Standards

[bbass75]

Janek,

I'd like to know what your take is on the importance of memorizing standards and being able to play them from memory in several keys. Do you have many standards memorized? What do you believe the benefits are from having a repertoire of standards memorized? Any insight you can give on this would be great. Thanks!

James

[jazzcrime]

james, i think you and i are the only ones who ask questions on here!
would love to hear your take on this janek.

[janekbass]

I do know a lot of standards, but as to what importance they hold for me anymore..... I don't really know. They were a means of communication when I was at Berklee, and something for us al to play together and work on improvising with. I think they hold a hugely important place in the history of music, and I love some of the tunes very much. But I don't think there's anything new about them at all, and when I hear yet another "jazz" artist making a "solo" album and it's just full of standards it seems like a little bit of a waste, especially when 90% of people who make standards records don't doing anything that hip with the arrangements.

I don't get calls for gigs to play standards so they really don't feature too highly on the list of my priorities any more. They can be really useful to work on certain improvisational ideas, and I still use them as a practice tool all the time. But it's rare that I'll actually play one on a gig ever.

Having said all this, it's important to learn that part of the history of music if you're working on being an improvising musician. So working on standards in multiple keys and learning tunes all the time is going to help improve your playing in leaps and bounds. I would just suggest getting past that part of history once you've dug really deep into it and I would encourage you to do something original with what you've learnt.

Easy,

Janek

[bassnutj]

How many standards does Mike Stern know? Over the years it seems he always calls the same ones: Alone Together, Green Dolphin St., Straight No Chaser, Equinox, Giant Steps....

[Evan_S._Brown]

Janek,

I'm having trouble with memorizing charts for standards, rhythm changes and blues are one thing but sometimes there are some really unpredictable changes in standards that i find difficult to remember. how did you go about memorizing yours when you were at berklee? are there special tricks that you implement?

regards,

Evan

[dhm]

I have a feeling Mike Stern knows more than 5 or 6 tunes..You don't build a harmonic vocabulary like that without really understand harmony....Just my opinion.

[Kindofblue]

Originally Posted by Evan_S._Brown

Janek,

I'm having trouble with memorizing charts for standards, rhythm changes and blues are one thing but sometimes there are some really unpredictable changes in standards that i find difficult to remember. how did you go about memorizing yours when you were at berklee? are there special tricks that you implement?

regards,

Evan

Ah, got here before me. I was gonna ask the same question!

[janekbass]

stern knows a ton of tunes, but I guess he just doesn't play them out that much. It's all about marketing a sound that people are into and recognize, and that works great for him.

As far as learning tunes and retaining them goes, you have to just play them over and over again. There are no shortcuts, you have to repeat in order to retain. Over and over and over and over and over again.

You need to know the melody of any song you're working on, and you need to work on relative pitch so that you can reference the melody at any point during the form and know that it's a certain tension or chord tone on the chord at that point. Then you'll never get lost on a song, and you'll be able to remember 100's of tunes. But melody is the most important aspect of standards for me. It's a reference point for where you are in the form, and it can be used as a starting point or reference point for improvising over the chord changes to a tune.

Easy,

Janek