Ear Training with random chord feature?

[Jason Sypher]

More and more I am playing in groups that solo over free changes, meaning, the soloist chooses the chord structure as he/she goes along. As a bassist I need to be able to hear these changes as quickly as I can. I find that if the changes are similar to my own thought process I can follow them fairly well but if they are really different I have a hard time quickly identifying the chord. I realize that this is just a call back to more ear training one of my weakspots as a generally self-taught player.
The musicians I play with have excellent ears and I really don't want to be the one fishing around for the chord and interrupting the flow of their solos. It would be great if I could find a program that also had a "random chord feature" that would test me in a play along sort of way. Any good program will help strengthen my ears but maybe there are some suggestions to help with my particular needs? Forgive me for not going through the archives, I'm a new parent and its amazing that I even got this posting off in time.....

[philip sirois]

http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id92_en.html

no alterations or extensions, but basic the seventh chords have some utility, plus its simple quick to use, which is nice.

congrats on the new addition!

[MingusAmongUs]

Originally Posted by philip sirois

http://www.musictheory.net/trainers/html/id92_en.html

no alterations or extensions, but basic the seventh chords have some utility, plus its simple quick to use, which is nice.

congrats on the new addition!

Good find philip!

[TimoMetzemakers]

There's also GNU Solfege which is free and has a lot of exercises to choose from. It's fun.

[Bassist4Life]

Originally Posted by Jason Sypher

More and more I am playing in groups that solo over free changes, meaning, the soloist chooses the chord structure as he/she goes along. As a bassist I need to be able to hear these changes as quickly as I can.

That's interesting. I've never played in a group like that before. You have to be able to discern what chords the soloist is playing over? I can't imagine that would ever really come together. But that might be part of the free sound you're talking about.

So you have a soloist playing over changes he/she is thinking about. Then there's probably an instrument playing chords trying to figure out which chords the soloist is thinking, and then there's the bassist trying to figure out the same thing.

Is that really what's going on? If so, that's wild. It doesn't seem like you would be able to figure out the chord everyone is playing unless you spend a lot of time on one chord.

Please understand that my post isn't a put-down on what you're doing. I'm genuinely interested in the process that you're describing to us.

Joe

[MingusAmongUs]

Originally Posted by Bassist4Life

That's interesting. I've never played in a group like that before. You have to be able to discern what chords the soloist is playing over? I can't imagine that would ever really come together. But that might be part of the free sound you're talking about.

Pretty common in jazz combos. I used to play with a piano player that would reharmonize the hell out of every tune, on the spot, with chords that would have most people spinning their heads. It took a bit of time, but after a while I got so I wouldn't even have to use my ears so much -- I just knew what was going on in the guy's head and could usually anticipate what kind of wacky changes he was going to play.

So it's as much a matter of getting to know the player as getting your ears in shape... if you have the opportunity to play often enough with a particular player.

[zac2944]

Originally Posted by MingusAmongUs

Good find philip!

+1 Great practice tool.

[Bassist4Life]

Originally Posted by MingusAmongUs

Pretty common in jazz combos. I used to play with a piano player that would reharmonize the hell out of every tune, on the spot, with chords that would have most people spinning their heads. It took a bit of time, but after a while I got so I wouldn't even have to use my ears so much -- I just knew what was going on in the guy's head and could usually anticipate what kind of wacky changes he was going to play.

So it's as much a matter of getting to know the player as getting your ears in shape... if you have the opportunity to play often enough with a particular player.

Yes, I understand the reharminization concept. If you're listening closely, you can expect to hear certain changes here and there within a piece. Is that what the OP is talking about? It sounded to me like it's the soloist is deciding the changes. It brought to mind Sonny Rollins who sometimes did not play with a harmony instrument to give himself more freedom. I was just wondering how that worked in the OP's particular situation.

Joe

[MingusAmongUs]

Originally Posted by Bassist4Life

Yes, I understand the reharminization concept. If you're listening closely, you can expect to hear certain changes here and there within a piece. Is that what the OP is talking about? It sounded to me like it's the soloist is deciding the changes. It brought to mind Sonny Rollins who sometimes did not play with a harmony instrument to give himself more freedom. I was just wondering how that worked in the OP's particular situation.

Joe

I think the OP is talking about something a lot more open (soloist basically composes the tune in real time) than what I was talking about... I just threw in a related anecdote.

[Bassist4Life]

Originally Posted by MingusAmongUs

I think the OP is talking about something a lot more open (soloist basically composes the tune in real time) than what I was talking about... I just threw in a related anecdote.

Cool.

[Mark Perna]

It really isn't everyone making up changes per se as they go but more like playing modally or over key centers that aren't planned out beforehand. Everyone listens and plays and makes it up as they go but no one is trying to catch the Db7b5#11b13 that the soloist just blew through for instance. Frequently, the chordal instrument will play more ambiguous or open sounding chords or drop out all together so as to not lock it in too tightly harmonically.

