Members mosiddiqi Posted January 4, 2010 Members Posted January 4, 2010 In the spirit of GaJ's recent "Comfortably Numb" thread, I thought I'd run this by you guys. Jawbreakerr posted a backing track for the above tune...and I made a complete hash of it. Here's the backing track: http://sites.google.com/site/jkherms/06Solar.mp3 and my take http://www.box.net/shared/yaquio62bg Now, I am NOT a jazz player..it's not my thing, but I felt I should be able to at least play a listenable solo over it...I failed. I thought "how hard can it be?"... Then, I realised.... What I did wrong: I didn't analyse the chords.. :facepalm: ...I just played, as I do with all jams...relying on my "rock trained" ear...hence the garbage I produced. I hardly ever listen to jazz..so why I thought I'd know the vocabulary by magic... What I'm going to do about it: Listen to how various players have played over it for a start. I analysed the chords ..the progression is: Cmin/Cmin/Gm7/C7 FMaj7/FMaj7/Fm7/Bb7 EbMaj7/Ebm7 Ab7/DbMaj7/Dm7b5 G7 ..which looks to me like a bunch of II V I progressions starting from the Gm7 descending a whole step each time...no doubt the jazz guys here are yawning....but this is genuinely new for me. So, I'll get to work...and post takes for your scorn..and hopefully your comments about what I can do to at least "fake" a jazz solo. Finally, that tempo is horrifically fast. Wish me luck....and feel free to have a go yourselves. ..especially the rock guys..it's quite an eye opener.
Poparad Posted January 4, 2010 Posted January 4, 2010 That track made me feel the same way. It's really brought to light a lot of things I thought I had down, but weren't happening at all when I did my takes on it. I've been practicing that tune for the past few days because of it.
Members mosiddiqi Posted January 4, 2010 Author Members Posted January 4, 2010 That track made me feel the same way. It's really brought to light a lot of things I thought I had down, but weren't happening at all when I did my takes on it. I've been practicing that tune for the past few days because of it. Well, having heard your excellent takes, I feel slightly better knowing that you found it tough. It really felt like a foreign language to me. But, I'm determined to delve deeper..I didn't like feeling like a fish out of water.
Members akapuli Posted January 4, 2010 Members Posted January 4, 2010 Although I prefer proper 'jazz', your version wasn't bad. If you want to check out similar approaches to jazz, I suggest to listen 'A Guitar Supreme: Giant Steps in Fusion Guitar' and the other albums in this serie produced by Jeff Richman. You might be surprised.
Members meganutt7 Posted January 4, 2010 Members Posted January 4, 2010 Mo, Your take was really not as bad as you said it would be... I was expecting a garbled mess... It sounds fine. Are you really nailing the tonalities of each chord?? no. But does that really make a diffrence at the end of the day?? I think that for what it is, it sounds fine. having said that... I think you may want to go through the tune a few times, just playing 7th chord arpeggios over the changes, then the scales you believe correspond to the changes.... I think this is a good step to knowing the tune better.. Also, learn the melody verbatim and make variations on it as well....
Members mosiddiqi Posted January 4, 2010 Author Members Posted January 4, 2010 Mo,Your take was really not as bad as you said it would be... I was expecting a garbled mess... It sounds fine. Are you really nailing the tonalities of each chord?? no. But does that really make a diffrence at the end of the day??I think that for what it is, it sounds fine.having said that... I think you may want to go through the tune a few times, just playing 7th chord arpeggios over the changes, then the scales you believe correspond to the changes.... I think this is a good step to knowing the tune better..Also, learn the melody verbatim and make variations on it as well.... Thank you for the encouragement Danny, yep, tonight will be 7th chord arpeggio night..I figured that was going to be my first port of call after working out the chord changes...I might just post that up...it won't be interesting in itself, but might be interesting for other players here to hear what it sounds like if they're not comfortable with arpeggios.
Members meganutt7 Posted January 4, 2010 Members Posted January 4, 2010 Well, the thing is, you don't HAVE TO just RUN the arpeggios... Once you HAVE run them to familiarize yourself wit hthe notes of each chord, try SOLOING using the chord tones to generate melodic material. Don't just go up the arps by rote, but select a couple of notes and craft a melody out of them, stringing together the chord tones for each change... This may sound very "Vanilla", but it is a great foundation for really outlining the changes and being "understood" as playing over them and accenting them!!!
