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Miles solo on So What is a marvel. It's all minor-blues phrase based. His solo has two chromatic tones; a maj7th + a #4 which he uses both sparingly.
It's all root - fifth-fourth, root third fifth fourth fifth, root, third, fifth, fourth fifth . . etc

Quote from the preface:
"Music sounds good because the "rules" of the music were used correctly. Music sounds bad because they weren't. Consequently, if one copies good sounding musical ideas from the tradition of the music, one is learning the rules of how to play good music on an intuitive, not an intellectual level. Copying gets the student directly into the sound and vocabulary of the music. The history of the jazz vocabulary contains the rules of the music within it. Most of the great masters I had the good fortune to apprentice with throughout my career learned by copying and played by ear. Most, if asked to name what they played, couldn't. But they could show you how to play by hearing them night after night, playing it right, so you could hear it and through the process of trial and error, eventually emulate their playing. In this manner the history of the tradition was retained through newer generations. Each newer generation found their individual way to play it without altering its basic verities and as in African storytelling, retained its true meaning.

As this music is learned by listening and copying then understanding what you are hearing and copying is a crucial element of the learning process. Forward Motion insures that you are hearing the music correctly by copying and practicing it correctly."

Interesting, I liked it, it reconfirmed a lot of my own ideas and what I have been taught. The connection to Bach, etc. It's not so much about playing jazz as how to play good music.
Quote:
"When the articles were first published, I was sure I had come upon original research that no one else had duplicated. It wasn't until I read Albert Schweitzer's biography of Bach (J.S. Bach, Vol. 1 & 2, Dover Books) that I realized that the musical laws inherent in FM were universal. Anyone exploring this subject would come to the same conclusions that Bach and I did. The rules that govern music are universal, not affected by the passage of time, place or genre. There are concrete reasons why some music sounds better than others.

In volume 1, Pg. 312 of the Schweitzer biography is his analysis of Bach's concept of phrasing. "If we follow the principle indicated by Bach's manner of writing his phrases, we see that he usually conceives four consecutive notes as grouped in such a way that the first is detached from the others by an imperceptible break, and belongs rather to the previous group than to the one that follows." Thus not

but:


Here Hal quotes the Bach book: ""…he proves again and again that those who regard the bar-lines in Bach's music as the borders of the rhythmic factors are bound to play him unrhythmically. In a Bach theme everything surges forward to a principal accent. Till this comes all is restless, chaotic; when it arrives the tension relaxes, and at one stroke all that went before becomes clear, - we understood why the notes had these intervals and these values." And again, on page 396 of volume 2 "If we do not experience this sense of tension followed by relief, the theme has not been properly played; it has been phrased in the ordinary rhythm of the bars, instead of in its fundamental rhythm."

Imo, this is really really important in looking at why a solo does or does not work.

The opening note is a Bb (tension) going to an A (release). And just to be a nit-picker (because I'm in a nit-pickin' mood) the melody tone you mention is a fourth; not an 11th.

Chris,

Re: FM.
Perhaps I was not open minded enough. I have to say I found it really really hard to read.

Except that in the original changes there is no Em7b5. I am not sure they even had a half diminished chord back in them days (I remember an interview in which Dizzy said that all the beboppers though of that chord as a minor 6th chord with the 6th in the bass).
The original chord was a diminished chord with the maj 7th in the melody apparently.

original version ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B96ApEvaoBY

sorry to be so nit-picky

No no, don't be, us nit-pickers have to stick together . . . it's all in the details.
Thanks for that original version . . .

I know that Hal can come across as a bit of a hard-ass, but he does know what he is talking about. Have you looked at the Master-Class excerpts on YT? They are really good.

>>Have you looked at the Master-Class excerpts on YT? They are really good.
Yes and sorry, it just doesn't do it for me.
It's not even hard-ass, it's just arrogance to me.

We french people are usually well known for our arrogance, but Pilc's masterclasses for example, I find awesome. It's actual examples of stuff you can practice, and he breaks it down into chunks that make terrific sense. If you YT it, there are some full masterclasses available that he gave at NYU or something like that. It's really good stuff.

Another example of someone whom I think gives great masterclasses / workshop is Aebersold. His stuff is applicable, and makes perfect sense. It's the same type of advice you'd get from Metaphor for the Musicians for example. It's just a marinade your ear kind of approach.
It doesn't need the "I'm better than you" speech and it makes a lot of sense.

JW, I'd suggest you transcribe little bits of your own solos to see what Scott means. I've mentioned before a number of times that you tend/tended to play acceptable notes in your solos, as in technically they can be considered correct, but at times there is the element of musicality that is missing. What I'd say this is probably two things that might be absent: One is purposefully (or not so much) choosing upper structure/colour tones and then framing the lines with these notes.
When a line begins/ends on a non chord tone, then the next line begins on a non chord tone the listener's ear tends to lose the connection to the flow. For example if you are doing a Cmaj to G7 and you start a line on D and end on an A, and you do similar things with other chord groupings the ear will fatigue after a short time because it won't have any chance to 'rest' on the fundamental chord tones. This is especially true if you are outlining something that is neither a C (root) or G7 (dominant) sound.

Of course this is really hard to write about without concrete examples and there are countless ways of doing the above musically, but maybe you can see what I mean?

