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Knotty, I just checked out emusic. What's the deal with it? I always get suspicious when I'm told I can cancel at any time.

I'm really excited for you having your own studio. That would be ideal! Me, I've got an instrument in every corner, but you can't get them together.

A little blog post for the new year ---

After passing the 5 year mark of learning Jazz, I'd like to describe what happens at this stage. First of all, the improvements in my playing seem to be geometric and I sound different now than even a couple of months ago. I attribute this a teacher's guidance as it focuses my practice on the things necessary to take the next step.

Back in October, I was focused on building up my speed. Before I started, I would never take a tune much above 150bpm. That was my comfort zone. A little bit because of watching Dave Solazzo and how relaxed he plays, I challenged myself to improve speed. And I realized that speed can't be developed until you really are able to relax everything but the active finger during playing. Easy enough at slow tempo but usually causing lock-ups at 250bpm. Now here in the New Year, I'm pretty relaxed playing at 220bpm, which is a professional level tempo.

Then the next thing my teacher focused me on is the Time issue once again. The difference between professional players and what I can play is time. The precision of swing and the ability to create the feel of swing is time control. Although I could play well enough, it wasn't at the 'rock-steady' level that pros play at. So I've just been heavily focused on exercises on refining my time. A month later, even my articulation changed. Didn't I say that swing is based on time control? Well it's true. I'm not done with this yet, but the improvements have been amazing. I've said this before and repeat it: you cannot swing well until you perfect your time.

The other thing I've worked on in the last few months is my Left hand. In a way, a weak LH also screws up time so they're all interconnected under the "technique" heading. Different muscles are building in my LH. I've been trying to improvise daily with my LH while comping with the RH. This is tiresome for my brain so I only do a little bit of it a day. But the dexterity change in my LH has been amazing too. It's not up to RH standards, but from where it came from, it's quite a jump. This is a more long term project and involves Hanon (not usually my preferred but useful here) and contrary scales.

The final focus recently has been the enhancement of my Jazz vocabulary. For this, I've engaged in a long-span study of Chick Corea, something that would not even be possible years ago due to the complexity and speed of what he does. But I discovered that plenty of what he does is the mainstay of Modern Jazz (intervallic playing, quartals, diminished scales, substitutions). I know all these in theory, but closely following a transcription of Chick and trying to play the line like he does just exposes some interesting patterns. I'm not a "lick" guy so my study is slower and more intellectual so I can apply it to anything.

So all in all, it was quite a successful 2009. If anyone has issues with the same things I worked on here, let me know and I'll pass on what I did to get past these limitations.

Happy New Year to all and let's get to the next level in 2010!

Wow. Jazzwee, what an honour to have such a great teacher, eh? Your progress is a real inspiration. I suppose, the bottom line is, there are no short-cuts, but if you stick at something, you get better.

TLT, there are absolutely no short-cuts. But it's like a staircase. You build on it a skill at a time. If anything, a teacher makes sure you're not focusing your time on things you already know. It's always an identification of a focus. I try to do the same here when I'm asked for advise. There's A-Z, but maybe I will suggest you work on E first.

There is no doubt that improvising in Jazz (or Blues) is a complex deal. Creating one's own music at millisecond speed cannot be a simple skill. But if you don't get ahead of yourself, it does pay off as the skill cannot disappear once mastered.

BTW - some of these skills might take years for some to develop. But with intense focused practice, I'm accomplishing them in a matter of a few months. I think that's really the point. This stuff can and does get done faster with guidance.

So I've reached the level of a reasonable passable jazz player in 5 years (a hard slog no doubt). Without guidance, I have no doubt that 15 years would not have been enough. I do think the teacher matters. Since most don't have one, I have shared what I know so that you do it closer to 5 than to 15...

I wouldn't mind it taking 15 years to get to your standard, at my current level of committment. But, within the next 15 years I do hope to be in a better position to get proper lessons myself.

My annual blog:

A year ago I got a guitar, started learning to play it. I first heard about '12 bar blues' and was amazed to find that it might finish on a 7th chord. Then I went back to the piano and learned how to play blues on that.

