So Much Sound

NAMM Day 4

2012-01-22T21:03:00.000-05:00

Day 4 was much quieter than the previous three, especially Saturday which was absolutely a madhouse.

I only had a few people I wanted to talk to, specifically the people at Steve Clayton picks and accessories who I endorse, Andy Lund at Taylor Guitars who very kindly got me a pass to the show and I wanted to see if I could talk the Santa Cruz guitar people out of that custom orchestra acoustic I had my eye on. Unfortunately, no such luck.

On the way to the Santa Cruz booth I happened on Stevie Wonder listening to someone playing a hammered dulcimer. You don't see that every day. A buddy of mine got video of him playing a drum kit on Saturday but I didn't expect to see him myself. That's one of the cool things about NAMM.

Everyone told me the show was nuts, loud, and annoying—and that's all true— but it's also a lot of fun.

It was great to catch up with some friends I hadn't seen in a while and fun to meet some new people and some heroes of mine. Not a bad trip.

And if I hadn't gone, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to see this guy. It was all worth it.

NAMM Day 3

2012-01-21T19:52:00.000-05:00

I'm quickly going deaf but it's been mostly worth it so far.

I spent some time today in the C.F. Martin booth taking with their rep and checking out some of their guitars. I was particularly taken with the one to the right. Really well balanced, played fantastically and of course is beautiful.

While I was there I ran into Joel Hoekstra, guitar player for Night Ranger, Trans Siberian Orchestra and Rock of Ages on Broadway. Such a killer player and a nice guy too.

Brent Mason

The highlight today though was going to the Paul Reed Smith performance area and checking out Nashville session guitarist Brent Mason do his thing with a pick up band. Unbelievable playing, incredible chops and taste too. I think in my other life I would be a country player. Since I don't have the time to devote to it I just check out guys like Brent and rip off as much as I can. The time-honored tradition.

Later in the day I spent some time at the Santa Cruz guitars booth and got some quality time with one of their reps and about six of their acoustics. The one below—I got a shot of both the guitar and a closeup of the headstock—a custom orchestra was a standout. Absolutely beautiful and it played like a dream. The bird inlay on the headstock was one of the most beautiful inlay jobs I've ever seen on a guitar. Sometimes these things can be too over the top for me but I felt like the maker really balanced the look of the instrument just right.

Santa Cruz

Finally, just as I was ready to go and head out the door, my buddy and drummer Adam Fischel spotted Vinnie Colaiuta talking to somebody in the Ibanez guitar booth, of all places. I told Adam that's definitely not Vinnie, Adam insisted, I said no way. Adam approached him and he was right. You can always count on a drummer to spot a drummer.

Just like high school kids, we got our picture taken with him. How could you not? Frank Zappa, Sting, Jeff Beck -- the guy has defined what it means to be the consummate sideman.

I still feel goofy getting my picture taken with these guys when I haven't played with them but what the hell. It's fun to be a fan every now and then.

NAMM Day 2

2012-01-20T15:24:00.001-05:00

Janek and Mike

I'm currently at Fodera watching my buddy Janek Gwizdala tear it up with the equally prodigious Mike Pope in a 2-bass playoff and it's only 12:20pm. Holy cow. Thanks to Fodera basses for making this happen. And who showed up just as they were finishing? Matt Garrison. I think the Earth tilted a little with his arrival. This much heaviness in one place will do that.

About 20 minutes before this I was treated to a snare drum solo by none other than Bernard Purdie who I stumbled on after turning a corner. Not bad for it being so early.

Bernard Purdie

With that said, blogging from your phone sucks. I'm happy to have the app, but man I don't plan on doing this much.

************************

It's been a hell of a day.

At the Gibson exhibition was a Les Paul with one of the most beautiful finishes I've ever seen. Instead of the thick lacquer normally used on them, it looked like the wood had been stained black and you could still see the wood grain underneath. It was stunning. I'm not much of a fan of the newer Les Pauls, once they went to the "Traditional" designation instead of "Standard" but I'd buy this one in a heart beat if only for the looks. This is what NAMM does to you. You see something like that and you quickly convince yourself it's perfectly reasonable to buy a guitar you definitely don't need.

Later I watched my friend and drummer Marko Djordjevic do a performance at the Albert Publishing booth with Jeff Ellwood, Damian Erskine and Matthew Garrison.

I've done a lot of gigs with Marko in New York and watching him play with other musicians really got me fired up to play with him again. He's such a monster and is a great writer as well. A really nice combination in a musician.

I finished up the day by having a conversation with Albert Lee who encouraged me to work on my chicken picking -- if only there was enough time -- and spotting George Benson in a booth signing autographs. Though I'm a huge fan of both of them, I only spoke to Albert. I was surprised how few people were there to see him, the guy is an absolute monster and legend and such a brilliant player. But that was to my advantage because I could be a fan for a moment and get my picture taken with him and actually have a conversation. Such a great guy.

NAMM Day 1

2012-01-19T23:41:00.000-05:00

I might have bitten off more than I could chew on day one. I knew NAMM was big, but I really didn't appreciate how big until I had been there for well over two hours and realized I hadn't seen even an eighth of it.

But I soldiered on.

In the afternoon I hooked up with my buddy, LA guitarist and writer Dave Wood who was doing a demo with MOTU on Digital Performer. Dave's a killer player and a great guy who also introduced me to one of my favorite discoveries at NAMM: the Deuce Coup distortion pedal.

The Deuce Coup is hand made by Jack Deville who runs Jack Deville Electronics out of Portland, Or. Jack demoed the pedal for me and I was blown away.

Incredibly warm sound, transparent and extremely responsive to attack and the volume setting on your guitar. Just a killer. I'm going to be picking one of these up when I get back to NY. If you get a chance to play through one of these, do it. I'm guessing you won't be disappointed.

The rest of the day was spent trying in vain to see everything (I really didn't understand just how big the convention center was), not go deaf and make it out of there without wanting to buy every cool thing I saw.

That evening I drove up to LA to hear some music at the Blue Whale jazz club with my friend and drummer Adam Fischel. Bassist Tim Lefebvre recently relocated to LA from NY and has a residence at the club through this week. The show had two outstanding drummers, Gary Novak and Mark Guiliana with Henry Hey on keyboards and electronics filling out the bill. It was great to hear Tim doing his thing out on the West coast.

More from NAMM coming up...

Paul Motian

2011-11-22T16:57:00.001-05:00

Paul Motian died today.

Thanks for your taste and incredible feel, not to mention some inspired performances all the way up until your death.

We should all be as lucky to make music of that quality until we pass. Here's hoping we are.

Thanks, Paul.

John McLaughlin: 1 Nite Stand Solo Transcription

2011-11-11T11:17:00.000-05:00

My first encounter with John McLaughlin was when I was probably about 12 years old. My brother who was responsible for all my early exposure to decent music, had brought home McLaughlin's Birds of Fire record and put it on. I can still distinctly remember the feeling of having no idea what the hell it was I was hearing, but I sure as hell liked it.

There was a tremendous amount of freedom in his playing that I had never heard before. Up until that point my exposure to music was the standard groups that are now referred to as "Classic Rock" who I still love, but I had never heard anyone play like this before on what I thought of as my instrument.

The guy was just blowing, and that was was the revelation.

I've followed John since then and as I got to be a better musician I started to understand just how good he really is. And not just in the obvious, virtuosic way, but for the incredibly clear way he expresses his ideas.

1 Nite Stand
When Que Alegria came out it became my favorite record for probably 2-3 years. I constantly came back to it and reveled in it. This was the John McLaughlin record I had been waiting for forever. It had everything that I had been attracted to about his playing and recordings on one disc: an amazing acoustic guitar sound (sometimes mixed with a guitar synthesizer), an unbelievable rhythm section, great songs and incredible blowing. For me, John's rhythmic expression is nearly unmatched by any well-known guitar player, I'm sure having to do with his immersion in Indian music. You really hear it on this record in every tune.

Below is a YouTube video of the solo excerpted from the song which will help you when learning or following along with the transcription and a link to a .pdf of the transcription.

Notes
"1 Nite Stand" is a bit of an odd bird on this record. It's essentially a funky 16-bar blues with a tacked on 2/4 bar making it 17 bars. That extra 2/4 bar will keep you on your toes if you want to play this one with your band.

What was great to see while transcribing this is how freely he moves in and out of playing very clear harmonic ideas based on the underlying chord changes and then playing free chromatic phrases. His command of the instrument and where he wants to go is fantastic.

One of the best examples of this is starts at bar 23 and continues through measure 30. The way he gets into playing over that B7 chord and follows the line through into the next E7 chord is nothing short of brilliant. Not to mention the technical demands of playing the line.