One thing I'd suggest to you is to start playing your chosen tunes up or down a semitone or tritone to see if it is muscle memory or your ear guiding your choices. Another thing that seems to make people more honest is to sing the lines as they play them.

Last year I decided it was time to work on my ears again and I followed the advice of (er...I can't find the name of the book... David Bergman? Jazz Musicians Guide to Creative Practicing?) where he says if you play a note you were NOT expecting, usually as the result of a wrong interval leap or scale choice, and instead of modifying the next line to suit the mistake go back and correct it. Seems like pretty simple and straight forward advice, but for years I never really did this! Now I can see the benefits of error correction and my ears have improved somewhat because of it.

Ugh. My daughter's school has a problem with nit picking these days. Nasty little insects those lice.


BTW Chris, thanks again for the lead sheet to WJM. Such a great tune.
Has anyone else played it?

Scep, it's disappointing to me if what you say is dominant in my playing, that I don't play with the intended chord tones. I make a point to listen for that. My ears, in general when I play, tell me I'm within the changes on downbeats.

What Scott showed as an example of a non-aligned solo was so far off the changes that I wouldn't find that acceptable. I would find it incredible if you said I played like that since by nature, I'm playing MOSTLY chord tones anyway. Just the probability of me not being on a chord tone would imply that either my timing was off (I'm doing approach notes on the downbeat and putting chord tones on offbeats), or I'm playing a different chord.

This is a serious problem as far as I'm concerned.

I recall the Bb was a pickup. The A was the one lined up with the chord.

But assuming this is the chord for the moment (which at least it is now commonly used), then here's an example where the main tone is not the core chord tones of 1-3-5-7.

Another example is Invitation which starts with the 9. Although here the 6 is really a chord tone because it's C-6.

I found these articles and thought they were interesting:

http://jazzadvice.com/how-to-be-mediocre/

http://jazzadvice.com/the-hidden-trap-on-the-road-to-improvement/

Any thoughts? Seems like a lot of good stuff on this site.

On Stella, I think the most important thing to understand about the melody is how it functions in the single key of Bb. It's almost entirely diatonic except for two occurances of the sharp 4 (E) and one occurance of the sharp 5 (F#). And a lot of standards are mostly diatonic in this regard. The gravity of the notes in the melody guides how the harmony unfolds, not the harmony guiding the melody. But of course, the chosen harmonies affect the "feel" of the melody with their own tonal gravities. I think that the melody's gravity pulls the underlying harmonic relationships along with it. Those "layers" of tonal relationships and the significance of their pull on each other guides the ear in recognizing coherence in the music.

Reading over what I just wrote, I'm not sure how to make this clear... but I sense that it's there and the easiest place to understand it is in classical music.

Scott, that's an Excellent tip!

I think the serious problem is that you may have side-stepped melody considerations and forged ahead into theoretical territory that is probably based on melodic considerations, but have neglected to incorporate the melodic stuff.
Chord tones don't really have much weight unless approached melodically. An extreme example might be to play the root (or 5th) of every chord without considering that by getting there you're outlining bizarre fourths or fifths and no discernible melody can be followed.
Also, your teacher may be telling you this same stuff, or has told you, but is now waiting for you to absorb it on your own. If I were you I'd take the chance to regroup so to speak, and think about how melodic your lines really are.
Or maybe it's best to forget about whether you are 'theoretically correct' and ask yourself if your lines are truly what you want them to be, and if they match your expectations of your type of sound. And if so, don't worry about what any of us say.

And, btw, I wouldn't say ALL of your playing is unmelodic. You've definitely improved in some significant ways, but now I think what might be missing is being very conscious of every sound you make rather than retrospectively congratulating yourself on playing the correct notes. Believe me, I've been there, and often times am still there wherein I play a bit automatically and stuff comes out that isn't what I'd really like it to be.

one thing JW, I'm a little surprised that you didn't recognize Scott's solo + bassline after just a couple of second. I wonder if this is holding you back.

You might want to play a game where you pull random basslines and guess what the tune is.

There are 2 other things that might help you:
- Learn 5 of your favorite tunes in 5 random keys each. I mean don't write down anything, just learn the tune, no sheet, no ipod, just you and the piano. If you've never done it before, it might be painful for the 1st hour, but it is the single most efficient way for me to learn tunes fast. That's the odd thing about it. I can try to memorize and play ATTYA for 2 years, and still not know it, but the second you try and play it in 3 or 4 keys, the tune is with you forever. You hear it totally differently. I am amazed when people need the sheet to Autumn Leaves. I mean how do you play jazz for years, and still need the sheet to 2-5-1 modulate to minor key 2-5-1. Know what I mean?

- Learn to play some basslines, with RH chords. This will help you hear how the tunes moves in and out of it's main tonality. The bass movement is really important.

Just my 2 cents .

+1
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I've never +1ed before, so I thought I'd use them up here.

Great articles, and a must read for those reading this thread. Unfortunately I saw myself in more than one of the practice tips (hangs head in shame).

Glad you guys found them helpful. Yeah, I know I'm super guilty of almost everything in there at one point or another. Interestingly, I've been little by little finding these "truths" on my own and the articles just blurt it all out... time to get real!