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Name me some "weird" jazz standards

Ajak

Ajak

Guest
Mar 31, 2012
314
4
Bern, Switzerland
#1
So I started in music school yesterday (monday was only welcoming day) and we had our first ensemble class. We were drums, bass (me^^), guitar, 3 horns and one singer.

So the teacher handed us a sheet of Alone Together which we should play. It is a 14 bar form. That's okay I saw it as a blues with a little attachment in the end. That didn't cause me problems. What did was that the songs stays on the I for six bars before going to the IV. and then in bar nine out of nothing there's that B-7 E7 change (song is in Dmin) which didn't make any sense to me at all.
So I had a really hard time getting a feel for this song because it doesn't seem (musically) logical to me nor to my ear. Which was bad but what was really much worse (and embarrassing) was that I fell out of the form a couple of times. :bawl:

So I'm doing my best right now not to get discouraged by what happened yesterday. And I thought the best thing to do would be to first: check out this song at home really well, transcribe lines etc from it and second: search for more songs that don't fit that "ordinary pattern" (not finding better words) that I'm used to and learn those.

So, throw me any jazz standards that have some unexpected turns in them so I can learn them/from them. I'd really appreciate it. Of course other tips are welcome as well.:)
 
#2
#4
There's a song called "Yama" that I absolutely love - the only version I've heard is by Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers off the "A Night In Tunisia" album (careful, there are two different albums with that title!).

It's a bizarre 13-bar form and the tonality is very ambiguous, but the melody is beautiful (in my opinion).

Jim
 
#7
Ajak said:
So the teacher handed us a sheet of Alone Together which we should play. It is a 14 bar form. That's okay I saw it as a blues with a little attachment in the end. That didn't cause me problems. What did was that the songs stays on the I for six bars before going to the IV. and then in bar nine out of nothing there's that B-7 E7 change (song is in Dmin) which didn't make any sense to me at all.
So I had a really hard time getting a feel for this song because it doesn't seem (musically) logical to me nor to my ear.
Click to expand...

Alone Together was originally composed as a ballad. Nothing blues-like about it at all. Your arrangement must have been simplified, because my chart is:

| Dmin | E-7(b5) A7(b9) | Dmin | E-7(b5) A7(b9) |

| Dmin | A-7(b5) D7(b9) | Gmin | Gmin7 |

| B-7(b5) E7 | G-7 C7 | F F7 | E-7(b5) A7(b9) |

| DMaj7 | E-7(b5) A7(b9) :||

Jazz has been referred to as the sound of surprise. You've just experienced this first-hand, so embrace it. While the | B-7(b5) E7 | may seem as if it comes out of nowhere, it's simply a ii V of V of i, or a ii V containing a secondary dominant.

These sorts of ii Vs are very common in jazz. Look at a chart for Gigi Gryce's Minority for a feeling of how ii Vs can be used.
 
#8
Not even going to jazz, one of the simplest blues form songs imaginable is Folsom Prison Blues - until you notice it's not in 12 bars: it's 11. It really screws up a lot of musicians who "feel" rather than "count."

I know, way simpler an issue than you're speaking of, but because it lies at such a basic level, it still really screws some people up.
 
#9
Thanks folks. I listened to Alone Together a bit and now it's very clear to me. The problem is that if somebody hands me a sheet of a song I don't know and then just counts in I have no way of knowing the melody because I have to focus on the changes. And that's quite bad because I couldn't really start listening to the people around.

And that B-7 E7 makes more sense to me now when it comes to where it's placed but still feels a bit weird since there's no A after it. I need my ear to get used to that.

And thanks for the tunes named! More will be welcome though because the point is to get it to sound right within the first 1-2 choruses (either with reading the melody as well or playing to a recorded track.

Thanks!

btw we had another ensemble class yesterday and that was way easier. Didn't mess up once and don't feel so bad anymore. But I still got a lot of work to do
 
#10
Ajak said:
So I started in music school yesterday (monday was only welcoming day) and we had our first ensemble class. We were drums, bass (me^^), guitar, 3 horns and one singer.

So the teacher handed us a sheet of Alone Together which we should play. It is a 14 bar form. That's okay I saw it as a blues with a little attachment in the end. That didn't cause me problems. What did was that the songs stays on the I for six bars before going to the IV. and then in bar nine out of nothing there's that B-7 E7 change (song is in Dmin) which didn't make any sense to me at all.
Click to expand...
You'll have to forgive me for not naming off any other weird jazz standards and addressing the first part of your post. But I think what happened is you came into the song with a preconceived notion about what you thought it should sound like rather than just rolling with the changes. Plus it's really not a blues but a minor swing.

I've always found it best when sightreading a chart just to go with what's on the paper and not try to categorize it for that very reason. That way, you're not stuck trying to wrap your head around why it's not going as you'd expect.
 
#11
JimmyM said:
You'll have to forgive me for not naming off any other weird jazz standards and addressing the first part of your post.
Click to expand...

If the OP can call "Alone Together" "weird" jazz, what would Ajak say about Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch!

"The Penguin Guide to Jazz selected this album as part of its suggested "Core Collection" and awarded it a "crown", stating, "If it is a masterpiece, then it is not so much a flawed as a slightly tentative masterpiece".

Eric Dolphy - Hat and Beard


Written by:
Eric Dolphy

Personnel:
Eric Dolphy — bass clarinet
Freddie Hubbard — trumpet
Bobby Hutcherson — vibraphone
Richard Davis — bass
Tony Williams — drums

Eric Dolphy - Something Sweet, Something Tender
 
#13
Interesting! So the mistake happened before I even started playing. I think the blues thought came up when I just played the changes and they didn't make sense to me. It sounded like random chords rather than an actual song. That way I was just playing chord after chord and had no time to actually listen to the rest of the band. That's when I started to look for a schematic and got caught up in the blues form.

After listening to a recording of Together Alone, it didn't seem weird anymore, don't worry.^^

I think most of the teachers started out with something easy and then taking it a step further. So I assumed he would do that as well. He didn't. My bad.
 
#15
Since your starting to get Alone Together under your belt, go ahead and try Beautiful Love. Very similar.

But you were caught off guard because you didn't know the song. You just need to listen to more jazz...a lot more. Alone Together is a pretty commonly played standard. If your going to keep playing jazz, listen to as much as you can! This will make the learning process ten times easier.
 

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