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Chris, that sounded like fun and lot of hard work. It is reassuring to know that even experts like you can still benefit from a jazz camp.

Given that you had a percussion guy, did you do a lot of stuff in unusual time signatures?

Perhaps you can share some tips for us.

Elssa, standard blues is in the 12 bar format. 4 (Call)-4(Call) -4(response). The form is very fixed but in jazz many chord substitutions are done to the middle measures but the main chords stay the same.

This is the base pattern of 12 bar blues.

|I7|I7|I7|I7|
|IV7|IV7|I7|I7|
|V7|IV7|I7|I7|

Like I said earlier, Blues does well with repetitions. As far as phrasing, I'd start off with C-Jam blues. That's a simple phrasing but very swinging. Just substitute a few different notes in there. Do you understand what I mean here? C-Jam has a very distinct phrasing. Even if the tune is a different blues tune, you can steal from the phrasing of C-Jam and just change the notes.

Just play the root in your left hand and forget all the fancy stuff.

My main point here is that it's not too much what notes you pick at first but how you phrase it that makes it sound good early on. It doesn't matter what notes you pick. It could be Mary-Had-A-Little-Lamb but phrased with proper swing, it'll sound cool.

Thanks for sharing that Knotty! I liked your rendition of Shadow of Your Smile Nice voicings.

Thanks again, Jazzwee:

"It could be Mary-Had-A-Little-Lamb but phrased with proper swing, it'll sound cool."

I see what you mean now...Yeah, I guess even a simple nursery rhyme can swing, with the right phrasing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUYpUogn91U

I'm going to work on that C-Jam Blues/phrasing.

Hey Elssa, actually, there is a jazz version of Mary-Had-A-Little-Lamb by some woman Jazzer. I saw it on TV. And it was in some unusual time, as I recall (not 4/4).

And on another website, there's Twinkle-Twinkle rendition, jazzified

Notes don't have to be complicated. If C-Jam can be made famous with just repeating two notes then it can't be that bad. How about 'One Note Samba'? (but it's not swing...)

This is why the very first lessons of jazz are about swing and phrasing (and why Blues is taught early on). In fact, that's why this thread has a pretty big focus on swing.

Personally, I wouldn't be embarrased at all of making a solo with just a few notes, as long as it had an interesting phrasing. Of course Ella is a master of phrasing so you got the point. In the beginning stages, I had to be master this in it's simplest form.

I posted somewhere that Bill Evans had a comment on this. He calls playing something complex, but without the background and knowledge to really play it as "approximation" and how this will just cause the player to fail.

Then he played something simple (a few repeated notes with nice phrasing and) and it sounded good. He says one should play simply first.

My teacher told me a long time ago to desist from comping with complicated left hand stuff first. The RH has to be mastered completely before playing them together.

From experience though, it didn't take long for my LH to get back in the mix. But my brain had to be trained to isolate the thought processes for melody making and the less distractions, the better.

Well, one interesting part was that he didn't want to do anything "fancy" with us. He thought that's what we do anyway, and would like us to focus on the simple fact (not) of getting the music to swing. We did however, work on Take Five, a piece that I've always loathed thanks to all those meaningless jams, and actually came to like it again. Teach' wanted us to play it slow, and I mean slow, so as to get in touch with the wave movement of the pulse.

Tips? hmmm not sure there, I/we worked such basic rudiments as listen to one another, and practice/rehearse everything slow, but still with a swing - that in particular was an eye (ear) opener for me. Hmm the tip that comes to mind is don't focus on notes but on rhythm.
Our teacher demonstrated everything on all the different instruments; he can't play piano, but he played a solo using three notes, but a lot of different rhythmic displacements putting my knowledge of all those scales and chords to shame!
Yep, Rhythm it is. That and combined with dynamics and phrasing is the secret.
But oh oh oh it's so difficult!!

That's a great explanation Chris. I hope that people also notice that we spend a good amount of time teaching the swing and phrasing in this thread.

At some point this last year, my ears finally picked up on the phrasing in a positive way. Meaning it took a higher focus. It came from my teacher having me insert changes in my phrasing. The change in the phrasing changed the mechanics of everything, because for me at least, it stopped sounding like me (and what I felt was mechanical playing) to sounding like someone else that I enjoyed listening to.

Of course the problem is that I can't always sustain this at a high level. But I working on getting good phrasing with just simple notes and making sure that's a reliable platform.

I think that when my phrasing improved (and lot of this has to do with rhythmic development too and how well one can subdivide), it changed the note selection automatically. When I'm listening to what I'm playing and it sounds good phrasing wise, the note selections improve too. Funny thing, and I can't really explain why.