Link to the transcription:
> 1 Nite Stand pdf

If you're interested in a transposed version of this for horn, let me know, I'd be happy to provide it. I hope all of you get as much out of this as I did.

Jimi Marley / Bob Hendrix

2011-11-04T14:44:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sure that's not...

Never mind.

Road Games: How to Keep it Together When You're on Tour

2011-11-03T14:27:00.001-04:00

In the past few months I've been all over the US playing with some great musicians and I've learned a tremendous amount—not only about music but how to make the most of life on the road.

Since I've had the last week and a half to get my thoughts together, I figured I might as well write something about where I've been and what I've learned.

Pro Tips
One of the biggest problems being on the road is erratic schedules. What that means is your eating gets really screwed up as well as your sleeping. In order to keep from gaining 150 pounds or just generally feeling like crap, eat as many vegetables as you can, when you can because catering and food options can be pretty grim.

Same goes for water. Drink it, lots of it. Bring it with you for long van rides and flights. Keep a bottle handy in your bag and pound it before you go through airport security and they make you throw it away.

Keep some nuts and Cliff Bars around for when there's just nothing to eat or you don't want to pay $9 for a slice of crappy pizza.

Before you leave home, download TV shows to your iPod that you don't have time to watch when you're home. I started watching season 1 of Family Guy on an airplane somewhere over the Great Lakes. I think that show has a future.

Speaking of your iPod or iPhone, make sure you don't forget your chargers and all that music you've never gotten around to listening to at home.

Internet service is sometimes free at hotels, sometimes not.

Find out about, and drink the local beer. You can get Budweiser anywhere, try something new.

Play with the local musicians. Find out where the jam sessions are and go. You'll quickly find out there are great players everywhere, and sometimes in the places you least expect.

Bring stuff to practice and the magazines that have been piling up on your coffee table.

Good headphones for your iPod are key to being able to hear what you're listening to and for letting the chatty guy sitting next to you on the plane that you're busy.

Bring your sense of humor. I was lucky to be touring with some really great people but if you're stuck for 10 days in the middle of nowhere with people you don't like, it's going to get old really fast. Remember why you're there—somebody likes your playing. That's a good thing. Focus on that, put your head down and get through it.

Be nice to the sound guy/girl, stagehand, tech, pretty much everyone. You might be coming through there again next year and people have memories. Chances are, these people are doing what they're doing cause they love music too. You're in it together.

Enjoy the fact that you're getting paid to play music around the country. Even when I was hitting somewhere that someone else might call nowhere, I met cool people and saw at least one amazing thing when I was there. Not to get corny, but this is a great country. Enjoy the travel while you're out there.

And to everyone I met in the following places over the past few months, it was a pleasure. Calgary AB, Regina SK, Charleston SC, Palm Desert CA, Queens NY, Savanna GA, Washington DC, Palm Beach FL, Kalispel MT, Solvang CA, Fayetteville AR, Huntingdon TN, Cleveland MS, Syracuse NY, Minneapolis MN, El Cajon CA, Farmington PA, Salt Lake City UT, Fort Collins CO, Westport CT, New Orleans LA, Gretna LA, Easton PA, Williamsport PA, Troy NY.

If any of you have additional tips I'd love to hear them. It looks like I'll be out quite a bit in the coming year and there's always room for improvement.

How to Explain Where You Were

2011-09-26T16:31:00.001-04:00

I hate it when bloggers don't post for a while and then out of the blue post a quick note that says, "I've been really busy guys." Everyone's busy, pretty much always. What they mean is, they're busy with things other than the blog. And it always spells the end of the site.

Well, I'm doing that now, except for the end-of-the-site part.

I've been on the road with two different bands for the better part of the last three months, had dinner with Nate Mendel of the Foo Fighters (it was a friend's wedding), had a beer bought for me by Brooke Shields and have met some incredibly nice people all over the U.S. When I'm not doing that I'm booked with gigs at Spiderman on Broadway here in New York and teaching private lessons. Some that I've gotten from writing this blog.

I know, poor me.

I'm not complaining, I'm explaining. This has been a fantastic summer of a lot of music and performing. Can't complain about that.

For what it's worth, I have a video in the can about Melodic Minor and Half Dimished uses but honestly, have not had the time to write the post. November through December is going to be much calmer so there are good things ahead. I may even sneak in a quick note about some Diminished stuff I've been shedding.

In the meantime, enjoy the rest of your summer if you still have it, or the beginning of the fall. All is well and I'll be posting some stuff in the near future.

Funk at the Vanguard

2011-04-04T10:31:00.000-04:00

Just a quicky-- I went to see my friend Antonio Sanchez play with Adam Rogers, Aaron Parks and Scott Colley last night at the Village Vanguard.

Adam had a couple really nice new tunes and I'm digging the direction he's going in if these new tunes are any indication.

But I couldn't help thinking, they really should only have funk music at the Vanguard cause man, that place just smells funky.

Wes Montgomery: Days of Wine and Roses Transcription and Tab

2011-03-28T13:52:00.002-04:00

I'm pretty sure Wes Montgomery was the first jazz guitarist I ever heard, off a tape my brother had of The Wes Montgomery Trio. I remember not liking the sound of the organ and not understanding the guitar playing—few 10-year-olds are hip and I was no exception.

Cut to today and I'm still listening to and dissecting Wes' playing and hoping that just a little rubs off on me.

If you're reading this, you probably are already aware of how great Wes is, how clear his melodic ideas are, how his command of chord soloing is still astonishing and how unbelievably hard he swings. And man, he made it look so easy.

Days of Wine and Roses

Below is a transcription with tabs of Wes' solo on "Days of Wine and Roses" off of Boss Guitar. Wes changed up the harmony of the song a bit from what most musicians are used to from the Real Book. The head is worth a transcriptions of it's own as it's done in a chord solo format and it's just beautiful what he does with it but that's for another time.

I also included an analysis of what's happening in his lines, the scales, ideas and arpeggios he employs over the harmony. Like any analysis, it's reverse engineering. You're getting some insight into the way Wes is thinking and approaching certain harmonic situations, but there are sometimes alternate interpretations.

The solo is here:

There's just not a note out of place in this solo.

Some Notes
It's amazing how much music he wrings out of a relatively straight ahead use of scales and arpeggios. His thematic ideas are stated very clearly throughout—notice how he treats the D7alt chord in measures 5-6 and 21-22, repeating the same chromatic approach idea. There is also an echo of another line used over Eb7 at measure 9 that he repeats in measures 25-26.

In addition to pretty standard scale/key based improvising, Wes makes ample use of both chord tone soloing in this tune as well as superimposing harmonic ideas over the base harmony like in measures 7-8 where the harmony is G-7 and Wes superimposes a D-7 arpeggio idea creating a G-11 sound.

Links to the music:

> Transcription and Tab

> Transcription and Analysis

Dig into this one, it will be worth your time to learn some of this if not all of it. I'll have a video up soon where I'll extract some of these approaches and demonstrate ways for you to get it into your playing, but until then, the analysis should give you an idea of how to use some of these ideas.

John Scofield Explains How to Practice, or Learn How to Learn

2011-03-25T10:11:00.000-04:00

There's a video on YouTube of a clinic that Scofield gave in 1983 somewhere or another that is frankly not very good for most people. I don't think he was accustomed to teaching at that point and a lot of what he says clearly goes over the head of much of the audience. So I approached this audio of a clinic he gave in the mid-90's at Cabrillo College with some hesitation.

Turns out it's fantastic for a lot of reasons.

The whole clinic is available at Casa Valdez, a great jazz blog and is worth listening to for any type of musician, no matter what your instrument. Scofield presents a lot of very clear ideas on how he approaches learning tunes and music in general.

This particular part jumped out at me because I think about how to practice all the time and have often wondered about the practice routines of musicians I admire.

I'll let Sco lay it out:

All the musicians I know, what they're about is learning how to learn...and getting good at learning and to keep that happening...to keep learning...keep absorbing music and learn how to learn something so that it comes back through you. Learn what to learn in your practice time—what to work on. You get better at that. So you don't have to play arpeggios for an hour, scales for an hour and then get to the real thing...to weed out the unimportant things you work on and to really work out, up here what it's going to take to improve. So you got to keep your wits about you in this practicing thing.

Later I'll post an analysis and transcription of his improvisation on Stella by Starlight and how he goes about getting the tune under his fingers. It's a killer.

What Happens In Your Brain When You Improvise?

2011-03-23T10:57:00.000-04:00

This video has been out for a couple months but I found it fascinating.

