 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: mmatisoff
Date: 2016-06-23 02:22
I love the Blues. Playing them. I've been studying the blues scales (again) and listening to as many blues artists as I can (clarinet and other instrumentalists). It's a different experience playing the blues then listening to them. Unfortunately, when I attempt to play along with various videos, I find that what is written in front of me doesn't sound anything like what is being played in the video.
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Author: ned
Date: 2016-06-23 11:30
''I find that what is written in front of me doesn't sound anything like what is being played in the video.''
Yes...well I'd put the written stuff aside and learn to emulate by ''ear''. It might take you quite some time, or, it might not possibly, that will depend on you.
Jazz and blues is learnt by absorption and copying, not by reading the dots.
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Author: laddybug3
Date: 2016-06-23 18:36
Jazz and blues has a lot to do with playing by ear and feeling. You can read the notes on a piece but playing along with another will sound different.
I had the wonderful opportunity to learn from two different instructors. Each had different aspect of what Jazz/Blues music should be played. One teacher only gave riffs and had me listen to the CD of the song I was to play.
The other gave me sheet music and told me to make my instrument, sing, cry, and other feelings. He also caught me throat instead of my tongue and gave me a piece; told me to use my throat and to make it sound out.
Both help me in jazz band. When I got music I looked at the riffs and were able to improv. Yet, use different sounds to make the piece come alive.
The band director had us listen to a jazz musician and play like the musician he picked for us. I got Benny Goodmen.
Now I playing in the summer community jazz band at the high school where I graduated from. I never made the band in high school. One of the my classmates persuaded me to join the band.
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2016-06-23 18:53
[Prefatory note: Be careful not to lock yourself into a 'Blues Scale' mindset. It's not as important as you might think to playing Blues, and can actually get in the way. As I look back, and take stock of my own playing, I really don't think Blues scales have played much of a role in anything I do...at least not beyond age 14 or so...and I consider myself essentially a blues player.]
As others have pointed out on this thread, jazz is first and foremost an oral/aural tradition. Listening, imitating, transcribing...all of these things are more important than reading or even learning proper names of things (chord names, scale forms, etc). Those are helpful insofar as they don't get in the way of the aural tradition, but unhelpful if the beginner thinks they can somehow learn from the page first.
Second, jazz is a communal art form. In order to learn and grow, you have to be involved with a community of living, breathing jazz musicians, participating in actual musical dialogue on a regular basis. Just as you can't learn to properly communicate any living language by sitting in a room reading it, or listening to a TV, so with jazz: you have to be out there 'talking' to each other.
Find yourself a jam session and dive in! You just might find it one of the best risks you ever took!
Good luck and keep swinging!
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
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Author: kdk
Date: 2016-06-23 18:58
The notation for basic jazz and blues melodies is the outline. Standard performance practice expects improvisation based on the tune - anywhere from simple embellishment to substituting something completely different. In normal jazz performance the players improvise a great deal of what they play, based, again, on the tune but also the chords that are used to harmonize the tune. So what you hear in a recorded performance is, depending on the player, improvised to one extent or another. The bigger the band, the more the players needed to stay with the written notation, but even then solo choruses were normally improvised.
So, as the others have said, to learn the style of play and of jazz improvisation, you need to listen to a lot of playing. It doesn't hurt to know some basic theory and harmony, either.
Karl
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2016-06-23 19:05
"The notation for basic jazz and blues melodies is the outline."
I would clarify this statement: notation of jazz and blues is not "the" outline, but only "an" outline. Take, for example, Sidney Bechet's "Blue Horizon." Bechet neither read not wrote music. The manuscript, therefore, is his recording, not any notated sheet music. Any written version would be an interpretation.
That's the way it is with nearly all jazz and blues in its primary form. As we go farther into written arrangements, we're really talking about the appropriation of jazz ideas into the written (usually commercial) sphere.
