Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Jazz Study Group: Autumn Leaves, ATTYA, etc.

Yes, I was planning to check them out. I like the way he puts it - not singing, just making a vocal representation of the rhythm. I have a comfortable vocal range of about a 5th - so singing feels intimidating. Yabbadabbadoo just feels plain wierd - but I can see the point.

Here's something to think about - I don't know if it's a question, or an observation, and I don't know if there's an answer.

Consider this:
In classical/rock music, the accents come on beats 1 and 3.
In jazz, the accents come on beats 2 and 4. Endquote.

Now, I have heard this said many times, I accept it, I believe it to be true, and sometimes I have felt and heard it. Now, suppose I take this from, perhaps a mathmatical point of view, and I, as a classical musician, wanting to learn jazz (and there are many in my shoes), I write out a piece of jazz with the accents on beats 2 and 4. I take my rubber and rub out the bar lines, and move them by a crotchet, so that what used to be the note on beat 2 is now on beat 1. I have the same piece of music in front of me, only the accents are now back on beats 1 and 3, which makes me happy because that's what I'm familiar with.

Only problem is, it woudn't work. Which is why nobody in the right mind would do such a thing. But why not? That's what I've been asking myself all day.

Something to ponder...

This must be hard to absorb and words are limited in trying to explain this, but simply moving the barlines over might put the accent in the right spot but it still won't sound right.

The reason is that Jazz is based on asymmetry while classical is based on symmetry. Jazz is imbalance.

The whole point of putting the stress on 2 and 4 is to trip you over. To give you a feeling of falling down and then catching yourself and restoring your step, and repeating this with every quarter note (crotchet).

So 2 and 4 is not just some marker. In a way, the beats 2 and 4 seem out of place and has an agitating effect. You want that effect.

Back in the old days, swing had the effect of making one want to dance. In more modern jazz, this imbalance effect has been achieved with other means (varying accents, varying lengths of notes against full value). But the effect is still to create imbalance.

So to summarize, 2 & 4 is not the end all. It is just there to promote the imbalance which is swing. You still have to create the swing feel. 2/4 will not do it for you.

Speaking personally, it works! lol

Actually, what you have just said explains a lot. Thanks.

Tlt,

sorry if my past explanations of singing weren't clear. What 7notemode shows is exactly what I meant. You don't have to sing well, but you have to sing the correct pitch. It's not just mumbling, it's
1. being able to identify the correct pitch being played
2. being able to reproduce articulation, time, swing, etc...

I record a lot of the stuff I do, but not the singing. It's bad singing, obviously. But after 5 minutes on 2 seconds of Charlie Parker, I correct what I thought I heard the first time.
Here's the thing. Take 3 bars of a solo on Charlie Parker, or whoever you want. One phrase. Now you heard it, try to sing it back, at any speed you want.
You can't.
If you can't, how can you expect to reproduce it on the piano?
You can't.
Spend 5 minutes on it. Now you can sing it.
Do this for as many weeks as you need Soon, you can reproduce, at least in singing, any line you hear.
Whether you can play it is a different story, that's where Parker technique will leave you behind. But slow enough, you will. Because now, you have heard the application of his theory, to his tunes and other tunes that you know, so you recognize the sound of upper structures, for example... You will not just recognize the lines being played, but the underlying chord progression.

Again, like jazzwee's article above says, you won't understand the benefit unless you start doing it.

++

Not at all, knotty, you were perfectly clear. No need to apologise. But it is different seeing someone playing and actually demonstrating what they are doing.

I would also have thought that you need to sing in pitch. But not according to 7notemode. Watch him carefully. Sometimes he does dabbadabba in pitch. Sometimes he speaks it. Sometimes he half sings/half speaks (aka bad singing). It doesn't matter.

I think the trick is he's worked out a notation system. Quavers are dabbadabba. Crotchets are be bop boop. Triplets are diddlely. (And Fred Flanders can eat my shorts!) It's doremi for rhythm.

He even suggests, for starters, saying out as dabbadabba, but not necessarily to time. I can see this working. Trouble is, I don't actually like the examples he uses. Doesn't matter, I can use it on something else. Like the Blue Groove - today I was trying to get accents on the off beats of the quavers in the last chorus. Could I get it? No sir. Will try again tomorrow.