Charles Limb, a scientist who happens to be a musician decided to investigate what goes on in the brain when someone is improvising jazz and freestyle rap by using an MRI scanner to measure changes in the musicians' brains.

In order to study what happens, he compared brain activity in someone who's playing a memorized solo to someone who is improvising one.

As he himself says, there's very little information on this yet but it appears that when we improvise, we have to shut off one part of our brain that inhibits us and activate an other. In addition, language areas light up and even with your eyes closed there are visual areas lighting up.

Reading the comments on the TED site, I'm struck by how many people—I'm assuming musicians or artists—seem to be threatened by this pulling back of the curtain. They argue that you can't possibly hope to understand creativity or the artistic process and further, science will never be able to create art without the artist.

So what?

They're kind of missing the point. There are robots that can probably shoot 3-pointers all day but it never gets old watching a real live human being do it in real time. Nobody's getting replaced here, it's about understanding. Demystifying the physics of shooting that 3-point shot doesn't make the athlete less compelling, if anything it makes them more amazing when you realize everything they're calculating on the fly.

As Limb says in the video, "It's magical but it's not magic."

Thelonious Monk Tells You How to Play Jazz -- You Dig?

2011-02-28T15:50:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine sent this to me a few months ago. I know it's made the rounds on the web but it was new to me.

Click on the image above to see full-size or just read below for the text.

Some handwritten notes from a notebook with some of Monk's philosophy, both for music and life apparently taken down by Steve Lacy.

I heard an interview with Steve Lacy a couple years ago where he spoke about playing with Monk. Many of the things he said in the interview stood out for me and I even wrote some down because they were so insightful so it was cool to see some of those very things appear in Lacy's notes from 1960.

I love seeing stuff like this from musicians and artists I admire because it's a peek into their thought process that you don't often get just from watching them perform. It let's you know what's going on behind the scenes.

Some of this is beyond me ("ALL REET!" -- an inside joke? A reference to Cab Calloway?) but much of it is good advice for any musician in any style.

I think it's great to see that Monk was aware and thinking of his audience. He's so often portrayed simultaneously as nutty, a tortured genius or in the throes of mental illness but this shows his very clear ideas about performance and how to sound good.

If what he says at the end is true – "A genius is the one most like himself." – Monk was most certainly a genius.

• Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.
• Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head, when you play.
• Stop playing all those weird notes (that bullshit), play the melody!
• Make the drummer sound good.
• Discrimination is important.
• You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
• ALL REET!
• Always know….(MONK)
• It must be always night, otherwise they wouldn’t need the lights.
• Let’s lift the band stand!!
• I want to avoid the hecklers.
• Don’t play the piano part, I’m playing that. Don’t listen to me. I’m supposed to be accompanying you!
• The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the outside sound good.
• Don’t play everything (or every time); let some things go by. Some music just imagined. What you don’t play can be more important that what you do.
• A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imagination.
• Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig, and when it comes, he’s out of shape and can’t make it.
• When you’re swinging, swing some more.
• (What should we wear tonight? Sharp as possible!)
• Always leave them wanting more.
• Don’t sound anybody for a gig, just be on the scene. These pieces were written so as to have something to play and get cats interested enough to come to rehearsal.
• You’ve got it! If you don’t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (To a drummer who didn’t want to solo)
• Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself.
• They tried to get me to hate white people, but someone would always come along and spoil it.

Transcription: Led Zeppelin's Black Dog

2011-02-02T10:31:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid I made it my mission to learn every Led Zeppelin song there was. In fact, you could probably say Jimmy Page taught me how to play the guitar as I played nearly nothing else (except maybe for a little Deep Purple, Aerosmith and Yes (yes: Yes)) thrown in until I was about 15.

There was nothing more satisfying than being able to figure out and play one of Jimmy Page's riffs. Turns out it's still pretty damn satisfying.

I was recently teaching a new student the Pentatonic scale and after having played it for a bit we reached the "so what now?" point. Black Dog is what.

This song is like a dissertation on how to make music from that scale. Sure, it has a few approach notes but in essence it's pure Pentatonic.

Funnily enough, this one was written by John Paul Jones who said "I wanted to try an electric blues with a rolling bass part. But it couldn't be too simple. I wanted it to turn back on itself."

I think he succeeded on this count. This thing is slippery as hell between the shifting rhythms of the riff and what John Bonham is doing. It's easy to interpret the instrumental sections in varying ways but as I transcribed it I went with what seemed to make the most sense taking into account the drums, harmonic motion and the phrasing.

No matter, the point of this transcription is to get the notes under your fingers so you can play along with the record (mp3?) or with your cover band. It's a good way to start.

This transcription is through the first chorus. I've notated the vocal line as well for reference but did not include the first one.

You can download a PDF of the chart here.

Like Lester: Lester Young Backs Me Up

2011-01-28T13:29:00.000-05:00

If only I could be as hip as Lester Young. Probably not going to happen but at least he's got my back on the whole chord-tone soloing thing.

Not that it's controversial. I got a great response to my chord-tone soloing post and video but that was with Mike Stern. It was interesting just a few days after I posted that to stumble across an example of a real world chord-tone solo. It made me realize that a lot of the stuff that we practice and are told to practice are not abstract. They come from musicians having checked out early players and then saying to themselves, "how the hell are they doing that?" then devising a way to practice whatever the technique is to get it into their playing.

I was recently listening to a new (to me) Count Basie record and a song came on I didn't know with a sax solo that blew me away, mostly because it was swinging so hard. But there was also some nice harmonic things here and there that were going on as well. Perfect for a transcription.

The solo starts at about 1:20 in on the video.

So I took an afternoon and transcribed it and lo and behold, it's pretty much a chord-tone solo with small exceptions.

I probably should have known that. Most of the early jazz improvisers did exactly that. Harmony in popular songs and jazz was relatively simple. There wasn't the tremendous amount of resources available like now for learning chord scales, substitutions and playing out hadn't even been invented yet. There were no jazz schools. People learned this stuff from other musicians they played with. It was about making a melody on top of the harmony and what fits better than the chord tones already there? This was 1939.

With that said, it's not a square chord-tone solo either. But it sure as hell is instructive on how to take that chord-tone base and build on it. Lester's got some nice blues-influenced lines in here and he even messes with a bit of Augmented ideas and of course some great approach note examples. And again, listen to how hard he swings. It's unbelievable.

So check it out. If you're not a sax player, learn it! It's fun to play another instrument's solo as you'll probably end up playing things you'd never have considered before.

Now if only I could hold my guitar out to the side while I play.

You can download a PDF of the transcription here.

Like Mike

2011-01-19T12:26:00.002-05:00

Is there anything more scary than chord-tone soloing?

Well, yes. Pretty much everything. I mean, chord-tone soloing is kind of lame, right? If you really want to be good, just learn a bunch of scales and then play them really fast in the right key.

Hipness? Attained.

OK, back to reality.

What's the Point?
Practicing chord-tone soloing is something I avoided for a long time. I had a teacher who once told me I needed to use arpeggios more in my improvising, that my lines were too scale-based. I remember thinking, "OK cool, I'll learn a bunch of arpeggios and then I can get back to learning new scales."

I didn't see the point in playing the notes that were in the chord. I wanted to play interesting notes. If I wanted to play notes from the chord, I'd just play the chord.

What I didn't understand was that he was telling me my lines didn't have any direction because I wasn't making the connections in the harmony with just scales. I was sort of meandering. Meandering in the right key, for sure, but meandering nonetheless.

If It's Good Enough for Mike...
I once attended a Mike Stern seminar where he was talking about practicing chord-tone soloing and how he still does it while shedding tunes. My head practically exploded, mostly with scorn because chord-tone soloing isn't hip. At that point I was seriously obsessed with the Augmented and Melodic Minor scale, string-skipping exercises and working out quartal voicings. What could be more boring than playing the notes in the chord?

Mike then went on to play -- I'm not kidding -- one of the most beautiful solos I've ever heard him play. The proof? I still remember it over ten years later and am still talking about it. How many performances can you say that about?

Like a little kid, with that goofy grin he always has, you could see the joy on his face just playing 1-3-5-7 of the chords. He did this on Autumn Leaves of all songs. Autumn Leaves -- a beginner of all beginner tunes.

This made me rethink everything, though it still took me years to fully recognize the power of this simple method.

How To
So how do you do it? Watch the video and find out:

Chord-tone soloing, like anything worthwhile requires some work from you. For any song you want to do this on, you have to figure out the chord-tones for each chord. If you know arpeggios by rote, this is one way to approach it but it's considerably easier and probably more musical if you know the actual notes you're playing.