I was telling Elssa earlier about C-Jam and it's phrasing. Well that's one example. There's a large vocabulary of phrasing that one has to develop I think, and in a lot of ways it may be more important than the actual notes.

Some improvisation is based on simple arpeggiations, but the rhythmic rearrangement of such a simple thing creates a new product.

I think it is quite true that
RHYTHM IS MORE IMPORTANT.

And I'd say not just in jazz but improvisation in general (although more important in jazz due to swing).

Thanks very much Chris. Your comments are timely and befitting of what's been discussed recently.

Thanks Jazzwee for that feedback.
There was a lot of sharing in our ensemble, another thing that strikes me is that I have no idea what the other members do for a living (well I do now, at least one of them), we were all so focused on playing and "getting it right". There is no better camaraderie than "anytime you need a drummer call me, I'll be there". Anyhow - our fearless leader was talking about what is the "correct" way of counting; he made the observation during all the ensembles (we were 5) evening performance. "Next year I'm going to have a course in how to tap one's foot!". He meant that some ensembles, even thought they had good players, failed to make a satisfying performance. They all were tapping their feet individually - and not together, in the music.

I'll post some of the rhythmic phrases we worked on.

Hi Everyone,

I decided to make my first Piano World post in the best AB thread. I’ve been lurking here since my wife, Swingin’ Barb, joined the thread in January. I am a jazz vibist. (Ok, it’s not a piano, but, I am playing on the same keyboard path.) I have learned a lot here – thanks to Jazzwee, Chris, Jazz+ and all of the contributors to the thread.

As Barb has mentioned here, we plan on performing as a vibes/piano duo within the next year or two. I am the improviser and scat singer of the duo.

I look forward to posting some of our playing in this thread. Your feedback to help us improve would be very much appreciated.

Tom

Hey Tom,

Welcome to the gang, can't wait to hear what you guys come up with.

Take care!

What do you guys think about the song "Satin Doll" as far as improvising with it. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Elssa - I saw your earlier remark "I'm just trying to figure out what exactly is the blues and what is the best way to improvise with it?"

Someone sent me this about the blues and I thought I'd share it -

1. Most Blues begin “woke up this morning.”

2. “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the Blues, unless you stick something nasty in right away:
I got a good woman—with the meanest face in town.

3. Blues are simple. After you have the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes. Sort of.
I got a good woman—with the meanest face in town.
I got a good woman—with the meanest face in town.
She got teeth like Margaret Thatcher and she weighs 500 pounds.

4. The Blues are not about limitless choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch; ain't no way out.

5. Blues cars are Chevies, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. Other acceptable Blues transportation modes include Greyhound buses and southbound trains. Walkin’ plays a major part in the Blues lifestyle. So does fixin’ to die. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or SUVs. Jet aircraft and state-sponsored motor pools ain't even in the running.

6. Adults sing the Blues. Teenagers can’t sing the Blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. In the Blues, "adulthood" means old enough to get the electric chair when you shoot that man in Memphis.

7. You can have the Blues in New York City, but not in Brooklyn or Queens. Hard times in Vermont, Tucson, or North Dakota are just depression. The best places to have the Blues are still Chicago, St. Louis, and Kansas City. You cannot have the blues in any place that don't get rain.

8. A man with male pattern baldness ain't the blues. A woman with male pattern baldness is. Breaking your leg while skiing is not the blues. Breaking your leg when your broken-down pickup truck rolled over on it is.

9. The following colors do not belong in the Blues: violet, beige, mauve (unless you’re truly desperate for a rhyme).

9. You can’t have the Blues in an office or a shopping mall. The lighting is just plain wrong. Go outside to the parking lot or sit by the dumpster.

10. Good places to have the Blues: the highway, a jailhouse, an empty bed, the bottom of a whiskey glass. Bad places to have the Blues: ashrams, gallery openings, weekends in the Hamptons, golf courses, Tiffany's, and Ivy League institutions.

11. No one will believe it’s the Blues if you wear a suit, unless you happen to be an old black man—and it’s an old black suit.

12. Do you have the right to sing the Blues?
Answer “Yes” if:
a. your first name is a southern state—like Georgia
b. you’re blind
c. you shot a man in Memphis.
d. you can’t be satisfied.
e. you're older than dirt
Answer “No” if:
a. you once were blind but now can see.
b. you’re deaf
c. the man in Memphis lived.
d. you have a trust fund or an IRA.
e. you have all your teeth
f. you were once blind but now can see

13. Blues is not about color, it's about bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues; Gary Coleman could. Ugly old white people got a leg up on the blues. Julio Iglesias and Barbra Streisand will never sing the Blues.