I've become acqainted with what jazz is. I can 'swing' with the RH, get the accents on the offbeats and keep legato, but the subtleties of swing ratio elude me. I can improvise with the RH, and keep the LH going, but only at a very, very simple level. I've got a fair idea of what's possible harmony-wise, but I can't harmonise or re-harmonise at any kind of speed.

At one point, when I set out on the piano, it was my ambition to be able to improvise on piano at the same level as I was able on guitar. Now I would say I can do that.

I can't say I have specific aims for the next year. But I do want to get better at each of these:
blues
jazz
rock
re-harmonising
improvising

It would be fine for me if, at the end of the year, I am the same technically as I am now. My technique just now is mostly adequate to do what I want to do, until someone persuades me otherwise. It would just be good to 'release' that technical ability in more creative ways, than just playing the notes on the page.

TLT, mentions something that I wanted to make clear on learning to swing/"swing ratios", etc.

In a way, swing is connected to several things: (1) Playing evenly and in time, and (2) Playing a wider range of tempos.

If you never reach a tempo beyond, let's say 120bpm, then you only get one aspect of swing: the hard swing, closer to triplet (heavier on the long-short). It's only when one reaches a tempo of 150bpm and higher that you get a different sense of this because at that tempo, it will be actually quite difficult to swing with an extreme ratio. At 200bpm, there is no swing ratio, it's quite even.

I only say this because over the course of this thread, that has been discussed but sometimes the context is different. For someone trying to "slowly" execute a tune at 100bpm, you practically have no choice but to have an extreme swing ratio of long-shorts. Even offbeat accents cannot be done at a very fast tempo (200bpm and above). In fact, at the higher tempos, there's more use of "short-longs" instead (which has a delayed feel).

So perhaps the deal is to reach "150bpm" speed first in improvising, although that can potentially be reached only by a beginner by using fewer eighth notes bursts. Even then, the difference in swing can be apparent.

In some cases, many here have focused on playing tunes only at a slow tempo. So instead of being focused on swing, perhaps the question is raising the tempo, which then opens up more of an understanding of swing feel.

Playing even a 'Donna Lee' head at these various tempi (100-150bpm) should make this clearer.

jazzwee - this is so helpful. Please continue to share your experiences. Even if it's a short excerpt month on month. I've not found a jazz teacher yet in my part of the world.

Hi EltonRach, sure! I never know if anyone reads what I say so thanks for the feedback.

+1

From the reading counts, I've always though this thread had so many lurkers, but never confirmed. Thanks for coming out and saying a word or two! It's good to know the room isn't empty

I suppose the upshot of this is not to worry about swing ratio until I'm playing fast? I'm asking partly because playing fast really isn't on my list of priorities. I need to be able to play slow first.

150bpm is considered 'Medium Tempo' and is really the bulk of Jazz playing. As in any training required to play faster, one should always play slow to perfect technique and play fast to recognize tensions. You can't ever play fast just starting slow.

Swing is a "time-based" technique so I was just saying that to fully learn swing requires the ability to reach a "standard" tempo because that's where you get the expected jazz 'sound'.

It is not necessary to shoot for a tempo beyond 150bpm as a lot of jazz can be played with that tempo in mind. But limiting oneself to an area below 150bpm is like closing oneself to what Jazz is all about. You'd be stuck at Ballad tempo.

A lot of masters play tunes at 100bpm, but what you don't realize is that they do that so they can add 16th notes. So in essence, they're really playing at 200bpm 8th notes. At 150bpm, you can fully play eighth notes. Eighth notes are the foundation of Jazz playing.

In the medium tempo zone, the range is between 120bpm at the low end and 150bpm at the higher end. At 150bpm, it's pretty difficult to play 16th notes so at this tempo, you pretty much hear mostly eighth notes.

So when I talk about swing and all the different discussions since the beginning of this thread, I had 150bpm in mind. I view 120bpm as just a transitional phase of technique building. That's not a stopping point.

I mentioned earlier that my teacher will hit on a weakness and focus on that and that's when progress develops. I've noticed that with everyone here, the approach has been to do jazz at very slow tempos. So I've identified that as a general weakness.

I recommend highly that everyone learning jazz to shoot for practicing at 150bpm in addition to slower tempos. We have to get out of our comfort level.

