Learning other peoples songs to improve your playing

[Dougie1316]

Discuss, bassists like Carol Kaye (I'm a huge fan) seems to think analysis and learning other peoples stuff doesn't help, most other top bassists do. It's an interesting thing, you'll learn licks, they might not always work into your playing but I feel that if you're learning a piece and really look at WHY it was played, that goes a long way. Plus, it's fun !

 

[MalcolmAmos]

Agree. I play Country and Praise in public and jazz at home behind closed, and locked, doors. Yes it's really that bad. Autumn Winds; one of these days...

Each one teaches me "things" that get folded into the other styles. Plus, like you say, its more fun this way.

 

[gln1955]

Does Carole Kaye really say that?

 

[lfmn16]

Discuss, bassists like Carol Kaye (I'm a huge fan) seems to think analysis and learning other peoples stuff doesn't help, most other top bassists do. It's an interesting thing, you'll learn licks, they might not always work into your playing but I feel that if you're learning a piece and really look at WHY it was played, that goes a long way. Plus, it's fun !

Can you provide your source for this statement? I've never heard that from Carol Kaye.

 

[Polfuste]

That's the only way i'm learning to play: working about others music and playing. Now i feel i need lessons to better understand things, to open doors i don't even see. But this method has carried me until now, where i can manage to play correct bass part, more or less, in every styles.

 

[pacojas]

i think he meant to say that Jeff Berlin hates metronomes!

BTW,... i just learned the Super Mario theme song and now i can finally play the bass! yea!

 

[fearceol]

Can you provide your source for this statement? I've never heard that from Carol Kaye.

While I dont think she says not to listen to other people's songs/music, she does actually say not to analyse.

 

[mambo4]

there is an awful lot of analysis in her argument against analysis.
Carol is simply arguing against overthinking , using a poor choice of words.
What Carol objects to are chord-scale formulas, same as Jeff Berlin's anti metronome rhetoric.
She suggests playing and listening first, who can argue against that?

You can't abstract a specific phrase from the original key
and turn it into a more universal pattern for any key
with out some degree of analysis.

 

[gln1955]

While I dont think she says not to listen to other people's songs/music, she does actually say not to analyse.

I get what she's saying, but she obviously analyzes quite a bit to able to write an article like that.

 

[lfmn16]

While I dont think she says not to listen to other people's songs/music, she does actually say not to analyse.

The way she describes it sounds tedious, but when I was playing jazz regularly, although I didn't actually think about all of the things she describes, if I hadn't learned it all to start with, I don't know how I would have known what to play. The ear of course trumps all, because if it doesn't sound good it doesn't matter if it makes sense, but unless you are a really advanced player I think it's helpful to have some guidelines. Maybe I need to reread that when I'm NOT on a lunch break so I have time to absorb what she's saying.

Don't tell Carol I disagreed with her!

 

[Dougie1316]

Can you provide your source for this statement? I've never heard that from Carol Kaye.

One of her posts on FB from a while ago, I'm sure she's said it a good few times that LEARNING other peoples material and analysing is a waste of time. Listening to other peoples music kinda goes without saying.

Let's get this off of Carol Kaye though!

 

[lfmn16]

One of her posts on FB from a while ago, I'm sure she's said it a good few times that LEARNING other peoples material and analysing is a waste of time. Listening to other peoples music kinda goes without saying.

Let's get this off of Carol Kaye though!

Considering your opening line I'm not sure you can get this off Carol Kaye. If you don't want to talk about Carol Kaye, what's your question, or discussion point?

 

[Dougie1316]

Considering your opening line I'm not sure you can get this off Carol Kaye. If you don't want to talk about Carol Kaye, what's your question, or discussion point?

It was just a small example for a wider question, a respected musician disagrees with a wider usually agreed on point, so why don't we question it ourselves rather than just focus on Kaye and what she may or may not of said?

 

[Clef_de_fa]

I have mixed feeling. I think that Learning other people music will challenge you into becoming better because the music may be at an higher level than what you can play or understand or even able to read the music. Analysing the music is also a good idea, you will be better at reading music, understand some music principle but you'll also need a teacher for that part pretty much like Learning a new langage, especially the written part that you may need a teacher to understand some of its rules.

where I'm not too sure is about lick and stealing a line that you use in your groove or solo. I think this part is really weird because then ... it is like quoting other people, you don't have any original idea, you aren't playing what is in your head either. You quote other line to fit your cliché chord progression which is sad and way too often used. You could say that a lick is pretty much like Learning a word and using it but I feel it is more like taking a famous sentence and using it like it was your idea.

