Reflective Blog Number 2

I have learned something about improvising.  About playing jazz in general.  Diving into the deep end and trying to implement transcribed solos into songs, without a proper grasp of the jazz style, is pointless.  Or not pointless; it's just more counter-productive than it is productive.

Until recently, I've been trying to transcribe snippets from artists such as Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson and Chick Corea.  While the listening did me good, and the transcribing certainly helped me get a feel of rhythm and phrasing, it was doing nothing to my playing.

I started studying jazz properly this year, with my teacher, Steve.  I had all these ideas and thoughts about improvising at first, but he wouldn't let me delve into it.  He constantly told me just to start my solos based on the chords I was playing; something I thought to be too simple.  So I ignored it.

It's only now, after studying and playing my pieces for my assessments next week and the various group tunes we've been doing over the months, that I've taken a step back and heeded his advice.

Rome wasn't built in a day.  And jazz cannot be learned in a matter of months.  It takes years to develop to the point where you can find yourself to be an amateur; it will take decades to master.  It took jazz pianist Mark Levine four years of playing and practice until he was able to play midly-effectively.  It took some of his advanced students 5 years, and others 10.   When Miles Davis used to play with session musicians he didn't know, musicians who had been playing jazz for fifteen years, he would say to them; 'That's cool.  You're not quite there, but it's cool.'

 Jazz isn't something you can just sit down and "play".  Improvising isn't something you just 'learn'.  It's more of a state of mind (apologies for the hippy talk) than anything else.

So when I've come to play my assessment pieces, rather than go over my head and try to play Bill Evans motifs, I've started to solo around the chords, and the notes in the chords early.  My knowledge of theory is progressing more than anything else, so I've started adding ninths, elevenths and thirteenths in where appropriate, but really, I'm focusing on playing with chords.  Little things like avoiding starting on root notes and avoiding playing straight arpeggios are things I've picked up with both help from Steve and Simon, our improv lecturer.  In class at the start of this semester, my solos consisted of me hammering away constant quavers of any note in the current mode I was playing in.  It didn't sound like jazz at all.  Just free form improvised drivel.  By sitting back and playing much simpler melodies around the chords, I've started making my pieces sound more jazzy than I ever thought I would at this point.

I'm still very much getting to grips with it.  I've started to touch upon altered chords and tritone substitutions, but I won't be fluent enough at playing around with them until summer/after summer. That's fine by me.  Steve has started teaching me things like replacing an F7 chord with a B7 in the left hand with a  C sharp triad in the right (I forget the name.  Maybe I just mentioned it).  By jumping from the notes in C-7 to the notes in that altered chord while soloing, heads turn.  People hear it and think 'wow, this guy knows his stuff'.  But I don't.  It just sounds like I do because I took time to think and play around chords.

So I will continue to transcribe solos, play things in different keys and read the many books I've acquired/bought from libraries and shops.  But I won't dive in and try to play like Bill Evans does any time soon.  If I did that, I'd go backwards rather than forwards.  I'll keep my playing based on my theory knowledge.  Now, I'm playing around with chords, passing notes and the occasional scale.  And Steve has told me that the solos I'm playing from doing that sound perfectly fine for my level.  When my knowledge and grasp of the jazz genre as a whole grows, THEN I will start adding more complicated things in.

Because really, when you start to learn piano, you don't start learning a Gb scale once you've just got to grips with a basic C scale, do you?  When you're not even used to playing one black note?  No.

Jazz is something I really want to be good at, and something I will strive to learn in a more focused manner once other things are done (like the four pieces I'm doing for next weeks assignment - if I have to practice them any more after next week I will tear my own ears off).

Autumn Leaves and Some Day my Prince will come.  Those are the tunes I'm doing that require a spot of improvisation.  In the pieces,  I switch genres; I go from playing 'classical, flowery jazz' to a fast paced waltz half way through My Prince.  In Autumn Leaves, I go from playing block chords to stride to funk; and I improvise over all of those genres, playing around the melody and chords.  When I come back to those tunes next year, in five years, whenever, I will no doubt be soloing more freely and openly.  But for now, I'm keeping things simple; because that seems to be working.   I only hope that in my end of year solo assessment for improvising, the simplicity in my playing proves to be as effective as I'm feeling it to be.

Also...

http://pianoaddict.com/

http://www.irealb.com/

Anyone with an interest in playing jazz/modern music (on piano especially) needs to use the above two links.  Pianoaddict has some of the most in depth playing and practicing tips I've ever read, while iReal B is a gift from God himself.  They can't play melodies on it due to copyright laws (man's greatest enemy) but they can give you the chord charts for over 1200 jazz standards.