Autumn Leaves
For example, here are all the chords in Autumn Leaves with their respective chord tones next to them. Notice I'm not putting in any 9's, 11's, 13's or what have you, just the basic makeup of the chords, 1 3 5 and 7.

A-7 = A C E G
D7 = D F# A C
GM7 = G B D F#
CM7 = C E G B
F#-7b5 = F# A C E
B7b9 = B D# F# A
E-7 = E G B D
E7 = E G# B D
Eb7 = Eb G Bb Db
D-7 = D F A C
Db7 = Db F Ab Cb (B)

Practicing this concept means playing those notes – and only those notes – over their respective chords while trying to make some music out of it.

Why do this? If you're a horn player or someone who can't comp for themselves, which makes most of us, it will make the harmony of the song incredibly clear to your ear making memorizing or just hearing it in your head much easier. You will also begin to see how notes and chords resolve into each other. It forces you to go off of auto-pilot and actually think about the notes you're playing, short circuiting your muscle memory.

Guide Tones
Particularly strong notes from these chords are the 3rd and the 7th sometimes referred to as "guide tones." They determine the character of the particular chord, whether it's a Major or Minor in the case of the 3rd, or has a b7 or a Major7. A great way to start this kind of practice is to play just the guide tones of the chord progression you're playing over.

For instance, here are the first 8 bars of Autumn Leaves with one example of a guide tone line:

In this example I emphasized common tones and tried not to leap but step between the chords as they changed from bar to bar if possible. In the following example I do the same thing but using both guide tones at the same time as building blocks for comping ideas.

And finally, here's an example of a chord-tone solo over the first eight bars of Autumn Leaves to get your started if you're new to this:

You can download a PDF of all of these examples on one page here.

Dig the Basics
Too often when I was in school I would ignore certain things I perceived of as "beginner" because there was always something so much more interesting to learn. I believed if I just learned that thing that seemed exotic to me, I'd suddenly be a great player. That's the lottery concept of improvising. You believe that if you learn that one scale, or concept, or lick or whatever then suddenly you'll be great.

If it were only that easy. All these concepts and exercises and approaches are tools to help you understand your instrument better but more importantly, much more importantly, understand the music you're playing so you don't have that feeling of not knowing what the hell is going on and just hanging on for dear life.

Like Mike, I practice this on all new tunes I work on and sometimes I do it just because it sounds good. And sometimes when it sounds really good, I understand why he has that goofy grin on his face.

Exercises for While You're Out There

2010-12-10T12:50:00.000-05:00

A number of people wrote and commented on my outside playing video, asking specifically about my 4ths and 5ths example.

While most of the comments asked for written examples or exercises (a few provided below), some were asking what I was thinking about while playing those intervallic lines.

Intervallic playing, like any kind of outside playing is very different in approach than inside playing. It's a much more "big picture" way of improvising.

For me, it's about creating tension with my lines and chordal ideas but with the idea of resolving that tension at key points, often at the ends of natural phrases in the song, or if you're playing in a more open setting – say vamping on a static harmony – resolving the tension at the end of a 4, 8 or 16-bar phrase.

So, to rephrase, I'm not thinking about playing particular harmonic sounds or implying chord changes or anything, I'm really just playing intervallic shapes, in the case of the video 4ths and 5ths primarily, and moving them around on the neck chromatically. The whole time though, I'm listening for points to resolve my lines (in the video I did it every 4 bars), and that is when I take a harmonic approach and play 4ths and 5ths that are inside to the key that I'm playing over.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Now, on to the examples!

I would first encourage you to play a scale you're comfortable with in 4ths, 5ths and 7ths. Improvising using these types of leaps – and on string instruments a lot of string skipping – will be much easier if you first get used to hearing these intervals in a harmonic situation your comfortable with.

Click image to see larger size. You can download a PDF here.

These first two pages have the Major scale played ascending and descending in 4ths, 5ths and 7ths. Get comfortable with this before moving on to the line exercises below. Also, play these scales harmonically as well, as double stops up the scale.

For line examples, I've provided a few exercises below to get your fingers and ears working together. This is a very different physical approach than scale or arpeggio playing (especially for string instruments). The first two examples employ some mostly 4ths/5ths based sequences, one descending and ascending. The third and fourth exercises employ mostly Minor 7ths/Major 2nds, again both ascending and one descending.

Click image to see larger size. You can download a PDF here.

Finally and most importantly, these are examples, they're not licks to plug in at appropriate moments of wailing. They're a way to get your fingers moving in these kinds of shapes and get your ears used to hearing these types of relationships. This is the reason these lines, though they are sequences, are not strict all the way through. I'm purposely breaking up the pattern in a few of the examples as a stepping stone to get you out of the mindset of just playing straight patterns.

As Hal Crook once said to me about exercises in general, "They're not the shit. They're the shit leading to the shit."

Time Machine

2010-11-30T12:10:00.006-05:00

A friend of mine sent this video over a bit ago and it fit nicely with a post I was going to write and film about working on your time, something that most musicians work on or certainly should work on in my experience.

Good timing.

Fixing any problems you have, whether it be sloppiness, bad feel, not being able to swing well, funk well, rock well or whatever well always comes back to your perception of and playing of time. If you don't perceive and feel exactly where the beat is, you're not going to be able to place your notes in the right space. And even more, you're not going to be able backphrase or play on top of the beat either -- at least not as a conscious choice. You'll end up dragging or rushing, which is not the same thing as consciously backphrasing or pushing in order to create tension.

When I was in college, the idea of playing with a metronome to many people seemed like the most school thing you could do-- that's not music, that's academic. It's what classical musicians do, not rock players or jazz players or whatever. In one of the first ensemble classes I had at Berklee, the teacher berated us, rightly, for our crappy time and told us we needed to practice with a metronome.

I remember thinking that was lame because first; I already had good time (right), and second I wanted to learn about more interesting things like hybrids and exotic scales. What I didn't realize was that no one would want to play with me if I couldn't play those hybrids with good feel.

So, for everyone who thinks that playing with a metronome is square, I'll let Metallica make my argument for me.

Check out James Hetfield's monstrous right hand technique in this video, especially when he's in the control room starting at about 0:16 through 1:15. What's that you hear in the background that he's playing with?

A metronome.

Don't take my word for it, Hetfield gives you permission to work on your time.

Salt Peanuts

2010-10-21T15:54:00.003-04:00

Happy Birthday Dizzy.

A la Mode(s) [Part 1 of a series]

2010-06-21T11:20:00.006-04:00

I've noticed a lot of confusion on different forums about modes. Players want to know how to use them, but are intimidated when approaching them. Modes have somehow taken on a mythic quality -- kind of like those exotically-named scales Gypsy Minor and Super Locrian-- scales that many musicians would prefer to view from afar.

Fear not. In this introduction to modes, you'll learn what they are, where they come from and seven of the most common ones.

First off, remember when learning anything new about music: there's only 12 notes* -- so how hard can it be?

Definitions
Simply, a mode is just a name for a scale derived from another scale. Got that? A mode doesn't exist on its own, it exists in relation to a parent scale.

If this is confusing, here's an analogy using fruit: An orange is a scale. Orange slices are a mode. Orange juice, another mode. Orange zest still another. You recognize that the modes of the orange (slices, juice and zest) are different things from each other but that they all come from the same place, the parent scale: an orange.

Modes are that easy.

OK, now that you understand the concept, here it is in practice.

Major Scale Modes
The most commonly referred-to modes, like when people say, "Hey, do you know your modes?" are those derived from the Major scale. I'm sure you've heard or even had some experience with a few of them. Let me fill in the blanks for you using C major as the example.

There are 7 notes in the C major scale so there are 7 modes you can create from the scale. It turns out they all have Greek names, which makes them easier to remember if you're Greek, but seem somewhat exotic if you're not.

Here's the C major scale = C D E F G A B

And here are the modes of the C major scale, notation and TAB below:
Ionian: C D E F G A B (Yes! It's the same as C major - it's still considered a mode.)
Dorian: D E F G A B C (C major scale, starting on D)
Phrygian: E F G A B C D (C major scale, starting on E; and so on for the rest)
Lydian: F G A B C D E
Mixolydian: G A B C D E F
Aeolian: A B C D E F G (also known as Natural Minor)
Locrian: B C D E F G A

Click image for full-size

So, if you know the major scale, it turns out you already know all its modes. You just start the scale from a different note and you're playing a mode. And if you're improvising with these modes, landing on the first note of them on a strong beat or at the end of a phrase will reinforce that you're playing one of the modes and not the Major scale.

