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OK Ed. So for the ii V I progression, if I were most likely to use a sub on the V, does that mean that ii and I are more important than the V ?

i went to see a group last Sunday.
Soprano - bass - drums + piano.
The first 3 played together all the time, but the piano was filling in for the first time. My friend joe Holt for those who know him.

The Soprano would be calling random tunes, in apparently random keys. In addition, they'd be switching keys all the time in the middle of a tune. Some tunes I knew, some I recognized, and some I didn't know.

Seeing how the pianist would just seem to know it all, had intro for all of it, and just overall mess with the tune a lot, I asked him "How did you memorize all those tunes??"
And he said, "I didn't really memorize anything per se.", Then added "when you think about it, there are really only 3 kinds of chords. The release, the tension, and the way to get to the tension.". That's it, that's the basic structure I know about the tune.

Perhaps that is how Bill Evans would think of the structure of the tune also. Listen to the McPartland interview. He shows you how he sets up a basic Cmaj over a pedal point, and then that gives him all he needs to gravitate over that basic structure.

It's really interesting.

Trying to second guess what someone like Bill Evans might think is akin to stepping out on very thin ice!

First of all, let's recall that, in the situation about which Evans is speaking, he is feeling his way into jazz. I BELIEVE that any of the traditional cadences, like our ii - V7 - I, he would think of as HIGH in his hierarchy, with each chord of high importance. Moving then to your question of substitutions, the ii7 is important, as is the substitute or altered V7, and equally the I, with color tones or extensions.

I've enjoyed the comments and links and hopefully Bill Evans will be continuously and further explored on this site as it seems his efforts and recorded works still have much to offer. Thanks also to chrisbell for recommending the biography, "How My Heart Sings" as I picked up a copy and am slowly digesting it. I found the following interesting written near the beginning of Chapter Four: Sideman -

"... and Evans retired somewhat from the live scene. After 'New Jazz Conceptions' he spent endless hours sight-reading Bach as an aid to developing tone control and technique.
Near the end of his life Evans told Jim Aikin: "Bach changed my hand approach to playing the piano. I used to use a lot of finger technique when I was younger, and I changed over to a weight technique. Actually, if you play Bach and the voices sing at all, and sustain the way they should, you can't really play it with the wrong approach. It's going to straighten you out in a hurry if you have a concept of what it should sound like."

As a beginner, I don't know if I have a valid thought on what he says but maybe his point is something to consider. What, how and when I should incorporate Bach into my playing schedule is an entirely different matter if it is appropriate.

It's a very valid point.
Glad you're enjoying the book.

I'm looking forward to starting the book too. I didn't know Bill retired from the live scene, although I knew he had always wanted the time to explore alone, do solo and to compose.

What does a weight technique mean ?

Well, a simple answer is let the arms be heavy and relaxed, the hands sturdy but not tense. It's the weight of the arm that keeps the key down.

I know i know, it's much more complicated writing about rather than showing it.

Thanks for that clear explanation Chris.
Makes me want to get back into WTC1.

Hi all,
Check out his right hand 'weight' technique. You can see it in the closeups:

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CzJOF3sdRr0[/video]

Also, is it me, or does he rarely, if ever, cross the thumb under any other fingers of his right hand? Or for that matter, cross any fingers over the thumb?
Growing up playing classical, I learned the crossing technique early on for scales and arpeggios and such. And although Bill must have learned this way in his childhood years too, it seems he has deviated from that school of playing, and found his own technique.

It appears to me he is using a 'planing' technique where higher notes are regulated to fingers 3,4, and 5, and lower notes are played with thumb and 2 only. It's like he locks his wrist position in place and just moves laterally left and right as the jazz line dictates, while avoiding any crossings.

Here's another look:

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=khSlPsvEE1U[/video]

Anybody else seeing this?

-Erich

Thank you Erich for the interesting video.
I don't know if I'm imagining it but it seems to me that his wrist seems high at first and then drops more after 3 min. So is the heavy arm technique around the 4 min mark ?

I've watched this a few times and I'm still not sure whether I grasp the profundity of what Bill is saying.
So if you take There is No Greater Love, would you say there are really only 2 chords Bb maj 7 and G min 6, and the pedal point is G ?

