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Double Bass My jazz playing sucks

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PeachinRegalia

Jun 10, 2009
11
0
#1
Hey, I’m starting to have a situation over Autumn Leaves. My pianist is playing all diminished dominants and I’m getting lost on what to play over this chord. I play arpeggios but the passing tones are like I’m thinking what to play or where to go, instead of playing it naturally. That evidences in my playing, we’re recording our live performances and I can tell when I’m starting to think what to play and when I’m not thinking. So I decided to go and get a new resource of licks, chops and ideas for soloing. The problem is that I travel a lot and cannot stick with one teacher, and due to spending a lot of plane hours, a book would be useless if I can’t play my bass. So, I decided to get a DVD method, and watch it on my laptop during my travels.
Can you suggest me a good one?
 
#2
Hey, man. What I suggest you is to get this jazz improve lessons DVD. Of course, is piano oriented and we play bass, but there are great soloing ideas as well as resources for different playing situations and, if you’re having troubles with your bands piano player, it will be helpful to hear and understand some licks and harmonization on a pianist’s perspective. I purchased it last year and improved my jazz vocabulary a lot.
Hope that this helps.

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#4
txstatebass said:
How about asking the pianist to meet with you and slowly go over these alterations. It can be on personal time, or even just before the gig. The only resource you need (IMHO) for licks an ideas are more records.
Click to expand...

There is no shame in doing this. A lot of guys have this idea that you should be able to walk on stage with strangers and pick up on all their cues and nuance and make great music. While some people can certainly do that it's something that takes years of practice and ear-training.
 
#7
txstatebass said:
The only resource you need (IMHO) for licks an ideas are more records.
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+1.
I'd even go a step farther and say this....
The more you listen, the more the listening becomes a part of you....permanately. That IS a scientific fact. New brain
(imaging) studies have proved this. Several books/studies are available now.
The time will come (obviously) when you need to translate this "knowledge" to and through your instrument. (Not too hard a task, really. It's harder to keep it back than letting it out.).
Sources: "Your Brain on Music". "Musicophilia" and on a less scientific, but more personal basis, "The Music Lesson" by Victor Wooten.
It will be in there, waiting for you to bring it out. Available now or when you get to be my age. :eek:

As far as asking the piano player....that's cool, IF he knows his ****. I'd rather ask somebody like Bill Evans who I know really knows his ****. He'll tell you if you listen closely enough.
Miles told me something yesterday. I didn't hear it for some forty years. I wasn't listening "closely" enough.
The big plus for you is that you can do most of this while you "travel". And no, you don't need a "teacher" to "teach" you this amazing stuff.
 
#9
Thanks Adam, but that whole "Miles (or any artist) telling us" stuff is straight out of Victor's book.
After reading where Michael (Victor's "teacher") tells him to listen to what Miles is "telling" him, I went back and listened to some Miles I thought I was intimately familiar with, and there was this little thing he played (said) that I never heard him say before.
Try it, you'll like it. (or not, as Michael would say).
 
#11
txstatebass said:
I'm gonna need that book. Funny about being in school for music: They teach how to play, analyze, practice, write about and pontificate on music. They never really teach you how to be a musician though...
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Michael says that living "shows" you how to be a musician. He says that you can't be taught, but you can be shown.
I've really known this my whole life. I just wasn't aware that I knew it until this book.

I think Victor should cut me in...as a shill. :hiding:
 
#12
Paul Warburton said:
Michael says that living "shows" you how to be a musician. He says that you can't be taught, but you can be shown.
I've really known this my whole life. I just wasn't aware that I knew it until this book.

I think Victor should cut me in...as a shill. :hiding:
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I have learned WAY more about life, from music, than I think I will ever learn about "MUSIC".

But why all da dis and dat we's all know we's talkin abouts the same ting (borrwing the accent from Victor's second teacher in that book)
 
#13
I got the piano DVD, because of what YamBass recommended me plus they have a bass soloing DVD, that is full of licks and ideas to play over II V I and Blues progressions, I already got a lot out of both DVDs.
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Also, I loved that quote by Paul. I might be checking on these stuff, the Victor's approach to music sounds fascinating and it's soo true that you learn more about life from music than about music.

It is a great topic in here, what you're discussing right now sounds too inspirating.
 
