Double Bass The Rhythmic Nature of Jazz, Review

[Violen]

Hey! I got the first and second dvds.

Im going to give some review and analisys in a bit.

For now, refrain from posting until you see me say "Ok lets discuss this." Let me give you guys some insight and a real review of it before we get a discussion going.

Going to watch the second dvd now.

 

[Violen]

Stolen For more Reviewing

 

[Violen]

And three should do the job.

If you want an insight to where this all started/came from,

Start Here.

Hal Galper Master Class - Rhythm and Syncopation

Hal Galper Master Class - Rhythm and Syncopation - YouTube

I realize im somewhat getting ahead of myself, but as someone who is working on a masters in bass/performance I am going to say the following things:

1. Yes. Get the book. We can Learn Better Together

2. Yes you need to watch the first dvd, and then watch it again. Sometimes some of the commentary he has gives more insight to the process than the actual process.

3. Yes i think this is something we all need.

4. More review to follow. Go watch the rest of the Hal Galper stuff.

 

[Huy Nguyen]

The Youtubes aren't enough - don't be fooled. They catch some of the important material but not everything. As for Hal Galper's video, it's great but theres much more to Longo's stuff and approach... IMO extends what Galper has to say.

And even the 2nd Dvd is skimpy (my complaint), but it shows you how to apply material from the 1st DVD without saying so. I've taken the concept and ran with it (including tying it to things I used to see/hear/do when playing in a bateria). IMO, one of the biggest things I've gleaned from those two DVDs is to nail the 12/8 pile pattern, nail the accentuation of 4/4 and 6/8 over it... then to take those two things and sing melodies while drumming out any of the patterns to understand how the melody lays on the rhythm.

Heck, this is not a new idea, and it's something that Latin Jazz melodies do all the time using 3/2 vs 2/3 claves. There's alot of gold to be mined in that 1st DVD if you stop to think about what he's saying.

But the Youtube interview with Longo's students is pretty important and missing from the DVDs. Practicing the rhythms every day and almost every available moment is key. This isn't something you do for a little bit and drop it off the regimen.

 

[Violen]

THe above response is the kind of thing i want to see propagate the first part of this discussion, so we can archive this for future searchers. (will edit this in a bit.)

 

[Huy Nguyen]

We've already started talking about the DVDs a while back here:
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f23/internal-time-838064/index2.html#post12154871

I'll leave it up to the mods to sort out the content into their proper places.

Fingers comment about getting time down by just simply learning to be drummer is spot on too.

 

[Matthew_84]

Thread revival here...

I bought this book and DVD combo from Link Removed.

I got the book "How To Sight Read Jazz and Other Syncopated Type Rhythms" by Michael Longo, and I also got the accompanying DVD "The Rhythmic Nature of Jazz: An Evening With Mike Longo: Master Class Series".

There is also a pamphlet that says, "announcing the second DVD called "The Fundamentals" from the four volume course "The Rhythmic Nature of Jazz." The pamphlet also says that the first DVD is called "Orientation".

But my DVD doesn't say "Orientation", or "Fundementals" or anything like that. So, when you guys mention the first and second DVD's are you talking about different DVD's then the one that I have? Are there more DVD's for me to buy? The pamphlet has a link to purchase the "Rhythmic Nature of Jazz", but it just goes to a link from the same sight, which just sells the DVD that I already have. So needless to say, I'm a little confused.

Also, here's a photo of my chapters on the DVD.

the chapters are:
Introduction
Two areas of study
Underlying structural rhythm in jazz
The question about touch
Drum demonstration with two drummers
Additive rhythm
Solution to syncopation problem
Diz's concept - not just African concept
The 5/4 addition
Continuities
Feeling vs. knowledge
Kush demonstration

Thanks

 

[Matthew_84]

Nevermind.. I found out that my DVD was only the first one.

 

[chicagodoubler]

IMHO, these resources should ALWAYS be secondary to transcription and playing with experienced players. This music is an aural tradition, and there are no shortcuts. When you learn the tradition by ear, it becomes as natural as speaking your first language. Learn too much from artificial pedagogy and you'll sound like a second year Spanish student. Hal would be the first to say as much.

I forgot- which DVD's and YouTube videos taught Paul Chambers, Ray Brown and Ron Carter how to play "jazz rhythms?".

Learn like the masters if you want to sound like one.

