Double Bass The Real Book

[christ andronis]

"I love Joyce.... she's my favorite."

-Rodney Dangerfield

 

[Paul Warburton]

Are y'all still talking about the real book? Or has the thread become a discussion of SteveS's admiration for the writing style of James Joyce?

Dave, it's easy to tell you haven't been around here for very long...some of our best work comes out of little de-railments like this. We'll leave ya alone now. Personally, I don't need no F****** Real Books!

 

[Paul Warburton]

"I love Joyce.... she's my favorite."

-Rodney Dangerfield

Marcus!! Please stay on the subject at hand!

 

[Ed Fuqua]

MULTIPLE STEVE - well it's certainly up to you, but the JOHNSON EXCHANGE PROGRAM is NOT about mean spiritedness. It' s a way to
1. have a sort of "peer review" if you are in an area that doesn't have a lot of bassists that you can go hear and talk to about playing and stuff.

2. the 'money where the mouth is' factor - not for ego reinforcement or comparative measurement but as a "locator" if you will. We talk about a lot of different approaches here and everybody's experience is different. My "truth" is entirely reliant on my own experiences and in order for others to evaluate how that "truth" interacts with their own, I feel that they should not only know about those experiences (which is why I'm always happy to talk about my background) but they should also be able to hear and evaluate my playing. That way they can hear for themselves if that's a direction they want to pursue.

I mean, the bottom line is that each of us can only sound like what we sound like. It doesn't matter if somebody thinks us a genius or a buffoon; it hasn't changed one iota the way we sound, right?


But as I said, it's up to you. If you don't feel like waiting for downloads, Damon was offering the 2 CD set. If for some reason he is unable to do that anymore, I'd be happy to send you my copy. If you hear somebody (like PW) whose playing speaks to you and you want to enter a private correspondance with that person, hey, there ya go. But I encourage you to embrace the idea of communciation being a two way street.

 

[Jeremy Allen]

SteveS--you needn't worry about harsh criticism of your playing should you choose to submit something to the Sampler. You will find that, in contrast to the way the verbal exchanges sometimes unfold around here, discussions of members' playing is, from what I've seen, always respectful, constructive, and generally "feel-good" all around. The prickliest pear of a poster quickly becomes a generous, encouraging, and appreciative listener when actual music is concerned. It's definitely one of the coolest things about TalkBass.

 

[Dave Martin]

Dave, it's easy to tell you haven't been around here for very long...some of our best work comes out of little de-railments like this.

You're right - I tend to hang around forums other than talkbass... where the best work comes from dre-railments like this.

 

[Phil Smith]

I don't think charts are a crutch though you can use them as such. I also don't think that charts interfere with the creative process, unless of course you let them. The discussion for the most part seems to be all or none and I guess for the person that's using the charts as a crutch or as training wheels the best thing to do is to take the wheels off to make it real in the person's mind that they can play without the chart.

I've seen Herbie Hancock using a chart for "Dolphin Dance", why do you think he was doing that? Because his ear was deficient? Because he didn't know the tune?

 

[Paul Warburton]

I've seen Herbie Hancock using a chart for "Dolphin Dance", why do you think he was doing that? Because his ear was deficient? Because he didn't know the tune?

Because they probably came up with a different arrangement for this particular concert.
We're not putting down reading per se, or even charts on the bandstand, It's about being musically helpless, unless you have a book in front of you. To me, that intimates an un-familiarity with the material....

 

[Uncletoad]

We're not putting down reading per se, or even charts on the bandstand, It's about being musically helpless, unless you have a book in front of you. To me, that intimates an un-familiarity with the material....

Nice summation of the whole topic. Leave it to the old fart to cut through the sh*t.

 

[Paul Warburton]

Nice summation of the whole topic. Leave it to the old fart to cut through the sh*t.

Thank you, my dear.

 

[Damon Rondeau]

I don't want to be disrespectful, but the idea of an old fart cutting through sh*t sounds, well, really stinky.

I too have been working at weaning myself from charts. It's easier now that the leader of my quartet has decided that a couple of hundred tunes in the book is probably enough for now. After three years it's time to start really concentrating on some core tunes... It's been scary but also very liberating to just trust my ear and play.

I played pop music for 20 years before getting serious about jazz, one of my first musical loves. We never used charts in any of my groupings and music stands were never allowed on a stage. Some of those pals catch me now and are very impressed that we read music and use charts! They don't really understand when I tell them I'm trying to lose the damn charts, that I'm trying to get where we were when we were playing R&B.