There is a lot of historical precedent for this concept. Ornette Coleman was one of the first to do it. He developed a system called Harmelodics to describe what he was doing. Miles' mid-60's band did it all of the time. They called it "time-no changes" which is fairly accurate as they didn't really play any changes but they did follow each other and Ron and Tony played time. Herbie rarely comped on those tunes. It was all walking bass, drums and soloist. Even Herbie played primarily single note solos without much in the way of left hand comping. Just to be clear, the heads had chords, the soloists almost never played over them though. Miles Smiles, The Sorcerer and Prince of Darkness are the classic examples. Coltrane's classic quartet did it over everything post-Love Supreme. McCoy Tyner developed his famous fourths voicing specifically to match the concept. The suspended chords are ambiguous enough that Trane could go just about anywhere without clashing with Tyner.

It's a lot of fun to play this way. When everyone is on, you can get some amazing results.

mark

[damonsmith]

Originally Posted by Jason Sypher

More and more I am playing in groups that solo over free changes, meaning, the soloist chooses the chord structure as he/she goes along. As a bassist I need to be able to hear these changes as quickly as I can. I find that if the changes are similar to my own thought process I can follow them fairly well but if they are really different I have a hard time quickly identifying the chord. I realize that this is just a call back to more ear training one of my weakspots as a generally self-taught player.
The musicians I play with have excellent ears and I really don't want to be the one fishing around for the chord and interrupting the flow of their solos. It would be great if I could find a program that also had a "random chord feature" that would test me in a play along sort of way. Any good program will help strengthen my ears but maybe there are some suggestions to help with my particular needs? Forgive me for not going through the archives, I'm a new parent and its amazing that I even got this posting off in time.....

It sounds like you are describing Ornette's harmolodic concept. Haden was able to shadow Ornette where ever Ornette modulated.
That was great in the early times, then later Ornette started to use more independant players.
So I think you need to decide if you want to always follow them, or if you want to put emphisis on a strange choice they made by staying where you are.
It seems to me if you wanted traditional harmony, you would use changes everyone knew.
I think you can use your own intuition in that context and maybe even lay down other choices based on what they play.

Even when you take a tradition role in improvised music, you can still improvise. They improvise a solo and you improvise a bass part.
The ideas you are talking about for study are good ones, but you should feel free to lay down your own spontaneous responses.
Identifying the chord on the spot and making an intellectual decision is normally going to make your contribution too late. What you need is a harmony note or set of notes, so you need to trust your natural choice in the moment.

[Jason Sypher]

In fact the soloist does stay on one chord for awhile before switching to the new chord. There is an example of what I'm talking about on my myspace page in the tune "Briul per Sase". Here is a link:http://www.myspace.com/jasonsypher

At this point in our band we were switching to pretty easy chords but as we have become more and more comfortable, we go all over the place. I would like to become so adept that I could not only hear the chord in a beat or two but anticipate it correctly. What I keep finding is that I start to hear things that aren't there and then eventually stop trusting myself and end up missing changes that are obvious.

I think this is basically harmolodic playing in a folk context. It's what I have wanted to do since I first heard Ornette but now that it's right in front of me I realize how difficult it is to do.

If an ear training program could be set up to play say, eight bars of a chord and then switch to a new random chord that would be ideal for my practice. I could just make some programs up in garage band and then wait a few weeks so I'm sure to have forgotten the sequence and work like that but it's so time consuming and labor intensive. I'm sure there are ear training programs that select random tones for you to identify but is there one that will also randomize chords? Hmmm.

[Bassist4Life]

That sounds pretty cool. I was aware of free jazz, but I didn't know the creative process behind it. Thanks for those great posts guys.

Joe

[MingusAmongUs]

Originally Posted by Jason Sypher

I think this is basically harmolodic playing in a folk context. It's what I have wanted to do since I first heard Ornette but now that it's right in front of me I realize how difficult it is to do.

That's really nice stuff. And you're darn right -- that's hard to do in a folk context, because I think mistakes would stand out more. But I believe in the end it's all the same: jazz, folk, classical, whatever. The more you do it, preferably with the same musicians, the more it will come together, and the more you will be able to intuit one another's musical thoughts. Not to sound too flaky.

Originally Posted by Jason Sypher

I'm sure there are ear training programs that select random tones for you to identify but is there one that will also randomize chords? Hmmm.

In fact the link at the top of the page has just that. Random chords. You can choose which ones you want it to select from. Try it!

[Jason Sypher]

I haven't had enough time to look yet, thanks.

[Jason Sypher]

I finally did take a look at it and I think I will try it out every morning as a little ear test. It's a nice little free exercise to start the ears in the morning.