 

[Marc Piane]

IMHO, these resources should ALWAYS be secondary to transcription and playing with experienced players. This music is an aural tradition, and there are no shortcuts. When you learn the tradition by ear, it becomes as natural as speaking your first language. Learn too much from artificial pedagogy and you'll sound like a second year Spanish student. Hal would be the first to say as much.

I forgot- which DVD's and YouTube videos taught Paul Chambers, Ray Brown and Ron Carter how to play "jazz rhythms?".

Learn like the masters if you want to sound like one.

+infinity+1

 

[Violen]

IMHO, these resources should ALWAYS be secondary to transcription and playing with experienced players. This music is an aural tradition, and there are no shortcuts. When you learn the tradition by ear, it becomes as natural as speaking your first language. Learn too much from artificial pedagogy and you'll sound like a second year Spanish student. Hal would be the first to say as much.

I forgot- which DVD's and YouTube videos taught Paul Chambers, Ray Brown and Ron Carter how to play "jazz rhythms?".

Learn like the masters if you want to sound like one.

These dvd's aren't short cuts. they are long cuts. they are fundamental techniques we should all study. your advice is great for generalization but the key to our tradition is rhythm and these dvds really expose some ideas that need to be spread throughout the community.

I reccomend them to everyone. Doing my drum exercises daily and the different grooves is opening up worlds for me. Things i take to the cats i play with and they are astounded at the changes, and it is changing their perceptions of jazz too.

Aural tradition isnt enough, especially throughout the generations with things get lost in the the translation, and the apprenticeship system is all but dead.

Please check out these dvds and books. I think they will help anyone go far.

 

[chicagodoubler]

Again, which DVD and play along and pattern book did Miles use?

The tradition is alive and well. You gotta leave the house to find it, and sometimes it takes some driving, but the mentors are still out there, and the recordings always will be, no matter what.

Glad you found a resource that works for you, but to me these things always sound a lot like:
http://www.pimsleur.com/

*You too can learn jazz in your own home! In just one week! Got an important business trip where you need to speak the jazz language? Don't waste years transcribing and going to sessions! Just buy our stuff!!!!*

Sorry for being dark. Cheers for working on drumming. However, this music has always been learned by ear, and always will be. Be aware that the majority of printed jazz pedagogy was not made for the benefit of the tradition, but rather for the benefit of the author and the publisher. Nobody buys copies of a book whose sole text is "transcribe and go to sessions," but that's how it works, guys.

 

[Huy Nguyen]

I've actually used Pimsleur to learn very basic Korean. Granted I already know 3 different languages, but it was actually pretty effective in getting things off the ground enough to understand a few things. As with anything, nothing beats immersion. BTW: I did steal Pimsleur's phrase learning technique and adapted it to learning heads. I use it regularly. Works amazingly well and the retention is decent. Every tool has it's use. Don't knock that one til you try it. Not sure if it's worth the money they sell it for tho.

As for Longo's stuff... having done it and worked on both DVDs - Violen is right, it IS NOT a shortcut. Longo is divulging Dizzy's approach and in its own way just as cryptic as learning through regular methods (transcription, listening etc). It's actually not his ideas, AFAIK, it's all Dizzy's ideas. The DVD's don't show you what notes or what scale to use one bit. Actually, it's very complimentary to any standard jazz "methodology". All it does it provide a different perspective on how rhythm fits with jazz melodies. What Longo espouses sheds new light on the same old bebop heads everybody's been trying to play for ages. IMO, once you understand how stuff like Confirmation is seen from Dizzy's approach, it takes on a sort of different life. Just from my own cursory exploration, I get a stronger sense of the differences where the melody's notes fall within the bar - and how falling on certain beats is totally different than others. Hard to describe. Certainly, it has a sort of subconscious effect on your soloing. Even tho it's on DVD, Longo's stuff is very much be "learning by ear". The DVD's also come from that approach that it's still an oral tradition.

IMO: you'd be missing out on something significant if you didn't give Longo's DVDs a try.

I find George Garzone's method a little more cookie cutter and in the words of Kenny Barron, "it leaves me a little cold." But then again, I haven't delved very deeply into it and it's also something that is very involved and takes a long time. Garzone says you have to do "hard labor" to get it.

 

[ejnachtrab]

Okay, transcribing and playing sessions are critical to developing as a jazz player. No question, no shortcuts.

