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mmm are you saying Knotty that I don't have to purposely try to remember standards ?
Of course I'm interested in your spreadsheet. Thanks !

Yes, I think you should try to memorize them, but only when your ear gets to a certain point will you actually be able to recall them.


I shared the spreadsheet.

Hi knotty,



I would be interested in learning more about your use of google spreadsheets and memorizing standards. Perhaps I can begin to incorporate such measures into my program. Thanks for any suggestions you can offer.

venice,

it's a pretty simple spreadsheet. I say when I played it last, and I give myself a score on the tune from 1 to 3. 1 being I know it but it might take a chorus or 2 to get it right.
3 being I don't think I can really ever forget the tune.

Then I have a formula that reminds me when to play it. It's simple and easy to maintain.

It serves as a good list of tunes to call also. At jam sessions and such. If you send me a pm with your email, I'll share the spreadsheet.

++

knotty,

Much appreciated. I pm'ed you my email.

Hi Custard Apple,
+1 What knotty said about hearing the chord changes under the melody inside your head. And knowing the melody is an absolute must. If you can sing the melody (it doesn't have to be note-perfect, just correctly up and down), then the chords will kind of 'follow' in your mind. Take the first 16 bars of Green Dolphin Street for example: (by the way, I play it in the forbidden key of C - haha)

Melody -> C..... B G E Bb....... A..... Ab F Db G.......
.G D E F G Ab Bb G....... .Bb F G Ab Bb B Db Bb.......

Each period . is a quarter note.

Now when I sing or hum this, I try to get whether the melody is rising or falling correctly, even if I can't sing or hum the perfect pitches (I neither have perfect pitch nor an acceptable singing voice - haha). And the general rhythm of the melody is nice to have correctly so that you are on the right measure!

Next, with standards like this, the melody dictates what harmonies must go along with it in the chord changes. Take the first 4 notes of the tune, we have in chordal order C E G B - well, that says CMaj7 to me! So I can safely assume that this tune starts on the tonic/release (Key of C) Cmaj7. It might not be so obvious for the Bb and A notes next - because they could fit a lot of different harmonies. But actually for our "structure" purposes, they are passing or color chords, or a way to get to the tension, so we can skip it for now. Then we have Db F Ab next (in chordal order), followed by a resolution to a G melody note. That says Db major to me (more likely DbMaj7). Without getting too technical, that is a sort of substitute for the tension chord which would have been G7 in this key - this is kind of a tritone substitution. The resolution should come next, and we have that nice fat G sitting there in the melody at the end of the first line. The resolution chord would have to be CMaj7 and yes, there is a G inside a CMaj7 chord so this is a very likely fit.

So finally, to memorize this piece, I first hum the melody and try to have either a tonic (CMaj7) harmony in my mind, followed by a way to get to the tension (the EbMaj7,D7 that follows) , followed by a tense chord (G7 or DbMaj7 in this case), finally coming to the resolution of CMaj7 once more at the end of the first line. So it looks like this in my mind while humming the melody:

C....B.G.E.Bb............... A......................... Ab.F.Db.G......
Tonic......Way to get to..Way to get to..the Tension..Release

Go ahead and try it yourself. Hum the melody to Green Dolphin Street, and imagine a tense or non-tense chord underneath. Again, it doesn't have to be note-perfect, and the chord symbols could be a lot of different possibilities, but what you are striving for is to have the release, getting to tension, and tension chords in the right general areas while the melody is playing in your mind.

Finally when you sit at the piano and you must accompany a trumpet/sax/vocal and you are not allowed to play the melody, you must think Tonic, Way to get to tension (something something) Tension, Release. In the key of C this could mean..
C... Cm7...Dm7...G7... C........ or,
C... Eb ...DM7...DbM7. C........ or,
C... Csus..Dm7...G(b9).C........
you get the idea. Notice that the release and tension stayed in the same spot and were often the exact same chord every time. But the way to get to the tension can change all over the place, and this is what makes you a different pianist than someone else playing this tune. We constantly have to make choices like this that make up our harmonic personality. But as Bill Evans says, you have to do that within the framework or structure of Green Dolphin street, so that the listener will know that you are playing that tune and not something else, and that they can hear where you departed with the "leaf" or extraneous chords, which defines your style.

