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Double Bass REALLY Learning a tune

#102
Ed, first of all thank you very much! I have gone thru your walking book and this is the next step for me. I am working with
autumn leaves
all the things you are
Man your post is as good as any lesson that I have had in the past year and I have a great jazz teacher.
Thank you again and subscribed.
I wish you could hear my progress on walking lines since pre and post your book.

Thankyou for sharing your musical knowledge so freely on this site
 
#105
Ed, I have a couple of questions about the chord line.

When you say it needs to stay in proximity, you mean each arpeggio should stay in proximity to where the previous STARTED, not to where it landed, correct?

Assuming that's true, a lot of my important chords end up in third inversions, which makes hearing the changes kind of tricky for me. For instance in bars 3-4 of "All The Things You Are", for the Eb7 I'm playing G-Bb-Db-Eb, and then for the AbMaj7 that leaves me with G-Ab-C-Eb. It lets me hear the common tones, but I don't hear the sense of stability I'm used to with that chord in root position.

Am I interpreting correctly that I should be building off the 3rd inversion in that case?
 
#106
Sorry, this didn't pop up in NEW POSTS. I didn't see this until I quoted this thread in another post. If a coupla days go by and I haven't answered, drop me an e-mail!

Anyway, don't forget the idea of elegance. The idea is to keep fingering as simple and non-convoluted as possible. In the instance you are talking about, the simplest solution is to use a root position/second inversion and then do the same thing down a whole step.

So F Ab C Eb - F Ab Bb D- Eb Gb Bb Db - Eb G Ab C
 
#107
Ed Fuqua said:
The idea is to keep fingering as simple and non-convoluted as possible. In the instance you are talking about, the simplest solution is to use a root position/second inversion and then do the same thing down a whole step.

So F Ab C Eb - F Ab Bb D- Eb Gb Bb Db - Eb G Ab C
Click to expand...

Hi, Ed. I'm still a bit unsure about the ideas of "close fingering" and "common voices":

"PROXIMITY - you want to use not only root postion arpeggios but also all inversions to maintain "close" fingering and common voices through the tune. For example, a progression of D-7 G7/ Cmaj7 - instead of D F A C G B D F C E G B (root position, root position, root position) one choice could be D F A C D F G B C E G B (root, 2nd inversion, root)."

My uncertainty involves inversion choice here. In the above example, suppose instead of root, 2nd inversion, root, you choose root, 2nd inversion, 2nd inversion. Then you come out with:

D F A C D F G B G B C E

Would this be a poor choice because of the immediate repeat of the G B pair going from the second to third chord?

Second question: Is octave choice important in this exercise? For example, D2 F2 A2 C2 as compared with D2 F1 A1 C2.

I understand, I think, that we're not building bass lines here but doing an exercise to get the basic harmonies in our ear. So, is the idea to select close fingerings across the strings that do the most to accent the differences in the chords' harmonies as we move from one change to another?
 
#108
Again, what's the simplest solution? It's not so much repeat as it is, which fingering keeps the idea of proximity and is "simple"? To me, that would be (in your example) the 'root, 2nd, root" rather than "root, 2nd, 2nd" because that doesn't involve position shifts NOR does it involve any convoluted fingerings across octaves etc.

As to your second point; chords are built from the bottom up. It's not a first inversion because I play the third first, it's because the third is the lowest note in the chord, right?
 
#112
My instructor has told me numerous times that a seasoned bass player should be able to play any tune in any key at a moment's notice. Challenging oneself, with exercises such as these, definitely make it that much more likely.
 
#115
psykopatsak said:
I find that nothing is as good for learning a tune as copying the scores to another piece of paper. Often very unessecary process, but as i play saxophone as well, i often have to transpose scores (sax is en Eb instrument), and by the time you're done, you already halfway there.
Click to expand...
I too use copying, muscle memory, as a learning tool. That said, surely you have noticed Bass Clef & Eb (alto sax) are the same charts excepting the chords & the F Clef mark?
 
#116
is sometimes pretty different from the way it's commonly played.

take for example body and soul. my go to version is charlie haden/kenny barron on 'night and the city.' they play it pretty much as written in the hal leonard new real book. however, in searching for 'the most vanilla version' i went to the oakland library and found a 1930 score of body and soul, published by harms. it has a similar harmonic shape to it, but about half of the chords are different from the hal leonard version in the new real book. several chords are similar harmonies but with a different root (e.g. in bar 4 Dbmaj instead of Fmin, or in bar 17 A7 instead of Emin7). but a few harmonies are quite different: in bar 3 Ab7+ instead of Gb7; and in bar 18 Gmaj instead of Gmin.

in cases like these where the harmonies in the older version are different not only from more recent publications but from the way most of the familiar recordings were performed, how do you use this information? how do you practice these parts?

thanks!

sean
 
#118
Ed Fuqua said:
I know I've typed this a few times in the past, but there've been a couple of requests, so here we go again.

First let me say that this isn't anything that I came up with on my own, this is the approach my teacher uses that he got from his teacher, Lennie Tristano. And for what it's worth, I think ANYBODY at ANY LEVEL will benefit from studying one on one with a player who has a deeper understanding than they do. The following set of exercises work BEST when you have some objective, knowledgable person who can listen to what you are doing and provide guidance to keep you moving in a focused and progressive direction.