14. If you ask for water and baby gives you gasoline, it’s the Blues. Other acceptable Blues beverages are: wine, whiskey, muddy water, beer, black coffee. Blues beverages are NOT: mixed drinks, kosher wine, sparkling water, Snapple, Starbucks Frappuccino, or Slim Fast. Although Rubber Biscuits and the Wish Sandwich are famous blues snacks, better stick to common blues grub like Greasy Bar-b-que, Fatback and beans, and Government cheeze. Blues food is never: Club sandwich, Sushi, or Crème brule.

15. If it occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover is a Blues death. So is substance abuse, the electric chair, or being denied treatment in an emergency room. It is not a Blues death to die during liposuction or from tennis elbow.

16. Excellent names for female Blues singers: Sadie, Big Momma, Bessie, or Fat River Dumpling. Excellent names for male Blues singers: Willie, Joe, Little Willie, Lightning, or Big Willie. Singers with names like Muffy, Sierra, Auburn, Alexis, Gwenyth, Sequoiz, Brittany or Rainbow are not permitted to sing the Blues, no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

17. The Build Your Own Blues Singer Name Starter Kit:
a. Name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, Asthmatic)
b. First name (from above lists) or name of fruit (Lemon, Lime, Kiwi)
c. Last name of a U. S. president (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.)
Examples: Blind Lime Jefferson, Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Okay, maybe not "Kiwi"…)

18. I don't care how tragic your life; if you own a computer, you cannot sing the Blues.
You'd best destroy it. Fire, a spilled bottle of Mad Dog, or shotgun.
Maybe your big *** woman just done sit on it. I don't care

19. Hey there, you can READ! This too be a big ol' problem. Most folks singin' the
Blues ain't never had much a chance for education. In the Blues… the three R's stand
for Railroads, Runnin' and Rehab.

20. It gots to be dark to sing the blues, preferably after midnight. Singin' da blues at noon is forbidden.

21. If none of the above works, try one last, pathetic stab at authenticity: name your guitar. Remember, Lucille is taken.

22. Epitaph on a blues musician's tombstone: "I didn't wake up this morning"

"7. You can have the Blues in New York City"

Very funny, Bill.. Thanks for my laugh for the day. :-) Well, I grew up very near and used to frequent NYC, and now live in a trailer park (okay, manufactured home park). Does that qualify me for singin' the blues?

Jazz Mallets, (AKA Tom) it's great that you came out in the open. We've already been communicating on the side so I feel like you've been here since day 1. It would be great if you shared in this thread.

Give us a little background of how long you've played and all the jazz camps you've been to.

p.s. Did Aebersold ever respond to that letter of yours?

Hi Elssa, Satin Doll is a common platform for starting improvisations. Changes aren't difficult and it doesn't modulate too much. So by all means!

My teacher was a little tough on me so he pushed me immediately to 'All the Things That You Are', which is a very difficult tune for a beginner to improvise on. I did wish I could play Satin Doll instead at the time.

Satin Doll is a typical ii-V-I tune for the most part so what you learn here is applicable to just about anything (including AL). I'd say Satin Doll is easier than AL because it's all major ii-V-I. Not the switching major/minor harmony of AL.

My teacher had some good advice when learning a new tune. He advises that you springboard from the existing melody. Meaning use it and it's structure to give you ideas. Profound improvisations happen this way. Basically this approach prevents doing "noodling". Everything is played with intent, good or bad.

When played with intent, practically nothing sounds bad. Ever read the book "Effortless Mastery" (Kenny Werner)? One of its tenets is that "There is no wrong note".

Obviously one still has to practice and build a jazz vocabulary/phrasing from listening, but once absorbed, there is no wrong note, thus there is never a thing to fear about what to improvise.

Some specifics to work on, try using chord tones first (1-3-5-7 but not necessarily in order), and hopefully from C-Jam blues, you've learned a lesson that "Repeating notes is good". Space (no notes) is good too. And it must swing.

Good luck Elssa!

b528nf7, you are funny!

Your examples put my theoretical "Call" and "Response" description to shame

"You're stuck in a ditch"
"You're stuck in a ditch"
"there's no way out"

How's that for emphasizing repetition?...

cool chris. keep sharing.