And for each of those jazz standards, it gives you a band to accompany you with (drums, guitar, piano, bass), the levels of which you can adjust to suit you, as well as the ability to change the tempo, key, style (jazz, salsa, funk, etc...) time signature, etc.

The chords are also available (ie. it tells you what notes are in the chords) if you buy it for like a pound.

The app itself (I should have mentioned it's for the iPhone/Mac/Android) is around £5, but the songs are all free.  It's worth every penny.  Throw a loop on it, set your tempo and you can practice your solos for any given song to a band in the comfort of your own room, all night long.

Tunes I am transcribing;

I am too poor for Logic.  Far, far too poor for Logic.  For the moment, anyways.

So I've been doing my transcribing using programmes I can get;

Audacity - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Garageband - http://www.apple.com/ilife/garageband/

Aaaaaand...that's it.  Because they're free.

I select the song, drag it into Audacity, change the tempo, sit at my piano, and play what I hear into Garageband.  I go over what I hear a few times.  Then I start to transpose what I've done in every key.  Meaning, hopefully, when I come to put things into songs, I'll be able to play it in anything.

So far, I've not done much.  But I have picked four songs I'd like to dissect; three ideas from each song, which will lead to 12 ideas, in 12 keys will mean 144 possible things I'll be able to play while soloing.  Hopefully.

The songs I have picked (for several reasons) are;

Autumn Leaves (an exam piece; studying this is mandatory)
Some Day my Prince Will Come (as above)
The Girl from Ipanema (this version; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqE7RuIbfjE
[The solo in that one isn't fantastic but there are ideas there that I'd like to use.]

Song for my Father (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLdm1yuoU_Q) [as above.  I will use the melody in solos too.]

How Deep is the Ocean? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJLe3o8IrNA) [not the version I linked; the version I want to use is from Evans' album 'Jazzhouse'.  Some of the piano runs in it give me shivers.  I've worked on this song in the past.]

 However, I must say, I feel that I am cheating, as I'm not actually writing anything down; just playing what I hear into a computer then triple checking it's correct.  Is this cheating, Simon?  Does it count?

Regardless, it's a lot better than doing nothing.

Please remember to subscribe to this blog too (http://jhopemusicalprogression.blogspot.com/) for general musical goings on.

Ta.

More Modal Tunes.

Due to strikes/staff days/aliens, today was the first improv lesson we'd had in 3 weeks.  Or 2.  However many weeks were between this post and the date stated on the last post.

It appears my group doesn't have a bassist at all, so I'm playing rhythm 100% of the time now.  Which is good, actually, as it provides me with much needed practice in playing rhythm parts.  We stuck to So What/Impressions today (both are in the same key and use the same chords) so today I was mainly playing a rhythm part with Jason, our drummer.

At first, as always, my timing was awful, but once I relaxed and started thinking about how many bars I'd played, I managed to get the key changes (from D Dorian to Eb Dorian) right 99% of the time.

I didn't do too much in terms of improvisation today, as we played a funked up version of Impressions.  Which was a tad annoying, as I'd been practicing the original versions of both So What and Impressions, and had been listening to them a lot over the past week, listening to what both Davis and Evans play during their improvisation sections (much more so Davis, though) in So What.  I'd prepared myself for playing those tunes, with firm idea in my head of what I could be playing (I'd learnt the basslines for both songs too incase our bassist was missing again) yet when it came to today, I was playing a completely different and more 'complicated' bassline than I expected, due to it being 'funked up'. I say 'more complicated'.  I don't mean that.  It was simpler, if anything.  The rhythm just wasn't as driving, and I found myself jumping around the lower register of the keyboard a lot.  Meaning when it came to my turn to solo, I was too busy trying to concentrate on keeping this new bassline going to a funk groove, meaning any solo/licks/passages I'd memorised for my improvising went straight out the window; the rhythms I wanted to play in my right hand were too different to what I was playing in the left hand.  Which, fair enough, with a little bit time to practice, I would have been fine doing, but on the spot, it led to my 'improvising' being a mess.

When it was in D, all I was thinking was 'right, play that bassline like that, simplify it, play it in one octave rather than 3.  Good, now play this lick here with your right hand when your left hand pauses and you know what, fuck it.'.  I was lucky most of it was in D, as my strategy turned to 'play the bassline as in time as you can and just hit any white note you can reach.'