Like taking a lick and playing it in all keys ... to me all it does and make you practice playing the same thing somewhere else on the neck, you learned a pattern that you move to fit the situation. Unless you also write it in all keys or that someone is throwing a small riff that you need to indentify the key on the spot and play it in a different key then write it down in standart notation it is pretty much parroting during a solo ... in a solo you should solo ! say your own thing ! This is something that I hate a lot about jazz in general.

 

[gln1955]

I think it's safe to say that everybody, at some point in their formal or informal training, has learned and analyzed other people's playing. It's a natural thing to do and, for me at least has always been helpful.

I admire Carole Kaye greatly. Maybe she's speaking from a perspective of the 1 per centers who have pretty much already learned and internalized it all and whose playing is only to create new music.

 

[Smooth_bass88]

"...just like everyone did in the 1950s....it's not rocket science and when you start to function chordally, like real music does, it becomes so much fun then...your ears/finger connections start to work automatically and take you down roads you never tho't you'd ever see in your musical world, and you're playing, really playing."

This is sooo absolutely true.

 

[Spin Doctor]

...where I'm not too sure is about lick and stealing a line that you use in your groove or solo. I think this part is really weird because then ... it is like quoting other people, you don't have any original idea, you aren't playing what is in your head either. You quote other line to fit your cliché chord progression which is sad and way too often used. You could say that a lick is pretty much like Learning a word and using it but I feel it is more like taking a famous sentence and using it like it was your idea.

Like taking a lick and playing it in all keys ... to me all it does and make you practice playing the same thing somewhere else on the neck, you learned a pattern that you move to fit the situation. Unless you also write it in all keys or that someone is throwing a small riff that you need to indentify the key on the spot and play it in a different key then write it down in standart notation it is pretty much parroting during a solo ... in a solo you should solo ! say your own thing ! This is something that I hate a lot about jazz in general.

Hmmm, well I get where you're coming from but I'm not sure how you get at having an original thought all the time. A vanishingly small number of people who have ever lived have managed to have an original thought. Most improvisors, when they are playing convincingly, are playing things they practiced previously. When I listen to the great improvisors like Coltrane, Pat Metheny, Pattitucci and the rest, a lot of times, I can hear the patterns they are playing because I'm learning the same ones. The way they can weave in and out of those patterns and be conversational is where the genius lies.

I'm not a huge fan of using quotes either, but lots of great players did it, so I can't see that as terrible. But jazz is about saying what you want, so there is that. But I do strongly feel that when it does come to playing jazz, copying and figuring out how to sound like someone else is crucial. But even as you do that, it's never going to be exact and that is where you learn to get your own sound.

Just my opinion, but when I hear people play who think they are blazing their own trail without putting in time studying at least a few other people very intently, their playing just sounds like gibberish. It's like they are trying to invent a completely different language that only they understand.

 

[Clef_de_fa]

Hmmm, well I get where you're coming from but I'm not sure how you get at having an original thought all the time. A vanishingly small number of people who have ever lived have managed to have an original thought. Most improvisors, when they are playing convincingly, are playing things they practiced previously. When I listen to the great improvisors like Coltrane, Pat Metheny, Pattitucci and the rest, a lot of times, I can hear the patterns they are playing because I'm learning the same ones. The way they can weave in and out of those patterns and be conversational is where the genius lies.

I'm not a huge fan of using quotes either, but lots of great players did it, so I can't see that as terrible. But jazz is about saying what you want, so there is that. But I do strongly feel that when it does come to playing jazz, copying and figuring out how to sound like someone else is crucial. But even as you do that, it's never going to be exact and that is where you learn to get your own sound.

Just my opinion, but when I hear people play who think they are blazing their own trail without putting in time studying at least a few other people very intently, their playing just sounds like gibberish. It's like they are trying to invent a completely different language that only they understand.

I get that. I think that I am philosophizing a lot about music and some concept. I know that we all use cliché and stuff like that to play because there is no way we could play anything. And we can see a lot of recuring musical phrases that all the great use.

I just find it quite deceiving to know that the music style that is all about improvisation isn't improvized at all.

 

[wraub]

I learned a lot about playing bass from playing with records. Actual, vinyl records, with the whole lifting the needle and guessing how far back to put it. Yes, Rush, Gentle Giant, King Crimson... top 40 radio, Duran Duran, Bruford... Raconteurs, Helmet, Brubeck... A wide range. Learned about phrasing, polyrythyms, rythmic difference, grooves and non-grooves, playing with a band, ... so many things. It's a good way to learn to play, if you pay attention.

 

[hsech]

Isn't that what's learning covers is all about?