reading doesn't really have much to do with playing jazz although I agree it's a great skill to have. Still, wes, benson, martino, pass and many others either couldn't read or could barely read.

When I studied with Pat, I was surprised that he couldn't sight read much of anything. I assumed because of all his theory rants that he would be a great reader but he spent his time transcribing in the beginning and then just playing after he went on the road.

[Joey Goldstein]

On 2015-12-24 10:26 PM, clevelandjazz wrote:
> but if what you hear is crap, it doesn't really matter.

lol

[rpjazzguitar]

I started the thread to discuss a central skill that I don't often see discussed or taught, at least not directly. Which is the ability to play a line that you have in your head (or just heard).

Others have mentioned other central skills, e.g. fingering and transcribing.

Most method books do provide fingerings, but I can't recall seeing a detailed discussion of how to solve fingering problems. And yet, I spend a fair amount of practice time doing exactly that -- trying to find fingerings that allow me to play specific lines up to speed. There are a bunch of useful techniques, but I can't recall seeing them discussed systematically. Obviously, I haven't read every method book.

For transcription, I've seen general instructions and some exercises out of the Ear Training literature, but I don't recall anything like a graded method. That may sound absurd. Certainly Martino, Wes etc never needed one. But, a lot of us don't have that level of talent and could probably use some guidance. Do they exist for other instruments?

[rpjazzguitar]

I should have mentioned that formal music education does include, as someone posted, dictation. My music education was individual lessons with private teachers and books, and that was never covered.

[Joey Goldstein]

William Leavitt's books will show you how to form nearly every possible
way to finger any line within a single position.
Each particular position fingering for a given line should be examined
for the various phrasing possibilities that exist for that line (i.e.
hammer-ons, pull-offs, legato vs staccatto, etc.) within that position.

Once you understand the principles that apply to fingering within a
single position, the rest of the puzzle, i.e. when and why to shift
position, is largely up to you.
And the rest of the puzzle is really about phrasing and flow.

No method book can show you how every possible line might be fingered in
order for it to flow nicely on the guitar.
There's just too many possibilities.
But by working on written lines that also include phrasing markings and
by trying to find fingerings that allow you to execute or mimic that
phrasing will do much to solve those remaining puzzles.
I.e. Some types of phrasing will simply force you to shift position. Etc.

But a firm grasp of the possibilities (and limitations) of position
playing (ala Leavitt) is the best first step you can take.

[Gerry]

On 2015-12-26 02:11:17 +0000, Joey Goldstein said:

> But a firm grasp of the possibilities (and limitations) of position
> playing (ala Leavitt) is the best first step you can take.
> IMO

IMO2

[Steve Freides]

It's problematic, at best, to teach dictation in private lessons. I do
it a little at the end of lessons, and I do it in the friendliest way
possible, since it can be quite daunting. I do "playback dictation"
where I play something and I have the student play it back on their
instrument.

My teachers always told us that the best way to improve your dictation
skils was to sing, using the names of the notes as the words, what's
called "fixed 'do' solfege" and I agree. I've known high level teachers
in the classical world who, if a student was having difficulty with a
particular passage, would ask them to sing it in this way, and if the
student couldn't, the teacher would refuse to work with the student on
the passage on their instrument until they could sing it on the names of
the notes first.

-S-

[rpjazzguitar]

I haven't taught regularly for a very long time, but students who can play other styles and are interested in playing jazz occasionally ask for a lesson.

The first thing I do is the Happy Birthday test. Pick a random finger and fret and play Happy Birthday. If they can't do it -- and they never can -- I point out that playing jazz is about imagining a melody and being able to make it come out of the guitar. (Apparently, there are other ways to think about what jazz is, but that's mine). And, that they need to develop that skill by practicing it. Play melodies out of your head, copy the TV, do formal ear training, whatever it takes.

Now, I never really did that. I got to be able to pass the Happy Birthday test just from decades of playing. But, I suspect that it might have gone a little faster if I'd thought about it this way.

Further, it seems to me that if you start playing more mathematically before you can pass the Happy Birthday test, you may be putting the cart before the horse -- that is, playing before hearing.

I don't really think you have to choose one or the other. You can work on all of it at the same time. But, with the availability of so much written-out and theoretical material, I think it's possible to gloss over something important. Back in the day, when people learned by transcribing and on the bandstand, the ability to play something from hearing it was the central aspect of learning and is, I think, still the best.

[Steve Freides]

rpjazzguitar wrote:
> I haven't taught regularly for a very long time, but students who can
> play other styles and are interested in playing jazz occasionally ask
> for a lesson.
>
> The first thing I do is the Happy Birthday test. Pick a random finger
> and fret and play Happy Birthday. If they can't do it -- and they
> never can -- I point out that playing jazz is about imagining a
> melody and being able to make it come out of the guitar. (Apparently,
> there are other ways to think about what jazz is, but that's mine).
> And, that they need to develop that skill by practicing it. Play
> melodies out of your head, copy the TV, do formal ear training,
> whatever it takes.

-snip-

I think you're 100% right in asking for this. Just FWIW, how I teach
dictation:

It's two parts: part one is being able to retain the melody you've just
heard; part two is understanding what you heard enough to write it down
or play it back.

The beauty of the Happy Birthday test is that part one is done already -
you've got a tune in your head. Now you're on to part two - what is it
and how do I play it?

I encourage my students to do this regularly and will any simple tune
they know: Mary Had a Little Lamb; Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; Row,
Row, Row Your Boat, and now I'll be adding Happy Birthday to the list.

After they've gotten the hang of their first sone - I usually start with
Twinkle because, except for one or two leaps, it's all stepwise, I move
on. For my piano students, I have them harmonize it using block triads:
I, IV, and V. And then I have them play that - block chords in the left
hand and the melody in the right - in all 12 keys. And even though I've
very big on reading music, this is one place where I specifically tell
them not to write anything down.

-S-

[Bill Godwin]

I hear this more and more my question is:
Transcribing as in hearing it and copying on your instrument? OR hearing it and writing it down in traditional notation?

[patmp...@gmail.com]

Hearing it and playing it back. This is not that easy, so at first you have to write it down as a crutch, getting a few notes at a time. If you can do it all in your head, great.

Eventually I got a little jazzman in my brain. If the tune is familiar I just pick up the bass and let him do his stuff. I don't know what is going to come out. If I interfere, there is trouble. I just stay out of the way. But it took a loooong time to get there.

They say that the way there is to memorize lots of great solos. And try to get every inflection and tone too. I didn't do that, but my progress was very slow.

The Big Hint: If you can't play it perfectly, slow down, even if you have to go at glacier speed. Once you get it perfect, you can speed up gradually. That's relatively easy.

[clevelandjazz]

Writing it down is unimportant in learning jazz IMO. What's more important is being able to play it, analyze it and understand how to use it over the original changes and be able to modify it to fit over other changes.

[jimmybruno]

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 8:47:08 PM UTC-5, rpjazzguitar wrote:
> It seems to me that a fundamental skill is the ability to hear a melody and play it, starting at any fret, any finger - the first time, without mistakes.
>
> If you can't do that, how can you think of a melody in your head and expect it to come out of the speaker?
>
> Can start with a random fret and random finger and play Happy Birthday without making a mistake?
>
> And yet, I rarely see this discussed. I can't recall ever reading about an exercise designed to build this skill. I do recall on player saying he'd watch tv and try to play along with everything, which may be a pretty good idea.
>
> Is this something everybody can already do, so it isn't even worth mentioning?

Interesting topic. I, unfortunately I have nothing to add. Almost all of the above is a necessary skill. I believe to be a musician, you have to have an ear and be able to hear the chord changes to any tune and the melodies

[jimmybruno]

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 8:47:08 PM UTC-5, rpjazzguitar wrote:
> It seems to me that a fundamental skill is the ability to hear a melody and play it, starting at any fret, any finger - the first time, without mistakes.
>
> If you can't do that, how can you think of a melody in your head and expect it to come out of the speaker?
>
> Can start with a random fret and random finger and play Happy Birthday without making a mistake?
>
> And yet, I rarely see this discussed. I can't recall ever reading about an exercise designed to build this skill. I do recall on player saying he'd watch tv and try to play along with everything, which may be a pretty good idea.
>
> Is this something everybody can already do, so it isn't even worth mentioning?

Most musicians can do this on their instrument. I would start with simple tunes or TV show themes. It may seem impossible at fist but it gets easier everyday.

If you can't hear then you shouldn't be a musician.

[Tim McNamara]

Becoming able to play melodies is relatively easy; becoming able to hear
and play the chords is more challenging (with jazz, anyway; pop and rock
are often pretty easy).