Hi Custard Apple,
Yes, at 4:20 is where I see it up close. Like Chris said earlier, the wrist is relaxed and you use the weight of the arm as a whole to 'throw' the weight at the keyboard. I don't really use this technique myself, but that's how I see it being used anyway.

Bill Evans had large, 'weighty' hands and fingers too, so this technique is a no-brainer for him. Now for a person with skinny, small hands, the older classic finger technique might work better for that individual.

It is also interesting to note that Bill plays 'air'-time with his comping left hand while the keys are being held down. His wrist is keeping some kind of rhythm or time even though he might be playing a whole note chord!

Cus,

I don't know that I get that either. But if we look at the A section of no greater love, I would say in Bb, the 2 chords are Bb and C7.
And how you move from Bb to C7 is chromatically or with substitutions of.
Bb - A7 / Eb7 - Ab7 / D7 - G7 - C7
So if you only take the tritone subs that's convenient, it's a circle of 4th to go to C7, or a chromatic bass down. As to which of the 2 tritones to use, you simply choose the one that's diatonic. So you could see No greater love in Bb as going Bbmaj7 Eb7 D7 G7 C7 then back to Bbmaj7 with a 25 (c-7 | f7) before

The bridge goes to the relative minor, that's an easy one, from D7 to G-6

When you think of it this way, it's not hard to memorize. And in fact, there's no real need to memorize it at all.

Hi again,
About the structure question, I have often thought a lot about this myself after I heard Bill try to explain it to Marian McPartland. By the way, don't feel bad, because I don't think she 'get's it' either! But due to time restraints, she has to keep the show moving along to the next segment. I feel that she would have liked to delve deeper into this subject with him if it was just the two of them talking without an audience.

Knotty's post earlier about his pianist friend who said "there are only 3 chords - tension, release, and a way to get to the tension" makes sense in this context of what Bill is trying to say, but only so far (more on that later). This is similar to Schenkerian analysis in the classical world. Heinrich Schenker said basically you can boil all tonal music down to I-V7-I, or I-IV-V7-I. So, in the key of C, we would boil everything down from a Beethoven symphony to a Gershwin tune to a Mozart C Piano Sonata to basically a C chord, G chord, and back to C chord. Or maybe C-F-G7-C. Like knotty's pianist friend was saying: Release (or tonic I chord), a way to get to the tension (IV chord), tension (V7 chord), release (resolve back to the I chord).

Almost all art follows this formula. Think about a movie or play: We have intro (Release, no tension yet), development (a way to get to the tension), crisis, conflict or climax (tension has built up all the way) and finally release or conflict resolution - end credits roll so you can head out of the theater.

However, all this being said, I think it is a little oversimplified to assume that this is what Bill Evans is talking about when he says "structure". I think that we have to add a little more harmonies to the basic boiling down version to get at what Bill is referring to.

So, in your example of "There is No Greater Love", Schenker might say, "Oh this is just I-vi-V7-I." But I think this is an oversimplification for our purposes. You could say that I-vi-V7-I about a lot of tunes, even Bach's entire Goldberg Variations. I think what Bill is getting at is that he asks himself "What chords make this tune "There is No Greater Love" and not "Heart and Soul"? What is its essence? What can you strip away and have a stripped-down but still recognizable "There is No Greater Love"?

If we strip away the passing or colorful chords, what are we left with? Well, you have to start the song somewhere, and this one starts with the release chord or I. So we have: (each | is a barline)
(singing pick-up) "there is no
A section:
|I | something | something | VI7 |
| II7 | II7 | V7 | V7 |
| I | something | something | VI7 |
| II7 | V7 | I | something |
bridge:
|something | vi |something | vi |
|something | vi |II7 | V7 |
A section:
|I | something | something | VI7 |
II7 | V7 | I | something |

The "something" chords are chords that I feel you can safely omit or mess around with and still be left with the essence of what makes this tune "There is No Greater Love" and not some other random tune. Also, when I say "V7", that will of course be replaced by the more jazzier "ii7-V7".

I think it is like being a caterpillar on a leaf of a tree. He can only see the leaves around him and it is easy to get lost in a sea of green leaves. But a human can step back away from the tree and see the trunk and big branches and understand the basic structure of the tree and how each of those precious leaves got there and where they are coming from.

