How should I go about learning Donna Lee?

[Fassa Albrecht]

I've finally decided to learn this piece of music and I've got the sheet music already.

Now I tried to learn it a month or so back but ended up giving in completely. now I want to play it again, and want to hopefully memorise it as well.

Whats the easiest way to learn this piece.

Any tips and advice for this piece will be helpful.

[stretchcat]

I learned Donna Lee out of the "Bird" Aebersold. I took it phrase by phrase and learned each one VERY slowly. Once I had all of them, I started playing the entire head slowly with a metronome (also with a drum loop) and gradually increased the tempo as I was comfortable.

Remember, a slow and accurate version of Donna Lee sounds better than a sloppy fast one, IMO.

Don't get discouraged.

[onlyclave]

Originally Posted by stretchcat

I learned Donna Lee out of the "Bird" Aebersold. I took it phrase by phrase and learned each one VERY slowly. Once I had all of them, I started playing the entire head slowly with a metronome (also with a drum loop) and gradually increased the tempo as I was comfortable.

Remember, a slow and accurate version of Donna Lee sounds better than a sloppy fast one, IMO.

Don't get discouraged.

+1

The answer is "slowly".

[bottomend!]

This is a good one on a number of levels.
The cool thing about it is the song is in two sections with the second part being 60% identical to the first, so you have that aspect to look forward to after you've worked your way through most of it ( it's like a built in reward for behaving and being good!).

Heres what to do if you want to learn the melody;

Take each bar individually and play it individually until it becomes like a little exercise unto itself. You'll need to find a fingering that works for the entier bar. Dont really worry or concern yourself at this point whether or not the fingering from one bar will connect to the next bar, just contend with one bar as it's own little island of joy/pain at this point.

Practice this one bar by being able to;

1st find a fingering

2nd say the names of the notes

3rd say the names of the fingers ( "one, two, three, four")

4th sing the note names

4.5th sing the finger names.

...then once you can do that and not goof up, move the pattern (it should "feel" like a pattern now and not just an arbitrary set of notes)
a half step in either direction. Work on being able to move it as far away as possible from the original.

added practice;

(this might be a little or a lot over your head at this point, I'm not sure) you should also be able to say the function of the note against the chord. For example; the first bar is a Abmaj7 and the first note is a "g". You would say "seventh". The next note is an "Ab". You would say root. You have to know the function of the notes incontext with the chord than are played over. This is slow and tedious but this is how real learning is accomplished. This type of practice cements the information into your jellified brain nice and solidified. Lots of stuff happening here cognitively so you're not just depending on one sense to pull you through. It imperative that you actually SPEAK the words out loud, not just "think" them. This technique ties alot of the loose ends together.

If you take a bar a day you'll be through this in no time at all. It's 32 bar tune but like I said, there is alot of it thats repeated so it should take about three weeks to get to the end. At that point you will not of actually "learned" the song so to speak, but you will be READY to learn it as a piece of music. While you're working on this exercise, you should also be listening to a good recorded version of it ( Charlie Parker being the obvious choice) and also be listening to the Jamey Aebersold play along version ( Ron Carters walking lines are pristine). Dont practice along with it yet, just listen to the rhythm section and... wonder. Very shortly you'll be in the ring with these guys and then the fun starts!

[PocketGroove82]

If you DO start learning Donna Lee, let me give you a word of advice (since you asked for it).

Once you learn the melody, don't be the guy who plays it in front of me in an effort to impress me. Because, I will ask you what key you are playing it in.
And if you can't answer that question...well, you didn't really learn Donna Lee.

I feel that there are 100 other standards you should have memorized before trying to tackle Donna Lee. Rest in Peace, Charlie Parker.