1. PICK A TUNE - something from the "standard" repertoire; my 4 tunes are STELLA BY STARLIGHT, THESE FOOLISH THINGS, BODY AND SOUL and ALL THE THINGS YOU ARE. When you pick a tune , you want to find the most vanilla version of the melody that you can. Look in older "fake" books, pull it off some Judy Garland record whatever. The idea is to get as close to the composer's concept of melody and changes than you can. The REAL BOOK (old ones, not the Sher or Leonard versions) tend to contain somewhat dubious transcriptions of specific recordings; again the idea is to get the composer's idea, not Sonny Stitt's version of the composer's idea. Kind of like the game Telephone or doing a book report from reading somebody else's book report; you stand a better chance of coming up with "your" interpretation if you know what the actual original was.
2. LEARN THE MELODY - set the metronome at quarter note=60bpm and PLAY the melody through. Over and over and over and over and over and over so that you can SING the melody if somebody drags you out of your bed at 4am. Get off the paper as soon as you can, I've found that learning the lyric that goes with the melody is a great way to internalize the melody.
3. PLAY A CHORD LINE - what do I mean by "chord line"? Simply this, a line that arpeggiates the changes but with a couple of important parameters:
A. PROXIMITY - you want to use not only root postion arpeggios but also all inversions to maintain "close" fingering and common voices through the tune. For example, a progression of D-7 G7/ Cmaj7 - instead of D F A C G B D F C E G B (root position, root position, root position) one choice could be D F A C D F G B C E G B (root, 2nd inversion, root).
B. IN TIME - the chord line shoudl reflect the harmonic rhythm of the tune. If the chord lasts one bar, the chord line is quarter notes. If half a bar (two beats) the chord line is eighth notes. One beat would be 16ths, two bars would be half notes. Let me know if this is not clear.

3. THE EXERCISE
PART 1 -with the nome at qnote=60bpm( and without the sheet), play one chorus of the melody and one chorus of the chord line, then one chorus of the melody. This is getting the sound of the melody and the sound of the changes in your ear.
PART 2 - For the purposes of this exercise, use the major scale for all major7th chords, the mixolydian for all dominant 7th chords and the dorian for all minor chords. Play one chorus of melody, one chorus of chord line and then improvise one chorus of half notes, ending with one chorus of melody. The half note chorus should try to emphasize MELODY over BASS LINE, you are not "walking two feel" but buidling a melody. It may be a little mechanical at first, but once you relax and let your ear start telling your fingers what notes to use, you can really get to some nice melodic material. Again, this is MUCH harder to do without somebody listening to your progress form teh outside, if you insist on doing this without a teacher, RECORD all of your exercises and listen to them without your instrument in your hands. When you get to the point that you are consistently creating some nice music with half notes, move to the next part of the exercise.
PART 3 - Play a chorus of melody, a chorus of chord line and then play 1 chorus in the following manner: the first 3 bars of each 8 bar section play the melody and then starting on beat ONE of bar 4 begin your improvised line of half notes. So you will have (in a 32 bar tune) 3 bars melody, 5 bars improvised, 3 bars melody, 5 bars improvised, 3 bars melody, 5 bars improvised, 3 bars melody, 5 bars improvised. Again, don't move on the first time you get this to sound like music, wait until you hit that every time.
PART 4 - as above, but the improvised chorus will have the 3 bars of melody dropped into a different place for each 8 bar segment( moving melody). That is, if you start the first 8 bars with meldoy, NO OTHER 8 bar section can start with melody.
PART 5 - as above, the improvised chorus now becomes only improvised half notes and rests. You should play (approximately) as many beats rest as you play measures of half note per 8 bar section.

When you've made it through this whole exercise, you start over and use quarter notes for the improvising rhythmic "denomination". And so one through accent 1 eighth notes, accent 2, accent3 , accent 4, accent 1 triplets, accent2 accent 3, 16ths etc.

This AIN'T quick; I've been studying with Joe for about 10 years now and I'm only up to accent 3 triplets with moving melody. But after about 7 or 8 months of starting this exercise (and a few others) , the amount of sense I made whiel improvising increase exponentially. And all the work I've put into really tearing apart these 4 tunes has translated into me being able to learn and play SO many more tunes. And has increased (along with the other ear training I'm doing) my ability to play tunes by hearing my way through them. If the piano player really knows the tune or if I can hear the melody in my head clearly enough , I can pretty much hear my way through the tune.
Click to expand...

Ed - this remains great advice today.
 
#120
Ed Fuqua said:
A. PROXIMITY - you want to use not only root postion arpeggios but also all inversions to maintain "close" fingering and common voices through the tune. For example, a progression of D-7 G7/ Cmaj7 - instead of D F A C G B D F C E G B (root position, root position, root position) one choice could be D F A C D F G B C E G B (root, 2nd inversion, root).
Click to expand...

Hi Ed: When using 'D F G B" for the G7 chord, you are calling
this a second inversion. Generally, I think of inversions as
chords where the root is not the lowest note. Maybe I am
inferring something that I shouldn't but it appears that you
are implying that it is a second inversion by virtue of the fact
that the root does not get played on the first note in the
arpeggiated chord. Is that correct?

I guess I'm just trying to understand the semantics correctly
here. Is it the convention to call an arpeggiated chord
inverted when the root note does not appear first even if it
may still happen to be the lowest note played?
 

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