#14
PeachinRegalia said:
I got the piano DVD, because of what YamBass recommended me plus they have a bass soloing DVD, that is full of licks and ideas to play over II V I and Blues progressions, I already got a lot out of both DVDs.
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Also, I loved that quote by Paul. I might be checking on these stuff, the Victor's approach to music sounds fascinating and it's soo true that you learn more about life from music than about music.

It is a great topic in here, what you're discussing right now sounds too inspirating.
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Great man, first make sure to work on your weaker side of playing and then move on to other topics covered in the DVD, I’ve found some blues tips that were really helpful.
By the way thanks for the tip, I didn’t know they have a bass soloing DVD, I got it and I like what I’ve seen so far.
 
#15
Couldn't agree more about listening. You don't just have to listen to the notes and transcribe the lines, but listen holistically to the music and try to internalize it. Jazz is cerebrial, but to quote another great source: at a point "Don't think, Meat, just pitch. Thinking only hurts the team."

You may not be ready, but you've got to let go and play at some point to make real music. Study, practice, reason, but listen and play. Commune with the music and the other musicians. That's where jazz happens.
 
#16
Paul Warburton said:
... "Musicophilia"...
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Timely. I turned on the end of "The Daily Show" tonight and Dr. Oliver Sacks was the interview guest. This was an important book to me and Dr. Sachs said tonight that a musician's brain is physically different than a non-musician. Enlarged lobes. He said there is debate about whether they are musicians because they are larger or if they have become larger as the result of being musician. He said his research leads him to believe that the brain lobes become enlarged as a direct result of *listening*". So, as we've been saying, the simple act of active listening, produces a physical change that will show up under your fingers.

Musicophelia is not be any means a music how-to book, but it got me out of big slump by helping me understand myself better.

Evidently there is a TV special, featuring Dr. Sacks, on this subject airing on PBS called "The Music Instinct". If I can't catch it, I'm going to try to find it on-line. Just in case anyone is interested.
 
#17
It was pretty hip, there's a lot of evidence that active musical training sends more blood and develops more electrochemical activity in the parts of the brain surrounding auditory centers. Also they found that the corpus callorosum (a system of fibers that connect right brain and left brain, facilitates communication between the two hemispheres) or musicians who had begun their training at a very young age was thicker than the control group of non-musicians. It also looks like (although they need to put more study in) that the thickness corresponds in some way to when one begins musical training, the younger you start the thicker it ends up. Why does that matter? Well the CC facilitates communication between right brain and left brain and the hypothesis is that training develops pathways for communicating creative intent (the music you are hearing inside your head, whether you are reading it or whether you are "improvising") to the nerves responsible for motor function. So you start young, you develop a pretty deep and broad set of neurons that communicate what you're hearing to the muscles necessary to make that into sound.

The other thing that was pretty interesting was that the first black hole that that they were able to map the frequencies of is a Bb; 53 octaves below the range of the human ear....

Parker's Mood, anyone?
 
#18
Paul Warburton said:
Michael says that living "shows" you how to be a musician. He says that you can't be taught, but you can be shown.
I've really known this my whole life. I just wasn't aware that I knew it until this book.

I think Victor should cut me in...as a shill. :hiding:
Click to expand...

Going OT a bit ;) but I really dug Victor's book too. I started it thinking it would be a little too "new age" for me but I'd recommend it to anyone, musician or not. I teach engineering as my day job and all too often the students complain that the prof (sometimes me and sometimes someone else) didn't teach them the material and they failed. What they needed was right there for the taking, all they had to do was exert a little effort and it would have been theirs. Years ago I learned that only you can teach yourself, but you have to pay attention. Maybe I'll assign Vic's book to my class this fall. That'll blow their minds. :D
 
#19
TROIKA - I think I saw a different show, but O'Sacks was on this one too. The one I saw may have been called MUSIC AND THE INTELLECT or MUSIC AND THE BRAIN or some such. And maybe it was a NOVA? Sorry for going to the bridge too soon...
 
#20
Google "Your brain on music" and "Your brain on jazz".
Learn to live without "censorship" in your playing. And vice versa. (or, not).

Hint, on all this: Do you have to think about tying your shoes? (Besides the original intention). Are you a "master" of shoe tying?
 

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