Dealing with Frustration?

[NathOBX]

Aeroplane is a tough one, dont worry about learning every single fill at first, get the basic progression and rhythm down and go from there.

 

[baddarryl]

Aeroplane is a tough one, dont worry about learning every single fill at first, get the basic progression and rhythm down and go from there.

Thanks everyone. That is exactly what I did with Red House and now I have it nailed. Writing down the chord chart helped me memorize the progression as well. Maybe I just needed to vent and get some suggestions. I sat down tonight and in no time got that and Badfish by Sublime down which was pretty easy once I got the riff. Aeroplane? Yeah, that will be an accomplishment

 

[White Beard]

Listen. Just listen with focus. When I was a kid (like 16-17) I would go to these jazz competitions and clinics for school jazz band, and the judges and clinicians would just drill it into into your head. Listen, listen, listen.

So, when I'm a kid and I'm not driving, parents and bus drivers are doing most of the long distance driving, so I had a lot of time to spend with my Sony DiscMan (with MegaBass) with little interruption (there was a small window of about six or seven years between the WalkMan and iPods where the DiscMan was king). I would listen to music very quietly on my Sony Boombox (with MegaBass) as I went to sleep. That's when I first heard Jimmy Cobb on "Blue in Green" do a very quite brush roll on snare during the outro, right before Bill Evans crescendos and then brings it back down. It blew my mind.

I listened to a lot of Miles Davis when I first started listening to jazz, so I listened to a lot of Paul Chambers. Eventually, when I would walk, I started hitting downbeats on the three chord-tone because I found it more interesting, and eventually I found out that Paul Chambers would start the downbeat on a chord-tone, and not the root. Didn't even know that I stole it from him.

The more you listen, the more you just soak it up. You just all of a sudden get these great ideas that other people have already had.

Also, stop trying to play every note like they played it on the record (NathOBX said this previously). No one will know. Trust me. No one person will come up to you after the show and say to you, "Uh, I noticed that during the bridge section there are grace notes from the natural major seven to the tonic that precede the downbeat in the official recording of the song, but you're playing flat-seven pick-up notes. EXPLAIN!!!"

 

[baddarryl]

Listen. Just listen with focus. When I was a kid (like 16-17) I would go to these jazz competitions and clinics for school jazz band, and the judges and clinicians would just drill it into into your head. Listen, listen, listen.

That is what I do. I have created Playlists on Spotify of songs I know, need to learn, ones we play etc. and listen all the time. I am 50 with no formal training and missed that boat. Hell I didn't even appreciate the Beatles or Jazz until I was 40 (had never heard of Paul Chambers and didn't know who Jaco was though I grew up in the same neighborhood he was in ).

I am starting to see that about every note. Thanks.

 

[two fingers]

I listen to the songs as much as possible, even if it's just background music while doing things around the house or while driving. That way, I get to know where the changes and breaks are. Then I just sit down and learn them by ear. If I've heard a song several times, I can usually learn it in about 10 minutes. If it's a complicated song, it will take longer but usually no more than 30 to 40 minutes.

This. 1000X this!!!!

I run earbuds up the bacl of my shirt amd down into my pocket into my phone.

Use Google Play or some other subscription music service to make playlists. Listen to those songs over and over and OVER again.