When it came to Eb, I just thought '...hit any black note you want, don't touch any white note bar C and F and oh look you hit B, that's fine, play it as a passing note but oh no, you just hit E too.  It's fine, don't panic, just transfer your attention to your bassline now; try and make that sound decent at least an--oh look your left hand is playing Gb Diminished -9 +13 or something.  Just smile, avoid eye contact and pray that someone else starts soloing or that Simon says 'stop' and relieves you and everyone listening to you of this torture.'

When I can see into the future and start practicing the right thing for the next improvisation class I'll be able to start walking out satisfied with what I've played.  Because right now, after every class I'm walking out thinking 'I thought my improvisation was improving.  What the hell was that?!"  

But seeing into the future isn't what improvisation is about.  It's about adapting to the current situation.  Maybe that's what the college is trying to teach me.  I just need to relax, think, and adapt.  Without a score in front of me.

How I hate being classically trained.

Wednesday 23rd November Class

Today was the first day in which we played in our assigned groups for this improvisation block, Knife and Fork.  I can't remember which one I'm in, but I knew which room I was supposed to be in, so I just went with it and walked in, and asked Simon if this was my group.

It was.

We worked on one song today; So What, by Miles Davis from his album "Kind of Blue" (I'm getting a tad sick of the amount of times I mention that album in my posts).  We were given two songs to learn last week (the other being Impressions, By John Coltrane).

The group was without a bassist today, so instead of doing any improvising or melody playing at all, I was tasked with providing a walking bass on my left hand.  Which, shockingly enough, I hadn't really done before.  So that was a bit new.  I made it too simple; I just went up the D Dorian Scale, added a Db in before I hit the octave D and played alternative notes on the way down.  Or something.  A dead bear could have played what I played today, meaning I need to look up playing effective walking bass lines sooner rather than later, because it will no doubt come up in something else at some point in the near future.

The focus today was playing the AABA structure, which consisted of 4 rounds of D Dorian, 2 rounds of Eb Dorian, then 2 rounds of D Dorian, wash, rinse, repeat.  Once we got that structure in our heads (which admittedly, took longer than it should have...) it was just a case of us, the rhythm section, comprised of Jason on drums, Mario comping on his classical guitar, and myself playing the bassline on my left hand, playing as a backing for our two violinists, Aimee and Lauren, and our singer, Fiona.  They seemed to improvise rather well, Fiona especially, seeing as she managed to sing through the key change rather seamlessly, unphased.  This may have been a fluke.  She said it was, at least.

For our next class, I intend to learn the two songs inside out and have a go at both improvising and waking along with a bass line (because bassists are unreliable).  I'll also read up on what Simon told me to read, which is a chapter in The Jazz Piano book which uses so what as an example of modal improvisation.

Seems every week, I'm learning something new.  Even if that thing is me learning that there's something I can't do and need to work on.  Which it is most of the time.

Three Pieces

Here are three of the pieces I have been working on in some way, shape or form towards improving my improvising;

Thelonias Monk - Straight No Chaser.

Many people in the class will be doing this, I'd imagine, as it's one we actually did in class.  With this one we simply were told to listen to it and compose a solo for it.  One would say "but composing isn't improvising!".  Composing a solo that works well over a jazz chord sequence in a specific song, then having said solo analysed by an experienced jazz player who then gives feedback is helpful as it we then know what sounds "right" and "wrong", and will use this knowledge when it comes to improvising in future.

Another piece I've been working on is Freddie Freeloader, from Miles Davis's critically acclaimed "Kind of Blue";

I've simply been learning the song so that once I start improvising fully, I'll have things to play into.

As I mentioned in my last post, I've given transcribing a brief go.  One of the songs I did was 'How Deep Is The Ocean?' by Bill Evans.
There are many versions of this song, and I couldn't find the one I used with the exact lick I transposed.  You can get an idea from this live version I found, however.  I spent ages going over 3 seconds of music, rewinding, playing, rewinding, playing (this was on my phone; my computer doesn't work at the moment) and scribbling down the notes on paper.  Eventually, I got what I thought was it and transposed it into all 12 keys.  I will start uploading any work I do soon.

An update; what I've done, and what I plan to do.

Our first assignment for improvisation class is simply to write document our current strengths/weaknesses when it comes to improvising, remind Simon, our lecturer of what we've already done, and explain what we're going to do between now and the next performance block in eight weeks time (not including holidays).

