Lazz

Shame - maybe that's just Hollywierd. Doesn't stop the necessity of being serious about their art, but jazz guys are the funniest people I know. Larry Goldings is a great piano-player, studied with Keith Jarrett, for example, played with big names from Sarah Vaughan through Jim Hall up to Brecker and Metheny, has a mean organ trio with Peter Bernstein and Bill Stewart, in-demand sideman for session with De La Soul, Tracy Chapman, Walter Becker, Till Bronner, Jesse Harris, John Mayer.........., took over the late Don Grolnick's gig as MD for James Taylor...... I mean he is serious heavyweight pro league. His alter ego, however, is the Austrian pianist Hans Groiner "from Braunau, also the birthplace of Hitler, but please don't hold that against me," who plays http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51bsCRv6kI0. Hans also has his own dedicated MySpace. .

I think you should drag out something from your dust-bearing back catalogue and re-christen it: "Please Re-Release Me" xxx

More basic building blocks info: .

Actually, I quite like the way this guy Gianni Chiarello communicates and illustrates the same ii-v-I voice-leading deal (apart from the tri-tone/b5 substitution.). His web-site seems to have a lot of other good stuff: http://www.playgtr.net/ .

Bobby McFerrin demonstrating (that any use ?) .

I dunno about that. There are Zappa tunes in jazz Fake Books. I thought we liked him ok. .

I fear I would feel the same - only worse. It's a great and valued thing you're doing, Rob. I feel privileged that some of my junk is getting a chance. Huge thanks Mille grazis. .

Well-spotted, Retro. Thanks. The essentials up from the root are the third and the seventh – these tones tell you whether it’s major or minor or dominant or half-diminished (or diminished) – and are the essence of their ‘shell’ voicings. Pat Smith has a neat intro to the concept in his Lenny learned ‘shell’ essentials from Albertan pianist Bob Erlandson (I know I’ve mis-spelled it), who picked it up, like everyone else, from Bill Evans. It means if you’re working with a bass-player that you don’t even need to worry about playing the root. Then you just add the extension to the shell – you don’t need 7 strings at all. You might, for instance, choose to voice a 13th chord from the seventh, heading upwards, to the third, and then the thirteenth – so you have a nice little stack of McCoy Tyner-ish fourths – I am fond of the sound of fourths – but you really have enormous choice and flexibility with the shell. Does melody imply harmony? – yes, I think so – it always does to me anyway. Which one? – all those you can hear contextually inside your head. Yup – I think so, too. Bear in mind that I don’t play anything worth speaking of – especially guitar – too damn hard to figure out all this theoretical mumbo-jumbo – unlike the handily diagrammatic and graphically laid-out piano keyboard, that’s for sure – which helped me get to grips with ways of ‘seeing’ harmonic relationships. As a singer, I want to be able communicate with other musicians - that's why I had to get to grips with it. As a tyro wannabe arranger, I want to follow as much as I can and be able to decode chord spellings in order to misrepresent them (smile, please). As a late and constant learner, those ‘finer points of voice leading’ to my ears involve the shell of 3rds and 7ths moving nicely in graceful baby-steps. For Example: The standard II-V-I turnaround in C – being Dm7 – G7 – CMajor7: The 3rd of Dm7 is F, and the 7th of Dm7 is C For G7, the F becomes the 7th, and the C drops down a half-tone to B – becoming the 3rd. That B then easily becomes the defining 7th of CMaj7, while the F drops a half-step to its 3rd, E. That’s why it sounds so sweet and natural, I think. Plus, maybe instead of the bass movement describing the roots D to G to C, you may even choose baby-steps there, too – having picked up on Pat Smith’s passing reference to tri-tone substitutions in the video above. (The tri-tone substitution rule says that any dominant chord can be substituted by another dominant chord whose root is a b5th away (a ‘tri-tone’ in distance) – which happens very nicely because the 7th and the 3rd of the chords simply swap their functions around. In our example, it means the G7 can be substituted by Db7 so that B, the 3rd of G7, becomes the 7th for Db7, while F, the 7th of G7, becomes the 3rd of Db7.) The tiny but effective result is that the bass/root movement, instead of D to G to C, can make the little baby-steps D to Db to C. Hope that helps someone out there instead of adding to being "****ed up" .

