Another thing I notice is that for most people, (including me), the first place we go when we want to learn a tune is the lead sheet, and not the record. We are so used to using books that we don't questions them most of the time.

Is Jamey Abersold promoting that kind of mentality by providing us with method books and lead sheets? I guess some people would argue that he is.. and I can see how some people may see it that way, if they grew up learning all the tunes/solos off the record without using any leadsheets and transcripiton boosk.

so blame yourself not Aebersold.


Are knifes producers promoting murders?

The thing that's nice about having leadsheets in the play-along book, is you know what changes they use in the record.
Otherwise you would have to transcribe to actual play along to figure it out.
who wants to do that?

Perhaps another reason that some are so opposed to Aebersold is that they subconsiously resent how successful he is in terms of how much money he makes. It's probably in the millions.

I think that's exactly why some people are opposed to the idea.. unless its a particular arrangement, you are should be learning them by ear, according to them

I am suprised that nobody else has come across what I mentioned.. I've heard from a lot of great sucessful players griping about all the 'books' out there, and I dont think. It seems like their learning experience is a lot more ear-based and not book-based. Like I said, some people go to the extreme as to say NEVER use lead sheets unless you have to.

delirium,

I am not sure why answering with such negative response, since I am just mentioning my observation, most people go to books to learn jazz, and in some ways it's natural for most of us. people usually don't learn tunes by ear.

I find that a lot of jazz education nowdays is book-based too. when you go to an improv class, you are most likely going to be working out of a method book, and you end up doing very little amount of transcription.

I am not blaming abersold for the way people play, I am just mentioning the point of view of the people who are critical of abersold and other academic approach to jazz, and although I am not as extreme, they do make a fair point.

I know this is not a very popular point of view, but at the same time I thought it was something worthwhile to bring to attention. Like I said, I was very surprised to hear about their views too, but it did make me wonder why the way I am learning jazz is so different from how they learned.

I am getting a feeling that people are misunderstanding this post as an attack on abersold.. I am not blaming abersold for what is or isn't happening in jazz education, I am just presenting viewpoints that is critical of his teaching method by very accomplished players. they have very different learning method.. and using their method is a very different learning experience.

There's another Jeff Clayton story I heard from his students that sheds light to this idea. When he was auditioning for Stevie Wonder's band, instead of reading the horn chart, he decided to learn them all off the records by playing along with them, and apparently that was one of the big reason he got the gig.

I think he tells his students that story to urge his students to learn most stuff by ear if not everything.

Do I agree with everything they say? no, can you work on both methods? yes. Do I use leadsheets? yes but not as often as I used to. The bottom line for me is, isn't it curious that these great players learned jazz very differently from how most of us did through abersold books?

because the fact most people play from books has nothing to do with Aebersold who encourage actually musicians to play by ear and transcribing.

well, isn't is somewhat contradicting that he encourages people to transcribe and at the same time offers transcription books and lead sheets? The point is debatable, but what these people are saying is that these books get in the way of the kind of learning necessary for jazz musicians

It doesn't necessary have to be about abersold, it could be other method books too. It seems like there is a tendency to learn jazz from books now days, and I think that is what some people are not happy about. I just picked abersold because that is the most popular example.

I get the impression that a lot of older players learned everything by ear at first, stealing ideas and learning tunes from records. And maybe they are worried about people missing out on that kind of learning experience.

Some of the teachers I had encouraged me to play along with actual recordings instead, because for them abersolds just seemed empty, it didn't have the vibe, the energy, and the interaction that goes on in actual playing.

I also noticed that these people are extremely adept at picking things by ear, they can literally learn a new tune by playing it couple of times with the band without music.. I am guessing that their ability is result of learning tunes by ear and not using lead sheets.


I can't provide any scientific proof, but it does seem like learning music with that method will make you a very different player than someone who work their stuff out with books.

Like I said, this is not my own opinion, this is something I heard from several very respectable jazz musicians. I found it very surprising, but it also shed new light on how one learns jazz.

Jamey is a shrewd businessman, that's for sure, and I certainly can't fault him for providing a full spectrum of jazz education materials. I don't know if his motive was to change the world or to change the face of jazz education, but it's difficult to argue that he hasn't been providing materials that educators and students want to buy.

On the "aural memory" thread, I posted a link to Ran Blake's article "The Primacy of the Ear." I highly recommend spending about 5 minutes skimming that article, no matter who you are or your stage of development.

In fact, here is another link to a very similar article by Ran Blake:
Third Stream and the Importance of the Ear

Guy,

Thanks for the article, its great. I can definitely relate to what ran blake is saying, and it sums up a lot of what I am trying to say.

I remember when i was in school, students were taught to play arpeggios and scales over chord changes, and there was very little ear work done, at least not to the extent that Ran Blake or others have. a lot of student didn't 'discover' this school of thought unless they were lucky enough to find the right teachers.

