That's interesting. I haven't noticed that that last pitch was wrong. I'll take a listen. Thanks for pointing that out!
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Double Bass Blue in Green analysis
- Thread starter Tom Lane
- Start date
I’m admittedly simple, indeed, but following your analysis with joy.
I’ve been revisiting this tune, and the recordings with time changes (i.e., it doubles, redoubles, halves…etc. but it’s the harmonic tempo, not necessarily the feel). Otherwise, it’s a möbius strip, so keep it linear.
I like the functional analysis, and I keep my eye on anchoring around the d- tonic. Before the tonic, is some kind of A dominant (major or minor), before that some kind predominant, like a ii, IV, bVI, or some other qualify or that root. There is interstitial material like bar 3 to 4 but lots of variations. Like the Db, or Db on beat 4, or no Db. C- to F, or C- Bb (just a trisub) for a bVI to V.
If I get lost, or someone else gets lost, the one chord that catches the ear is the d- to E7. And to help others, back to the top of the head, on bass I lead into the G on bar 1. And that seems like enough. Also, yeah, band eye contact and body language.
But if we’re all okay, I might play G- to Bb to A, or even Bb to G- G#o, or something. What happens if I start on E- instead od G-? Someone might mishear as the E7 and that could be bad.
As an exercise, one could record a chorus of miles solo, just the melody line, then test all the bass root motion possibilities under that with no chords.
I enjoy playing along to recordings with the time changes, and using my ear to hear how the drum or piano is totally telegraphing that something’s about to happen. Sometimes I fail and have to find my way back, like real life. And the more versions I try, make me more prepare when it happens in a gig. And I really hear the basics of the progression when it’s the double double time.
AND learning a lot through your analysis.
I’ve been revisiting this tune, and the recordings with time changes (i.e., it doubles, redoubles, halves…etc. but it’s the harmonic tempo, not necessarily the feel). Otherwise, it’s a möbius strip, so keep it linear.
I like the functional analysis, and I keep my eye on anchoring around the d- tonic. Before the tonic, is some kind of A dominant (major or minor), before that some kind predominant, like a ii, IV, bVI, or some other qualify or that root. There is interstitial material like bar 3 to 4 but lots of variations. Like the Db, or Db on beat 4, or no Db. C- to F, or C- Bb (just a trisub) for a bVI to V.
If I get lost, or someone else gets lost, the one chord that catches the ear is the d- to E7. And to help others, back to the top of the head, on bass I lead into the G on bar 1. And that seems like enough. Also, yeah, band eye contact and body language.
But if we’re all okay, I might play G- to Bb to A, or even Bb to G- G#o, or something. What happens if I start on E- instead od G-? Someone might mishear as the E7 and that could be bad.
As an exercise, one could record a chorus of miles solo, just the melody line, then test all the bass root motion possibilities under that with no chords.
I enjoy playing along to recordings with the time changes, and using my ear to hear how the drum or piano is totally telegraphing that something’s about to happen. Sometimes I fail and have to find my way back, like real life. And the more versions I try, make me more prepare when it happens in a gig. And I really hear the basics of the progression when it’s the double double time.
AND learning a lot through your analysis.
You can start on a Em7b5 or use it later in the first bar. But the b5 is important.
If you use it on bar 1 beat 1, you double the melody note which is not very interesting, but on the fourth beat it sounds good.
If you use it on bar 1 beat 1, you double the melody note which is not very interesting, but on the fourth beat it sounds good.
I've found that as well. Voice the G-6 as G F D E without the Bb and you'll recognize how important that tritone is.
I haven't provided an update for a while and thought I should keep this going. I'm still working on this but I have a bunch of irons in the fire these days so I don't always manage to carve out time for it every day. I've been mostly sitting at the piano and composing solos and improvising a few choruses on the DB. Back and forth. I think it's being fruitful because my goal for the past couple of years has been to make my solos more sophisticated and that's happening on the DB, a little more sophisticated vocabulary and devices, with lines that hold together more coherently. On my composed solos, the first one I did a couple of weeks ago was mostly bebop flavored, with all of the typical devices: enclosures, rhythmic and octave displacement, chromaticism, chord tones on the downbeats with chromatic fillers to make that happen. I think I got every device in those two choruses except the triplet arpeggio starting on the 3rd. But, there is a triplet and some thirds, so... I think the bop vocabulary is finally starting to come back out of me unconsciously. So I'm pleased with that. I'm still working on being able to play the solos in time on the piano. And that's been fruitful too because one of my limitations as a pianist is always looking at my hands. It makes sense, when I sit at the piano, the only time I read is when I'm studying one of my lesson books. Otherwise, I'm usually playing a tune I already know. So this has been good for my reading. I'll post the chart and a vid once it's up to a reasonable tempo sans clams.