I do, however, think a distinction needs to be made between how PC learned to play and how a white kid from the suburbs who didn't hear real jazz until he went jazz camp in 10th grade is going to learn. There are different resources, advantages, and disadvantages now. I was a Jazz studies major in the early 1990's, in one of my first lessons in college my teacher told me I needed to know a thousand tunes... Well, I think I knew two. His generation grew up with jazz. I grew up listening to the Beatles or worse, Duran Duran, not the American songbook, that's a lot of ground to make up.

My point here is I think it's close minded/myopic to dismiss these resources out of hand. Yes there are still mentors out there, but this whole thing has changed. In the 80's all those mentors were tripping over themselves to get a gig teaching at the university or coming up with their own jazz pedagogy. Hopefully it's worth something.

 

[Huy Nguyen]

FWIW: The DVDs are about as close as I'm going to get sitting around and hanging out with Dizzy and Mike Longo without getting into a masterclass with Longo. It's delivered in a seminar style. The exercises are minimal. It's basically two clinics recorded on video. IMO, the material itself is so-so, but the ideas can be astounding.

If you buy the Longo's latest CD, you can get a practice track that has him drumming for a long period of time. You play and drum against the practice track just to cop his time feel. I haven't done it yet, but I don't think you can get closer to the oral tradition than having him actually do it for you in person.

 

[chicagodoubler]

hdiddy-

There are a ton of teachers out there who played with Dizzy and would be happy to share you some of his approach. I've had the honor of working with a couple, and found their conveyance of Dizzy's teachings far less pedantic... and universally very simplistic.

Excuse me for ranting. These products aren't my cup of tea.

ejnachtrab- Actually, PC and his contemporaries would have grown up hearing a lot of pop and mickey mouse stuff too. Please remember- what we call "standards" now were the popular songs of that era, and the treatment was just as simplistic as the pop of today in many cases.

Jazz has always been something that required effort. Nobody brings the tradition to us. We have to search it out and honor it and it's been that way since the start. There's no product or method that can substitute for hard work and love.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

I do, however, think a distinction needs to be made between how PC learned to play and how a white kid from the suburbs who didn't hear real jazz until he went jazz camp in 10th grade is going to learn. There are different resources, advantages, and disadvantages now. I was a Jazz studies major in the early 1990's, in one of my first lessons in college my teacher told me I needed to know a thousand tunes... Well, I think I knew two. His generation grew up with jazz. I grew up listening to the Beatles or worse, Duran Duran, not the American songbook, that's a lot of ground to make up.

I think this is a good point - so times change and in the 1950s there were hugely more clubs where you could hear Jazz and play Jazz. Plus it was the popular music of the day and was all around you.

In the 21st century, the music you hear is manufactured/programmed - there are very few clubs anywhere that put on Jazz and the pros have all those gigs sewn up - how do you learn and break into this ?

The only way I got into Jazz was through educational programmes.

 

[chicagodoubler]

We listen to the same records they listened to. They aren't on the radio as much, but they are on our iPods.

There may be a lower density of clubs and performances but the big markets still have amazing bands playing 7 days a week. It requires more effort than it used to, but a hungry young fella can achieve total immersion in this music, and still make a decent living playing and teaching.

It's funny. Everybody talks about how the work is all dried up but there's still a half dozen dates a year where I scramble to find a sub...

 

[Tom Lane]

New students have a lot of new materials that they can take advantage of. I agree that they're not a substitution for playing by ear, but used properly, they can get the beginner up and playing sooner and provide a foundation for them to hang their ear on. Band-in-a-Box, the Real Books, these are not shortcuts but study aids. One of my favorite quotes from one of my teachers is "Fake books are for when you DON'T know the tune". But they're also great for kind of learning a lot of tunes quickly. Wake up and smell the coffee folks.

 

[Bruce Lindfield]

We listen to the same records they listened to...

Well - when I started listening to music seriously and buying albums in the late 70s - Jazz was in its fusion period and the live music I was exposed to in Britain, was all heavy rock - Led Zep, Deep Purple, Yes, Genesis etc.

It took me another few decades to get back to hearing all the classic Jazz from the 40s, 50s and 60s. I imagine for kids growing up today, it might be easier to get downloads, but these didn't exist when I was learning about music and live Jazz gigs in my home town were non-existent, but I could see great rock groups every night.

Ironically it was only Jazz education that opened up the earlier history of Jazz to me and what before had sounded impenetrable to my ears, suddenly made sense when explained by teachers and as I actually tried to play that music. Without the further explanations of what was going on; I doubt I would ever have got interested in Jazz.