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

TLT, who composed "Lost Valley"? Is it one of these million standards I don't know? I didn't find it in my Real Book.

It's by Tim Richards. It's on this album apparently:

http://www.timrichards.ndo.co.uk/spiritlevel.html

I confess I'm tempted to buy.

I've been working some more on the transcribed Horace Silver solo. If I can pull this off (and I'm not sure I can), then you take back every negative word about this book. Is it a deal, jazzwee?

It's on Rhapsody. I think this link expires after a while, but for now you ought to be able to point and click a bit and hear it here:

http://rhaplinks.real.com/rhaplink?rhapid=6340361&type=playlist&title=Playlist&from=real


Tim Richards wrote it.

Ed

Only available in the US, unfortunately.

TLT, it's not that I have anything negative about a book like Tim Richards. Obviously it has nice arrangements of tunes. But you and I know that Jazz is about improvising. So, I personally avoid playing written jazz music. I might copy it stylistically as an exercise but I could do that with any record.

So to me the only book necessary (that shows actual music and not theory lessons), is a Fake Book. The rest, I spend time just listening.

As an example, Green Dolphin Street is a basic standard that beginning jazz students study. It was one of the first tunes I learned. But it's not that easy to solo on.

If I flopped the lead sheet in front of you, would you be able to play based on what you learned from Tim Richards' book? Could you play it two handed and then shift to comping one handed? Could you comp it with just two handed chords if someone is singing the vocals? Could you solo on it?

I haven't seen this book, mind you so maybe it's more complete than I might think. So you can always prove me wrong here.

But hopefully, you can see the difference in what you learn from a teacher. I'm hoping that you will learn to bring this skills out from inside you.

BTW - I saw the Lost Valley tune on Itunes by Tim Richards right after I posted. So I figured it was an original of his.

Good point. I've been mulling this one over today - where I want to take jazz and what I want to get out of it. I think the chances of me gigging with a fakebook are about nil.

Certainly I do much better with an arrangement, but I suppose that's to be expected given my previous training. And I don't think it's a bad thing necessarily to read from sheet music - I'm more concerned with the musical output, but I can see it makes me less versatile as a musician.

Maybe I should just start harmonising as I used to. Simply, not jazz.

But it's not in the gigging TLT. What are my own chances of gigging at some restaurant?

I never said you should stop playing written arrangements. You are correct that it gives you musical output now.

I'm just telling you though that the feeling of being able to play anything at any time without anything to look at is such a rush. You're creating your own music then. At some point, who even needs a fakebook?

And I've watched you progress so I know you're capable of this.

It's probably the reliance on written music that holds you back. It's fine to do both. One being a technical training. If you want to make significant progress, I would spend 80% of the time on improvising.

I think playing from sheet is an important part of ear training.
If you can read music, then I think it's totally fine to pick up an arrangement and play it.
Pick up a Garland arrangement, and I am sure you will absorb the language much faster. Same for bebop, pick up the Omnibook and you will absorb Parker blues much faster.

I think you need a balance of this, strict technique, transcriptions and improvisation.

If you only play from sheet, that's all you'll know how to do. Certainly, there is more to music than playing someone else's.

Always good to get different opinions.

For me, I was always so great at memorizing, so dreadful at sight-reading, it feels really strange to be on the 'I love sheet music' side of the street.

I've just been improvising. Honestly. I mean, honestly, honestly.

I don't know about 80%, but I've been doing an awful lot of scales lately. LH's beginning to keep up now.

I almost forgot about this thread.

When I was just starting out, and I was given these rules on how to improvise (just like I'm telling you), I felt like I was creating no product. Everything sounded bad. But by repetitively doing the routine of 3rds, etc., the ears pick it up. Then something will just change. But like anything else, it doesn't happen fast. In piano, it comes in waves as you know. So you just keep plugging along and training for it and it just comes.

When I say improvising, there's many parts. Changing voicings, changing rhythms. It's not just notes. But you just try out something different every day.

I don't know if improvising is something that can only be done by some people or not. When I started I was able to improvise. Badly maybe but I was able to create melodies. Is this a requirement? I don't know.

Maybe we can ask Knotty and Riddler who both can seem to come up with melodies.

Can you invent a melody? (forgetting the chord progression for a moment).

It would be sad if it cannot be learned, especially by otherwise musical people. I'm of the feeling that it can be learned. People who do licks do it quite mechanically actually. All I do here is explain it more intellectually so it can be duplicated in any key.

Jazzwee, I hadn't noticed this last post, but will reply to it later.

For now I have some recordings to share.

Song for my Father (Horace Silver) as transcribed by Richards:
http://www.box.net/shared/agp6jsvag8

Autumn Leaves, honest improvising, focus on 3rds, but with a bit of give:
http://www.box.net/shared/pn384je37h

TLT, you are just excellent at playing these written pieces, even for such quick work, you've got it rhythmically close! BRAVO! Use these as learning opportunities to see what he does with certain chords.

Of course this is more Blues style than Latin. But there are so many versions of Song for My Father...