The second composed solo is a newer concept I've been learning about: using the Diminished half-whole scale over a ii-V-I progression. I'm pretty pleased with what I've gotten down thus far and how much I'm finally internalizing about the way it's used and sounds. I'm still working on finishing that one.
The next composed solo I think will employ triad pairs which I expect will be useful on the bass. I hear Chris and John and Lynn use them almost every solo. I don't know if that's what they're thinking about when they use them, but what they're playing sounds like the concept, and like the Diminished H-W scale, the structure helps the melody sound more coherent, even if you're playing outside.
So, to steal a popular tag-line "stay tuned!"
The second composed solo is a newer concept I've been learning about: using the Diminished half-whole scale over a ii-V-I progression. I'm pretty pleased with what I've gotten down thus far and how much I'm finally internalizing about the way it's used and sounds. I'm still working on finishing that one.
The next composed solo I think will employ triad pairs which I expect will be useful on the bass. I hear Chris and John and Lynn use them almost every solo. I don't know if that's what they're thinking about when they use them, but what they're playing sounds like the concept, and like the Diminished H-W scale, the structure helps the melody sound more coherent, even if you're playing outside.
So, to steal a popular tag-line "stay tuned!"
"it's better to play something simple and honest than to try to shoe horn a diminished whole tone lick into one's solo." - Bill Evans, not really but kind of
Are you sure any of this is actually helping your vocabulary? In European art music, the means of production are separate from composers/theorists. In American improvised music we are responsible for deciding what the play for ourselves. I.E. classical musicians have to be ready to play what they are told, jazz musicians needs to make their own decisions about what to play. Nothing beats having your instrument in your hands and making some decisions while playing.
The clip I posted included a great example of Bill playing what he would like to hear from a young improviser, do some wonderful simple riffing. Kind of blue is stark in its simplicity -- what is the Mingus quote about making genius making the complicated simple and fools making the simple needless complicated ? Develop deeper vocabulary from what? What do you sound like? I am unconvinced by this approach. I don't understand how you are facilitating anything without playing a lot. Play your favorite licks to death in the practice room and then see what comes out on stage. It's great to be thoughtful, but if you are spending more time writing notes on a page or sitting at the piano then you are playing bass, I think that is a serious mistake if you want to play bass.
Very few people thought as much about as music as Bill Evans and you never ever hear him say "I wish young musicians spent more time on scale theory" ... or "the problem with young improvisers is they just don't know the super locrian scale." etc
That is not at all what I am saying. Do what works for you. Building a language is a personal thing. What works for one artist, doesn't work for another. I just think it is very easy to lose sight of the goal of theory. Especially in a world where there are BM's in jazz studies.
TL;DR: I think your advice is good but not always the best tactic for improvement.
Okay, thanks for your POV. I think maybe your conflating an academic, music theory approach with what I'm doing. I'm not sure that's a fair characterization of your comment so correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe it's worth explaining a bit in case someone else is.
Let me try an analogy and see if that changes your mind a bit. When I picked up the bass, I was curious about walking bass lines. Typical mid-life crisis kind of stuff; I was bored and wanted to try something new, so I rented a fretted BG from a local music store for a couple of months and started trying to play walking bass lines. I somehow knew a bit of how it was done and listened to tunes I liked and could easier hear the bass and tried to cop what they were playing. That was going pretty well for a few months but when I tried to pick up a leadsheet and try a new song, I couldn't think of the chords or scales quickly enough to do it in real time. I was used to soloing over rock and blues tunes on guitar and they rarely change key. I had the "blues" thing down well enough to play professionally in regional bands. But when it came to jazz bass, I could only play what I'd transcribed. So, I took it out of real time and started composing my walking lines. I'd write them out and then play them, criticizing what I didn't like and rewriting them until I was satisfied, along with highlighting what I did like. I was still transcribing tunes I could find but not as much because I split my time. Eventually, I found the licks that we all find, the "money shot" as Lynn Seaton calls it, D E F F# G A Bb B C, etc. All the typical ways we get from the root of one chord to the next in four notes. After a year or so of doing that, I didn't need to write my lines out any longer because I'd internalized the licks; they became part of my vocabulary. And I find that I don't have any difficulty using those licks as a skeleton to build new licks and new material but I had to "discover" enough licks first to become functional. I also had to memorize how to spell and play all of the chords and the Major and Minor scales. I used to spell the chords and scales whenever I was waiting for something as a way to kill time. I still do that, but now it's trying to make a melody using the Diminished HW scale rather than the pitches to C7#9.
