Jeff Berlin Discussing Music Ed

[Fergie Fulton]

I gig on occasions with a really well classically trained pianist/pipe organist who just wails on that sort of old school rock and roll stuff all night when the mood takes him! He plays a fantastic funky clav too. Absoutely top guy, musically speaking - I will say, though, that he is definitely the exception rather than the rule in that respect (versatility wise).

I agree totaly, but the point i am making is that the piano player that got the rest of the tour was not as good as the others, he just had the "groove" that Chuck was looking for.
With Chuck there is no rehearsal, you turn up and play live to the audience, that is the first time you get to feel what is required, one shot at it. The piano player that he used was no great technician like the others, he just found or had what was required by Chuck. Its that groove things again. Maybe the others if they had more time would have got through it, but time was not on their side. Again as has being mentioned, he was fit for pupose. Maybe he just had more experience, so kept it simple as he had heard what happened to the others, used their experience with Chuck to his benifit. It may even have been Chuck doing it to the piano players because he had the power to do so, proving a point to all around him that he's in charge?

 

[Roy Vogt]

I agree totaly, but the point i am making is that the piano player that got the rest of the tour was not as good as the others, he just had the "groove" that Chuck was looking for.
With Chuck there is no rehearsal, you turn up and play live to the audience, that is the first time you get to feel what is required, one shot at it. The piano player that he used was no great technician like the others, he just found or had what was required by Chuck. Its that groove things again. Maybe the others if they had more time would have got through it, but time was not on their side. Again as has being mentioned, he was fit for pupose. Maybe he just had more experience, so kept it simple as he had heard what happened to the others, used their experience with Chuck to his benifit. It may even have been Chuck doing it to the piano players because he had the power to do so, proving a point to all around him that he's in charge?

I'll be you played a whole lot of walking quarter notes like Willie Dixon and it made him smile....

In Nashville, where I've lived and worked since 1980, where you put the half note and how you play with the other kids on the playground will define whether you work or not. Knowledge isn't bad to have either, but getting a quick grasp of what is needed saves a lot of frustration. Check out this column I wrote from Mel Bay's bass sessions a few years back:
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[engedi1]

As someone who has a degree in classical studies and knows lots of classical musicians, I feel I can weigh in here. Very few classical musician will be able to "groove" outside of the context they are used to. Classical music is felt on the 1 and 3 and the accents and phrasing that sounds great in classical music is just too square for pop music.
However, there are always exceptions to the rule, to be found in people of unusual talent. The Tuba prof at my school (Arizona state ) was perhaps the most accomplished classical tubist I have ever heard. Could play every solo in the classical playbook.
He also led the schools big band program, and could playing a walking bass line like Ray Brown! He was an absolute mofo no matter what the style.
That is a combination of talent, and studying both styles, alot. Benny Goodman was also a great classical and jazz player. This is pretty rare though, as most classical guys just can't get the feel right. I think they could if they quit classical, and spent all their time doing jazz for a couple of years.
I think groove and feel are mostly learn through experience and listening.
Of course there are those who will never groove and have no sense of touch or feel no matter how much they practice. I feel bad for these, because they often practice hard and love music but just don't have it. We all know folks like this.

 

[Chupacabra]

Hi Jeff,
in several posts you mentioned playing more vertically than horizontally to create various lines. In some posts a couple of people said something to the effect of, "Horizontal is scalar & Vertical is chord tones". Is this refering to how the music looks when written down? So a chromatic scale would look quite flat, while using chord tones (in 3rds​), or even larger intervals such as 6ths​ & 9ths​ would quickly move from ledger lines below the staff to ledger lines above the staff, creating a steep looking image?

 

[Fergie Fulton]

I'll be you played a whole lot of walking quarter notes like Willie Dixon and it made him smile....

