Confirmation up to tempo... anyone?

[manutabora]

Hey Guys and Gals,
So, yesterday my "Charlie Parker Omnibook in Bass Clef" came in the mail. Immediately I started working on the first song in the book, which is Confirmation. Actually, I had already learned the head to that song a while back, but hadn't played it in so long that when I tried to play it it was all really sloppy and didn't sound good at all. Now I've relearned the head and will probably start working on the solo part tomorrow.
Here's the thing though. I got it up to 130 bpm, and that's as fast as I can go while still being able to cleanly play all the notes. Any faster than that and that Fmin7 arpeggio becomes a glissando or something. The marking on the piece says 208 bpm. I thought it was funny that at the beginning of the book they give a sort of disclaimer that says that the pieces may not actually be playable on bass instruments. Now I'm thinking they may not actually be playable for MY fingers.
I was just curious. Do any of you play that or any other parker tunes up to tempo? Is it a realistic goal? I would love to eventually be able to play the head and the solo up to tempo... And I know that musically it will not be all that significant to just memorize that stuff, but I think it would be a good way to try to take my chops to the next level.
For the record, I play electric bass. If anyone can play this stuff up to tempo on an upright...

[onlyclave]

Alain Caron plays "Donna Lee" on double bass fairly well.

I've been playing out of the Omnibook for years and it's my favorite piece of study material and there was a time I had the same idea as you, but when I realized I was sacrificing musicality and precision for speed I stopped doing that.

Alto sax can articulate a lot of note very quickly by just wiggling fingers and not tonguing notes and therefore the instrument speaks faster. Electric bass just can't do that because it take a certain amount of time to get the string moving.

You can try playing that stuff as fast as you can but you will find that your chops will advance significantly if you play Charlie Parker slowly. Make it very, very clean and see what happens.

[Scot]

IME, the nice thing about Bird's lines transcribed in the Omnibook is that they tend to lay nice on the fingerboard. I would say that most of the heads are playable up to tempo. But some of the solos, on the other hand...forgetaboutit! Particularly when he does the multi-bar double-time lines.

I was taught to use the Omnibook as a tool for building bebop vocabulary. The way that I've mostly used it is to highlight certain lines that I liked and learn them along with the chords to play them over. In other words, I'd pick ii-V lines, Dom7 chord lines, etc.

Another thing I did was to sing the heads and solos. In general, learning to sing solos is great.

[Scot]

Originally Posted by onlyclave

You can try playing that stuff as fast as you can but you will find that your chops will advance significantly if you play Charlie Parker slowly. Make it very, very clean and see what happens.

Excellent advice.

[ZonGuy]

The OmniBook is great!. Here is a suggestion for rapid improvemnt through effective practice.

1) Choose one piece (and only one piece, beacaue you want to focus on it) and go xerox it.

2) Slowly work out the fingering that makes the most sense to you - notate it on the xerox sheet in pencil. For example, for a particular lick I will notate 7 inside a circle over 1, placed over the first note of the lick meaning use the first finger at the 7th fret. Add notations like (slide up/down) etc, or new positions as necessary. Add right hand (p,i,m,a) notation as well if necessary.

3) If you don't already play with 4 fingers on your left hand, now is a good time to reconsider.

4) OK, you got your first guess of the best fingering (the "figuring-out stage"). Now, you move on to the "Practice" Phase

5) Set the metronome at the fastest setting that you can play the piece flawlessly - meaning possbily around 40 in some cases. Be honest - you are only screwing yourself up if you cheat.

6) Play the piece a couple for times. Notate where you think the fingering has to change. On "Donna Lee", I reworked the fingering lots. Oddly, what I wound up with was pretty close to the Jaco transcription fingering although the Parker Book and Jaco's version are different note-wise.

7) If you can play the piece FLAWLESSLY without scuffing up, great, advance the metronome 4 or 8 or 16 BPM as appropriate.

8) If you can't (meaning you are mortal), analyze the measures you scuff up and ask yourself why you scuff it and work through the measures individually until you can play the little parts flawlessly-timing, tone, intonation, inflection. THEN bump up the metronome and repeat.

9) You will find as the metronome speed increases, different scuffing points will appear - analyze them and work through them.

10) Memorize the piece as you go. Hear it in your head. Visualize it in your head. Yellow highlight places you have repeated trouble with.

Practice a piece 5-15 minutes a day. More than this may not be productive, depending. Practice the piece every day. Use the metronome, Be honest with yourself about playing flawlessly. YOU WILL GET RESULTS FAST!.

I learned this practice technique from my college classical piano teacher ( a symphony player). I never amounted to squat on that instrument, but I applied it to bass and made a huge leaps in my ability to play.

I used it recently to make a jump in 16 measures of solid 16ths from 80BPM to 120 BPM over two weeks (try it sometime). Practicing effectively becomes even more important when you play stuff that tortures your tendons because you can't flog at it endlessly - you have to get results expeditiously.

My $0.02