I do think there is something in vocalising, or playing a wind instrument that is more primal, or more direct. I have always felt this but never heard anyone say it before. The breath comes straight from the heart (not from the lungs as my biology teacher once insisted). Which makes vocalising and good stepping stone, when you want it to come out your fingers.

I feel I should say it - I've not given up on those Autumn Leaves! They are still falling - gently!

I see. I missed that about pitch the first time.

the idea if singing the correct pitch came from somewhere else then. In Metaphor for the Musicians, Randy H., who is strictly against singing while you play, haw a whole chapter he calls "marinating" you ears, and that involves singing. He says there to pay attention to correct pitch. I think he has a point.
7notemode talks specifically about swing, so in that respect, it probably doesn't matter. But in any event, we could just go back and ask him.

What I am finding personally, is that when I first hear a line, I don't hear it correctly. It's very vague what I hear. As I am spending more time studying a particular artists, the lines start to come out more clearly. I think that comes from spending the time to slow down and listen.

I had a different way of fixing my hearing. I guess each person comes up with their own way. I have very good tonal memory so I'm able to remember the notes. But getting the swing phrasing was difficult at first and I didn't have a teacher at the time who said "sing it/scat it". So I don't have that experience.

What I did then was pick some phrases from some "swinging players" and put it into the software transcribe and slowed it down. Even then I couldn't exactly pin it. So being kind of a technical kind of guy, I put it into a waveform format and plotted the beats on it. Then I noticed where the notes were landing on the beats. It was like a discovery. I like to analyze things that way.

The good news about this particular approach that I took is that the next time I listened, I would start to understand where everything landed with respect to the beat. And from there I tried to duplicate it. I would listen to a couple of the phrases like hundreds of times. It did take a few years to hone it down.

Now as I read this discussion, I wondered if I could sing it (I don't use fancy syllables). I discovered that right now it's pretty easy to sing it. It's so ingrained in me. I don't know what came first, the cart or the horse.

By the time I got to my current teacher (closing in on my 3rd year with him), it got a lot more sophisticated. My task was to emulate the swing of several artists: Bill Evans, Wynton Kelly, Chick Corea, as an example. These three have particularly unique styles. It really enhanced my understanding of "modern" swing. It's changed a lot over the years. It's more sophisticated now with nuances of time that makes it sound fresh.

For a beginner though, I find the best piano playing swing to learn first is Wynton Kelly. He is known as a "hard swinger" so the swing is very distinctive. But I caution one to listen closely since sometimes he will play with accents only and the eighths are straight. I've said this before and I will repeat that the tune "Freddie the Freeloader" (Miles Davis Album) is such a good one to learn from. Many jazzers have started with this tune. And the piano player here is Wynton Kelly. The piano solo is very simple.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xQE47HYbeM

BTW - Freddie the Freeloader is really a blues tune. If you can copy the solo here, you'll be on your way. (the piano player in the picture is Bill Evans however).

In the end, learning to swing starts with listening. Often we cannot swing because we cannot hear. Singing/Scat is one way of improving hearing. I obviously used a different method that worked for me.

But as I said in a prior lesson, one cannot swing without "good time".

So much to say. Where to start?



I think it's fair to say, we have different ideas of what constitutes simple!

I've not posted any music here for a while, but I've not been idle. Been focussing on a couple of different things. First, getting accents on the offbeats (and, more tricky, not putting them on the downbeats). So, I continued on the Snidero Blues Groove, and did my damndest whenever quavers came up, mostly in the last chorus. Did dabbadabba to practice this, but I'm not singing in the recording. Is this the effect I'm after? I was wondering if I've overdone it a bit?

http://www.box.net/shared/h4o6jnyauy

Didn't find the accents at all easy, but I feel, once I get it, it'll be a big hurdle out of the way. Especially when the LH plays on the down beat, it is hard not to accent it.

Second, improvising. Now I need to take a step back and say I got a couple of books by Tim Richards (Improvising Blues and Exploring Jazz). I think at this point, the material in the beginning of these books is exactly what I need for improvising. Autumn Leaves is harmonically way too complex for me - I was just playing random notes from the chord, with no real feel what was going on. With simpler stuff, I hear the note I want to play, then I play it. Course, it is deathly boring (sample: http://www.box.net/shared/gerus9arm6), but I can cope with that if I feel it's leading somewhere.