No more clarity on the metaphor of suspension, I fear. But we have another 'hold on just a minute!' for this nonsense with the 9. I took a brief swing through the land of google (gee - I thought I'd trained myself not to do that - it contains an absolutely un-mediated mine-field of contradictory info) and found confident opinion that 'add9' is used to signify the addition of the 9th to an extant four-note chord - making it the same once again as Retro's C9 as a dominant extended to the 9th degree (C E G Bb D). Confusion is back. There has to be a better answer. I mean, who the hell would bother with a five note chord ? I don't personally know anyone who would choose to voice the 5th. That, along with the root, would be bass-player's business, surely. So our C9 is defined by three notes only (E Bb and D). And if, as seems likely, that 9th is happening in the melody, then you'd only need the 3rd and 7th. It is sounding a bit fishy to me. Anyone have a light ? .

Hi Phil. Just in time for you to shed more light and/or confusion on a few outstanding niggling little ambiguities HERE Thanks.... oh - and welcome.

Me too. I think the reason for most of the cracks comes from the fact that folk who otherwise couldn’t really play a lick can use the package to make something that sounds half-way decent. But I wouldn’t go blaming the package for the fact it has unintended side-benefits for people who can’t really play. It was never meant to be that kind of tool. That’s not at all the reason why it was designed and developed. The initial raison d’être was to make a more sophisticated practice tool for jazzers. That's it. In days B.C. (before computers), everyone from the novice on up to Michael Brecker, for instance, used the Jamie Aebersold Play-A-Long LPs or Ramon Ricker’s Music-Minus-One series as part of their practice regime. The give you a library of progressions and turnarounds, basic blues and ‘rhythm’ changes in different keys, and a solid bag of tunes from the standard jazz repertoire, with backing from a rhythm section of piano bass and drums. If you were a piano player wanting to practice a tune, you could turn off one of the stereo channels and work-out alongside just the pre-recorded bass and drums. Occasionally decidedly un-groovy, with those fixed and pre-recorded backings quickly losing any element of supportive surprise, they were nonetheless an essential tool for those occasions when you can’t easily call a bunch of mates round for a blowing session. As I said – every player uses them, from student to pro, so there is a huge market including educational institutions as well as established jobbing musos. They are an accepted and established part of teaching and learning. Peter Gannon (PG Music) set out to bring that style of journeyman tool into the digital era and make it ‘better’, more groovy and happening, and with loads more practical applications like being able to switch the feel of a standard you may be working on from swing to latin, or the tempo from a medium burn down to a ballad. And, if your bent was towards more decidedly ‘original’ content to your pad, then the real cool innovation was also being able to program your own changes and get it all together with your own material. PG has a solid musical background – his dad played jazz piano and his brother Ollie, who started playing the instrument only when he was 20, became one of the premier first-call guitarists in Canada – so Peter is very well connected throughout the muso community and pretty much knows everyone. The reason for making note of this is that it enables him to call upon absolutely world-class players to record the music elements used in the program. That’s just another of the things that makes it so good. Other added bits that came from development and actively listening to their growing customer base now extends its application as a compositional tool and enables us to print off chord charts and horn parts and it allows you to transpose 'em and hear ‘em and check ‘em before hitting that button, as it has also allowed folk who otherwise can’t really play a lick to make a fist of a half-way decent sounding recording. But I think it’s well worth bearing in mind that BIAB was a practice tool designed by improvising musicians as for improvising musicians. It does a bleedin' great job at it, too. The fact that amateurs can use it productively in their bedrooms is also cool. But that's just an extra small bonus alongside the essentially heuristic intent. (I'm sure they also care about songwriters) .

That makes some sense. Does it make the same sense to all of us ? Aaah... So maybe not. I didn't know that. The picture in my own head has been about the 4th 'hanging' there unsupported by the 3rd - and hence the 'suspension' notion. I'm ready for your interpretation if mine is off-beam, but that's what I've been blindly taking for granted without ever thinking to question, ... plus my own thoughts on progressions is that voice-leading is always what it's all about - so I'd never given the sus4 any particular special status in that regard. I don't hear dissonance much there either, to tell the truth, but then I am a big fan of fourths anyway. Great book! .