 

[TroyK]

The discussion for the most part seems to be all or none and I guess for the person that's using the charts as a crutch or as training wheels the best thing to do is to take the wheels off to make it real in the person's mind that they can play without the chart.

What everyone has been discussing aside, it was my thread once upon a time and as Ed already clarified once, it's about using the Real Book to get by on standards because I don't know them. Not about reading music or using charts on stage. They are very different things to me. I've largely ignored the debate about whether it was a good or bad thing to do because I'm doing it regardless. It's helping me. Maybe once I'm "done", I'll ease up on myself about it, but I will have developed my ear, learned some tunes, learned how to learn tunes and generally broken my dependance.

I've seen Herbie Hancock using a chart for "Dolphin Dance", why do you think he was doing that?

Herbie will get there someday. Maybe after he hears my story of inspiration, he'll decide it's time to get serious about himself as a musician.

 

[Damon Rondeau]

I saw a fairly recent Chick Corea/Gary Burton concert on the tube within the last couple of years. They were doing the old "Crystal Silence" material (man I loved that album.) Chick had all kinds of fold-out multi-page charts all over the top of his piano that he strained forward to see and to flip the page when he needed to. Just two guys and he wrote most of the tunes!

They sounded marvelous.

 

[Sam Sherry]

I've heard for a long time that Chick brings charts with voicings he wants to try.

It obviously does not keep him from playing in the moment.

 

[Phil Smith]

What everyone has been discussing aside, it was my thread once upon a time and as Ed already clarified once, it's about using the Real Book to get by on standards because I don't know them. Not about reading music or using charts on stage. They are very different things to me. I've largely ignored the debate about whether it was a good or bad thing to do because I'm doing it regardless. It's helping me. Maybe once I'm "done", I'll ease up on myself about it, but I will have developed my ear, learned some tunes, learned how to learn tunes and generally broken my dependance.

I think it's possible to ease up on yourself and still work towards improving your ear or being a human juke box. The more opportunities you have to play, the more your ear develops, unfortunately today isn't like yester-year where there were a lot more opportunites to play popular music and so you have to use a more formalized approach to learn "Standards" which outside of the jazz world are obscure tunes.

Your knowledge of tunes will never be the same as someone that came up playing and listening to those tunes when those tunes were popular, nor will it be if you are not actively engaged in playing these tunes on a regular basis in actual playing situations. People that know lots of tunes have been playing lots of tunes for a long time.

 

[TroyK]

I think it's possible to ease up on yourself and still work towards improving your ear or being a human juke box. The more opportunities you have to play, the more your ear develops, unfortunately today isn't like yester-year where there were a lot more opportunites to play popular music and so you have to use a more formalized approach to learn "Standards" which outside of the jazz world are obscure tunes.

Your knowledge of tunes will never be the same as someone that came up playing and listening to those tunes when those tunes were popular, nor will it be if you are not actively engaged in playing these tunes on a regular basis in actual playing situations. People that know lots of tunes have been playing lots of tunes for a long time.

I somewhat disagree with you, with all due respect. At least where it pertains to me. I play a lot and there are tunes that I've been playing for years that I haven't learned. I can't entirely explain why, I just haven't. My working theory is that I process input differently depending on how I get it. When I get it from a lead sheet, my eyes can lead my fingers around the bass sufficiently for me to support the tune. But, it appears that with me, repetition doesn't internalize it as a song. It's gone virtually as soon as I turn the page.

I've read stories about guys back in the day with a record player in one room and a piano 2 rooms over, dropping the needle, lifting it, backing it up, dropping it again, then running down the hall to see if they can play those notes (or chords) on the piano, then coming back to the record player to start over. We're way too "advanced" now to put ourselves through that now, but I'll bet those guys didn't forget tunes that they learned that way.

My goal isn't to be a human juke box, but a solid jazz bassist with a good book of standards and an ear and method to add to that book as demand drives it.

 

[Jeremy Allen]

I've read stories about guys back in the day with a record player in one room and a piano 2 rooms over, dropping the needle, lifting it, backing it up, dropping it again, then running down the hall to see if they can play those notes (or chords) on the piano, then coming back to the record player to start over. We're way too "advanced" now to put ourselves through that now, but I'll bet those guys didn't forget tunes that they learned that way.