On a personal note, I've heard many jazz pianists other than Bill Evans take this too far and lose the structure of the original tune. I once listened to a piece and about 3 minutes through, realized the guy was playing Misty - OMG I said to myself. He did not do ONE of the original chords. But that is getting into a subjective area and the grey area of personal taste when deciding how much spice chords to sprinkle into your arrangements. I think the happy middle is a good place to be. Learning the tune how it is in the fakebook, and changing some of the less important chords (as we have seen), all while keeping some of the original tune in tact for the listener's sake (this is what Bill is talking about when he says 'depart from' or 'play off' the structure).

Sorry for the longish post again - I've learned a lot from this discussion - stuff I will impart to my jazz students in the future. Thanks all.

-Erich

Hi Erich
I agree that this discussion has been very helpful. Thanks for your Green Dolphin Street illustration.
I'm on There is No Greater Love for a few more days, then holidays, then I will start a new song which will most likely be Green Dolphin Street.
I know my melodies in the standard key and an alternate key. Melodies are the most important element to me in that I am trying to learn thematic improv the way Sonny Rollins and Bill Evans constantly refer back to a motif.

Hi Knotty
I found your advice encouraging about not stressing over memorisation until my ear gets more developed.
And after looking at your spreadsheet, I plan to implement a spreadsheet system today.

Cus,
Sounds like you have a well balanced approach!

Green Dolphin Street is a very fun tune. If it looks tricky at first, well, it isn't. And you can do lots of things with it. This is a great tune to apply everything and anything you want to try.

I'm so glad I've stumbled upon this thread. Not only listening to and watching the clips of Bill Evans, but also reading the thoughtful musings of those of you engaged in this dialogue, is very helpful to me in my early stage of trying to learn to play jazz piano.

In reading about Evans's hierarchy of chord changes, I am starting to think that my years playing bass guitar in bar bands will actually be of considerable help to me in developing as a pianist. A good bass player has to develop the ability to quickly sense what the essential chord changes are, and what the important passing tones are.

Hi shepdave
It must be wonderful to play 2 instruments, I think the best jazz players know another instrument.
When I play the bass notes of There is No Greater Love, it sounds really different to the standard tune.
How did you interpret what Bill was saying about pedal point ? Is Bill thinking the pedal point is his base, rather than the primary chords ?

Cus, I don't know whether I missed it or was listening to/reading the wrong thing, but I can't find where he's talking about pedal point. Can you point to a time in one of the video/audio tracks or a place in an article?

Hi Shepdave
It's from the Marian McPartland "Touch of your lips" interview with Bill @ 3:45

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y9g0EQcZXI

Sorry to take so long in responding, custard apple. I wanted to listen to the interview a couple times and think about it.

If I understand what you said in your comment a couple slots above, I think you're right: I think Evans is thinking of the bottom of what he's doing in the LH (which, for example, is a G on the bottom of his tonic C chord) as the springboard for what he wants to play.

It's a little elusive, though, and he doesn't make it crystal clear.

Incidentally, I'm sad to note that trying to follow that Open Culture link to the original Steve Allen / Harry Evans / Bill Evans documentary now results in a 404 error. I'm really glad I watched that interview twice through!

oh no ! I just tried the openculture link and it didn't work for me either. But I found the Bill Evans Universal Mind interview on you-tube.

Thank you shepdave for confirming my understanding of using pedal point as the springboard for improv.
I'm soloing over There is No Greater Love at the moment, I believe that in this case, Bb is a pedal point for the whole tune as well as the tonic for the A sec.
But Bill's example was more interesting, that in his improvisational thinking, he treats this C maj tune as a G maj tune. I will see if I can start thinking this way for the next tune I work on.

The documentary's back now on Open Culture, no worries. It looks like the Open Culture site had a temporary server problem.

That's cool, thanks for letting us know.

Bill Evans was the Chopin of jazz (I read that somewhere.) I love everything he did and it has made me a more thoughtful player.

Thoroughly enjoyed that documentary. Thanks for posting.