well this biab is only for desktop/laptop, not so easy to take with. But yes, its superior to iRealB especially has the drums played by real drummers. There's also RealBook libraries out there and it's really easy to edit chords, etc.

Well I'm thinking only in the sense of creating practice backing tracks (which I can then load on Itunes and play on my phone. At least in the 2007 version the RealDrums already existed. Though I can't remember how realistic they were.

One renders the track(s) as audio, import to an iThingie.

So do I need to buy a new version just to do drums + bass? i.e. did the RealDrums change since 2007 version? Or just added the other "Real" instruments?

Some of the features you're saying are very interesting but I'm thinking only about drums + bass right now.

well, the midi sounds are still there. but the realtracks/realdrums are different. much better imo. also, the app itself is vastly improved.

Jazzwee - there is a BIAB ipad/iphone app. that can be used in conjunction with the actual BIAB program running on your desk or laptop computer.
I agree with Chris - it is a great tool for quick generation of a bass and drums backing track - and the realtracks/realdrums are so much more realistic than if created by the usual midi sound-sets that are available.
Doug

Thanks Doug -- I noticed that app requires Version 11. Anyway, sounds like a good idea when making a more serious recording. I don't know how useful the Iphone App is though since it's just playing audio files. Might as well stick to Itunes.

I thought your beginning was really cool. Then when you started just playing continous eighth notes was where I think it lost it. And IMO, tension and release still has to be built and phrasing still should be as interesting.

Intervallic, like the initial portion of what my teacher played in ATTYA (in the link I had before - http://www.box.com/shared/k13ibez7c0 ), simply had an unpredictable nature to the sound. The harmony is still the same (though he was doing a reharm there). Listen to the first few seconds just for his phrasing style.

I'm not sure who's the pre-eminent specialists in this kind of playing. To me McCoy Tyner had a specific kind of intervallic that was very dense so it gave you a particular harmonic feel. Here the phrasing variety is absent I think.

My teacher is well known for this style around here, but he doesn't overuse it either. When we were practicing it though, he was demonstrating that you really have to jump around a lot so it was practiced by always going back to the root of the chord (hand placement wise) just to force movement in practice.

In the Pilc video, I think he's implying that a lot of new students are doing this but in a mindless way. I think it is really difficult to this and "hear" it. Which is probably why I don't have the guts to play it.

I think it would be interesting to hear a switching, from playing normally and then this. The unpredictable intervals sounds like it raises the tension to me. And so that could be used to effect.

I agree with a comment Beeboss made that any device, if overused sounds trite. So this is just stuff to add to the arsenal.

What's this intervallic playing we're talking about?

Knots, you know how the regular vocabulary for jazz has a certain predictable shape and flow? Steps, arpeggios, and an up and down movement along the keyboard.

Intervallic playing has more unpredictable intervals. There's a larger proportion of larger intervals such as 4ths,5ths and 6ths and less stepwise movement.

McCoy Tyner, for example, had a very specific movement in mind which was perfect fourths and fifths and depending on where you start on the chord, you could come up with a unique sound. McCoy's though is very recognizable and is a very specific variant.

Other stylists have come up with more unusual sounds because the intervals are not as predictable.

It's a part of what I learned and there's snippets of it in what I do, but not necessarily with intent (so it's not cohesive yet).

yeah, I hear it on the first few seconds of that clip, thanks.

Can you point to a sample where McCoy does some of what you're talking about?

Here's a guy that specializes in McCoy stuff (better to understand because you can see it). You can compress a perfect fourths quartal pattern into a pentatonic which is what he does here. It's not really so intervallic here though it could be. But sonically, it's a very recognizable sound and his patterns are kept close.

Thanks for checking that out. I agree about the tension and release and phrasing. Basically, I just don't have enough vocabulary and control with this style to know how things fit together in a predictable way so I'm just trying to think my way through it. So it ends up sounding like I'm lost or don't really know the changes. I used to have the same problem playing melodically and with bebop. While the styles are different, I've found that absorbing vocabulary, and in particular, becoming familiar with the way notes want to move in terms of tension and release, has greatly improved my ability to play better sounding stuff. Not to mention the rhythmic aspect of phrasing. I plan to go the same route with the intervalic approach... building a vocabulary through careful searching, planning, memorizing, and transcribing. But I think it was necessary to absorb alot of melodic/bebop vocabulary first because the intervalic approach builds on that foundation.

Knotty, this would be an extreme example of an intervalic approach. I'm in the process of transcribing both hands of the first 7 choruses of the solo. LH is all quartal voicings. RH is largely triad pairs and pentatonic. Oh, and it's Willie Pickens in case you missed my earlier post.