In Nashville, where I've lived and worked since 1980, where you put the half note and how you play with the other kids on the playground will define whether you work or not. Knowledge isn't bad to have either, but getting a quick grasp of what is needed saves a lot of frustration. Check out this column I wrote from Mel Bay's bass sessions a few years back:
[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]

LOL i'm big on Willie Dixons playing attitude. Again i agree about knowledge and education, it gives you the tools to improve more than anything i have ever encountered. Techniques and styles come and go but music is always relevent as is the theory behind it.
Great article and i must say it was the same thing in London in the early 80s. Every audition and knock back was a lesson in where i went wrong, rather than what i did good. What i did learn was its a business and NO means "not today", and if you are willing to keep coming back you will get more yes's than no's..so long as you have learned and adapted.

In my CD player just now a Nashville favorite i believe, Mike Henderson and the Blue Bloods.

 

[Roy Vogt]

LOL i'm big on Willie Dixons playing attitude. Again i agree about knowledge and education, it gives you the tools to improve more than anything i have ever encountered. Techniques and styles come and go but music is always relevent as is the theory behind it.
Great article and i must say it was the same thing in London in the early 80s. Every audition and knock back was a lesson in where i went wrong, rather than what i did good. What i did learn was its a business and NO means "not today", and if you are willing to keep coming back you will get more yes's than no's..so long as you have learned and adapted.

In my CD player just now a Nashville favorite i believe, Mike Henderson and the Blue Bloods.

Glen Worf, the bassist in that band, is one of the top call studio guys in Nashville and tours with Mark Knopfler. Mike's got a hot bluegrass band called the Steeldrivers now.

 

[Fergie Fulton]

Glen Worf, the bassist in that band, is one of the top call studio guys in Nashville and tours with Mark Knopfler. Mike's got a hot bluegrass band called the Steeldrivers now.

Thanks for the up-date i will search them out.

 

[JeffBerlin]

In light of some of my experiences with soloing on studio projects, I'd like to propose a question to Jeff:
Do you sometimes compose your solos (a la Jaco) or just play live with the band and take what happens?
I'm aware that Pat Metheny has at times composed solos by punching in phrase by phrase and then taking the "Frankenstein" solo and taking it home and learning it.
From what I can hear, everything post "In Harmony's Way" sounds like one pass. Were you doing that back in the 80s on "Champion" and "Pump It" or was there a preplanned strategy at times?
My personal preference is to go real Old School like those old 50s and 60s Jazz Records and catch a live performance and interaction. However, I'm not above punching in to tweak a phrase when the producer or co-producer thinks I can do better.
Your thoughts?

All my solos were one pass with occasional fixes. Sometimes I just can't live with the mistakes that happen in my solos and so I have to fix a couple of notes sometimes. My idols are people Keith Jarrett and Gary Burton. Knowing that I will never obtain their breadth of melodic ability, when I try to raise my game and enter into their lofty strata, I often screw up. I know what I am aiming for, but I don['t have the skills or the musicality to play it. This is why I have so much stuff to practice; my flaws are all evident to me and I know exactly what I want to improve.

But, yes, my solos are one pass, with little fixes if required. Now that I include another brighter sound in my recording mix, if I move my right hand one inch to the left or the right, the bass tone gets immediately more bassy or more trebly. It is a very hard thing for me to control and so my tone is often all over the place. But, at least it sounds different, and "different" is something that I can live with!

 

[JeffBerlin]

Well, what about a great classical player (not to pick on them) that has never played jazz or funk or R&B? They might be great at classical but can't swing or groove. So, the particular feel or groove is relative to the experience of the player in a particular genre.

You summed the whole thing up. Well done!

 

[JeffBerlin]

Hi Jeff,
in several posts you mentioned playing more vertically than horizontally to create various lines. In some posts a couple of people said something to the effect of, "Horizontal is scalar & Vertical is chord tones". Is this refering to how the music looks when written down? So a chromatic scale would look quite flat, while using chord tones (in 3rds​), or even larger intervals such as 6ths​ & 9ths​ would quickly move from ledger lines below the staff to ledger lines above the staff, creating a steep looking image?