Third, Autumn Leaves. Richards has this in his jazz book. (He also discusses how to improvise from it, but, to give you an idea, it's on pg 150, and I'm on pg 15). Anyway, I thought it would be interesting to put it here for the purposes of comparison.

http://www.box.net/shared/gfpc1db568

It's in Bb. The chords are the same with a very few exceptions. He doesn't use 9ths, but he does use 6ths. There's a different chord in 1 bar. Apart from that, it's the same. Anyway, it was interesting for me, because it's the first time I've seen the tune written down. I played it pretty much as written.

Fourth, I also had some thoughts about accents and rhythm, but perhaps they should wait for another post?

BTW - TLT, did you mean the solo is difficult because there are no notes to read? Or difficult phrasing wise? There are actually transcriptions of this on the web as it is a common solo to learn. I would say the 1st twelve bars doesn't have anything difficult note wise. But of course the phrasing is difficult. Heck even if you just learned 4 bars and duplicated it you'd learn a lot about jazz phrasing.

Anyway, I'm not directing this at you but all the others who are reading this thread looking for guidance.

This is the stuff that you can't and wouldn't want to avoid in jazz and that's getting ones hands dirty. This is hard work no doubt and should be part of the daily practice routine (for the long run).

One easy way to learn jazz phrasing, is to play the heads (melody) of many tunes. One particularly difficult one that gives you challenges in fingering is Charlie Parker's "Donna Lee". Earlier in this thread Barb tried this. I still practice this to this day (although I play the whole thing with solo). In reality this is played at close to 200bpm so it is pretty intense.

Some other very nice heads for learning phrasing are "Tenor Madness", "Blue Monk" (a challenge to play thirds), "Bessie's Blues". These are all Blues tunes.

The music for heads are in the REAL BOOK I.

Playing heads are an easy transition for the Classical pianists since there's no improvisation yet. I spent a lot of time on these myself in the 1st couple of years of Jazz study.

Jazz is all about is listening to all this and figuring out the 'lingo'. Back in the old days, the Jazz guys just exchanged this kind of information in person and passed directly by emulating. They used to gather after the gig in the early hours of the morning.

Exact Transcription of Wynton Kelly Solo on Freddie the Freeloader

http://www.slideshare.net/mabbagliati/freddie-freeloader-wynton-kelly-tab

I just noticed it's a Guitar Tab but the notes appear to be the piano solo.

TLT Fantastic job on Snidero! I don't know the tune but your phrasing was excellent. This is very helpful for you so I would continue. Increase speed a tad each time.

Hey jazzwee, maybe I'll play it on guitar!

Can't get the link to work, but it says the problem is probably temporary.

The Snidero study is good - simple enough I can follow. If that's how I'm to do quavers, I'll just keep going till it feels more natural. Four quavers at a time seems to be my limit - then I need a rest to regroup!

Now, I hope I'm not flogging a dead horse here, but I want to go back to rhythm and accents and what we were talking about before. I want to check I'm understanding things right.



Now I'm going to go back to the two statements I keep hearing and deconstruct them.

Statement 1: In classical and rock, the accents come on beats 1 and 3.
Statement 2: In jazz, the accents come on beats 2 and 4.

Statement 1 is true, mostly. Only there is syncopation. The Beatles use it, Mozart uses it and Bach digs it. No question. But I could certainly agree that the main stresses come on beats 1 and 3 95-100% of the time.

Statment 2 does not apply in the same way that statment 1 does. In jazz, the accents might come on beats 2 and 4. They are just as likely to come on beats 1 and 4, 1 and 2+, 2+ and 4+, 1 and 4+, 3 and 4+, or any other combination you care to think of.

That's how they are different. But they share something important in common. Jazz rhythm and classical rhythm both have bars, with beats that come consistently, repeatedly, and predictably. (Not all music has this). There is always something that happens on beat one of the bar. In classical/rock, we get used to the thing happening being a stress or accent. In jazz, you take the accent away, you take the note away and leave a rest, but there is still something happening. It is still there. You feel it (although you might struggle to dance to it). For want of a better word, I'm going to call it 'oneness' - the thing that happens on beat one.