I hear you Scott. At least now when I listen to someone playing, I'm starting to become aware of the elements. I noticed though that in intervallic playing, it's less of the melodic shaping but more phrasing elements.

For example, in the ATTYA teacher's example, I know what he's playing there. There's actually no mystery to the notes (augmented triads). The mystery was how he phrased it. Since there's no real good source for this vocabulary (he's one of the pioneers of the style), it's hard to figure out.

I think standard phrasing vocabulary could be used to good effect, which you did at the beginning.

The challenge though to this style is hearing it. Man, it is difficult to hear those intervals. That's why it's easy to get lost.

There's another style of playing that's not vocabulary based. More along the 'make a motif--then develop it'. Equally unpredictable. Though again, phrasing seems to be the consistent thread from the historical vocabulary.

In the Pilc video I posted earlier. He was playing an E scale over an F Blues. How the heck do you hear that?

Scott, Willie sounded like McCoy Tyner there. Looks like he's got that style down.

BTW - I think some may say Intervallic = Pentatonic. But that's true of the McCoy Tyner style but not necessarily of intervallic in general.

Another big user of Pentatonic is Chick. Hard to recognize because he's always changing the harmony. (Figured it out from transcriptions).

This was posted before but Ahmad Jamal is doing the same thing here in many parts. Now here's a good balance I thought.

sorry, cross posted .

Jazzwee, I was thinking about what you said here... and you'll probably disagree with me on this , but...

I do hear a few cliches in the BiaB Giant Steps solos (the jazz ones... not the metal version), but most of it is what I would call vocabulary, albeit a little strange and "computery". But to me, a cliche is a widely over-used, isolated idea that is always repeated verbatim without any variation. Whereas vocabulary is mixing and matching and reshaping common, recognizable, and understood melodic relationships. There is no way to avoid this if you want to sound good.

I'm wondering if you're considering what I would call vocabulary, to be cliches. I think that if when you are playing and you hear something familiar you should try to hold on to it and understand it... not avoid it as if it were no good because it's been done before. If you only try to create your own ideas, it's like creating your own language that nobody else understands. You have to truly absorb and understand the ideas of others for a long time. Really absorb it, not just play it and forget it. And you should try to absorb and recreate the ideas of players that you admire, and not just try to emulate them by assuming you know what scales, chords, or theoretical patterns they used and then playing those scales, chords, types of patterns in the hopes that you'll sound like them. Dig in to the scales, chords and patterns and find the exact stuff they play. Then practice it... alot! You don't have to transcribe to do this, but that is one way. You just have to sit there and search for things and work them out. Don't move on from an idea until you've got it down, worked out the things you're having trouble hearing, and you can repeat it over and over. Then try to remember it and use it for awhile. I think what I'm trying to say is, don't practice improvising, practicing absorbing vocabulary. Because you can't improvise in a language you don't know. This is what I learned from Willie Pickens and what I'll continue to work on forever I'm sure.

I guess my point is, that when I hear you play, it sounds like you're trying to create your own language. I think you're missing the fundamentals of music vocabulary, not just jazz. And I wonder if it's because you're trying so hard to have your own sound. I was this way before Mr. Pickens opened my eyes.

I don't mean to go on a rant, and I'm guessing you'll likely defend your understanding of what I'm saying. But since we're here to give support, I wanted to share my thoughts.

But the basic fundamentals of music vocabulary are still there and they are the source.




Having a firm grasp of lots of vocabulary is how you learn to hear this stuff.





I just don't think that any playing that is good is without vocabulary. Where does the motif come from? The ideas for how to develop it? Also, I don't think there's anything unpredictable about intervalic playing, for those who understand it. Of course, I'm not one of those...yet.

This shows the difficulty with modal. It's really hard to shape the solo and get some tension and release going.

Anyway, there's some intervallic stuff going on here. I think there's too much stuff. In retrospect I'd simplify and maybe change rhythmically too as I progress. This is a first try though.

Footprints
http://www.box.com/s/pkenb17tu7cqqiugf4gu

Now I know why I don't like jazz.

Now I know why I love jazz.

Scott, there's a book by Shelly Berg on improvising (he's a traditional player BTW), he calls these lines YOU SHOULD PLAY "cliches". So he didn't subscribe any negative meaning to it.

And neither do I. The good news is that I recognize them and I know them to be vocabulary. I'm not intending to defend anything since I just spent the last couple of months learning Keith Jarrett. So I intend to soak it in.

There's no disagreement about soaking it in and learning it. But no teacher tells me that I have to play that way. That's all. So I still don't.