Verticle implies chord and horizontal implies scale. It goes deeper than that, but these two general descriptions work. Scales imply tonality, they don't state it. But chords are specific and only state those sounds. Therefore, chords, which are built one note over the other (vertically) are better to practice than scales which are built one note NEXT to the other (horizontally).

By the way, key centers are a false manner of learning how to play scales, by the way. They are a shortcut and they will not help you to specify tonality. It is today's instant gratification method of learning how to play and they offer incorrect notes as possibilies in academica which is not a good thing to do. So, avoid key centers while you are learning (which is different than playing, which allows for everything and anything).

But verticle exercises are the way to go in most cases. You can ignore scales for awhile until you've become good enough to know how to practice them. They make for a terrible beginning exercises, but seem to make more sense later in one's musical development.

 

[Roy Vogt]

All my solos were one pass with occasional fixes. Sometimes I just can't live with the mistakes that happen in my solos and so I have to fix a couple of notes sometimes. My idols are people Keith Jarrett and Gary Burton. Knowing that I will never obtain their breadth of melodic ability, when I try to raise my game and enter into their lofty strata, I often screw up. I know what I am aiming for, but I don['t have the skills or the musicality to play it. This is why I have so much stuff to practice; my flaws are all evident to me and I know exactly what I want to improve.

But, yes, my solos are one pass, with little fixes if required. Now that I include another brighter sound in my recording mix, if I move my right hand one inch to the left or the right, the bass tone gets immediately more bassy or more trebly. It is a very hard thing for me to control and so my tone is often all over the place. But, at least it sounds different, and "different" is something that I can live with!

That's the way I prefer to roll as well-good to see some validation

 

[SuperFunkyPete]

A quick heads up to all using the Chord Studies for Electric Bass book.

Up until F minor, there are usually 5 exercises, with the last two being 64th note etudes using the chord tones/tensions/passing notes.

i.e. what each chapter usually looks like is something like this:

1. chord tone exercise, passing tone from below
2. chord tone exercise, passing tone from above
3. chord tone exercise, passing tones from above and below
4. chord tone etude, with passing tones and tensions
5. chord tone etude, with passing tones and tensions

After you finish with the F minor chapter, each 'chapter' changes to having only 4 exercises; they chop out exercise #5.

I've has a quick look at the same book, which is written by the same author, which is for sax - called 'Technique of the Saxaphone; Part 2: Chord Studies' - and it has all 5 exercises for every chord type, as in the original Trombone Studies book.

I'm not sure why they cut the number of exercises for each chord type from 5 to 4 for the Electric Bass book, but it surely is annoying. The exercises they cut are really good!

I see from the Saxaphone book that all the exercises are exactly the same as in the Electric Bass book. Perhaps I need to write out the missing exercises and stick them in the back of the Electric Bass book.

Jeff, do you have any comments? Do you think people need to practice both exercises #4 and #5 for every chord type, or will #4 suffice?

Pete

Sorry to quote myself, but I wasn't sure if this got lost in the discussion. Jeff, any comments? Thanks.

 

[JeffBerlin]

Sorry to quote myself, but I wasn't sure if this got lost in the discussion. Jeff, any comments? Thanks.

Hi Pete. It depends on which book that one buys. I've always opted for the trombone book because it is the one that I know and the one that I showed to Richard Appleman those years ago.

Pete. Are you coming back to The Players School of Music? I remembered from Vicky that you are coming back for a month of tune up lessons. Is this true? If so, it will be great to see you!