[Liberty Citizen]

Hi everyone. I've just started to study Donna Lee seriously as well. I've decided to stick to the original (Bird) and not listening to any other bass players' versions (Jaco, Wooten, Caron...) for a while, until i have everything figured out. First, i try to learn each section just by ear and analize how different fingerings change the articulation and swing feel. Then, when i have completed analizing chord-scale relationships, repetition of patterns, etc, i'll read the chart and check for errors. I have to slow down many parts with a wave editor, although that's something Janek Gwizdala doesn't recommend. It's a long term process, but it's fun, develops a lot of skills and i don't need to just walk through the changes to survive tonite's gig. By the way, i don't think there's anything wrong in trying Donna Lee before memorizing more standards. Nothing wrong in facing a challenge. The worst thing can happen is realizing it's not the right moment for you to try: let it aside a couple of months and try again. The really stupid thing is just studying Donna Lee 'cause that's what Jaco did, and everyone else does it. And stop investigating any other standards.
Anyway, i'm just an amateur with very limited experience

[DocBop]

Originally Posted by stretchcat

I learned Donna Lee out of the "Bird" Aebersold. I took it phrase by phrase and learned each one VERY slowly. Once I had all of them, I started playing the entire head slowly with a metronome (also with a drum loop) and gradually increased the tempo as I was comfortable.

Remember, a slow and accurate version of Donna Lee sounds better than a sloppy fast one, IMO.

Don't get discouraged.

+1 learn each phrase at a time. Learn it slow and focus on good phrasing. Listen to Charlie Parker and learn to sing the head of the tune. Then sing along when you practice playing it. That will get so breathing space and again help get the phrasing down. Learn to play it in more than one position on the neck that could be simply about the 12th fret and below, or two fingering patterns. That not only is good tech and fretboard practice, but makes you focus on the notes and their sound.

Then when your fingers get tired while resting start analyzing the melody in comparison to the chords. Analyze the chord progression. Later after learning the head start transcribing one of Parkers solos. Taking one tune and learning it inside out and dissecting it can teach more than learning 100's or licks or lines. Trying to discover how a legend thought about a tune is a like taking a masters program in music.

[doctorjazz]

Yeah, basically what everyone's been saying. Very slowly, phrase by phrase with a metronome taking plenty of time out to work out good fingerings. You might also want to listen to and play along with a record to try and cop Bird's phrasing and the way he accents notes.

[Zebra]

If it's any help, here's a pretty cool youtube vid of someone breaking it down into slower tempos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-3IpGPFV60

[kesslari]

I started putting this into practice, and am curious about what's going on melodically.
It's not quite easy to understand how the melody fits over the changes, at least for me.

It seems like Mr. Bird put a lot of b9's over the dominants. Is he playing a sort of diminished scale over them?

Any pointers and things to look for so I can better understand this harmonically would be great.

[matthewbrown]

Donna Lee requires some really interesting fingerings and shifting. Jaco didn't slur many notes (if any) as I recall, but I developed a fingering that allowed me to do a lot of hammer-ons and pull-offs that work with the tune's phrasing (I think). It's a good challenge for technical reasons, but I agree that there are so many melodies to learn that it may not be the most significant, especially if you haven't done many of the easier standards. I learned it before I could really HEAR it, and it took me along time to wrap my ears around it. On the other hand, it was a real milestone for me, and I think it's well worth doing.

[onlyclave]

Originally Posted by kesslari

I started putting this into practice, and am curious about what's going on melodically.
It's not quite easy to understand how the melody fits over the changes, at least for me.

It seems like Mr. Bird put a lot of b9's over the dominants. Is he playing a sort of diminished scale over them?

Any pointers and things to look for so I can better understand this harmonically would be great.

Mr. Bird played lots of b9s as well as #9s because he liked to "surround" target notes with chromatic upper and lower neighbors.

If you're seeing a +9 or -9, +5 or -5 then he might be playing superlocrian (7th mode of the harmonic minor scale), but since you can play anything you want on a V chord and it will work as an alteration he could be playing anything.

[dlloyd]

Originally Posted by kesslari

I started putting this into practice, and am curious about what's going on melodically.
It's not quite easy to understand how the melody fits over the changes, at least for me.

It seems like Mr. Bird put a lot of b9's over the dominants. Is he playing a sort of diminished scale over them?

Any pointers and things to look for so I can better understand this harmonically would be great.

Tritone substitution.

The thing that makes the V-I cadence work so well is the tritone interval between the 3rd and 7th of the dominant chord. The dissonance begs for resolution. The inversion of that interval gives another tritone, and you can use these notes as the third and seventh of another dominant chord a tritone away from its original root. This, again, resolves very nicely to the tonic.