Perception
Maybe you're wondering, If I'm just playing the Major scale from a different starting note, why doesn't my ear hear it as C major? The reason is we're very susceptible and open to sound by reinforcement. Modal playing requires proper reinforcement of the starting note (in music theory it's called the "one" -- because it's the first note -- or the "tonic"), so that your ear makes the connection that it's a mode you're playing, not the Major scale.

Jump in and play with these! There's three Major-sounding modes (Ionian, Lydian and Mixolydian) and four Minor-sounding ones (Dorian, Phrygian, Aeolian and Locrian).

A great way to really hear how they work is to use a sequencing program to accompany yourself. Set up a drum loop or metronome and a bass drone pitch of the mode you want to work with. For example, if you want to play around with D Dorian, set up your drum loop, make the bass drone pitch D and then play the C major scale over it, making sure to start on D and emphasizing that pitch on strong beats and phrase beginnings and endings. Suddenly your C major scale sounds like a D minor one.

And if you've ever been afraid of music theory, guess what? I just taught you some. Music theory is simply a way to talk about and better organize sounds. Remember though, music came first, the theory second. Playing your instrument is the best way to experience and express your sound, theory is just a way to talk about it when you're not playing.

Extra Credit
Listen to Miles Davis' record Kind of Blue if you haven't checked it out before, and if you have, check it out again. It's full of modal tunes and playing and additionally is one of the greatest records of all time.

Next up: a video showing you some modal playing and improvising ideas.

* Only 12-notes in Western music. Middle Eastern, Balinese and lots of others have more. Be glad you're not learning things in those traditions.

You're the Top

2010-06-09T15:00:00.003-04:00

Happy birthday Cole Porter (119) and Les Paul (95).

It's pretty cool that these guys' music and innovations are still touching and influencing musicians decades after they were first produced. Even more, their contributions have absolutely wound themselves into popular culture so much most people would know of a Cole Porter song or have seen or listened to a Les Paul without even knowing it. That's pretty amazing.

Maybe tonight I'll play "Night and Day" on a Les Paul. Seems only fitting.

Got Plans Tonight? Now You Do

2010-04-24T13:45:00.004-04:00

Just a quick note-- Wayne Krantz is playing with Tim LeFebvre and Keith Carlock at the Highline Ballroom in NYC tonight. If you're in the area, go. I'll be there.

All three of these guys are fantastic musicians and play beautifully together. Wayne especially is an unbelievable improviser. I just did a 4 day seminar with him last week and I've been practicing incessantly since then. He has a great method I'll share at some point on this blog.

In the mean time, I've got a lot of gigs over the next few days, one I'm learning a bunch of music for (with a comedian(!)) so my next video on chord-tone soloing is a bit delayed. Real life sometimes gets in the way of writing a blog. Weird.

Anyway, to sum up: go see Wayne tonight. I promise you won't be disappointed.

Do Your Thing

2010-04-08T16:39:00.000-04:00

And I'll do mine.

"In the end we can talk for hours but that's the only thing that really matters, like you try to convey something that will reach people at an emotional level. And that's it for me. I don't play for musicians, I don't care about what other musicians think ... I don't play for them, I'm not trying to be accepted by other musicians, like, "Yeah OK this guy is good enough. He's one of us." I'm not one of anything, I'm just doing my thing."

-- Argentine pianist Emillio Solla

Cherokeed

2010-03-23T09:57:00.002-04:00

I ran across this recently on YouTube and it doesn't require a lot of explanation.

If you've ever played an instrument at any level and been around people better than you, and especially if you've ever sat in on a bandstand you can relate to this.

Bill Cosby is a genius.

Go Play Outside!

2010-03-15T09:00:00.001-04:00

Did your mom ever yell "Go play outside!" when you were a kid? Well, here's your chance to do it all on your own.

Playing outside allows freedom. You don't have to worry about breaking any windows or vases; you're finally free to do what you want.

When you played games as a kid, you had your own internal logic for what was happening. You might have been playing cops and robbers and suddenly a space alien appeared on the scene. It might not have made any sense to a casual observer, but to you and your friends who were just playing in the moment, it flowed seamlessly.

It's the same with music.

We spend all our time learning rules (quick-- what's the chord scale that works over D7alt? trick question: there's more than one), memorizing scales, songs and chord voicings. So it's not unusual for someone when first asked to play outside to just go blank.

How do you deal with no rules and all that freedom? You're so trained to color inside the lines, the very idea of coloring outside of them gives you the sweats.

Even worse is the fear that if you're playing free, you're just bullshitting-- none of your notes or phrases has any meaning. I had a lesson once with George Garzone and when I expressed this to him he said, "Who cares? Maybe you could stand to bullshit a little."  

So let's bullshit a little. 

In a previous post I talked about how to begin playing outside. Like learning anything, it's helpful to check out a master first, study them, and then figure out your angle on it.

As Clark Terry said, "Imitate, assimilate, innovate."

Now that you've checked out Steve Coleman, Ornette Coleman and hopefully lots of others, it's time to start assimilating and innovating. This can be daunting-- where do you start?

In the following video, I demonstrate three ideas to get you going. These three different exercises are great if you're just beginning to play outside, or if you're already familiar with it and are looking for new approaches.

In these exercises I play my ideas over an ostinato in C. This makes it easier to hear the relationship of the notes you're playing to the base harmony. If you're just starting out with this kind of thing and I had you practicing these ideas over a song with a lot of chord changes like "All the Things You Are," you'd probably lose your sense of where you were pretty quickly. These exercises are designed to develop your ear and your phrasing, and keep you focused on the task at hand, not at keeping track of chord changes.

And as I've said before, there's always time to make things more complicated. When you start to get comfortable with this material, go ahead and try employing it over a blues or a standard.

Finally, it's helpful if you practice these ideas as I demonstrate in the video-- alternating between playing 4 bars outside and 4 bars inside. The idea is to create tension with your out lines and then to resolve that tension with inside lines. Again, this develops your ear and your phrasing, both of which separate good players from great players.

Let's get to the video!

EXERCISE ONE: TRIADIC IDEAS
The first example is playing outside lines based on triads. For this exercise I chose the triads a major third above and below the home key of C-- Ab and E major.

Not only is this a good way to practice soloing with triadic ideas, but specifically these triads are great if you're just getting your ear acclimated to outside sounds. That's because those two triads share common tones with C major. Check it out:

C major = C E G
Ab major = Ab C Eb
E major = E G# B

A side note: if you stack all those notes together you have the really interesting and beautiful augmented scale. But that's another lesson.

So, the C major triad has the notes C and E in common with with the Ab and E major triads. Additionally, the B in the E major triad is the major 7 in a Cmajor7 chord so there's another inside note. How about the outside notes? Ab and G# are the same pitch and function as a #5 over a C major triad (making the triad augmented) and the Eb of the Ab major triad functions as a minor third or #9 over the C major triad.

If you've ever played any altered Dominant chords, these notes are right out of that sound so your ear probably won't perceive them as mind-bendingly dissonant. But if they do sound that way, congratulations on stretching your ear.

EXERCISE TWO: INTERVALIC IDEAS
The second exercise breaks out of utilizing traditional harmonic sounds and instead employs intervals as improvisational material. For this particular example, I chose 4ths and 5ths. This is somewhat arbitrary, I could have demonstrated ideas based on 7ths, or 6ths or any combination of intervals, but I wanted to utilize a set of intervals that were relatively easy for most musicians to quickly get under their fingers and secondly sound good in many different contexts.

If you're just starting playing out, ideas like playing lines based on intervals instead of specific scales is a great way to start. 4ths and 5ths are great because you can employ variations on the Pentatonic scale which you probably already know and is absolutely full of these easy to grab intervals, and secondly, the sound of these intervals is "open." You're not declaring one key or another with them for the most part.

When doing this exercise, you're not only practicing playing out, but it's an opportunity to work on your fluidity with playing intervallic lines as well as moving the Pentatonic scale around.

Yet another side note -- the classical composers Hindemith, Stravinsky, Copland among others worked a lot with basing pieces on intervals, 4ths and 5ths especially, as a way to generate new sounds not based on traditional harmony. Coltrane's pianist and monster musician in his own right McCoy Tyner pioneered playing lines and voicings based on 4ths derived from the Pentatonic scale, so you're in good company here.

EXERCISE THREE: SUPERIMPOSING CHORD CHANGES
In this third exercise, I superimpose the chord changes to "Giant Steps" over the C ostinato.