In my case, my comfort level was 150bpm and I have now pushed this to 200bpm, and now I push myself to 250bpm. When I do, I see improvement.

The issue with 150bpm is not just swing. Improvising at this speed requires an awareness of tempo relating to the changes. You can't get lost. It isn't as much about using long streams of eighth notes as it is remaining in time and not losing one's place in the form. The faster you go, the more confused one gets in relation to the form.

Practice needs to be focused on hitting underdeveloped areas.

I've been working on Chick Corea stuff lately. Still making "Matrix" a nightly learning project, like an Etude, getting my fingers familiar with his moves.

So today, I just started Spain at a whim. Spain has always seemed intimidating with Chick doing duets with Rubalcaba or Hiromi on this. Then lately, we see that 13 year old kid playing this.

Well surprisingly, it wasn't difficult at all. I would say it is a fraction of the difficulty of Windows. And lots of stuff in Matrix or Windows are applicable to Spain as well. Chick loves the keys B, E, D. In contrast, a lot of standards or in Eb, Ab, Db. So it takes some getting used to when starting with Chick stuff.

I was just on Day 1 of Spain and I was playing it already...

It's really been fun rotating around different masters and learning a thing or two from each.

Hi jazzwee!

I would be lying if I said I know the numbers you are talking about. But I'm glad you still feel you're making progress.

It is fun to chop and change around, and sometimes progress seems to happen really quickly.

I've been having fun with Blue Monk, and I'll make a recording and post it here when I get a chance. I'm not sure I'm actually expecting progress - though I play every day, it's often not for long. I just feel I have such great material at my fingertips now, I really need to make good use of it. Still focussing on blues.

I've done some learning from real music using Transcribe for guitar, but not yet for piano. I suppose that's next...

Blue Monk is great -- but quite difficult to do. I still fumble with that one.

The reason is that the "official" version by Monk had you doing the melody in thirds. Moving chromatically in thirds is really hard. Do you do it in thirds or just a single note melody. Then by the time I add the Bass in the LH, I'm confused already

I can't say I practice it hardly nowadays but I did play it at the thanksgiving party at my house. Once I get past the head, then I can have fun with the solo portion. Apparently I'm doing it better nowadays since I got a request to play an Encore.

TLT, as far as I'm concerned, I treat Blues just like Jazz. Same rules, same swing, same effort so choose whichever pleases you most.

The nice thing about Blues is that there are several melodies that can be used as an alternate over the same Bb Blues.

AND -- when you get more advanced, the options to play on these dominants are quite expansive compared to a normal tune. So you don't have to be limited by a Blues scale.

Blue Monk (Thelonius Monk, arr Tim Richards) - single notes, not 3rds, I'm afraid

http://www.box.net/shared/90t9n0lchl

What I like about it is it's relaxed enough. I get a few quavers, and then I get to rest in between and talk myself into the next lot of quavers.

As for improvising over that baseline (that's written out, by the way) - well, I don't know, but if I try anything really daring, like more than one note in a bar, then the LH screws up. I've decided that's par for the course.



That's the general idea, only some is more honky-tonk, which is also fun. But with blues, the general harmonic idea is more predictable and familiar. Meanwhile I'm practicing scales and modes for jazz. It just seems to take forever for the finger-patterns and sounds to go in. If only I'd done some of this years ago...

There's actually a lot of good material in the Richard's blues book, which I had overlooked. The beginning is quite uninspired, but it does get better.



You mean - using notes from the dominant chord I'm playing over?

tlt - how fun Blue Monk is! I think you swing nicely, tho I'm not a particularly sophisticated listener. But I enjoyed this a lot.

Cathy

TLT - very nice - sounds like you had a good time playing it!

To celebrate your fine music, here are a few I am working on in the blues style.

Truncated Blues

Short and Sweet

Another Stint

Glen


Jan 2010 Selections

Why Should I Care
Two Minute Intersticies[/size]
[size:8pt]Intermission Solace[/size]
[size:8pt]Misty (Exerpt)
Biting Cold 1
Stormy Weather
What's New
Nature Boy
Stint in C
Venerate

Thanks guys!

And - play it again, Glen!

I would love to play like that, Glen, that's a real inspiration. Beautiful, every one of them.

How do you do it?