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
Post Edited (2016-06-23 19:14)
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Author: brycon
Date: 2016-06-23 21:38
Although the blues are an important component of jazz, modern jazz and blues are two distinct genres. A blues played by jazz players will use different chords, time feel, vocabulary, etc. than one played by traditional blues players. So the first step should be determining if you want to play jazz or blues.
If you want to play jazz, ditch the "blues scale" (which isn't even a scale but an incorporation of some surface level elements of the blues into a sort of pentatonic structure). It's what highschool band directors with no jazz experience teach their students so they can fake their way through a solo. (Just for fun, check out Sonny Rollins playing "Sonnymoon for Two" live at the Village Vanguard--he does more playing the tonic than anyone has ever done or will ever do with the blues scale). After that, ditch the sheet music and do everything that Eric says.
As for why you sound bad: who knows. You could be playing in a different key than the recording, you're time could be bad because you haven't internalized the swing feel, etc. If you pinpoint what sounds bad, you should be able to get some more focused feedback.
Good luck, man!
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Author: MarlboroughMan
Date: 2016-06-23 21:57
brycon wrote:
"...ditch the "blues scale" (which isn't even a scale but an incorporation of some surface level elements of the blues into a sort of pentatonic structure). It's what highschool band directors with no jazz experience teach their students so they can fake their way through a solo."
I completely agree, and nearly posted the same thing above, but worried it might be a little too "inside baseball" for the OP. But since you've brought it up, I'd really like to know when our current understanding of the "blues scale" was codified. I doubt it was early on. The scale itself is exactly what you point out--superficial elements grafted together (unfortunately without temporal reference to the chord structures that implied it)--and a player is only lucky (guided by their ear over the chord changes) if it using it works at all.
I first realized the blues scale was a hindrance when teaching beginning jazz to kids. The scale was a real problem when trying to get them to understand 12 bar blues form...and if it can't help you through 12 bar blues, it's pretty well useless. After that, I started being mindful about whether I made any use of it myself, and found that I never did.
Agreed too on categories for blues and jazz. Very different soloing style is needed for both. The closer you get to roots blues and roots jazz, the more crossover there is in stylistic approach, but by the time you're talking about "Blues for Alice", it's a very different thing.
Eric
******************************
The Jazz Clarinet
http://thejazzclarinet.blogspot.com/
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Author: mmatisoff
Date: 2016-06-25 23:15
I've started doing what you suggested ... playing along with other musicians online. Now, I need to find some real musicians to jam with. Thx.
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Author: mmatisoff
Date: 2016-06-25 23:31
I'm working on George Lewis' Burgundy Street Blues. I trying different twists and turns on his riff. Sometimes it works great. Sometimes it like chalk on a blackboard. Thx for the insight and suggestions.
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Author: fromsfca
Date: 2016-06-27 20:47
A great way to learn is to follow something Lee Knoitz taught me years ago (ala Lennie Niehaus):
Play a tune; next time through, just add a passing tone to the tune. After that, add a lead-in note...and so forth.
The idea is to begin to improvide using a very controlled approach, training your ear to hear what works and what doesn't. As you start to encounter the same progressions over and over you start to build a tool box of approaches.
Yeah, it's like classical theme and variations....the best ideas and innovations are typically based on the old masters.
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Author: Arnoldstang
Date: 2016-06-27 23:14
If you play from the melody as a starting point you will find a few tunes where the pickup bar groups nicely with bar 1. It continues with bars 2 and 3 etc. Autumn Leaves and In A Mellow Tone come to mind. Most people will consider these tunes starting on the words Leaves and Tone respectively. If you play off the melody it gives a different slant on things as the phrases are shifted. I think learning the melody is step 1. Past this you should know and hear some harmony especially when things go outside the key.
Freelance woodwind performer
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Author: Sean.Perrin
Date: 2016-06-28 09:16
Stick with the pentatonic scale notes at first. The full blues scale notes won't sound good over the all chord changes, but the pentatonic notes (most often) will.
Founder and host of the Clarineat Podcast: http://www.clarineat.com
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