Again, this is somewhat arbitrary. You could superimpose the chord changes to "Fly Me to the Moon" or "Angel Eyes" or whatever over that ostinato. I just chose "Giant Steps" as it's a tune I've been working on for a bit and I believe in combining my goals. I can practice playing outside lines while playing inside those chord changes at the same time. Pretty cool.

This is probably the hardest of the three exercises but here's a number of benefits to it.

It's a great way to focus your mind as you have to keep track of the chord changes to the song you're superimposing with no help, cues or reassurance from the accompaniment, it's all up to you to keep things together.

You also have to look for islands of consonance wherever they appear -- in this case when you hit the ii-V-I in the key of G -- and make the most of them as they're fleeting. These are your moments for resolution of that tension.

And finally, this is a great exercise because you ARE playing chord changes, so your lines have shape and moments of tension and release within them, it just so happens your playing the "wrong" chord changes. But doing so gives your lines their own internal logic. The listener might not recognize that you're playing the chord changes to "Giant Steps" over that C ostinato, but they will recognize that for some reason, your lines have an ebb and flow to them and some shape, they're not just a bunch of random pitches.

I could practice this stuff for hours, and in fact I had to edit the video down as I played each example for a couple minutes each and the length was getting out of hand. I hope you got something out of this and have a chance to practice it. It's a lot of fun.

--------------------
I owe a debt of gratitude to three masterful teachers and musicians, Hal Crook, George Garzone and Dave Liebman, all of whom I've ripped off to one degree or another in these exercises. Please check them out if you haven't.

Thor VonClemson Shows You How

2010-01-01T14:28:00.003-05:00

I give up.

Modal harmony? Pentatonics? Polyharmonic fusion hybrids? Alternate picking licks? Sweep arpeggios? This guy has it all.

Weep at his power.

Happy New Year and looking forward to more in 2010. Best to all of you.

Friday Wisdom

2009-12-18T11:06:00.004-05:00

This was too good to pass up.

I watched the documentary Before the Music Dies one more time and was struck again by the smart words for musicians from Branford Marsalis, the commentary on the music industry by Dave Matthews and just the general survey of the land the movie offered.

However, the highlight the second time was the interview with Erykah Badu. In a word: amazing. She had one of the best quotes I think in the movie, on what it takes to a successful musician these days.

In her mind you need to be, "...buck naked with glitter and a beeper."

That's probably about right.

Where do I get a beeper?

(Coming up: filming video on how to begin playing out. Stay tuned...)

Pentatonic Fluidity

2009-11-22T22:05:00.002-05:00

My previous posts about Pentatonics focused on Kurt Rosenwinkel's ability to play them fluidly, through chord changes, without jumping around on the neck. His method consists of coming up with some random chord changes and then playing the appropriate Pentatonic scales as the chords go by rapidly.

So once you've gotten this together (you have been practicing this, right?) what's the next step?

Applying this concept over a real tune. If you don't do this, you're going to be stuck in abstract practice-land. And you don't want to spend too much time there- remember, the reason we're doing all this is to make music.

In the video below, I first demonstrate Kurt's method of playing minor Pentatonics over minor7 chords going up in whole steps starting on Bminor7. Then, I move on to playing Pentatonics over Coltrane's "Giant Steps." This is a difficult tune for any improviser, which is why I chose it to demonstrate the strength of this concept. The chart can be found below the video.

Now let's get to the music!

(Click on the image to see the larger version)

Some notes about the video:

For clarity's sake, the Pentatonic I'm using in both demonstrations is the standard minor Pentatonic known by most musicians: 1 b3 4 5 b7. Using notes, a C minor Pentatonic would be: C Eb F G Bb.

Many musicians think this is the Pentatonic scale, but Pentatonic just signifies a five-note scale. It could be any grouping of any five notes.

Some of you may wonder why I chose the particular Pentatonics I did for "Giant Steps." Without going into music theory, the answer is simple: these Pentatonics sound good over these chords. Why? Because they happen to contain a lot of notes from the basic chord, so I end up outlining the harmony clearly yet there are still some interesting color tones in there as well.

This is a pretty inside way of playing (here's more on outside playing) but it's a great start to getting this concept together. Here is the basic system if you're not familiar with it yet.

Over a minor7 chord, play the Pentatonic with the same root. So, over Aminor7, play A minor Pentatonic.

Over a dominant7 chord, play the Pentatonic a major 6th up/minor 3rd down from the root. So, over D7 play B minor Pentatonic.

Over a major7 chord, play the Pentatonic a major 3rd up/minor 6th down from the root. So, over Gmajor7 play B minor Pentatonic.

There are many more colorful approaches to improvising with this scale, but I'm purposely staying away from implying substitutions or upper structure sounds. My goal was to hew as close as I could to the basic harmony while utilizing only minor Pentatonic scales and keep it relatively simple. There's always time to make things more complicated.

And stay tuned- I'll demonstrate some of the more colorful approaches you can take with your Pentatonic playing in a future video.

Finally, and this is for guitar players, I purposely limited myself to a relatively small space on the neck (on other instruments, you could limit yourself to a narrow melodic range, say from middle C to an octave above that). This is to force me out of using the patterns I'm comfortable with, and into thinking in a more horizontal manner. I want to be aware of where I'm at, what's coming up, and how to get to the next note without necessarily using position playing. There's freedom in that limitation.

Hope you enjoy this one. It was a fun concept to explore.

P.S. A few of you have asked me about the backing tracks to this video. Here's a link. You'll need Apple's Garage band to use it.

[December 2, edited for accuracy: reader Animals2 on Harmony Central caught a discrepancy between blog post and Pentatonics used on the chart]

Out Cat, Out

2009-10-28T11:30:00.012-04:00

I got a lot of hits and emails on my post about Drew Zingg's solo on Steely Dan's "Peg," mostly from players wanting to know more about his approach to playing "out."

If you're working all the time on playing the right notes and avoiding the wrong ones, how do you suddenly turn around and play the wrong ones on purpose?

Playing out is a tough subject to cover because there's many ways of doing it, just like there are many ways of playing inside.

Purposeful out playing, in which you're superimposing dissonant harmonic ideas or systems over the main harmony -- think playing "Giant Steps" lines over a Blues tune -- is one way to do it. This also has the benefit of giving your lines an inherent logical structure. On the other end of the spectrum is pure free playing -- think Ornette Coleman's groundbreaking records of the '60s (though much of his improvisation can be analyzed in functional harmonic terms). Then of course there are those moments where you forget what key you're in and you're making clam salad on the bandstand. Good times.

What's the key to successful outside playing? I think it's the same as successful inside playing: phrasing.

For those of you who think that playing outside is just playing a bunch of random, dissonant notes, here's an idea: over a tune or ostinato in C, just play random notes from the key. Who's going to pay to listen to that? Nobody. Why is that? Because you have to have good phrasing. There has to be shape and purpose to the line. It's hard to play well inside and it's just as hard to play outside.

So how do you begin to learn this kind of improvising if you've never done it before?

Listen to someone who does it well first.

Steve Coleman is many things-- consummate musician, writer, intellectual, composer and an absolute monster when it comes to improvisation. If you've ever heard any of his work, you've probably had your mind blown.

Steve has a brilliant solo on "The Oracle" (on Dave Holland's record Extensions) where he carefully and beautifully balances his inside lines with outside ones. This particular tune is a great starting point for understanding and learning outside playing because the harmony behind the solo is static which makes hearing the outside versus the inside lines very clear. If you're listening to complex changes and the soloist is playing out on top of them, it can be very difficult to hear the relationship between the two. Here on "The Oracle," Dave Holland plays an ostinato in F minor so you can clearly hear Steve's lines and their relationship to the home key.

The reason why I think this is a successful solo is Steve's use of tension and release. Notice how he'll play a phrase completely inside (bars 1-7) and then the following phase he adds tension by dropping in very dissonant notes and sitting on them purposefully (bars 10-13: note the held B natural in bar 11).

And I can't let this transcription go without calling attention to Steve's use of rhythm. If you're looking for ways to break out of your usual lines and licks, copy out some of the rhythms from this solo (bars 3-7 are a great example) and with a metronome, plug in your own notes. I promise you Steve's rhythmic concept here has enough material for you to work on for months.

Coming up, I'll have a video of myself playing over this ostinato, demonstrating inside and outside ideas.

Here's the video of the solo and the full transcription is below.

The Eb chart can be downloaded here in PDF format.

Click on the charts below to see full-size and download. Charts are in C and sound an octave lower than written. If enough people bug me, I'll put up a guitar chart with tab and a Bb version.

(Special thanks to my friend Alex Lacamoire who helped me decipher a particular rhythm in one bar of this solo that threatened to push me into a work release program.)