That AL is SUCH AN IMPROVEMENT! It sounds like real improvising. Then I can hear your ear taking over later so it's even better. At the beginning you were relying on the 3rds, then you took over. That is exactly what I hoped would happen.

In my commentary above on improvising, I said I don't know if it can be learned by someone without some inate ability at this. My teacher did it with me with 3rds just like I did in this thread. He said it works. It certainly works for me and other teachers use this style as well (3rds).

But if anyone is looking for proof, IT'S RIGHT HERE!

I think, it's like gravity. Certain tones cause motion. Dominant chords want resolution. 3rds define harmony.

THIS IS CAUSE FOR CELEBRATION!! YAY!

Not totally sure I understand the question. I will tell you that I think everyone will have a slightly different approach to things. For me, the exercise of composition is the exercise of improvising, but you are allowed to go back. It takes a while to hear chord changes to un-familiar tunes. But with time, you hear it, and you can hear a melody in your head. I have listened to Jazz since I was a baby, so much of the vocabulary is in there somewhere.

The good thing about the composition exercise is that you get to apply all the rules that make up a great solo.
Number 1 is to create a melody, something that you could sing, or play on your horn, versus something crazy. Create a conversation, you talk, I respond. And apply rule that will make the solo interesting. A phrase in only as good as the phrase that came before and the phrase that comes next. You want to get used to playing long lines. The composition will allow you to do this, and make sense, much more easily. Then when you improvise on the same tune, things come more naturally.

Overall, you want to tackle things slowly and easily, so you can understand what you do. So even a complicated topic such as crazy scales and modes, can become very easily, if you work on one scale over one chord for so long.

Of course it can be learned. Some people will pick it up more easily than others. I would say the main factors are age, and the amount of music you have absorbed in your life.

Great solo TLT, that's really coming along!

++

Thanks for listening, knotty and jazzwee! I have been totally hooked on Song for my Father. I could hear the beat strongly even when I wasn't playing it (damn, where is that third hand?). I just love being able to play that. As you say jazzwee, bluesy in places, almost good ol rock 'n roll.

As for improvising, it felt quite comfortable doing what I was doing. There was no point of panic - what am I doing next? If in doubt - hit the 3rd.

I don't know about whether everyone can learn to improvise, or whether only some can. Imo, most people can learn to do most things, given the chance.

What I have noticed is that before I can improvise, I need to feel safe. By that, I mean that I need to feel like whatever I do will be OK. I imagine it's the same for everybody. You can't improvise if you feel you're going to make a mistake and everyone will laugh at you.

But everyone's different. So me, for example. I have many years of learning to play the right notes, a pretty finely tuned musical ear, and quite high standards for myself. I can sit alone in a room, with no recorder on, and still feel 'not safe' to improvise - because if I won't like the sound, then I'd rather not do it.

My son, on the other hand, has little aural training, little experience of having to play the right note, and generally thinks he's God's gift to music. Put him on a stage in front of a thousand people, tell him to improvise, and he'll feel safe.

That's one reason I think this system of learning by posting recordings might actually be quite good. I can make a recording, and if I don't like it, I just delete it. So I can play (and get feedback) without the pressure of having a teacher sitting right next to me.

So that's my tuppence-worth on improvising.

Knotty, the gist of my question, which TLT has elaborated on, is if improvising is inate for you. The difficulty in my answering this globally for every person is that I know that improvising (to some degree) comes naturally to me.

Now of course, improvising at the jazz level came from honing skills and ear but I had some built in skills for the basics. When I was young, I would harmonize the alto in a choir instinctively.

In this thread, we are trying to each everybody, and TLT, fortunately for me, you learn very quickly. But is doable for everyone? Knotty, I'm just trying to get at where it comes from for you and Riddler, just to compare notes.

I've not met a 3-year old who doesn't sing little ditties to him or herself.

My kids do not like to sing But they can create melodies on the piano.

I know I was playing by ear when I was a little kid, and that eventually evolved into a primitive form of improvising.

That gets me to thinking: maybe the first step in learning to improvise should be ear training (???).

Just a thought.

I liked Knotty's thoughts above, too, especially about the relationship between improv and composition.

Ed

Thanks Ed. Now one would think that if you play by ear a little, that you could just plunk down an experimental series of notes (a primitive improvisation as you say), and then at some point, one hears the random notes as a remembered pattern and is able to duplicate it.

Aside from the concept of "hearing", which I believe is a necessary skill to improvising, maybe the rest of it is just letting go of structure.

In the 'Reharm' thread, you can see some being cautious and then you see others being experimental. Maybe improvising is a natural skill that is impaired by the feeling of picking out the "wrong notes"?

At least as discussed here, we give a range of notes that cannot be wrong (chord tones) so we can initially limit that fear factor. Since the original Classical composers were improvisers, maybe this is just a training thing. From a young age, children are taught to follow a fixed musical score in Piano.

Guitar players (like me) on the other hand learn to just "Jam". It's just a theory...