I can't judge whether what Jamey Abersold did is right or wrong, but I can understand why some people would disagree with what he is doing.

I wish i could find John Clayton's article on jazz education.. it was published in downbeat magazine couple of years ago.

Etcetra,

to me, playing is training your ear.
When you play a C chord, you learn to hear it.
When you play G7 --> CM7, you learn to hear that progression.
When you play a whole tone scale for the first time, only then do you hear it in records.
The day you play a particular scale on a particular chord is when you start to hear it on records.
One day you play a George Shearing transcription, and all of a sudden, next time you listen to Shearing, you hear 10 times more stuff.

I had a classical teacher who used to dazzle me with crazy sight-reading skills. I brought jazz sheets that I was seriously struggling with, and he'd say "let me hear it", and he'd just play it.
I asked that same teacher if he does transcriptions, and he said they were a waste of time to him. I said, well how to you play this? And I played my CD. (Yvan Cassar on Cantaloup Island). He found the key it was in (no perfect pitch), then just repeated the same line, explaining it was the sound of 3 scales blah blah blah...
He simply said: "I've played those scales over these chords before".

I wouldn't discard practicing scales / chords over chords.

the whole music is all about the ear, hearing and improvisation - books have nothing to do with music besides that we use them for recalling something been played e.g. 100 year ago, but playing is all about hearing. I agree most people and even musicians got this wrong and use books for everything but it's because ear training is not easy in the beginning and people are lazy and they like shortcuts. Again Aebersold is doing nothing wrong selling books, it's business - is Mc Donald's doing wrong selling junk food???
If people are stupid (and 93.75% are) so why not to use it.

With my NEC/Blake/Earobics background, I put it in a slightly different manner:

Music is all about internalization (what my jr. high school band director called "singing it in your head"). The best way to internalize music is with your ears, and not your eyes.

(that last sentence rankles some piano teachers)

But it's a struggle with my own kid. He's been taking piano lessons forever, and has been studying tenor sax for the last year and a half. He does work on jazz tunes, and I've made sure his iPod is filled with playlists of the things he works on, and of pianists, and of tenor saxists. But he doesn't listen unless I push him into it. It frustrates me! Like "can't you tell that LISTENING IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART!"

I'm kind of being sarcastic here (with just a smidgen of truth...), but I realize part of this is my problem. I don't use music as "sonic wallpaper" -- I don't have stuff on in the background all the time. I prefer, and my family prefers, a somewhat quiet background. I do listen, but only when I can focus on something. Even though he has an iPod, he doesn't tend to listen to music on it -- he uses it for videos and games, and as an alarm clock.

this is actually same what I said, hearing occurs in you head internally and it's essential to be able play what you hear not the opposite.

That's the first piece of advice I got when I returned to the piano, and it's served me well.

If you're reading a good ear training book, they will make the point that the benefit of training your ear is to make it easier to "play what you hear."

I just today saw a picture of Guy Lombardo, taken in 1947. He was leaning back in his chair, feet propped up, eyes closed, and he was in an empty ballroom, sitting in front of the empty band stand. The caption explained that he was contemplating a new arrangement, trying to hear it before he wrote it.

I was at CSUN while Leach was still active, and recall at times he was rather condescending to rhythm section players. Not just me...he was particularly brutal on drummers...but I digress.

My peers used all available tools - including Abersold play alongs in learning jazz. For myself, I learned first learned jazz by transcribing Bill Evans recordings. It was painful....very painful in the beginning, but over time it got easier.

Others I knew started out with Abersold and then learned to transcribe later. I found them helpful when I couldn't find a bass player and drummer to jam with when I was working on tunes like Giant Steps and Countdown. My point being that one should use whatever is at their disposal to help the process.

Abersold can also be useful for beginning improvisers it terms of keeping track of form and hearing chord changes. Just as long as they don't rely on them exclusively and not develop transcription skills.

While learning jazz is and always will be an aural tradition, I don't see any reason why one shouldn't make use of technology to help the learning process.

The JA system has been an invaluable tool in my development as a jazz keyboardist/pianist and I don't think I would have achieved as much progress in my study without the source. I also have many other study methods, classical, Bach and jazz books. I spend a lot of time listening to a variety of music and I do spend a fair amount of time transcribing ideas off of jazz recordings, but not necessarily doing an entire takedown and writing it out. I get bits and pieces and then try to digest the solo elements and see if i can filter it in my own direction.

One thing I get out of JA play alongs are the great rhytmn section players like Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, Hal Galper, Steve Davis and Mark Levine, their concepts in comping and groove. I get many ideas just listening to how they interpret a tune.

I have always recommended JA system to serious jazz students like the Rhytmn Changes book and a few others that include common standard tunes everyone calls at jam sessions.