Jazzwee,

I got very excited when I learned about jazz phrasing from your discussion on accents and swing intensities. I felt as if a blindfold had been removed from my eyes. Let me repeat myself, I suddenly began to understand a concept that had eluded me since majoring in music in college, namely, musicality. (I never heard that word in high school.)

My college applied instrument teacher (percussion) was always jumping on me for my lack of musicality. He would play a passage after I played it and, while there was always something different about his interpretation, he could never put into words what that difference was. He never used the word "phrasing". Oh, I knew all about dynamics and tempo changes. But no one has ever helped me fully understand that music is not really meant to be played precisely as written with a fixed tempo -- unless you want to sound like a machine. So I never got it.

But I got it from this thread. And it has made such a big difference in my playing. Also, it didn't hurt for me to get my new set of vanderPlas vibes -- see photo at the following link:

http://www.marimbas.com/vibes.php

I never had an instrument before that really encouraged me to sustain a note. (Remember, I was a percussionist so if I wanted to sustain a note I had to keep hittin' my instrument to sustain a sound. And it was very hard to be MUSICAL while doing that.)

Back to this thread: I got so excited about what I learned about phrasing that I created what I called a "Jazz Syllogism", which I sent to Aebersold whose jazz camp we attended last summer:


JAZZ SYLLOGISM
==============


1. If the correct jazz solo notes to play on the beats are the primary chord tones (root, 3, 5, 7), AND

2. If the non-chord notes would be the "wrong notes" if played on the beats, AND

3. If the non-chord notes are played on the off-beats, AND

4. If "cool" jazz phrasing accentuates the off-beats (the 'and' of a beat),

It THEREFORE stands to reason that:

"Cool jazzers" must ACCENT the "wrong notes" (non-chord notes) on the off-beats.


I figured that Aebersold could share that with the students when he reads things out loud during his discussions. All I got was a polite response thanking me for my feedback. There was no recognition of the jazz syllogism.

I'm not complaining about the Aebersold camp. I learned a lot and had a great experience. But I am quite jealous of what Chris got out of his camp as regards their focus on phrasing. Regrettably, that is all the jazz camps I've been to.

As regards my experience, I worked as a drummer beginning in the summer of 1963 when I joined the musicians union as I was a senior in high school. (I played with the old men then. Now I'm older than most of them were and I'm still playing the same songs, namely, the standards.) I worked my way through college as a drummer (I majored in music education -- percussion specialty) and then was a percussionist in my 4 year hitch in US Air Force field bands. I taught high school band for 2 years, but went into industry after that for over 25 years. It was during that time that I began playing along with the Aebersold albums. I got pretty good at running changes but I became supremely bored with doing that. I would often go 6 months or a year without playing -- always with the hope that when I came back the wall that I kept bumping into had been moved out of the way. It never happened.

As I said earlier, not until this thread.

What really convinced me about the importance of phrasing was when Swingin' Barb (my wife) did a little experiment. She recorded a song in midi with all the good phrasing principles. Then we experimented by playing it back at different tempos. LOL -- the accents seemed to disappear at a much faster tempo, but the phrasing was still effective!

Barb and I have just recently started rehearsing together. I guess we were reluctant to do that because we [must have] felt there were too many imperfections in our individual playing. We have been shocked that so many things have come together and that we're getting an excellent sound. As I'm writing this, Barb is sitting next to me on her digital piano working out a Shearing-style arrangement of "Lullaby of Birdland". We tested the concept with her first chords and it worked incredibly well.

Anyway, enough about me. So I'll repeat myself: I am really enjoying this thread. Enough said.

Tom

Knotty,

Thanks for the welcome. You are already helping Barb and me. We visited your blog and listened to that Shearing YouTube link you posted. It has inspired us to work up a Shearing style of Lullaby in Birdland.

Tom


Bill,

Your Blues definition had me in stitches. I copied it into my Humor Folder. I'll be shamelessly using some of those one liners when we start entertaining.

Tom

Elssa,

I posted a Satin Doll vid last year. I'm almost ashamed now. It's from "Jazz Conception".
Ledonne comes up with just amazing arrangements and solos for this tune. It's a great vehicle for Stride, and blocks, both of which are played there. Also you'll hear that like Jazzwee says, it stays really close to the melody, specifically rhythmically speaking.
Not sure you'll get so much out of watching me, but hey ...
I'd encourage you to get the sheet for this. I remember thinking at the time I'd never be able to do it, and overall, I probably wasn't, but nevertheless, I got a great deal of satisfaction and self confidence out of it.

Your technique is easily on par for something like this.

here goes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSZjxYnzCtA