BRILLIANT POSTS

[Jake of Bass]

This is a thread for those who read a fantastic post, for one reason or many, and it is so good you must bring it to the attention of others.

Rules:

1) The post must possess rare quality - we're not talking a really good post, we're talking one that shines with it's uniqueness.

2) You cannot nominate your own post.


Ok, here we go.

Originally Posted by afromoose

Play them as fast as possible.

See here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHQYmnA-jbk

This is what you should aim for. The faster you can play, the better musician you are. It's that simple. Once you know a scale, rinse it as fast as possible then move on to the next one. Try and play as many different scales as you can as fast as you can, and then people will know not only how fast you can play them, but also that you know more than one. When you're playing a scale, don't mince around going 'up, down, up, down, lah lah' - Go to the top, or go to the bottom - just get on with it!

Gurning, screaming and sweaty palms will help.

If you want to play a scale REALLY fast, then you might want to leave out the boring notes along the way. This is called an arpeggio. Arpeggios are even more impressive than scales, but again, remember to play them as fast as possible.

If you start from a different place than 'the start' in a scale, you have a mode. Mode means your in a certain mode - like being in "super pursuit mode" if you're knight rider's car. Modes in music are useful for showing that you understand emotions. There are seven emotions, and hence there are seven modes.

1. Lydian - airy fairy elf lovely
2. Ionian - everything makes sense today
3. Mixolydian - feeling kindy cheeky, firm and fruity
4. Dorian - duh, am I lethargic or just cool?
5. Aeolian - the women are crying
6. Phrygian - orcs and goblins
7. Locrian - will-o-the-wisp, at one with the amoral nature spirits

There are other scales which are even more complicated and these are for 'complex emotions'. A complex emotion is like a combination of the ones above - for example Melodic Minor 'everything makes sense today but the women are still crying' or Lydian flat 7 'my elf is cheeky'. This is high level stuff so make sure you master the basics before you move on. Using complex emotions gives your playing even more depth.

By rinsing a good variety of scales, you can be both a good musician and a true artist, painting vivid pictures with emotionality. Always check you are allowed to play a scale by consulting this diagram http://www.apassion4jazz.net/jazz-chords-scales.html. There are no wrong notes, but at the same time, some notes are wronger than others. You might hear things like - "Sometimes the wrong note is the right note and sometimes the wrong note is the right note. Ah...." This is called ambiguity.

Below is the wrongness continuum. It is a sliding scale from obviousness to wrongness.

Obvious - - -> - - - Clever - - - -> - - - Wrong

Aim for the middle. This means a scale that comes lower down the list on the chart.

Example for scale choice over a Imaj7 chord (see chart)

Ionian (obvious, duh) -> - Lydian (clever, vg star) - > - Harmonic Minor (wrong, oh dear)

Hope this is helpful.

This is brilliant because not only is it quite on the mark, it is hilarious and very original. Well done!

[Bruce Lindfield]

From the ridiculous to the sublime, Ed Fuqua :

REALLY Learning a tune

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I know I've typed this a few times in the past, but there've been a couple of requests, so here we go again.

First let me say that this isn't anything that I came up with on my own, this is the approach my teacher uses that he got from his teacher, Lennie Tristano. And for what it's worth, I think ANYBODY at ANY LEVEL will benefit from studying one on one with a player who has a deeper understanding than they do. The following set of exercises work BEST when you have some objective, knowledgable person who can listen to what you are doing and provide guidance to keep you moving in a focused and progressive direction.


1. PICK A TUNE - something from the "standard" repertoire; my 4 tunes are STELLA BY STARLIGHT, THESE FOOLISH THINGS, BODY AND SOUL and ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE. When you pick a tune , you want to find the most vanilla version of the melody that you can. Look in older "fake" books, pull it off some Judy Garland record whatever. The idea is to get as close to the composer's concept of melody and changes than you can. The REAL BOOK (old ones, not the Sher or Leonard versions) tend to contain somewhat dubious transcriptions of specific recordings; again the idea is to get the composer's idea, not Sonny Stitt's version of the composer's idea. Kind of like the game Telephone or doing a book report from reading somebody else's book report; you stand a better chance of coming up with "your" interpretation if you know what the actual original was.
2. LEARN THE MELODY - set the metronome at quarter note=60bpm and PLAY the melody through. Over and over and over and over and over and over so that you can SING the melody if somebody drags you out of your bed at 4am. Get off the paper as soon as you can, I've found that learning the lyric that goes with the melody is a great way to internalize the melody.
3. PLAY A CHORD LINE - what do I mean by "chord line"? Simply this, a line that arpeggiates the changes but with a couple of important parameters:
A. PROXIMITY - you want to use not only root postion arpeggios but also all inversions to maintain "close" fingering and common voices through the tune. For example, a progression of D-7 G7/ Cmaj7 - instead of D F A C G B D F C E G B (root position, root position, root position) one choice could be D F A C D F G B C E G B (root, 2nd inversion, root).
B. IN TIME - the chord line shoudl reflect the harmonic rhythm of the tune. If the chord lasts one bar, the chord line is quarter notes. If half a bar (two beats) the chord line is eighth notes. One beat would be 16ths, two bars would be half notes. Let me know if this is not clear.

3. THE EXERCISE
PART 1 -with the nome at qnote=60bpm( and without the sheet), play one chorus of the melody and one chorus of the chord line, then one chorus of the melody. This is getting the sound of the melody and the sound of the changes in your ear.
PART 2 - For the purposes of this exercise, use the major scale for all major7th chords, the mixolydian for all dominant 7th chords and the dorian for all minor chords. Play one chorus of melody, one chorus of chord line and then improvise one chorus of half notes, ending with one chorus of melody. The half note chorus should try to emphasize MELODY over BASS LINE, you are not "walking two feel" but buidling a melody. It may be a little mechanical at first, but once you relax and let your ear start telling your fingers what notes to use, you can really get to some nice melodic material. Again, this is MUCH harder to do without somebody listening to your progress form teh outside, if you insist on doing this without a teacher, RECORD all of your exercises and listen to them without your instrument in your hands. When you get to the point that you are consistently creating some nice music with half notes, move to the next part of the exercise.
PART 3 - Play a chorus of melody, a chorus of chord line and then play 1 chorus in the following manner: the first 3 bars of each 8 bar section play the melody and then starting on beat ONE of bar 4 begin your improvised line of half notes. So you will have (in a 32 bar tune) 3 bars melody, 5 bars improvised, 3 bars melody, 5 bars improvised, 3 bars melody, 5 bars improvised, 3 bars melody, 5 bars improvised. Again, don't move on the first time you get this to sound like music, wait until you hit that every time.
PART 4 - as above, but the improvised chorus will have the 3 bars of melody dropped into a different place for each 8 bar segment( moving melody). That is, if you start the first 8 bars with meldoy, NO OTHER 8 bar section can start with melody.
PART 5 - as above, the improvised chorus now becomes only improvised half notes and rests. You should play (approximately) as many beats rest as you play measures of half note per 8 bar section.

When you've made it through this whole exercise, you start over and use quarter notes for the improvising rhythmic "denomination". And so one through accent 1 eighth notes, accent 2, accent3 , accent 4, accent 1 triplets, accent2 accent 3, 16ths etc.


This AIN'T quick; I've been studying with Joe for about 10 years now and I'm only up to accent 3 triplets with moving melody. But after about 7 or 8 months of starting this exercise (and a few others) , the amount of sense I made whiel improvising increase exponentially. And all the work I've put into really tearing apart these 4 tunes has translated into me being able to learn and play SO many more tunes. And has increased (along with the other ear training I'm doing) my ability to play tunes by hearing my way through them. If the piano player really knows the tune or if I can hear the melody in my head clearly enough , I can pretty much hear my way through the tune.

[TallLankyBastyd]

Only two posts into it... and ALREADY I'm hoping that Zombies come here and eat this thread.