So instead of:

ii - V7 - I

you have:

ii - bII7 - I

The root and fifth of the tritone substituted dominant chord act as the b5 and b9 of the original dominant chord, and the two can be superimposed to give an altered dominant chord.

One of the features of the dominant chord is how they are often extended by the addition of 9ths, 11ths and 13ths.

If the tritone subsituted dominant is extended to a ninth chord, you get the #5 of the original dominant, the 11th gives the major 7 of the original dominant (which is an avoid note), and the 13th gives the #9:

Dominant chord in C major:

G7

G B D F
1 3 5 b7

Tritone substitute:

Db7
Db F Ab Cb
1  3  5 b7

Function in G7 chord:

Db F  Ab Cb
         (B)
b5 b7 b9  3

Db13
Db F Ab Cb Eb Gb Bb
1  3  5 b7  9 11 13

Function in G7 chord:

Db F  Ab Cb  Eb  Gb  Bb
         (B)(D#)(F#)(A#)
b5 b7 b9  3  #5  7   #9

AVOID!!! Clashes with b7

The reason the altered (superlocrian) scale works so well on a dominant chord is that it mimics the tritone substitution by using notes that function as flattened and sharpened fifths and ninths.

[dlloyd]

Originally Posted by Fassa Albrecht

I've finally decided to learn this piece of music and I've got the sheet music already.

Now I tried to learn it a month or so back but ended up giving in completely. now I want to play it again, and want to hopefully memorise it as well.

Whats the easiest way to learn this piece.

Any tips and advice for this piece will be helpful.

First, why do you want to learn it? If it's as an exercise to improve your bass playing, I wouldn't necessarily start with 'Donna Lee'. Jaco indicated that he practiced a lot of Charlie Parker's music in an effort to improve his bass playing... 'Donna Lee' was the culmination of this effort. If you want to follow his example, I'd start with some of the easier Parker tunes, like 'Now's the Time', learning both the head and the solos and trying to work out what Parker did and why. Concentrate on the harmony that Parker's playing with and take notice of what he does with the dominant chords.

This stuff is hard to transcribe, so it might be an idea to get a hold of the Charlie Parker Omnibook. I'm pretty certain you can get it in bass clef... mine is in treble clef, but that's okay. Just make sure you get one for C instruments!

Work your way up to the more difficult tunes like 'Donna Lee'.

Q. What do you feel are the most fundamental aspects of theory or technique to work on in mastering the bass-or any instrument? Do you practice scales and arpeggios, what sort of exercises would you recommend, especially for meter and stamina?

JACO: ALL SCALES & ARPEGGIOS IN ALL KEYS MODES MINORS ETC. PIANO THEORY (INVERSIONS, JAZZ CHORDS, EAR TRAINING), BACH, CHARLIE PARKER MUSIK.

[kesslari]

dlloyd - thanks. I'm going to reread your post a couple of times, with the head in front of me... Especially playing with how the tritone substitution works (as opposed to how it sounds- I've used it and liked it but only "sort of" understood it, based on the 3rds and 7ths).

Superlocrian - that's kind of an unholy marriage between half-whole diminished and whole tone scales? That's what it looks like when I map it out.
I've played with using straight half-whole diminshed over dominant chords, and like that sound a lot. Now I will play with superlocrian as well. I've never really given melodic minor scales their due work...

Thanks again. Got a big chunk of new material here to explore.

[MD]

A slightly more up tempo version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npy3D...eature=related

[SteveC]

Originally Posted by PocketGroove82

I feel that there are 100 other standards you should have memorized before trying to tackle Donna Lee.

I tend to agree. I can't recall a gig where someone called Donna Lee.

To answer the OP's queastion, the best advice has been given - slowly.

[cowsgomoo]

you'll get more use from learning how Donna Lee works than where to put your fingers in order to play it

[Scot]

Memorize the changes and learn to improvise good walking lines first.

[Dr_Funkdamental]

Originally Posted by dlloyd

This stuff is hard to transcribe, so it might be an idea to get a hold of the Charlie Parker Omnibook. I'm pretty certain you can get it in bass clef... mine is in treble clef, but that's okay. Just make sure you get one for C instruments!

Work your way up to the more difficult tunes like 'Donna Lee'.

Yeah they do have them in bass clef. I transcribed this song and others for sousaphone and the book really helped alot.