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Double Bass The different ways of approaching Improvisation..

#61
It occurs to me to relate this "fact" and then a question.

My guitar player friend went to Ghana last year, plans on returning.
He said the people were poverty stricken yet were happy... he also said they were unbelieveably talented with drum grooves. They took drums as a natural thing from a very early age. Most people had some degree of talent with drums... and that talent was far beyond the global norm... Ghanaians were very talented with groove.
Question, do you think we can create a fund for the Ghana people to help implement more electricity in their lives, and thus bring metronomes aka gnomes to these people? They would even be better at what they are so good at already. technology for Africa. What'dya think ;)?
Maybe they would catch up to we metronome users in the States?
 
#65
suraci said:
I guess if you are dropping beats the way you mention, then a metronome sounds useful but so is a recorder!!!

Tempo "moved around" is that a bad thing, it moving around? So by extrapolation, James Brown "moved around" ha ha ha he sure did. Is James Brown groove moving around to be avoided.../ slight irony there, bordering on facetiousness.
Your last sentence, could you go into it.... envelope based time playing?????
Click to expand...

I got this from TB...

Hal Galper's Piano Lesson - Minimizing Emotion - YouTube

Tempo moving around is not in itself so bad, but it is not the current fashion. When it does happen, it's always better when people voluntarily choose to move the tempo around as opposed to involuntarily.

A recorder is actually quite inferior... Think about it and tell me why. Imagine a 20 minute practice session.
 
#67
longfinger said:
I got this from TB...

Hal Galper's Piano Lesson - Minimizing Emotion - YouTube

Tempo moving around is not in itself so bad, but it is not the current fashion. When it does happen, it's always better when people voluntarily choose to move the tempo around as opposed to involuntarily.

A recorder is actually quite inferior... Think about it and tell me why. Imagine a 20 minute practice session.
Click to expand...

I don't see why a recorder would hurt, but only help?
Don't you trust your OWN ears?
 
#69
honestly i think a metronome is useful for developing what solid time is... The metronome is always right.. Its a good way of getting a sense of what time is ...

Actually after jamming with a lot of real life drummers i was starting to think my time was bad but after jamming with a drum machine i know its on spot lol
 
#70
cire113 said:
honestly i think a metronome is useful for developing what solid time is... The metronome is always right.. Its a good way of getting a sense of what time is ...

Actually after jamming with a lot of real life drummers i was starting to think my time was bad but after jamming with a drum machine i know its on spot lol
Click to expand...

Listen to yourself " a metronome is always RIGHT " but a metronome NEVER EVER EVER swings.


Again, this is a multi level topic.
Lack of work is a forgotten elephant in our living room discussion.
1. When you play with same drummer 30 times in a month ( and he is decent player ) , you learn things not available with once a month.
2. Lack of groove is my single largest issue with being a full time professional, dating back to, well forget that date, I did.
Lack of groove.
Lack of groove or the degree of groove, can be explained in different ways. one way is that great players moved AWAY from groove playing and set examples for the rest of us.

Parker grooved his a** off.
Did Ornette C? Maybe for you on an emotional intellectual level, but is that kind of playing helpful for the intermediate player still in the imitative stage to improve?
Does listening to genius like Bill Evans help one to groove... I say NO.

So you have poor role models among the advanced leaders of the cutting edge setting an example that is NOT groove intensive. It may GET intensive at points in the performance, but it is not intensive in the way that Ray Brown is or Marcus or Jaco, right from note ONE.

Pat Metheny is deeper into music than I am, but I focus on groove. His whole style does NOT.
He sets an example. People do not listen to the giant prior to him Benson or Martino or Pass or Wes.
All THOSE people played with cutting edge AND groove, esp Wes.

Ditto for Ray Brown... we tend to say Oh yeah Ray and Oscar great but passe. Fine, but one LEARNS something when one mimics these older giants.

This above stuff applies to the collective music community
groove is lessened, I am sorry, but it is
Maria Schnieder's band is interesting creative, but it don't swing the way early Thad, early Basie did.

You do understand I have DO respect Metheny and other cutting edge people, BUT facts are facts. And some music is just more grooving than other music.. and that has little to do with a metronome btw
 
#71
suraci said:
I don't see why a recorder would hurt, but only help?
Don't you trust your OWN ears?
Click to expand...

But you did not do what I asked....


In a 20 minute practice session, I can play with a metronome with 20 minutes of playing, and 20 minutes of concurrent listening and adjusting while I play. Good practice for playing with others.

With a recorder, I could only practice with instrument for 10 minutes, and then I'd have to spend 10 minutes listening to a recording of me without being able to adjust my playing. Time not as well spent.

Perhaps a good balance could be, 16 minutes with the metronome, and then 2 minutes recording the end of of the practice to hear the current state of my time. And 2 minutes to listen to it.. Perhaps.. perhaps not.
 
#72
It's a little like the pot and the kettle, me pointing out that all this groove/metronome talk has drifted pretty far from the topic originally at hand. Even so: drift it has. I would point out that we do have many existing threads on time, time concepts, dealing with other players, who swings and who doesn't, etc. I know I stopped hearing anything about different approaches to jazz improv about two pages ago.
 
#74
suraci said:
You have to develop feel, musical ideas, and steady time
how does playing to a recording show up as inferior to metronome?
Humans are not metronomic but the best are closer to a metronome I suppose. So go to the source, Ray Brown, Marcus, Hadrien whomever
Click to expand...

I didn't mean to say that playing along with recordings is inferior, it's just different. IMHO playing along to recordings allows one to delude oneself about their time feel. Just like people who sing to the radio while driving, it doesn't mean they can go out and sing on stage. In my experience, when I play with recordings I'm hearing the recording and not me. So I can believe I sound like PC when I really don't.

Honestly though, if what you're doing works for you, and what I'm doing works for me, why do insist on getting everybody to see you're way as the one true path? I'm just trying to relate why I feel the way I do through my experience.
 
#75
Playing along with recordings has a few problems, to wit:
1. lost in the morass - basically it doesn't matter what you play or where it falls in the time stream, the recording allows you the illusion that you are still playing "with " it.
The nice thing about practicing improvising with a noam is that the line lives or dies with you. Either the note choices move the harmony forward or they don't, they either communicate what you're hearing or they don't. No place to hide.

2. as goes Rome, so go we all - if the rhythm section on the record rushes or drags, guess what? You rush or drag along with it. And while that may not pose a problem with a recording that you get to play with a lot (and can anticipate the movement), trying to do that in a performance situation with a lively group of improvisers is like trying to run across a river by stepping on the rocks above the surface. Only the rocks move.
If you have to take yourself out of the moment to try to anticipate where the next downbeat (or whatever) is going to fall, then you aren't really improvising. You're playing damage control.

This is nice...raneyjr's Channel - YouTube

Oh and also -nohm, neaum, nowm.
 

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