After I felt that I'd become functional as anaccompanistt, not that there's not room for improvement, there is of course, but then I started concentrating on my soloing. It's improved from where I've started quite a bit, but that was a pretty low bar. I had trouble giving up quarter notes, developing a motif - not stating a motif, but restating it after the first instance, and then restating it again in a slightly different way - making my lines sound coherent, playing longer phrases, building excitement over more than one chorus, ending a solo on time instead of cutting cut-off by the top of the form, etc. Lot's of stuff I couldn't do that I used to do on rock or blues tunes with guitar. About all I could do was hear the form and the harmony, and not usually lose my place. I was certainly thinking too much and playing behind, like a lot of beginning soloists.
I was exploring all that, soloing on tunes that I knew but hadn't solo'd on much and came across a tune that I couldn't think of anything to play. I think it was Footprints or All Blues. All I could hear when it was time to solo was the bass line. That still happens to be sometimes if I'm too deep into my bass line - I don't seem to be able to change from being an accompanist to being a melodist but not very often any longer. I happened to mention that issue to David Friesen, that I couldn't think of anything to play for a solo, and he recommended that I compose a solo away from the bass. Even though that's exactly what I did with my bass lines when I started, it hadn't occurred to me to compose a solo because, of course, they're supposed to be improvised! Duh! But I took David's advice and it worked! I wrote out three choruses, memorized them and played it pretty much the same way for a while but it didn't take long for me to find new ways and now I don't even remember what that composed solo was.
The past couple of years, I'd say that I solo better than a lot of DBers but I still make beginner mistakes at times, mostly along the lines of abandoning a motif too soon or providing enough interest. I can usually start out well and end well, not lose my place. I don't play behind the beat or lag the harmony and I'm not thinking much while I play, just singing a melody in my mind's ear and realizing it on the bass. Some hiccups once in a while: I miss my intonation on a leap or stumble over what I intended to do, but for the most part, I can play what I hear. My issue is I'm dissatisfied with what I hear because it sounds "too inside" and "too simple". Too much like a hymn or folk music. Not like Miles or Parker or Evans or Brecker or Metheny, etc, so I'm trying to "hear" more sophisticated things. I've tried to hire teachers to help me, but no one appears interested, so the best I can think of is to analyze the music I like, figure out how it's different than what I'm doing, and try to mimic that. I transcribe lines but much of the time I can't play a horn solo in real time on the bass, so, it's helpful but not so much. And there aren't a lot of great DB solos. There are some and they're on my to-do list.
Another method is as I described, practicing soloing on the tune on DB along to a practice track, and composing solos on the piano. The advantage of composing the solos is two-fold, it gets me away from the and my, limitations on the DB, and permits me to improvise slower, not in real time, out-of-time, in fact, and even rewrite sections if I paint myself into a corner.
Listening to myself, I'd say it's definitely taking me in the right direction. I think my progress would probably be faster with a good teacher but I haven't found anyone yet. I've found that it's also wise to beat a tune to death and just play it for months. I think that's because then I can focus on the thing I'm trying to study and improve rather than the tune itself.
I will say that I've heard your advice before, to play a lot, and I think it's good, wise, advice. I have played a lot in the past and I find that my playing gets more intuitive if I play with others every day for a few hours. For 2 years, I played in a community college big band, and then for 5 years I lead my own combo and played around town as a sideman. Mostly amateur and semi-pro things. I gave it up because I got to the point where the bands were satisfied with my playing but I wasn't. I found that I was spending too much time playing and administering the band developing charts and getting gigs and such, that I didn't have enough time to practice enough to make satisfactory progress. And I wasn't good enough to play with high-quality, pro-level players very often so some of the bands were better than average but still kind of amateurish, IMO. I find that I learn in phases and that I can only focus on one or two things at a time. So, I think the advice to "play a lot" is good advice but it's also not always the best tactic all of the time. It's like climbing a wall, first the right foot, then the left foot. Some things improve, others atrophy but they come back quickly.
Wow! That was more of a commitment to a response than I anticipated! If you've read this far, I'll send you a check!
I think you are on a good track.
