Essential Jazz Knowledge? Check this out!

[jbl71004]

Thanks Steve... I had never even noticed the Master's section (kind of a newbee). I'm checking out his forum now. Thanks again .

 

[Bassist4Life]

I almost cried when I saw this:

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

OMG! That's no joke. I thought you made that as a gag. I can't imagine this being "essential" or "generic". I've seen a lot of music notation, but this is nuts.

Joe

 

[westland]

I hope that drew some people in. I recently heard of Band-In-A-Box and though I don't really like the program, the website has a great feature called "Riff-A-Day". I've learned more about playing jazz basslines with this website than anything else, oddly enough.
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

I use BAIB all the time, mainly for my piano accompaniments (along with their various XXX Pianist series), but have started using for bass walking lines as well. These are the greatest for preparing you to play live (something I haven't really done in 20 years). It's harder I think to get the feel for the BAIB tracks because they are sort of flat and lame sounding, like a band at a Holiday Inn bar; but they have all the stuff needed for an accompaniment, and are unforgiving on beat, changes, etc. Really the best way to prepare for actual group playing.

 

[westland]

[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

I'm curious as to why this is 'essential' ... it's just riffing around a sequence of V-I cadences ('authentic' cadences I think is what they are called) ... I don't see much useful about the particular riffs ... there's a I-II-I moving down the modal scale, and some outlining of chords (nothing wrong with that) ... but why would I want to memorize this?

 

[c-ba55]

What you absolutely need to know is what notes are in what chords. So when you see a chord symbol like Bm7b5, you IMMEDIATELY think, and your fingers go to, B D F A. After that, it's just connecting one chord to the next in a way that sounds good to you. That second part is just practice and listening. The first part requries some study and thinking and practicing.

 

[mstott25]

What you absolutely need to know is what notes are in what chords. So when you see a chord symbol like Bm7b5, you IMMEDIATELY think, and your fingers go to, B D F A. After that, it's just connecting one chord to the next in a way that sounds good to you. That second part is just practice and listening. The first part requries some study and thinking and practicing.

This I agree with. However, I think it's also imperative to figure out walking bass in a way that makes sense to you as a bass player/musician. I never think in terms of the actual names of notes. When I see any half diminished chord I automatically see the fingering in my head and I see the numbers that make up that chord (Bm7b5 = 1 b3 b5 m7). That's what works for me. Other people think in terms of notes and that's what works for them but bottom line is you need to know what notes make up those chords. When I analyze other players I'm contstantly thinking along the lines of intervalic relations. Oh Ray Brown's walking down from the 3rd to the 5th below the chord tone here, or Ron Carter played a m6 and it still worked there etc. I studied with Todd Johnson and studied out of Gary Willis' fingerboard harmony book (Todd's a big fan of Willis and studied under him too btw) and their approach really helped me out. I mentioned earlier Todd Coolman's book which I think is the best because it's very concise and gets right to the point. I tried Friedland's book also but lost it some time ago. I'm sure I picked up something from every book I studied but certain one's stand out to me as being especially helpful.

Todd Johnsons DVD with the modules is more than enough to get you going and if you want something cheaper Todd Coolman's book is great. Willis' book is a little more involved IMO and took me several attempts before I actually made it through it and I'm not sure if I would have if I didn't look through the other books beforehand. Bottom line is this: It will come easier to some people than others but it will require work on your part no matter what. Don't expect to master it over night, it really depends on what tune you are playing and don't feel discouraged when it doesn't come all of a sudden. Somebody could walk great on the changes to Anything Goes and then not know what to do during So What or Giant Steps. That's when I had to transcribe other bassists and figure out what ideas they had which helped immensely!

 

[jbl71004]

Thanks to all for your input. Greatly appreciated!!

 

[Sean S]

I think too many people look at theory the wrong way. They think theory is the right answer to questions. IMO theory and reading/writing music is our language to communicate with, analyze music, and keep notes for using idea again. Theory is also a source of new ideas to work with and make music from.

I think something along those lines...theory is also a tool to help understand musical concepts; sometimes on paper it works better than just playing...