Members Jawbreakerr Posted January 4, 2010 Members Posted January 4, 2010 Hey Mos! just one little "pointer" that helps me. try to follow a quarter note melody line through the entire song... ill post a few examples and then build upon these "guide tone lines" - (they arent strict guide tone lines, but rather just picking out notes that highlight the chords... youll see alot of them are close to eachother) imagine that each bar corresponds to the changes you posted above. - each note i post is an important note in that chord and you should try to aim for it in your improvs. Eb | Eb | Bb | A A | A | Ab | Ab G | Gb | F | Eb after that Bb > A it continues down in a horizontal fashion till the song starts over again. i like to follow that "Bb > A" (and on down) on the D string at the 6th fret. let those notes be your guide. if you listen to my take, i tried to nail those little changes to each chord. those halfstep movements will give you the most mileage. play through those notes at a reasonable tempo so you can hear the movement in the chords. really hear the changes, then you should be able to just "go off" ................ and yeah, its definitely slightly inaccurate to call Solar an "easy first jazz song" - sure it doenst have alot of chords, but ANY Jazz song is hard if you dont know how to play. and ANY song is hard to sound really good. funnily enough, the "easiest" songs to some of us guitar players is also the hardest stuff for other horn players. like long Modal songs. its hard to keep it interesting, but that seems to be a special skill for rock players.
Members Jasco Posted January 4, 2010 Members Posted January 4, 2010 Good job just goin' for it Mosiddiqi. In addition to the good advice you've received above, a couple other things you might consider to work on hitting the changes. - Record your own rhythm track of this tune, but at a much slower pace. As it gets easier, keep re-recording it slightly faster, until it is up to speed. Why not just use software to slow it down? Because when you record it, you'll be working on playing the chords, which will in turn help you play lines over the changes. - Also, you may want to simplify the changes at first. Change all the ii-V-I's into V-I's for example: Cmin/Cmin/C7/C7FMaj7/FMaj7/Bb7/Bb7EbMaj7/Ab7/DbMaj7/G7 - Listening to, and transcribing, other peoples lines from this tune, as well as analyzing them is another step to help.
Members mosiddiqi Posted January 4, 2010 Author Members Posted January 4, 2010 Hey Mos! just one little "pointer" that helps me. try to follow a quarter note melody line through the entire song... ill post a few examples and then build upon these "guide tone lines" - (they arent strict guide tone lines, but rather just picking out notes that highlight the chords... youll see alot of them are close to eachother) imagine that each bar corresponds to the changes you posted above. - each note i post is an important note in that chord and you should try to aim for it in your improvs. Eb | Eb | Bb | A A | A | Ab | Ab G | Gb | F | Eb after that Bb > A it continues down in a horizontal fashion till the song starts over again. i like to follow that "Bb > A" (and on down) on the D string at the 6th fret. let those notes be your guide. if you listen to my take, i tried to nail those little changes to each chord. those halfstep movements will give you the most mileage. play through those notes at a reasonable tempo so you can hear the movement in the chords. really hear the changes, then you should be able to just "go off" ................ and yeah, its definitely slightly inaccurate to call Solar an "easy first jazz song" - sure it doenst have alot of chords, but ANY Jazz song is hard if you dont know how to play. and ANY song is hard to sound really good. funnily enough, the "easiest" songs to some of us guitar players is also the hardest stuff for other horn players. like long Modal songs. its hard to keep it interesting, but that seems to be a special skill for rock players. Ah!..cool ideas!...you're a good man, I don't care what they say......I'm going to crack on with this for a while..dammit...you might have actually got me interested in jazz
Members meganutt7 Posted January 4, 2010 Members Posted January 4, 2010 yeah.. the first two standards I learned were "Black Orpheus" (also called "A Day In The Life of a Fool" or "Manha De Carnaval") and then "Blue Bossa". Those, I think, are a tad easier to follow... Slowly introducing you to more modulations.. Then you may want to try "Solar" or "All The THings You Are" or one of those... Regardless, I think it's more about being "idiomatically correct" when it comes to sounding convincing on these tunes.... Playing the right scale is often not enough... It's alot about time feel, idiomatic phrases, etc. You want to use the vocabulary that is more identifiable as "jazz", if you wish to sound like a traditionalist that knows what he/she is doing... This of course is only if you want to play over the Aebersold backings of these tunes... You could EASILY arrange the same tune as a funk/fusion tune, a bossa nova, a metal song, whatever... If you did arrange it in an alternate way, it would open up many more possibilities for you as far as using YOUR OWN phrasing to express the tune's changes... It may be in your interest to re-record Solar in a few different ways.. If you like, I could even do it for you.... Just let me know what genre you want it in and I can knock one out this week for you...