What I would recommend is using changed notes from chord to chord in your improvisation (or composed improvisation, things like that are used in unisono big band parts) to make clear what has changed and not staying too long in the notes of the tonic or avoiding the changing notes.
Yes, that's been my tactic for more than a decade. I think playing the few differences makes me sound like I'm honoring the changes better if I'm trying to play inside. Playing outside is more difficult for me. I don't think I can really do it yet, but working with the Diminished HW scale patterns is helping me with that. Bebop doesn't go outside for any length of time. Chromatic passages, sure, but not multiple measures of playing outside and then resolving.
I suppose there's two ways to think of playing inside. The first is to note the pitches that change and don't change from chord to chord, within the overall context of the key of the passage. The second is what @Don Kasper pointed out in this thread and that I think I heard Miles referred to as the "butter" notes. Pretty sure I heard that in a Herbie Hancock interview. The "butter" notes are the most pleasantly striking pitches against the chord. It's not usually the 5th or the root. They're frequently the flat-five, major 7th, and third. Next I think, again, depending on context, could be the 2nd, and 6th. If you're aiming for tension, then the sharp fifth, the flatted nine, unaltered fourth, flat sixth or raised 5th. Not sure where the flatted 7th fits in; I'll have to give that some thought. Whether you want to play the butter notes depends a lot on the context, as it always should, IMO, but generally, as an accompanist we don't and leave them for the soloist, but there's no hard and fast iMO.
Thanks for sharing that Bill Evans clip, crd! What stood out to me was how he used simple ideas to develop a compositional approach to his solo by using repetition and variation, restating his ideas through out the harmonic progression.
- Jul 18, 2017
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@Tom Lane, when I listed to that clip and heard Evans demonstrate what was something simple to him, I immediately thought, "That sounds like what I would do" - actually, it sounded more complex in places than what I would do, but parts of it felt like they were right in my wheelhouse.
I don't know that this is relevant, but I think it is: My first instrument is guitar and my first major in college was classical guitar performance. I switched majors when I realized I just didn't have the chops to play world-class repertoire on the classical guitar, but I never stopped playing. I play the occasional gig - background music at an art gallery opening in my town and the like, and I've figured out that what works for me is playing simple repertoire beautifully. I don't consider myself untalented, and I know I can play musically on pieces that aren't technically challenging to me, so that's what I do, and I get compliments all the time about my playing. (For you classical guitarists out there, I'm a big fan of Stanley Yate's collection, "Graded Repertoire" - even the very first piece in the book, which he wrote, is beautiful, and most of the other pieces are by famous classical guitar composers.) I'll bring the guitar in and improvise quiet music while communion is being served at my church job where I'm mostly the organist, and again, compliments galore come my way.
I think this is relevant to the current discussion because I think there's a time for reaching outside your comfort zone and a time to stay within it. If I wanted to improvise outside my comfort zone, I'd do it in a practice room and not in front of an audience, and the very last thing I'm doing when I'm improvising it trying to play like someone else. It is, to use one example, always lost on me that people want to play the guitar solo in Stairway to Heaven just like it's on the record. I've seen it notated quite carefully but I just look at it and say, "Why? Just make up your own."
Just my opinion; your mileage may vary.
-S-
I don't know that this is relevant, but I think it is: My first instrument is guitar and my first major in college was classical guitar performance. I switched majors when I realized I just didn't have the chops to play world-class repertoire on the classical guitar, but I never stopped playing. I play the occasional gig - background music at an art gallery opening in my town and the like, and I've figured out that what works for me is playing simple repertoire beautifully. I don't consider myself untalented, and I know I can play musically on pieces that aren't technically challenging to me, so that's what I do, and I get compliments all the time about my playing. (For you classical guitarists out there, I'm a big fan of Stanley Yate's collection, "Graded Repertoire" - even the very first piece in the book, which he wrote, is beautiful, and most of the other pieces are by famous classical guitar composers.) I'll bring the guitar in and improvise quiet music while communion is being served at my church job where I'm mostly the organist, and again, compliments galore come my way.
I think this is relevant to the current discussion because I think there's a time for reaching outside your comfort zone and a time to stay within it. If I wanted to improvise outside my comfort zone, I'd do it in a practice room and not in front of an audience, and the very last thing I'm doing when I'm improvising it trying to play like someone else. It is, to use one example, always lost on me that people want to play the guitar solo in Stairway to Heaven just like it's on the record. I've seen it notated quite carefully but I just look at it and say, "Why? Just make up your own."
Just my opinion; your mileage may vary.
-S-