I have a question, if anyone can help. Specifically, I am curious about this ‘add9’ idea. How would Cadd9 be different from C9 ? I don’t get it yet. Also, as unfortunately I don’t follow tab, I can’t make sense of those note spellings in the same way Steve and Nick can, but it seems I might still be interpreting standard shorthand chord spellings a little differently. A written suspension, as I understand it, tells us how the writer wishes us to ‘voice’ the chord in question: Csus means that with the root C staying at the bottom the rest of the chord tones are built from the 4th upwards. Similarly, C2 means that the chord tones get stacked on top of the root from the 9th upwards. Otherwise, we might just as well call it a C9, no? Boff – yes, there are indeed useful ‘golden rules’ and guidelines for making chord progressions work. But they are real tough to talk about through these media and when we are so unsure about whether we speak the same theoretical musical language and can understand each other. To make real headway, my opinion is that one way or another you are going to have to figure out effective ways of making sense of the theory side. And I think the quickest bestest way is to get some face-to-face teaching based on where you’re at. That way, ambiguities and misunderstandings can be sorted out on the spot. It all helps. .

“Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes?” Beautiful title. Beautiful concept. Yeah !!

Names ? I can't think of a single one.

I'd like to submit "Round This Time Of Year". Only place to check it out right now is through our Hip Pocket jukebox player on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hip-Pocket-Music/95095406543?ref=ts

Hard to say while I struggle with deep-seated prejudice here. Impossible to answer without a long test-drive, but these things worry me. The web-site describes the purpose of the software as "to help jazz musicians compose and hear solos similar to ones that might be improvised". My riposte is that if they can't compose and hear solos then how can we call them jazz musicians ? Site also describes the objective as "to improve understanding of solo construction and tune chord changes" - which is something usually achieved by listening, by analysis, by transcription.... and that style of personal discovery process seems to be, to me, of most real fundamental importance in jazz education. The rest is done through interacting with your instrument and with other musicians - not with a machine. So I don't get the point of having a computer program improvise on our behalf. That just ain't what it's about. See - I told you there was prejudice involved - and without trying the damn thing (do I have time?) my criticisms are only really validly aimed at the words on the web-site. There must be good points involved though, I'm sure - for a start, it's free - which seems like a good deal. There is also the suggestion that it might serve equally well as Band In A Box does - but then I know the guys who built that baby and why while I don't know any of the names attributed to this Impro-Visor piece of kit (sounds like a form of head-gear) and am immediately suspicious of its actual heuristic value............... as I said, there is some personal prejudice involved. What do you think of it, Mike ? Have you taken time to test it ? .

Oh yeah. A lot of good juicy stories on the Frishberg site.

“God, how I still love private readers, it’s what we all used to be." J.D.Salinger

Hey Chertl. I am also a resident of BC. And a mate of Hugh Fraser, to boot. Or - as I know him in expatriatese - Huge Fry-Up. Good that you're here. Lazz .

Good article. Well-written, cogent, fun to read. Nice job. .

how about the four note guitar solo ? pretty cool. http://www.bluesguitarunleashed.com/blog/27/the-4-note-solo/

Desire Discipline .

It's been so long since I logged on that I might as well be new So hello to everyone. I've been busy running hiding and trying to keep out of trouble Doing too much death and depression as the reaper gets closer to home I could tell you all about it but I just ferkin HATE whining So I've been undercover The messages of constant support, warmth and understanding from Steve, Steve, and John, have meant a great deal - a life-saver - even if I have been a total wonker buried in the lack of response department. (I did try clicking on the 'help' button, but no fairy-godbother materialised) (I think my karma-card is over the limit) Thanks in heaps. .

Gee - I feel very limited. So many 'genres' for which I am ill-equipped and unable to achieve an authentic voice. Not that it worries me - I have too much on my plate trying to raise my game just within my preferred areas of expression.