I have been looking more at looking at the structure of these "cliche" phrases and seeing what makes them sound good.

There will be a different path to my sound (compared to traditional methodology) and eventually it will all meet in the middle since I am spending the time to learn the vocabulary. But don't expect me to quote some Charlie Parker line because I'm not good at that. I'd rather alter my own music creation style than to recall phrases.

So you'll just have to bear with my differences. I do have top notch teachers guiding me so I'm sure they will not leave me astray. They would tell me if I'm heading in some hopeless direction. I think they all recognize that something is coming out of me that is unique and just needs to be developed.

For whatever reason, they don't seem to be worried. Maybe it's because they deal with many many jazz students every year and have some expectation of what will work out in the long run.

As much as you say that my teachers are steeped in tradition, I've lately discovered that some of it came later. In the beginning they just let themselves loose and made their own sound. One of them became a pre-eminant voice in Jazz Fusion. So there are other ways to get there.

But like I said, don't let this imply that I'm not learning vocabulary. I've been transcribing and copying and listening. So bits of this I will apply. It's only been a short while though so lots of stuff to go through.

LOL - not my kind of thing either but he does a decent job copying the style. There's no variance though. Jamal uses it tastefully.

I just want to address this specifically since this was a topic of discussion with my teacher long ago.

You seem to think of vocabulary in different terms than I do. First, the notes are clearly from a harmonic base. There's no mystery to that. It doesn't take vocabulary to come up with notes to use for a good melody if you understand the harmonic structure.

The other aspect of this is phrasing the collection of notes. I was taught different phrasing. Clearly there's a lot of influence from whoever is teaching you and that affects the sound.

So the combination of these two is a specific vocabulary.

To me, simply presenting a scale is complete absence of vocabulary. But having a vocabulary recognizable to you is a completely different issue. Perhaps your teacher required that he hear specific copying of phrasing styles and phrasing hooks such as those common in bebop.

That's not what I was taught.

We were working once on Someday My Prince will come (new tune at the time for me), and I was just playing scales. Then he said "look at this" and played this wonderful unique melody just based on the chord tones. It doesn't sound like anything in standard jazz because for one, it wasn't based on eighth notes. So there's the bias.

I wish I had the ability to create the melody that he did. It didn't come from any vocabulary though. It was based on chord tones and just an ability to construct an alternate melody.

It was beautiful. That to me is the longer term goal. I'd like to have the ability to generate those ideas. It was like sitting down and composing.

Looking for comments on this one, JW?

Go ahead Scep. Please don't hesitate next time.

I reuploaded it though and put an Aebersold backing track on it.

Ok, I've heard both versions at least twice now. The second has some good moments in it. I'm still wondering how it is that you would be able to imagine these lines, especially the ones that arpeggiate over an octave.
The phrases that sounded good were the ones that had a beginning and an ending that encompassed a small span of notes, and they also lead from the end of one to the beginning of the next, as in the note choices were leading the ear to hear what you 'should' do next. The other phrases either just ended in an odd way (outlining an unpleasant interval over the harmonic progression), or they left the ear behind a bit when the phrase carried over for too many notes, almost as if you wanted to add something else, but it turned it into a runon sentence something like I'm doing now, but I really could have finished earlier.
I'm still of the mind that no matter what you call intervallic playing, that if there is no sense of melodic content being attended to, then all you have is a series of intervals (ala Pilc's reflections).

Can you record Footprints any other way, or do they all have the 'intervalic' sound? As per our discussions, I'd still like to hear lines that have consistent melodic direction. Were you happy with this recording?
And actually, what do you play on a ballad? Have you recorded any? This may help me better understand what you're trying to do once you limit your rhythm to more quarter and half notes, with the eighth notes tying the major stopping points together.

Scep, I treat a minor blues pretty differently. You say I can't hear the melodies over an octave but I actually sat down and noodled these for days/weeks. I can hear these intervals pretty clearly. Just like I can arpeggiate perfect fourth intervals in my head for 2 octaves (which is all it is).

Sometimes I do this for a bar of a minor chord, but rarely. Usually when I see several minor chords in a row, I'm looking for it as an opportunity to sound different. If it's C-7, I'd think about times when I want it to be C-6, C-11, C-(Major). Depending on how I think of it, I tend to attack it differently. Now I did learn this. Call it vocabulary. I learned the big picture part of this and I'm implementing it my way.

I think this is the part of the sound I make that seems to bother most because it's so intentional and against all expected rules.

When I play a regular standard with just standard ii-V's and no time to linger, I will stick to a strict harmony. But once I've sat down and taken in the tune, I just let my ears tell me what to do.