I don't mean to get all philosophical, but I think that Bill is stepping back away from the tune and looking at the basic trunk and big branches of the song. That way he can alter the "leaves" and not get lost! You can replace all the leaves ("something" chords) with chords of your choosing. This is part of what makes a pianist unique. But Bill is saying, "you must understand where everything is coming from - the basic structure or building blocks of the song - only then can you safely adorn or deviate from (the "leaf" chords) without fear of deviating from the essence of what makes that tune itself and not something else".

Sorry for the longish post, but I find anything Bill Evans said worth discussing and pondering. Hope this helps!

-Erich

Knotty,
I'm sure that what your pianist friend has in is head is something like the boiled-down version I posted above. Yes, it is much easier to build a catalog of songs this way, rather than trying to remember all the "leaf" chords one after the other.

Looking at the final 8 bars of that tune,
release (bar 1), a way to get to the tension (2nd, 3rd, and 4th bars), tension (bars 5 and 6), release (bar 7).

Or another way of looking at it:
I VI
II V,
I VI
ii-V I.
.. vi .. vi,
.. vi II-V.
I VI
ii-V I.

Notice the use of commas and periods - it almost becomes a big paragraph if you speed it up and play the boiled-down structure in your mind quickly. Much easier to memorize something like this than to try and go, "now what was it, Bb69 Eb7 Ab7 G7 C7 Dm7-G7 Cm7 F7... ARGH!!

Thanks knotty for your post on the tension-release topics - I'm going to use this technique myself.

you're welcome.

Here are 2 interesting short clips from Don Grusin:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRZTLD2Yn74
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Xew9Ke6A0

If you watch the full thing, he expands on how he tries random way to get from one chord to the next. The first clip is him demonstrating on an F blues.

Hi Erich,

Your input above is well worth contemplating and appreciated. Also enjoyed the analogies but wonder what's going to happen to the caterpillar... perhaps an inspiration for a new composition? Thanks.

Ha ha, yes the poor caterpillar can get lost, BUT... he is close enough to the action to see the details that everyone else might overlook!
That, and he gets to feast on the details! Food for thought?

Hey Knotty and Erich
Many thanks for your detailed responses. I'm very excited as I think you two have cracked it for me. I memorise one standard per month, during which time I forget all previous standards.
For my next standard, I'm going to design the chords your way using the key chords method, and then I'll test whether I remember it one month out, 2 months out.
What standard for a beginner lends itself well to this approach ?

Erich
I had also wondered what Bill meant by architecture. I think you are right about building blocks.

Knotty
For the 4 note exercise in your Don Grusin video, should I practise this as 4 notes in the LH, since I am still doing single note RH melodies ?

Cus,

>>For my next standard, I'm going to design the chords your way using the key chords method, and then I'll test whether I remember it one month out, 2 months out.
This is a trick question. The fact that you expect to "remember it" in 2 months already is setting yourself up for failure. However, basic theory and analysis will go a long way.

Ultimately, this is an ear exercise. You train your ear to memorize the melody, and you use your ear to memorize the harmony under it, which is nothing but another melodic layer.
The more you do it, the more it happens. At first C-7 | F7 | Bbmaj7 | Ebmaj7 is just that. But then, that whole block never needs to be memorized ever. That's because you see it so much in all standards.
Look at this progression next
F maj7 | D7 | G-7 | C7
You got the G-7 C7 alright. Your ear already knows when the tunes comes back home. But what about that D7?
You might be surprised and have to memorize the D7 at first, but quickly, this will just be internalized just as much.
And so on.
Most tunes move through keys and progressions in ways that become easy to hear.

Where this becomes much more problematic is on non-traditional harmony. Those of Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter or Pat Metheny. But even those difficult tunes use combinations of tricky changes and standard ones.

So start with all the standards. Better yet, start with all the standards that everyone is "expected" to know.

If you want to boost the process, learn your standards in 3 or 4 keys. By the time you learn All the Things you are in the 3rd key, the analytical part of the brain takes over.

I personally use a google spreadsheets of all the tunes I know. And I keep it up to date. If you're interested, I can share and you can copy it. I can also gather a list of 10 "most wanted" tunes for you. A good place to start memorizing.

Warning, this is a big time hog.