[jimmybruno]

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 8:47:08 PM UTC-5, rpjazzguitar wrote:
> It seems to me that a fundamental skill is the ability to hear a melody and play it, starting at any fret, any finger - the first time, without mistakes.
>
> If you can't do that, how can you think of a melody in your head and expect it to come out of the speaker?
>
> Can start with a random fret and random finger and play Happy Birthday without making a mistake?
>
> And yet, I rarely see this discussed. I can't recall ever reading about an exercise designed to build this skill. I do recall on player saying he'd watch tv and try to play along with everything, which may be a pretty good idea.
>
> Is this something everybody can already do, so it isn't even worth mentioning?

If you got hear the melody you are half way there. Each in the melody has a certain color against any given chord. Start with the long notes of the melody

[jimmybruno]

On Wednesday, December 9, 2015 at 8:47:08 PM UTC-5, rpjazzguitar wrote:
> It seems to me that a fundamental skill is the ability to hear a melody and play it, starting at any fret, any finger - the first time, without mistakes.
>
> If you can't do that, how can you think of a melody in your head and expect it to come out of the speaker?
>
> Can start with a random fret and random finger and play Happy Birthday without making a mistake?
>
> And yet, I rarely see this discussed. I can't recall ever reading about an exercise designed to build this skill. I do recall on player saying he'd watch tv and try to play along with everything, which may be a pretty good idea.
>
> Is this something everybody can already do, so it isn't even worth mentioning?

Still can't type. What I meant was ... If you can hear the melody you are halfway there. To hear the chords, learn what each note sounds like against a given chord. Start with the long notes. The 7th of a chord has a different color than the 3rd.

[rpjazzguitar]

> Becoming able to play melodies is relatively easy; becoming able to hear
> and play the chords is more challenging (with jazz, anyway; pop and rock
> are often pretty easy)

It's the chords that I find challenging -- even though I can do it with melodies. Learning do it with chords has been way slower. After decades, I can hear straightforward progressions (think, for example, "All of Me"), but, I have more trouble if somebody calls Stella in an odd key. My thought was that, if I had it to do over, I'd spend a couple of years in formal ear training classes.

[patmp...@gmail.com]

If you don't mind my asking, why would that be better than figuring out lots and tunes?

[Steve Freides]

clevelandjazz wrote:

> Writing it down is unimportant in learning jazz IMO. -snip-


I confess this troubles me a little; it's like saying it's fine to move
to a new country and learn to speak the language but not learn to read
and write it. Sure, I guess that's OK, but in at least some sense, it
makes you illiterate, too.

I don't mean to start a flame war, and I have taken your remark a little
out of context, but I have to chime in and say it's good to be able to
do both, and there's no reason not to. Being able to hear something and
understand it without having your instrument in your hands, and
demonstrate that understanding by writing it down, is a valuable,
general musical skill, and it will certainly help some people who play
jazz guitar is it addresses their weakness in this area.

-S-

[rpjazzguitar]

Over the years I have figured out a lot of tunes. Certainly, I could have done more.

I have done some work with Ear Master and found it helpful.

As far as why formal training would be better, I guess it's the same thing as any field of study. You can get all the information you need from the library, but it still helps some people to have a teacher.

[decap...@yahoo.com]

Yes, I teach a select type of student who is usually already advanced, yet does not have the years of blood, sweat, and tears of relentless playing experience. And they often have good ears, yet don't improvise very well. They might not only make distasteful note choices( chord voicings too), but their sense of phrasing, form, rhythm and bare knuckles intuition is cockeyed.

Stan Getz didn't know the names of the chords he was blowing over. Wes didn't either. What does that tell you?

It tells me that there is something entirely separate at play, literally. And yet, this does not connote forsaking studying legit ear training, which highly recommend. Good command of solfege is an invaluable tool that unlettered players may only realize when their instruments are not readily available.

Yet again, for the aspiring jazz guitarist all of that won't amount to a hill of beans without full command of the instrument, which I believe is best taught via an apprenticeship, if possible. If not, then keen compensation skills come into play. That can work for many players also in suiting their personal needs.

And you are right when you say that all the greats learned by lifting off the vinyl and even the radio and movies. Jazz is a personal beast and it is nothing short of multifaceted.

All the advice from everyone here is good . The problem is that it's best to learn it from very early on as kids. At the later stages, playing and hearing "simply " become simultaneous . And it's a beautiful experience. It mimics or parallels human speech and/ or writing. We command what ends up being second nature.