Members heavy D Posted January 4, 2010 Members Posted January 4, 2010 Yeah, you do sound like a rock player trying to play jazz, but honestly it sounds decent. Confidence is important, and for the most part the playing is pretty confident. But yeah, there are times where you're doing things like playing minor 3rds over maj chords, etc, and you might want to work on that. This is a tune that is played many different ways, especially the first couple bars. If you were to play it at a jam session they'd likely play Cmin/maj7, which leads to a different feel (and also creates some different approaches for the following ii-V). But this backing is pretty much straight bebop, which IMO fits the melody of the tune better anyway. What I'd recommend as an exercise is running the arpeggios of these chords in 1/4 notes. I don't know how you view the fretboard, but I'd recommending starting in whatever position you're already comfortable in, then gradually branching out to others. So we have Cmin7, and for example I'll put it here: 1)2)3)4)-----------8--85)------10--------10-6)8-11----------------11-8 That's Cmin7 (and because it's 2 bars we walk up, then back down). Next the ii-V to F; 1)2)-------------------------8-113)-------7-10-------94)----8---------105)106) Again, don't worry about the fingerings, just start with what you already have down, this is just for example. So do this for every chord. The goal is here is two fold; you're both getting these things under your fingers, but you're also getting the sounds of the chords in your ear. Next try this variation- on the ii-Vs walk up one arpeggio but down the next. 1)2)3)-------7-10--94)----8------------10--85)10------------------------106) Why is this important? It clearly points out the movement of the 7th of Gmin to the 3rd of C7. This is one of the building blocks of jazz, and the crux of many jazz lines. As you really start to hear and feel that movement you'll want to come up with different ways to approach it. Like hitting the 7th (of Gmin) then walking up chromatically to the 3rd (of C7). Chromatics are very important. And don't just play the arpeggios verbatim, trying skipping notes in them and rearranging them in different ways. And of course you can add notes as well, but don't worry about scales just use your ears. They key is to make sure to lead from one chord to the next. This is bebop 101.
Members heavy D Posted January 4, 2010 Members Posted January 4, 2010 Also do you know the melody? Definitely learn and analyze the melody, and learn how ti works over the chords. On a tune like this it can help to sort of always have it going in your head as you improvise.
Members gennation Posted January 5, 2010 Members Posted January 5, 2010 This link doesn't work. http://sites.google.com/site/jkherms/06Solar.mp3
Members 1001gear Posted January 5, 2010 Members Posted January 5, 2010 Hey unbammed again. sSSup wit you anyway? Link also unwork here.
Members TrickyBoy Posted January 5, 2010 Members Posted January 5, 2010 Jason Rule #1... (granted my rules carry no weight whatsoever) Your not allowed to post something that says "I suck, I suck, I suck..." and then post a solo that's pretty damn good. Is is Jazz per se? no But who cares. If I was sitting at a bar and heard a guitarist pull that out, I'd have been jammin!!! My whole thing with improv is that you don't try to confirm to make your solo fit the music - you listen and then play what you feel. If rockabilly comes out - so be it!!! A second thing - I think it's cool that you just went at it without knowing the original melody, playing with the arps, etc. While I agree that if you were trying to create a solo for a recording project you'd want to do that, I'm all for going into a solo ignorant sometimes and seeing what happens. I need to figure out how to record solos like this so I can play this "solo over a backing track" game. Unfortunately, I'm a tech idiot. :thu: (that's 2 thumbs up)
Members bigboy_78 Posted January 5, 2010 Members Posted January 5, 2010 Yeah that sucked man. I'll just go an practice a bit more and one day I might be able to play that bad.
Members mosiddiqi Posted January 5, 2010 Author Members Posted January 5, 2010 Yeah that sucked man. I'll just go an practice a bit more and one day I might be able to play that bad. ...thank you!...but, from my perspective, I missed by a mile! Thank you everyone for your help and kind comments...I have a clear technical plan now about how I'm going to improve in this area and I just need to carry on working and listening to as much of this stuff as possible so that I can start to hear lines in my head the way I do with rock stuff.