[Edit: Added Eb chart October 30.
Edit: Fixed Eb chart up an octave, November 1.]

What's That on Your Face?

2009-09-30T16:29:00.001-04:00

I've been busy working furiously on a Steve Coleman transcription and video for this blog, which by the way, is one of the more difficult transcriptions I've ever done. Since it's been a while, I thought I'd offer a little inspiration for today. I know I need it, this transcription is kicking my ass.

I was watching some clips of Allan Holdsworth tearing stuff up at some small club or another and there was a brief interview with him at the end where he was talking about the process of improvisation.

A small aside. I had the pleasure of meeting Allan once and got to talk with him at length about music and his learning process. We were interrupted constantly by fans at the club we were at, who kept telling him how "awesome" he is.

Pro tip: when talking to someone who is awesome, you don't need to tell them that -- they've heard it at least once or twice before. Why not try learning something from them? But I digress.

So in this video clip, Allan related a quotation about improvisation that I thought was inspirational as well as reassuring. Gary Husband, a frequent collaborator of his once told Allan, "If you start digging deep you can't expect to come up with no shit on your face once in a while."

The truth always has a directness to it, doesn't it?

I have a similar story. I attended a master class while in school with legendary saxophonist Dave Liebman. One of the other students raised his hand during the question period and asked how to learn how to stop making mistakes while performing.

Interesting question right?

I thought Dave's answer was amazing. He said, "That's impossible. I make mistakes all the time, still. The difference between you and me is when you make a mistake, you throw up a red flag telling everyone you've made one and call attention to it. I make a mistake, and I just move on."

So, if you get shit on your face while fumbling around looking for something good, just wipe it off, and keep going.

It's How You Say It: Part Two

2009-09-08T12:24:00.001-04:00

Back this week with Pete Anderson's second solo in the Dwight Yoakam song "Guitars, Cadillacs." For the transcription to the first solo, click here.

Pete's solo here is a more developed solo than his first in that he uses plenty of guitaristic techniques throughout and even steals a few from pedal steel.

Again, the analysis (in blue, under the standard notation staff) falls flat in accurately describing what's going on here. The key to playing this solo well and the reason why it's so good is Pete's feel. Again, it matters what you say, but it really matters how you say it.

Pete swings like Tarzan, really stretching and pulling the time feel which adds a lot of rhythmic tension to his lines. You'll notice too, like in the first transcription, he knows how to construct a solo. He uses double stop 6ths as a recurring motif to tie everything together and he works them through the two different harmonies in the song. Notice too, the figure that starts the solo-- it's a call-back to the key thematic figure he used in his first solo.

As a guitar player, a highlight for me is bars 7 through the end where he makes use of a pedal steel sound (bar 8) with a nice bend on the G string from G# down to F# while holding the high E, and then use of different strings to play the same pitch (A) four times, one after the other (bars 9-10). That's the kind of thing you can only do on a stringed instrument and it really has an impact.

I discovered that the video I had linked to on YouTube has been taken down due to copyright restrictions so here it is on another site. The second solo begins at around 2:03 in this video.

Click on chart to see full-size

It's How You Say It

2009-08-25T11:00:00.003-04:00

I like to check out a lot of different kinds of music even though my focus as a musician is Jazz. Recently, a Dwight Yoakam song caught my ear, one, because it was a good song all on its own and two, his guitar player's outstanding solos.

If you're a jazzer, you're probably thinking, "what can some country player teach me about improvisation?"

A lot. Here's a couple of things to start. Firstly, working within the confines of just two chords (not even a IV chord?!), Pete Anderson, the guitar player, manages to wring out a beautifully phrased, perfectly formed Country solo. The strength of the solo relies on two things-- the simplicity of the idea that he works with and repeats throughout (see bar 3 of the transcription for his basic idea) but even more importantly, it's the articulation of this idea.

In my transcription, I have a basic harmonic analysis of what Pete's doing as it's good information for structuring your own solos, but it doesn't even begin to approach what he's doing here. Pay attention when listening to his attack and phrasing, how he bends these notes and uses pull-offs to shape the lines rhythmically. That's how you make Pentatonics sound like music.

If somebody put this chart in front of you and you played the notes in perfect time, like the way a computer would read it down, without bends, without the slurs and pull-offs I guarantee you'd think it was a terrible solo. Too square, too obvious, too simple-- boring. But the way Pete articulates these simple lines is what gives the solo life. His phrasing is killing. He swings.

That's something to remember in your playing. A lot of times we think we'll be saved if our ideas or lines or chords are complex and hard to play. Surely everyone recognizes how hard it is to play that Pentatonic stuff you've been shedding for the past couple of weeks. How come no one's banging down your door? Cause it's how you say it that matters.

Some of Miles Davis' greatest solos were basic modal lines full of whole and half notes. Very easy to play, but the magic was in the phrasing and articulation.

Check out Pete's swinging solo in the video. It starts at around :53. The transcription and analysis is below and I'll have the second solo transcribed for next week.

Click on chart for full-size

I'm a Beginner

2009-08-20T09:34:00.009-04:00

If you haven't listened to WBGO's "The Checkout," do yourself a favor and add it to your rotation. They have a podcast on iTunes or you can listen to it directly from the site linked above.

I was listening to some archived shows recently and ran across an interview with the members of Sangam: tabla master Zakir Hussain, saxophonist Charles Lloyd and drummer Eric Harland.

The always excellent interviewer, Josh Jackson, was talking to Lloyd and I thought his response was amazing:

Josh Jackson: Master Lloyd, Charles Lloyd...

Charles Lloyd: I'm a beginner.

Josh Jackson: (Laughs) I believe that, in some sense.

Charles Lloyd: I have beginner's mind and as Zakir often reminds me of a statement I made in one of the joint interviews we did -- I think it was in Switzerland -- someone asked me about the music and was I gonna do this or do that and I told them I had never gotten good enough to quit, yet, and so I'm still looking for those sounds that will deliver me home...

I've been posting transcriptions and writing about technique and ways to make both yourself and myself a better musician. When you're practicing, sometimes it's easy to get frustrated by things you can't do yet or things you think you'll never be able to do. It might even make you want to quit. Ego takes over and you start to believe you're worse than you actually are.

Charles Lloyd is 71 years old and refers to himself as a beginner. I think every time you sit down to play or to practice, it's helpful to think of yourself that way. There's always more to learn, always something you can't do yet. We're all beginners, every day.

"Peg" Gets Pegged by Jon Herington

2009-08-17T09:30:00.000-04:00

In my ongoing effort to transcribe everything around me, I decided to deconstruct Jon Herington's live solo on the YouTube video of Steely Dan's "Peg" I wrote about in a previous post.

Unlike Drew Zingg's approach to this tune, Jon quotes from the original Jay Graydon solo and then expands on what he was doing. This solo is more in the spirit of the studio version but with definite modern and personal touches from Jon.

Check it out (Jon's solo is the last one about 1:41 into the video):

Like Drew's, what stands out to me is the clarity of his ideas and his fantastic phrasing of them. The structure of Jon's solo is impeccable. He alternates at the beginning between quoting Graydon's signature double stop opening with open G-string pull-offs, back to the double stops and then more pull-offs, only pausing to drop in some nice string bending technique, the last one with an added right-hand tapped note to a high B to nail the 3rd of the G chord in the harmony. This is like a rock soloing 101 class.

The rest of the solo is Jon showing his taste and chops with melodic bends and phrases interspersed with some really nice line playing and even returning to some more open string pull off lines. Interestingly he finishes the solo with a chromatic sequence that is not that different from the one that Drew Zingg employed in his solo. Maybe Donald Fagen requests that of all his guitarists.

Check out the transcription, my analysis is below each staff in blue.

Click on score to see full-size

Les Paul

2009-08-13T15:19:00.003-04:00

Les Paul died today. I don't have a whole lot to say about it above what others have said already.

My first, good guitar was a Les Paul Custom that was heavy as hell and sounded amazing. I saw the man himself play last year and he was a fantastic performer. He was a little rough around the edges, guitar-wise, but the guy was 94. If we could all be that fortunate. Rest in peace Les and thanks for changing everything for the better.

(Photo by Ric Molina at Molinaville)

Kurt's Sonic Part Two: Pentatonic Revenge -- The Shredding

2009-08-10T09:32:00.000-04:00

Where were we?

Oh yeah, tearing up some Pentatonic lines.

One thing we learned from my last post on this subject is Kurt Rosenwinkel has spent a bit of time getting his Pentatonic playing together. I'm guessing probably a little more than a bit.

If you're brave, check out the YouTube video about 1:40 into it.