Before the course started, I thought my weakness was simply this;

 "I can't improvise.  I can hear what I want to play in my head, but I can't play it on my instrument."

This was simply because I hadn't practiced enough to be able to think about what each note on the keyboard sounded like - I couldn't go from one note to the other in half a second and be confident that it was the note I wanted to play.

Now, however, after having listened to more jazz than I previously had, having researched, transcribed and transposed music etc, I've been able to detail my weaknesses and strengths.  I will start with my strengths:

-I know what I want to play - the melodies used in improvising aren't completely unknown to me.  This has always been the case.
- Having listened to more music with improvising in it, I've started to get a feel for it; don't constantly play.  Leave space.  Repeat the rhythm of melody lines but use different notes.  Less is more.
-Due to practicing and transposing, I am starting to find it easier to play things in different keys;  tunes, modes, chords, etc.
-I know what kind of rhythms I want to play.
-I'm starting to get to the point where I can go from putting the notes in my head onto the keyboard.

My weaknesses, however:

-I need to sit down and listen to a piece over and over and over, and then be given a few minutes to work out what I'm going to play; I still can't improvise on the spot.
-When it comes to more technical improvising, using modes, etc, I know the modes and notes in them I'm to play with, I just don't know how to use them.   My head is the toolbox and my fingers are the joiner.  The toolbox has all of the right tools, but in this case, the joiner doesn't know what to do with them.
-I can't transcribe rhythm to save myself.
-If someone were to ask me to play a solo on the spot (which they have done) I can't.  Or I can, but it doesn't work.  At all.

That's not to say I am completely useless and will be for the rest of time, though.  Since I first started working on the course, I've started to feel myself improving.  

I've been transcribing pieces; Bill Evans and John Coltrane, mostly.  I've made a start on Miles Davis and some of the Esbjorn Svennson Trio's work, but not as much as I should be.  What I have is terrible, and needs work; over the next week or two, I will begin uploading and blogging more frequently, showing all of the work I do, no matter how good, bad or humiliating it may be.

Details of my past futile attempts at transposing can be found in this post; http://jhopehndimprov.blogspot.com/2011/10/week-34.html

Once I transcribe a piece, I transpose it.  Which is something else I've started doing; transcribing.  It is, as Mark Levine says, one of the most important things any aspiring jazz musician can do.  It helps your transcribing due to the fact that you're constantly looking at notes and going over key signatures; it helps your playing; playing Autumn Leaves, for example, in G minor is easy enough.  Transpose that to Gb minor, however, and it becomes a different thing altogether.  Or it was.  For I'm starting to try and transpose everything I play into the first key that pops into my head, and due to the work we've been doing in classes (Theory, improv, etc) as well as research I've been doing myself, I'm starting to find that transposing songs into another key is something I may well be good at, if I put more work into it.

Until now, I've made a start on transcribing, transposing, reading up on Jazz Piano books, practicing licks and playing along with songs; made a start.  I will admit, I am in no way doing half as much work as I could be doing.

I'm getting a flat in the next 2-3 weeks, cutting travelling time by about 10 hours in a five day week.  It will mean I'll be able to practice at home. I won't have to rely on college practice booths being available for me to practice properly, on a piano that works well enough.  I'll have time to reformat my computer, so that I can install/download musical applications and programmes.

With this in mind, my goal between now and the next improv block is simple; practice more.  Transpose more.  Transcribe more.  Study more.

Instead of practicing for two hours at college, I will practice for two hours at college and two hours at night.  I aim to learn all of the 'basic' jazz chords (basic as in not added 9ths and 13ths) so that I can play any of them, in any key, without thinking about it.  This goes for all of the modes, as well.

I also aim to transcribe two phrases from at least three different songs a week, in every key, until then.  Instead of one every two weeks.  And I don't mean on a computer; I mean on manuscript paper, with a pencil and eraser.

I aim to practice any tune I try to play in at least two keys other than the original (to start with).

I aim to finish reading Mark Levine's jazz piano book, even if I'm not at the stage where I'm playing half of the things he mentions; I'll read it all, and then refer back to it when I start to get further in depth with playing jazz.

I also aim to download an Apple app which I will post about here once I get it working; in short, it allows me to play along to any genre in any key in whatever tempo I set it at.

I plan to actually work and do more than I'm asked, rather than just do what I'm told to do and leave it at that.

This all comes into effect once I start living in Edinburgh, which, as I say, will be in the next two weeks. Once I start living here, I'll have more than enough time on my hands to do all of the above.

Hopefully.