Members mosiddiqi Posted January 5, 2010 Author Members Posted January 5, 2010 Jason Rule #1... (granted my rules carry no weight whatsoever) Your not allowed to post something that says "I suck, I suck, I suck..." and then post a solo that's pretty damn good. Is is Jazz per se? no But who cares. If I was sitting at a bar and heard a guitarist pull that out, I'd have been jammin!!! My whole thing with improv is that you don't try to confirm to make your solo fit the music - you listen and then play what you feel. If rockabilly comes out - so be it!!! A second thing - I think it's cool that you just went at it without knowing the original melody, playing with the arps, etc. While I agree that if you were trying to create a solo for a recording project you'd want to do that, I'm all for going into a solo ignorant sometimes and seeing what happens. I need to figure out how to record solos like this so I can play this "solo over a backing track" game. Unfortunately, I'm a tech idiot. :thu: (that's 2 thumbs up) ha!...thanks Jason!...my usual approach is to just go for it..but this time I was really bugged by the results..so felt I had to do something about it. To record on your computer, you just need a way in, as it were..I use a POD XT straight into the "line in" on my PC...and Reaper recording software which is free...it's very easy to use..hell, I can do it!.
Members gennation Posted January 5, 2010 Members Posted January 5, 2010 Like Joe Pass says "I just think of that IIm7 chord as a V7 chord anyways". The IIm7 is like a rootless V9 chord. So, you can simplify the IIm-V-I into just a V-I. I'll dig up the lead sheet for you as the melody in this shows you a lot, you see where C B Bb and A are all used in the melody, but not a continuous 'blanket' scale. If you want some quick learned on the IIm-V-I check out: http://mikedodge.freeforums.org/ii-v-i-playing-over-the-changes-t19.html And how to look at Minor bluesy jazz tunes this will show you a lot about the moves in 4ths/5ths and how to preceed the next chord with it's V7, which leads you to dim7 and aug chords giving you some forward motion in you playing: http://mikedodge.freeforums.org/footprints-some-forward-motion-concepts-t2.html Always here to help out, and hopefully make you say "no {censored}!"
Members mosiddiqi Posted January 5, 2010 Author Members Posted January 5, 2010 Like Joe Pass says "I just think of that IIm7 chord as a V7 chord anyways". The IIm7 is like a rootless V9 chord. So, you can simplify the IIm-V-I into just a V-I. I'll dig up the lead sheet for you as the melody in this shows you a lot, you see where C B Bb and A are all used in the melody, but not a continuous 'blanket' scale. If you want some quick learned on the IIm-V-I check out: http://mikedodge.freeforums.org/ii-v-i-playing-over-the-changes-t19.html And how to look at Minor bluesy jazz tunes this will show you a lot about the moves in 4ths/5ths and how to preceed the next chord with it's V7, which leads you to dim7 and aug chords giving you some forward motion in you playing: http://mikedodge.freeforums.org/footprints-some-forward-motion-concepts-t2.html Always here to help out, and hopefully make you say "no {censored}!" No {censored}!.....thanks genn ..the key for me so far was just slowing the damn thing down, so I could hear it...I honestly haven't had to do that for rock stuff for a while now..so I'd almost forgotten that it was the obvious thing to do
Members meganutt7 Posted January 5, 2010 Members Posted January 5, 2010 I gotta say, Heavy D always has great advice. A great mind is among us. I agree that the "voice led" arpeggio approach is a great way to really get to know the tune. Another great exercise (I think it's from the Hal Crook "How To Improvise" book) is to play one or two bars of the melody then one or two bars of improv, then repeat. This will make sure that you have the melody down and are able to access it any time you wish. It's a great tool to fall back on, if nothing else. Also, try to really mess with the melody (phrasing it differently.. bending, using different rhythms, octave displacement, etc. etc.)
Members gennation Posted January 5, 2010 Members Posted January 5, 2010 A common thing is to play the melody one time through, before going right for the improv jugular vein. Then recap your improv with the melody. The basic head-solos-head call of duty for realbook jazzers. Reason being... just because 20 songs have the Major and/or Minor II-V-I progressions in them, you shouldn't play the same solo for all of them!!!! The differentiator is the melody. Again, if you have no clue of the melody, you're more likely to play the same solo every time you see a ii-V-I or a ii-V-i..without even knowing it.
Members Phlat Phive Posted January 5, 2010 Members Posted January 5, 2010 A common thing is to play the melody one time through, before going right for the improv jugular vein. Then recap your improv with the melody. The basic head-solos-head call of duty for realbook jazzers. Reason being... just because 20 songs have the Major and/or Minor II-V-I progressions in them, you shouldn't play the same solo for all of them!!!! The differentiator is the melody. Again, if you have no clue of the melody, you're more likely to play the same solo every time you see a ii-V-I or a ii-V-i..without even knowing it. These are good tips. Being a proper slacker, I didn't even bother to learn the head for that jam over on GJ.
Members girevik Posted January 5, 2010 Members Posted January 5, 2010 Props to you Mos for taking on a fairly difficult jazz tune. I'll probably apply much of the advice posted here to my own practice.
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