Perhaps , as the initial thread bearer mentions that this type of discussion is rare , what is even more rare is transcending the beginner lesson atmosphere certainly after milked far beyond the coda.

Where do we go after all the beginner tips are exhausted? And inversely, where do we go before the beginner tips are spewed forth?

[Joey Goldstein]

As far as hearing melody is concerned I see that skill as being more or
less ubiquitous in human communities.
Almost everybody can sing Happy Birthday or several other "nursery
rhymes" we, in the West for example, are exposed to as children w/o any
musical training.
Ditto for the melodies of popular songs we hear on the radio or elsewhere.
Although when I was very young I did have some training with the Orff
Method and my father was a good singer who taught me a few chords on his
baritone uke, most of my own ability to hear melody simply comes from
singing popular tunes as a kid.
The most basic skill involved here is the recognition that one note is
higher (or lower) than another note.
Then you learn to discern how much higher or lower.


And if you can sing a melody and hold each note clearly in your mind you
can always figure out how to play those notes on a guitar (as long as
someone you know knows how to tune up the guitar for you) or another
instrument.
At that point it's simply a matter of trial and error.
Sing the first note of the melody and then find that note along one of
the guitar's 6 strings.
The next note in the melody will probably be available on that same string.
Sing that note and look for it *1 fret at a time* along that same string
until you find it.
Don't leap around the string hoping you'll find the note intuitively.
Do it *1 fret at a time* eliminating all the wrong notes as you proceed.
If you find that this note exceeds the range of that string then you'll
have to start looking for it on the next highest or lowest string.
Proceed like this until you know what all of the notes of your melody are.
At this point don't even worry if you have a decent usable fingering for
your melody.
Your ability to finger things effectively will improve with more skill
on the instrument and with more familiarity with the phrasing elements
of your melody.

So the ability to hear a melody is something quite different than the
ability to play that melody on an instrument.
For people for whom the former is impossible to learn to do, the latter
will always be beyond them as well.
If and when I encounter a student who simply can't sing an easy melody I
never know what to tell them.
There are remedial ear training courses out there but I don't know how
effective they would be with an adult student.
These skills do seem to be tied up with exposure to music and music
making as a child.

If you treat the heads of your jazz tunes, even complex bebop heads, the
same way (i.e. as melodies that you can sing) then eventually those
sounds will be available to you as an improviser as sounds that you can
hear.
As a matter of fact, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I
think you can learn almost as much "vocabulary" by working on
pre-composed classic bebop heads as you can from lifting solos.
But only if you pay attention and learn to hear those heads.
Each bebop head is a dense little study in melody and ornamentation.
These melodies have a lot more jazz "vocabulary" built right into them
than an American Songbook standard.
The same approach and attitude should be taken when working on a
transcription of somebody's jazz solo that you're interested in.
I.e. Don't just learn to read/play it.
Learn to sing it too.
Analyze the melodic/rhythmic devices that are being employed and learn
to create your own lines using those same or similar devices.
Etc., etc.
I also firmly believe that it's by singing what you practice that you
learn to hear what it is you are practicing.
And even if you don't sing out loud you should always be playing *as if*
you're singing if you want to be honest about playing what you hear.

I don't think anybody learns to hear chord voicings via such an
intuitive process though.
The ability to hear chords really seems like it's more based on
accumulated musical experience playing an instrument than it is on
simple environmental exposure to music.
But the outlines of chordal hearing and melodic hearing are really based
on the same skill set.
It's only experience and repeated trial an error that will get you to
the point of being able to hear, in very broad strokes, the difference
between major, minor, augmented and diminished triads.
In order to learn to hear and recognize these triads a musician will
have to spend lots of time playing them, sometimes arpeggiated, and
comparing them until they get a general sense of the texture of each sound.
Ditto for the basic 7th chord types.

