Double Bass How to learn/solo on Giant Steps?

[azureblue]

+1

I'll never forget the jam session with all the conservatory kids playing Giant Steps with everybody taking 100 choruses. I called Wine and Roses and was met with blank stares and 'do you have a chart?'.

Been there, laughed at that, too My call is "Dolphin Dance"..
No way to Wee - Doobie" (pointless, fast running of scales) through that tune at all.

 

[skwee]

Check out more versions of the song to get inspiration:

Vanessa Rubin: cool jazz waltz version--good alternate way to interpret the tune, and it's slower.

Arturo Sandoval and the Latin Train: "The Latin Trane" is Giant Steps

 

[FMartin]

Work on "Have you met Miss Jones".

 

[chicagodoubler]

Ed and clink,

I thinks it's one of the crimes of jazz pedagogy that people are indirectly or not taught that jazz began with bebop, that complexity equals art, and that playing the Coltrane matrix makes you a mature jazz musician. But how else are you going to get kids to enroll and buy your books if it doesn't seem difficult? Can you imagine Lester Young applying to a jazz program these days?

The majority of kids graduating with jazz degrees today know less than a dozen ballads, and couldn't play a gig accompanying a singer to save their lives. Less 26-2, and more Gershwin, Kern, and Porter, please, academia?

 

[Marc Piane]

Ed and clink,

I thinks it's one of the crimes of jazz pedagogy that people are indirectly or not taught that jazz began with bebop, that complexity equals art, and that playing the Coltrane matrix makes you a mature jazz musician. But how else are you going to get kids to enroll and buy your books if it doesn't seem difficult? Can you imagine Lester Young applying to a jazz program these days?

The majority of kids graduating with jazz degrees today know less than a dozen ballads, and couldn't play a gig accompanying a singer to save their lives. Less 26-2, and more Gershwin, Kern, and Porter, please, academia?

That is so ****in' right on!!!

I was doing a gig the other week where the guitar player was ripping up all these bebop tunes but time turned 'round and 'round when we played "I'll Be Seeing You".

 

[Don Higdon]

+1

I'll never forget the jam session with all the conservatory kids playing Giant Steps with everybody taking 100 choruses. I called Wine and Roses and was met with blank stares and 'do you have a chart?'.

That is both laughable and pathetic.

 

[Paul Warburton]

Work on "Have you met Miss Jones".

Ya'll seemed to have missed this.

 

[chicagodoubler]

Paul,

Yeah but.... why would anyone be working on Giant Steps if they didn't know Ms. Jones?

This should be a given. And people wonder why it's harder and harder to get paid well or to find work at all these days.

 

[Treyzer]

.....The majority of kids graduating with jazz degrees today know less than a dozen ballads, and couldn't play a gig accompanying a singer to save their lives......more Gershwin, Kern, and Porter, please, academia?

There have been some great posts by many of the regulars on this thread. I would just add that being able to play and understand how "Giant Steps" is harmonically constructed is important in jazz studies/understanding. However, this and similar tunes (Moment's Notice), are usually played as fast as possible with as many gibberish notes crunched into each bar.

Typically, in most musical jazz settings, if a standard is called, it is not counted off at the fastest possible tempo, ("Cherokee" excluded). Most "musicians" are usually trying to play something musical so why is "Giant Steps" the exception? This tune can feel great as a ballad, a 3/4 ballad, a mid-tempo swing, and/or a latin or bossa feel and, at least for me, exploring these different approaches really can help someone understand what this tune is all about. IMHO

 

[chicagodoubler]

Trey- nobody said it wasn't important. My point of contention is that the steps leading up to these tunes are often omitted, and this is a wretched disservice to the music. Nobody would argue against the significance of this era of Coltrane's music, but often it feels the argument has already been made against much of the music leading up to Coltrane, bop aside.

And yes, burning these tunes constantly gives a terrible performance practice, and leads to a limited understanding of them. Play the tune as a balad for an hour a day... viola!

 

[FMartin]

"Have you met Miss Jones", composed by Rodgers and Hart before or in 1937.

The thing with Miss Jones (besides being a great song)... check the chord changes on the bridge. Trane certainly did so.

 

[Paul Warburton]

Paul,

Yeah but.... why would anyone be working on Giant Steps if they didn't know Ms. Jones?
This should be a given.

IMO, you're still missing something and it's not nice to eyebrow yer elders.

 

[chicagodoubler]

What, regarding the bridge? Isn't there the idea that the whole matrix came from the Slonimsky book? The idea of dividing the octave into three parts? James Moody used to talk about that a lot. IE- three key centers, the roots of which spell an augmented triad? There's definitely a connection between the Ms. Jones bridge and Giant Steps- anybody know if Trane ever commented on this, or if it's a correlation we made after the fact? Certainly Ms Jones isn't the first instance of a major chord moving a tritone to a ii-V...

Paul, I wasn't eyebrowing you, my friend. I was eyebrowing the idea of putting the cart before the horse. Much respect.

 

[Greg Clinkingbeard]

Ya'll seemed to have missed this.

Nope.

 

[Don Higdon]

According to Amazon, the Slominsky book was published in 1947. Miss Jones was published in 1937.

 

[chicagodoubler]

I would absolutely love it if Nicolas Slonimsky was a Rogers and Hart fan!

 

[bottomzone]

This guy does a nice job of breaking things down:

Giant Steps Revealed - YouTube


A Groove is a Terrible Thing to Waste!

 

[Jeremy Allen]

James Moody said Trane never performed the tune live--he wrote it as an etude, recorded it for the album, and put it away. Moody was always amused that the exercise became something people called on the stand.

But anyway, it's a big part of the canon, and I personally only came to love playing it after playing it nice and slow for a long time. David Berkman has a wonderful chapter on "100 Rainy Day Activities To Perform On Giant Steps" in his amazing book "The Jazz Musician's Guide To Creative Practicing." (Great book, in a world of too many not-so-great jazz method books.)

 

[gerry grable]

Your right!
I first played Giant Steps on a steady dance gig at a resort, with a great jazz piano player who used to insert it into the merengue medleys. The band leader had no idea what it was or where it came from

 

[tkozal]

So I dug out my copy of John Goldsby's book "The Jazz Bass Book". Chapter 72, "The Coltrane Progression". It mentions "Have You Met Miss Jones", and also Duke Ellington's 1995 composition "Blue Rose" as preceding Coltrane.

Some day I'll post my story of starting out with a figure, and eventually actually playing the changes.