But then I remembered that Zombies prefer brains...

...so, that ain't gonna happen.

[Muusers]

[Phalex]

I nominate Wilser's Shart story: so I crapped in my pants yesterday...

[Relic]

Originally Posted by Phalex

I nominate Wilser's Shart story: so I crapped in my pants yesterday...

"shart" story? I see what ya did there

[Jake of Bass]

Five posts in and already this thread is turning to ****.

On another music forum (that gets much more ridiculous and full on than this one) this same type of thread has lasted YEARS.

[Bruce Lindfield]

OT - is by definition, non-music related trivia and general rubbish - the serious stuff sits elsewhere!! NEWB alert!!!

[TallLankyBastyd]

Hey...

...I was just trying to be my most "ridiculous and full on".

[Relic]

Originally Posted by Jake of Bass

Five posts in and already this thread is turning to ****.

On another music forum (that gets much more ridiculous and full on than this one) this same type of thread has lasted YEARS.

Give it time my friend. OT is a rather odd collection of brilliant, serious, silly, profound and outrageous all wrapped into one.

[Jake of Bass]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lindfield

OT - is by definition, non-music related trivia and general rubbish - the serious stuff sits elsewhere!! NEWB alert!!!

At this rate you'll be stalking me around the forum after every post I make. Productive use of your time I see.

[Jake of Bass]

Originally Posted by Relic

Give it time my friend. OT is a rather odd collection of brilliant, serious, silly, profound and outrageous all wrapped into one.

Cheers, I haven't ventured into this part of the forums much, just the bass part - I use other forums for the randomness

Love the avatar btw, that's brilliant in itself!

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Jake of Bass

At this rate you'll be stalking me around the forum after every post I make. Productive use of your time I see.

And that from the person starting this waste of time - pot meet mr kettle!

[Jake of Bass]

I don't want to go into your asinine conversations again. Your immature attempts at point scoring have grown very tedious. I'll derail my own thread at this rate.

[mike_v_s]

Originally Posted by Jake of Bass

Five posts in and already this thread is turning to ****.

On another music forum (that gets much more ridiculous and full on than this one) this same type of thread has lasted YEARS.

Well, this one has only been open a few hours.....

I've actually given it quite a bit of thought and have had trouble narrowing it down to one user, much less one post. Most of the stuff by Hollowbassman, TheBigO and louieeadg should be chiseled into stone tablets.

Mike

[Relic]

+1. Hard to narrow it down.
Generally I like Maki's posts. They're full of irreverent humor but damn insightful. I'll have to look for a few examples.

[Jake of Bass]

True, I should be more optimistic. By all means, share their brilliance as they have done so already

By brilliance, it can mean in the contexts of knowledge, originality, humour, insight or a combination - I'm sure you get the picture.

[Bruce Lindfield]

Originally Posted by Jake of Bass

I don't want to go into your asinine conversations again. Your immature attempts at point scoring have grown very tedious. I'll derail my own thread at this rate.

Hmmm... seems somebody needs to read the TB rules :

Rule #1: Respect your fellow members
All registered users must address fellow members with the utmost respect at all times. If you do not agree with a fellow member, be courteous in your response. Thomas Jefferson said it best: "When I hear another express an opinion which is not mine, I say to myself, he has a right to his opinion, as I to mine".

Because of the limitations of text based communication, the expression of intent can be tricky. One of the most common triggers of rule violations is the misinterpretation of intent behind a post. Use smilies often, and remember, it never hurts to begin a response with "In my opinion"...

If you do not address everyone on the board with respect, be prepared to lose your membership.

[Jake of Bass]

I've tried to ignore you but you won't let it rest.

Please, just leave me alone already.

[Relic]

Originally Posted by Jake of Bass

I've tried to ignore you but you won't let it rest.

Please, just leave me alone already.

(psst, there's an "ignore button", works like a charm and can prevent one from saying something that might cause an infraction or banning, just saying..)