As far as lifting exact chord voicings is concerned, you can go really
far by just figuring out the top and bottom notes of each voicing first.
The outer notes are always the most exposed and the easiest to hear and
should be thought of as melodies in their own right.
The top note of a voicing will always be heard as some sort of a melody
or counter-melody.
And if the chordal player is sophisticated enough, his top notes should
be just as singable as any other melody.
Bass lines are mostly comprised of progressions of chordal roots with
occasional inversions and/or passing tones.
If you learn to sing the bass-lines of the tunes you're working on, just
like you can sing the melody, it will help your ability to memorize the
chords and your ability to hear other bass-lines for other tunes that
are similar yet deviate somewhat form the bass-lines you are already
familiar with.
Since most music based on the maj/min key system uses familiar chains of
root progressions in piece after piece there really isn't as much skill
involved in developing the ability to hear bass lines as you might imagine.
Learn the main progressions first:
I IV V (Im IVm V)
I VIm IIm V
IIIm VIm IIm V
I IV IIIm VIm IIm V
Etc., etc.
The more prior kill you already have in constructing decent bass lines
will help greatly in hearing other people's bass lines on recordings.
To me, ear training is really just musical experience.

Once you know the top and bottom notes of a chord voicing, figuring out
the rest of the voicing can either be an intuitive "ah ha" process where
you just recognize a chord quality that you're already familiar with or
a process involving more thought and logic based on your knowledge of
the probable voicings that are commonly used.
The latter implies that some sort of a harmony course has already been
completed by the student and that he/she has familiarized themselves
with the basic ways that musicians use to voice chords.

So, if the top note of a chord is Eb and the bottom note is C there's a
good chance that the chord will sound like some sort of a root position
voicing of Cm.
If you already recognize the chord quality as being minor then you're
almost done.
You can confirm that it is a Cm chord by playing a Cm chord on your
guitar and comparing its sound to the sound of the chord on the recording.
If it is Cm then any other notes in the voicing are likely to be Gs or
Bbs (possibly Bs or As) and maybe a D or an F thrown in for colour.
As your experience grows you'll be able make those distinctions with
greater and greater accuracy and speed.
If you play your Cm chord on the guitar and it sounds too dissimilar to
the chord on the recording, then you might have to do a bit more thinking.
And that thinking will be based on your knowledge of the typical
harmonic possibilities of chords that have Eb on top and C on the bottom.
E.g. If it's not a Cm chord it has to be some other chord on which those
same two notes happen to fit.
If it's not a Cm chord, then C isn't the root.
If C isn't the root then it must be the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th 11th or 13th
of some other chord.
Usually it will be the 3rd, 5th or 7th.
To test whether it's the 3rd try playing an Ab chord or an Am chord and
compare it to the recording.
Etc., etc.

At least that's the way it works for me.

[Tim McNamara]

On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 21:37:22 -0800 (PST), decap...@yahoo.com
<decap...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> All the advice from everyone here is good . The problem is that it's
> best to learn it from very early on as kids. At the later stages,
> playing and hearing "simply " become simultaneous . And it's a
> beautiful experience. It mimics or parallels human speech and/ or
> writing. We command what ends up being second nature.

Learning seems to be most efficient when we are kids and- when we are
kids, possibly most efficient when it is play rather than the tedious
drudgery method embraced by formal education. The goal of that seems to
be to regulate joy out of learning with the mistaken notion that you are
only really learning if it is a miserable experience. Ach, I am being a
crabby and cynical old fart reflecting on the horrid experiences of
grade school and junior high school. But there is truth there- school
designed like a production line is damned to be miserable for many if
not most. Half of the ADHD, etc., that kids are diagnosed with is their
honest reaction to spending 8 hours a day in a craptastic experience.

Less cynically, I am reminded of Joe Pass and Pat Martino describing
their experiences of learning as children. For Joe it was driven by his
taskmaster father who wanted something other than for his children to be
steelworkers. For Pat it was being enticed by joy. And yet both
becamse superb, even exemplary, jazz musicians. They started when young
and they developed their ears and their ability to grab jazz vocabulary
from hearing it, transferring it into their apperceptive mass and being
able to assimilate it.

I have been reading Lin Flanagan's biography of Johnny Smith. There are
two situations described in the book that stick out. One is of Johnny
listening to a Barney Kessel record once and then being able to play the
solo along with the record perfectly. The other happened after his left
hand was injured (he lost about 1/4" off the tip of his ring finger and
had to have a graft done) and was bandaged up after surgery. One of his
students played a solo arrangement of "Moonlight in Vermont." A week
later Johnny was able to reach over and finger the same arrangement on
the student's guitar using his *right* hand on the neck!

Playing thousands of hours at a professional level not only assimilates
the knowledge but I think it rewires the sensorimotor cortex of the
brain. It's probably true for musicians, basketball players, golfers,
race car drivers- maybe doctors, accountants and people working the
floor of the stock market, too. Maybe all professions.