 

[bench]

Hi Jeff,

in your column in bassplayermagazine of august 98 there are chord exercises (basically playing the four chord notes in different combinations, and starting from all the notes one after the other).
the written examples are for Cmaj7. below you show the basic chords: Cmin7, Cmin/maj7, Cmin7/b5, Cdim, Cdom7 and some others.

here´s the question (which can be related to the "chord studies" book too):

if i work through those lessons in all twelve keys it will take a while. is it better to work through all the maj7 chords first and then through all the min7 chords and so on, or is it better to work through all the different chords in C and then in G and.... or is it best to jump between the tonalities and the chord-qualities more random-like so that the practicing is more evenly balanced?

thanks bench

 

[JeffBerlin]

Hi Jeff,

in your column in bassplayermagazine of august 98 there are chord exercises (basically playing the four chord notes in different combinations, and starting from all the notes one after the other).
the written examples are for Cmaj7. below you show the basic chords: Cmin7, Cmin/maj7, Cmin7/b5, Cdim, Cdom7 and some others.

here´s the question (which can be related to the "chord studies" book too):

if i work through those lessons in all twelve keys it will take a while. is it better to work through all the maj7 chords first and then through all the min7 chords and so on, or is it better to work through all the different chords in C and then in G and.... or is it best to jump between the tonalities and the chord-qualities more random-like so that the practicing is more evenly balanced?

thanks bench

There's no hard rule about this. But, I have found that if one pays attention to one thing at a time, they tend to learn that thing pretty well. So my suggestion is for you to take, say, a Maj7 four note chord tone, play the inversions up and down the neck and do this in 12 keys. Then go on to the min7, min7b5 etc.

 

[Smallmouth_Bass]

There's no hard rule about this. But, I have found that if one pays attention to one thing at a time, they tend to learn that thing pretty well. So my suggestion is for you to take, say, a Maj7 four note chord tone, play the inversions up and down the neck and do this in 12 keys. Then go on to the min7, min7b5 etc.

And is there any value in saying the scale degree out loud (or note names) as you play the chord tones while doing those exercises?

 

[onlyclave]

And is there any value in saying the scale degree out loud (or note names) as you play the chord tones while doing those exercises?

Yeah, it's more valid than calling out fret numbers.

 

[SuperFunkyPete]

Hi Pete. It depends on which book that one buys. I've always opted for the trombone book because it is the one that I know and the one that I showed to Richard Appleman those years ago.

Pete. Are you coming back to The Players School of Music? I remembered from Vicky that you are coming back for a month of tune up lessons. Is this true? If so, it will be great to see you!

Yep. I'll see you next week! And I'll be kicking around for the 10-week course. More Charlie Banacos lessons please!

I've been looking for the trombone book, but it's out of print, and nearly impossible to find. Been using the Electric Bass book instead for now; just about done in Eb (doing all exercises in all 12 keys). One day, I will finish this book...

 

[odin70]

Is the Players school a "jazz school"? Imo if you are not aspiring to become a jazz musician and/or a bass soloist, chord tones are not that important. It may seem very important in a classroom setting, but out there in the real word...who cares? Most musicians that i have met are looking for whole other bass qualities than being able to play inversions of c major. Imo you should of course have a basic knowledge of chords and scales, but i think people here are going bananas over an issue that is only one part of what makes a musician able to play and make good music with/for himself/others.

 

[Roy Vogt]

Is the Players school a "jazz school"? Imo if you are not aspiring to become a jazz musician and/or a bass soloist, chord tones are not that important. It may seem very important in a classroom setting, but out there in the real word...who cares? Most musicians that i have met are looking for whole other bass qualities than being able to play inversions of c major. Imo you should of course have a basic knowledge of chords and scales, but i think people here are going bananas over an issue that is only one part of what makes a musician able to play and make good music with/for himself/others.

The more you know, the more you can choose to play (or not). If I'm only bound to playing the root of the chord in one or two places on the neck, it's going to cut down on my options. If I can think about a chord sound everywhere on the neck it's going to allow me much more freedom whatever I'm playing (even Country recording sessions )
It's sort of the difference between driving a car with a 1 speed transmission and a 5 speed transmission, IMHO.