So now I'm going to try to replace the original statements with something I'm happier with. How about this:

In classical/rock, the main accent normally co-incides with the oneness, and lesser accents are distributed symetrically through the bar.
In jazz, the accents are divorced from the oneness. Simple

Now, maybe this is a terribly convoluted way of putting it, and I'm not trying to write a book. Let me know if you understand what I'm saying, and if you think it's fair.

That concept is incorrect. It's going to lead you to utter confusion. Accents in jazz are NOT on 2 and 4.

The MAIN Accent in swing are in the offbeats. 1+, 2+, 3+, 4+.

Accents in Rock/Classical are in 1, 2, 3, 4.

But realize that together with the main accent, there may be minor grouping accents. I am not talking about that. Neither am I talking about the degree of accents. Some players accent lightly but swing hard. Some players accent heavily but play more straight. The main rule doesn't change. Swing itself is created by the control of OFFBEAT accents. And Offbeats are defined in Eighth Notes (quavers).

TLT, I just listened to the Tim Richards stuff. I don't really know what materials are provided, but hopefully whatever resources you are using has a CD you can listen to to compare. Otherwise, it may just propagate the error. I did a blues book too (supervised by my teacher) in my first year of study of jazz so this is a good thing.

But this is not improvising. So to me this is an exercise in learning jazz/blues phrasing. Separate objectives IMHO. I did all the above. There wasn't enough time in the day at the beginning because there was so much to absorb.

Donna Lee - Swing Practice the Charlie Parker Way

For those who are ready for a challenge...

I made an earlier recommendation to play the head of "Donna Lee". If one can find the lead sheet to this (Real Book), I'd advise this as a long term project. This is really, initially quite a project in learning where to place accents. You will see that the rule on accenting an offbeat has to be strictly followed because if you accent the wrong spot, the head will not sound correct. Somewhere in this thread, I believe I did a recording of this, two years ago. I can re-record it if anyone else wants to start this. Barb was one of those that learned this tune.

What I mean by placing accents is that some of the lines in this melody start on an offbeat (+) or downbeat (quarter note), and thus sometimes some lines start with an accent or without. For a beginner it is daunting. Now it is automatic and I don't give it a second thought. I started with this after playing all the simpler blues melodies. This melody is finger mangler. It can cause tendonitis/sprain without good technique if one does not think of correct fingering and relaxation. So this is a challenge.

Here's Volvoxburger playing it on youtube at a very reasonable speed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHPW9_BsLCQ

You will find many versions of this with blazingly fast playing (200bpm and above). But the speed is not important here. It's replicating the phrasing of the melody. The Youtube people show off with this and it's really bad if played with bad time.

Second stage of this piece is to solo over the changes. Actually, soloing over this isn't that complicated. No harder than AL for sure. I would actually rank this as an intermediate piece but it just becomes advanced when people want to shoot for 300bpm.

I think it is also good advice to learn to sing/scat this (slowly obviously) although I have to admit I have never done that.

And if you're a glutton for punishment, the other Charlie Parker tune is "Confirmation". Very similar. Aside from learning how to swing, there is a lot to learn here too related to improvisation as the lines played are typical even in soloing.

OK, I give up.

I'll play more and talk less, eh?

OK, why don't you tell me which error, and then I'll know?

TLT, it's excellent that you're asking these questions. The more we clear up stuff the better for you. The kind of thinking you're doing was no different than my thought processes at the time. So please continuously ask and test and retest your understanding.

You have no error on Tim Richard's stuff. I was just saying that whatever the resource, it should have a CD so you can compare against it and make sure you're doing it correctly. It's impossible to do Blues/Jazz with just simple sheet music. The reason (as you already have found out), that jazz phrasing cannot really be notated easily. It would be unreadable if we did. For example dotted eighths wouldn't correctly represent it and neither would accent markings. So there has to be a listening comparison.

Again, to repeat, you did Snidero perfectly phrasing wise. You're swinging just fine. No problem there. If you can sight read music well enough, I would do the more advanced things I said above.