The system is just another set of tools, but not the only one that provides a good study guide to learn more about jazz and how to learn to playing. It works for me

katt

I wish it was that easy.. I am not discouraging playing scales/arpeggios over chords, but the problem with a lot of people don't know 'how' to use them and they don't necessary hear them just because they play them..

There are so many college students who can play apreggios/scales/pattern in their sleep, and their playing is really boring and unmusical. there are people who learned patterns/licks out of books, and they can play them, but when they use it in tunes it sounds so out of context.

Ran Blake talks about listening to record over and over again and picking everything by ear in his article.. its a very slow process esp if you dont write them down. All I can tell you is that it's a very different kind of learning experience, its even different than transcribing something yourself and learning to play. You have to rely completely on your ear to learn.

I am starting to do that more and I am seeing benefits of that kind of learning. Whenever i use abersold (which is not very often), I can figure out changes to a tune within couple of minutes, and it became much easier to pick stuff up by ear. it also helped with my sight-reading too.

In that respect, I can see how lead-sheets can be redundent and unnecessary, and I can see why people would urge against using them.. reading lead sheet can become a clutch.. why not make at habit of not using it at all from the beginning?

I know saxophonist Steve Coleman follows the African aural tradition...

Here's Ran Blake, pretty dark:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjIZFvk5_JU

i don't think anyone is against transcribing, but it's more about to what degree should the music be learned by ear, and that's probably where the divide is between Jamey Abersold's approach and Ran Blake's approach. It may be harder to take the latter approach, but maybe in the long run its better.

Of course learning (memorizing) by ear is musically preferable, it internalizes the music in a different way, but it takes more time. I can usually memorize a melody, its changes and form in about 15 minutes by looking at a lead sheet. By ear it seems to take a lot longer to memorize a melody, its changes and form. Managing your time is part of the situation and with hundreds of tunes to learn there are only so many hours in a day. So using a lead sheet can speed up the process.

It's funny, but when I do a takedown of a tune by ear, I will remember it better than if i just have a lead sheet, because sometimes using the lead sheet, I will not work on memorizing the tune, just relying on the written page.

I started out as a total one handed rock n roll organ ear player then struggled to learn how to read music as a beginning piano student at Berklee years later. I even remember the first song I learned by ear and that was Stand By Me, the basic I VI IV V progression in C I think, the original key. We had an old console very out of tune piano, that my brother used to take lessons on when I was a kid. So possibly just hearing my brother play subliminally poured piano music in my ears.

Apparently my father heard me playing Stand By Me in the basement piano, came down and noticed I had no sheet music. He asked me how I learned this simple tune and I told him I got it off the record. I then asked him if he would help me buy a Farfisa compact organ and amplifier for Christmas, which he did and I have been playing and practicing ever since

katt

that does make sense, and in some ways more practical to use lead sheet. I guess the people I mentioned work at a very different level with respect to ears. I heard this one band play a rather complicated 32 bar tune, and the bass player learned it within matter of minutes.. it only took couple of choruses for him to play the tune.

I had a chance to talk to him later. He was playing LH voicings for C7 with his right hand, and he was showing me how he can play any note of the c7 chord to make a different chord, and went on to talk about how you can literally play anything over the changes if everyone in the ear had to ear to follow.

It's probably not a level most people get to, nor should one expect to be at that level, but It was interesting to hear about the kinds of possiblities that these great musicians are hearing in their music.

This reminds me of keith jarrett's trio.. they can litearlly go anywhere with a tune because of their ears.

nitekatt2008z,

thats a good point . its amazing how much of what you learn sticks to you when you learn it by ear, its almost impossible to forget, whereas anything I remember off leadsheet is prone to memory slips.

Also learning by ear helped me to recognize patterns in tunes harmonically.. unless its a very difficult tune you pretty much expect it to go to certain places. It's one thing to know by theory that a tune usually goes to its IV, V or relative key, but its another thing to hear it.

You know a lot of the masters, like Dick Hyman, recommend getting the original sheet music and learning a tune that way. But of course listen to as many different recorded versions as possible. I remember seeing both Hank Jones and Horace Silver in the mid 1980's performiung with lead sheets for everything on their music stands.

And if you ever want to see that Farfisa organ again, here it is, being ransomed on ebay, of all places, for a $375 opening bid:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-60s-FARFISA-...%3A1%7C294%3A50

please don't compare bass part to piano part,
bass player has easy path...no chords, no voicing,
mostly roots and fifths... :p

delirium,

I am sure this guy is able to play the chords on piano if you asked him to....he is well aware of the chord quality of each chords. for me, figuring the tune out isn't so bad once i know the bass notes, unless the chord is exotic.. I really doubt that bass players has it easier than us in that respect

I have some Dick Hyman books. He is a fine teacher/performer and has some lessons clips on youtube. I think he is based in NYC and has students

katt