We're too "advanced" to do that now? Maybe not the running-between-rooms thing, but every jazz musician I know transcribes solos and learns tunes that way. If you're not doing that, I strongly recommend giving it a try--it may be slow at first if you've never done it, but your ear will grow tremendously. I transcribe solos without a piano or a bass (just with a tuning fork to give me a point of reference), and I learn tunes just by listening and understanding the chord relationships. Just as with remembering long strings of numbers, it's easiest to break tunes down into bigger chunks of the common elements running through most standards (iii-vi-ii-V, modulations to the IV or vi or iii, turnarounds). Once you learn to hear the bigger structural elements, it all gets easier. And the skills necessary to do so can all be learned and developed through practice. To suggest a first step--when reading tunes from a fake book, see how quickly within the tune you can stop looking at the chart. Can you do it by the second time through the form? Or the tenth? One will improve with practice. (It's like that anecdote in the Jaco biography, when the guy recounts playing a gig with him and calling "All The Things You Are" and Jaco says he doesn't know it; the guy thinks "Great, I'm playing with a bassist who doesn't know one of the most common tunes in jazz-dom" and gives him a chart. But Jaco looks at it through the first chorus and then just throws it aside and plays the snot out of the tune. Sure, that's Jaco, but that's also a logical tune the formula of which quickly becomes apparent.)

I hesitate to mention this because some may take it the wrong way, but much of the friction on this board seems to come when people of widely-varying experiences weigh in on the same topic. There are players contributing to this thread who long ago developed the ability to hear the structure of a jazz standard immediately; put on one of those "Ella Fitzgerald sings the so-and-so Songbook" and these people would be able to write down the changes as they occur (maybe not the actual chords if they don't have perfect pitch, but the roman numerals or relationships). To someone like this, discussing the use of the Real Book on a gig takes on a different aspect than it does for someone who really still relies upon it (not that there's anything wrong with that, naturally). I know I personally was in the latter category for a long time, but no longer.

 

[TroyK]

I do transcribe. I simply meant that with CD's, MP3s, headphones, studio monitors, loopers, etc. I have it easier than people with wax and a piano in different parts of the house. But, they had to really internalize it, which I think is the point. The easier we make it on ourselves, the less we retain it, perhaps? I can't do the ear to paper to bass thing yet. I know someone who can and I look forward to that. My most productive method at the moment is at the piano with staff paper. There are measures that I can certainly notate from ear and over time, I assume they will grow in incidence.

I agree, with the "don't take this the wrong way portion of your post". When everyone first starts playing jazz, there are always people around to tell them. "You should know 100 tunes before you go out to play" and "Learn from listening to records". Which, although completely true, isn't that helpful. You have to get started somehow and then you've got to grow beyond it.

This post was about the fact that I decided that it was time for ME to cut the apron strings of dependence on the Real Book. That's it. Not a social statement, not a mandate for anyone else. Just sharing with my peeps on what I'm doing with my time and what experience I'm having with it.

 

[christ andronis]

I also feel that people "dug in" a little harder when trying to learn something, whether it be learning the instrument or transcribing tunes. We live in a world where the attention span and development of it makes a big difference as to how fast you'll learn. The process really hasn't changed since man was born, it's just the concentration that has
devolved....of course, this is IMO.

 

[Huy Nguyen]

My working theory is that I process input differently depending on how I get it. When I get it from a lead sheet, my eyes can lead my fingers around the bass sufficiently for me to support the tune. But, it appears that with me, repetition doesn't internalize it as a song. It's gone virtually as soon as I turn the page.

I think this is the critical statement here guys. There's more than one way to skin a cat. Everybody learns differently. Not to brag but several of my music teachers have always been impressed with my memorization skills. Usually I'll have whatever Simandl exercises (or something like that) memorized by the time for my next lesson. It's not that I work at it, it just happens. I guess I got it from playing classical piano for 15 years. And yes bad habits do get reinforced sometimes too, but I have my own way around it. I'm shocked when they tell me they can't do that. I still don't believe them. In terms of jazz, to me, it's a minor skill except for playing heads I guess.

For myself I know I can pick up the tunes, and have been, simply by using the book as a crutch. Much like YOKOJOHONO describes, I try to look away from the lead sheet after several choruses, especially if it's something I know. Works for me, but not for everybody. So as much as I don't like to hear about a book being torn up, if that's what you have to do Troy, I can respect that.

Question tho Troy: Are you learning the tunes by the chords/key centers used in the RB, so you just know it in one key? Or you actually breaking them down into roman numerals so you can transpose to any key later on?