practicing / usefulness of scales

[winston]

Originally Posted by janekbass

well if you really want to nail something note for note, you'll work hard on your ear and on your chops to get there.

There was no slowing stuff down in the days or charlie parker and dizzy. they pioneered that stuff from scratch. So the least amount of respect we can pay the music is to work hard enough on our ability to be able to transcribe without slowing it down.

Easy,

Janek

This is an interesting thread. I've been figuring out a number of classics note for note (most recently the Peterson/Brown/Thigpen version of OP's "Tricrotism") but I haven't actually started writing them down.

Regarding slowing things down to learn them: I'm not sure when the 16 RPM record player came into being, but I do remember it being a common speed to find on turntables well into the 70s. Many of the home/semi pro reel-to-reel tape machines I've seen from the 50s-70s had adjustable speeds. I've definitely read interviews with jazz greats who said they slowed down records/tapes to learn parts. I don't think slow-speed learning is cheating, but I also don't think it will help you develop the split-second real-time skills you need on the bandstand.

[Phil Smith]

Originally Posted by winston

... I don't think slow-speed learning is cheating, but I also don't think it will help you develop the split-second real-time skills you need on the bandstand.

Real time skills on the bandstand come from real time playing on the bandstand, be it reading, improvising from charts or just making stuff up in the moment.

Originally Posted by janekbass

There really is only long term when you're pursuing this. The short term is the same old "easy answer", and "quick fix" situation that a lot of people ask me about. Students and audience members on clinics often ask what the answer is, expecting it to be some magical phrase I tell them that will change their playing forever. It's not. It's long term hard work, and dedication and respect to the music. I don't want to sound harsh about it, but I do feel very strongly about this subject.

Are you saying that a hypnotist can't plant a suggestion in my head for great playing and that will raise my level of play up to the stratosphere? I'm seriously discouraged now!

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. Keep keeping it real Janek.

[Dave Martin]

Originally Posted by janekbass

Clay,

one of the best ways of coming up with more melodic ideas is to develop more of a melodic sense in your playing.

And not to put too fune a point on it, one of the best ways to develop more of a melodic sense in your playing is to play melodies. While quoting other songs during your solos can be both hackneyed and trite (if done wrong, or too often), knowing the melodies to a zillion tunes - how they're put together, how they relate to the underlying harmonic structure, how they can be re-worked to fit with a different harmonic or rhythmic stucture - all of these are good things.

Parker did it, Coltrane did it, there's no reason you can't.

The work that opened my eyes to a lot of the possibilities of harmonic and metric displacement of well known melodies was not a jazz tune - it was Peter Schikele's "Eine Kleine Nichtmusik" from "A Portrait of P.D.Q Bach"; no musician's CD collection would be complete without it.