Here, Kurt again tackles playing minor Pentatonic lines rapidly, over minor 7 chords going up in whole steps (Eb, F, G, A, B, C#), generally sticking to a harmonic rhythm of one chord per two beats.

A couple of things about this part of the video and his performance struck me. The range he plays in is quite low and he keeps to a pretty narrow zone on the neck. This again really demonstrates the wealth of harmonic possibilities available in a very limited area and shows you don't need to be jumping all over the place in order to grab the notes you want. Like McDonald's, there's probably one near you.

Notice the shape of this extended line too. He has a nice ability to make what would otherwise be a dry demonstration musical by not just moving in one direction and using the same patterns. The line grows and shrinks organically, peaking at the end when he hits the high C and comes back down. He's making music out of an exercise. Pretty cool.

And along those lines, if you look at the transcription carefully, you'll see there's some fudging. He's not strict about two beats per key, there are a couple of passing tones here and there and at the end he essentially plays an Am11 figure, not fully keeping to the strict idea of the demonstration. To me that's reassuring-- he's not a robot, he's making music out of this challenge. That's what you should do too.

Here's the transcription (tempo is not indicated as he speeds up pretty quickly into it):

Click on the score to see it full-size

Like a Boy Scout

2009-08-07T09:58:00.002-04:00

Be prepared. That's what I learned this week.

While I was in the middle of a project in midtown, I got an unexpected call from a musician who is, shall we say, famous. "Can you be at a jam session in a couple hours?" he asked.

No warning, no music- no instrument, even- I was just told where to show up and there would be a guitar waiting for me.

A couple of things went through my head: "I can't believe who I'm talking to." and "I'm going to look like an idiot in front of these people."

I looked for a comfort zone and asked, "Can I get a recording or music beforehand?"

"Nah, you don't need it," he replied. "We're just going to play."

Was I crapping my pants? Yeah. But then somebody close to me reminded me of a few things: that through studying improvisation I had in fact practiced to expect the unexpected, and learned how to thrive in it. She reminded me that unfamiliar situations were what I had prepared for and that's all this was, just another unfamiliar situation. Also that I should take at least 10 deep breaths.

The truth is, it was hard to keep all that in mind, but I did decide to let go of being intimidated by the situation and instead, just grasp the opportunity- and I'm happy to say for the most part I did. By the end of it, I realized the advice was right. Because I had constantly kept practicing and primed my myself for challenges and unexpected performances, everything turned out pretty well.

So how did the one hour jam session go? It ended up being closer to three hours, and I think we wrote two songs. I didn't really keep track, though. We really were just playing and enjoying the moment.

...

Now, check out Ricky Skaggs shred on some Bluegrass in preparation for the weekend. I'll be back next week with another Rosenwinkel Pentatonic transcription.

"Peg" gets Pegged by Drew Zingg

2009-08-04T11:23:00.010-04:00

I came across this video on YouTube where people are asked to rate these different, live guitar solos over Steely Dan's "Peg."

Jay Graydon's original solo on the studio album is one that's become a classic and now is inexorably linked to the song. (Imagine a different solo at the end of "Stairway to Heaven." Same kind of thing.)

Interestingly, if you've seen the documentary on the making of "Aja," you'll know that Jay's was one of a few different solos that were competing for the final mix on the studio album.

Among these live solos on the YouTube video, three caught my ear.

Admittedly, I'm biased towards two of them: Wayne Krantz' for his brave take off and total disregard for the original (disclaimer, I'm friendly with Wayne and took a few lessons with him when I first arrived in New York), and Jon Herington's model of how-to-improve-on-a-classic (second disclaimer, I'm friendly with Jon on a professional level).

But, Drew Zingg's drew (har) my attention for a couple of reasons. First, it was easy to hear what he was doing due to the clarity of his phrasing (and the recording for that matter) and second, he does a really nice job of working in some chromatic, and extended harmonic lines over the original harmony while employing some classic blues figures. Good reason for a transcription to figure out what he's doing!

Have a listen (Drew's is the second solo in at about :25):

Nice job Drew. OK, here's the transcription with my quick analysis (written in blue below each staff line):

Click on chart to see full-size

So what's going on here?

Drew is using a general G tonality for his "base" and extends his lines from there, mostly returning to it for harmonic stability.

He begins with G blues lines for the first four bars and then begins opening it up. For me, the most interesting section is measures 5-8, specifically measure 5. Notice he begins measure 5 with a G triad over the CM7 chord (making CM9), pushes up a tritone to a Db major line, then back to a G triad (with a #11 passing tone) then back up a tritone, this time using a Db minor sound. This is all within the space of 1 bar.

Cool right? Make no mistake, this is planned out and practiced. I doubt he played this solo the same way every night, but his ideas are very sharp and phrased clearly which tells me he's not just blowing-- he's thinking about what he's doing here.

Here's a good chance to get this into your playing.

Practice switching between two tonalities using a metronome or, to really hear the harmonic superimposition, over a sequencer playing these chord changes (two beats of CM7, two beats of Gsus2). The idea is to do a consonant tonality over beat 1, an "out" tonality over beat 2 for tension, back to a consonant one for beat 3 and so on.

So, for beat 1 (the CM7 chord), play a G triad or G major type line, beat 2 switch to a Db major triad or Db major type line, beat 3 back to G major, beat 4 back to Db major.

You'll notice if all you employ is triads, the lines won't necessarily be as melodic, that's why Drew is mixing up playing triadic based lines with scale based ones. There's nothing wrong with doing just triads, it's its own sound -- you'll see what I mean.

What will happen after practice is you'll start to see the G major triad/lines as your home base and a comfort zone and you'll be able to look ahead to your next leap to a more out tonality like Db major. When you get to that point, you'll know your starting to nail it.

Experiment with other triads or scales as your out target as well. This is a great way to introduce harmonic complexity into your playing while still keeping some logic and melodic things happening.

Coming soon, a transcription of Herington's solo...

P.S. You can follow this blog on Twitter at http://twitter.com/somuchsound

Edit: July 8, 2010 -- edited for clarity. Alert reader and guitar player Mark Schuh caught a couple accidental accidentals in the wrong place. I blame Finale.

Branford Rants, Actually Makes Sense

2009-07-31T10:34:00.011-04:00

Another quotation from Before the Music Dies.

If you haven't watched this movie, do yourself a favor and do it now. I'll wait.

Go.

Not only does it have great performances, there are some amazingly insightful interviews with Erykah Badu, Dave Matthews and Brandford Marsalis among others.

One of moments that hit me as a practicing musician and someone who is constantly trying to get better was this:

Interviewer: "What have you learned from your students?"

Branford Marsalis: "What I've learned today from my students, is that students today are completely full of shit. That is what I've learned from my students.

...much like the generation before them, the only thing they're really interested in is you telling them how right they are and how good they are. That is the same mentality that basically forces Harvard to give out B's to people that don't deserve them out of the fear that they'll go to other schools that will give them B's and those schools will make the money.

We live in a country that seems to be just in this massive state of delusion. Where the idea of what you are is more important than you actually being that. And it actually works as long as everyone is winking at the same time. Then if one person stops winking, you just beat the crap out of that person and then they either start winking or they go somewhere else.

But it's like, yeah, my students, all they want to hear is how good they are, how talented they are they're not really -- most of them are not really willing to work to the degree to live up to that."

I've talked to a couple of friends about this and have gotten various reactions, some positive and some negative.

But I think he has a point. Especially the negativity of, "the idea of what you are is more important than you actually being that."

It's tough to take a real assessment of your ability as a musician. It requires being objective about your playing which is nearly impossible while you're doing it: you're the performer, not the listener.

So how do you get an idea of what you sound like?

When I took some lessons from Wayne Krantz he made me buy a $20 Sony cassette recorder. Cheap, crappy and it works. It's also completely objective about your playing.

Record yourself. Play something you think you're good at, record it, then listen back. I'll bet it's not as good as you thought. How bout this: do you think you stand up straight? Have someone take a candid picture of you walking or talking to someone.

There's a lot of stuff we do we're not aware of and it follows into your playing as well.

So make recording a regular part of your practice. Maybe five minutes a day of just performing into a tape recorder and listening back to it. Acknowledge the things that are good, and pay attention to the things that aren't, then figure out how to fix them. And stand up straight while you're at it.

This is the hard work that Branford is talking about.

Something to Think About on Monday

2009-07-27T12:56:00.001-04:00

"The 20 million people who buy a Britney Spears record aren't music fans, they're popular culture fans."

-- from the documentary Before the Music Dies

Kurt's Sonic: Goes Pentatonic

2009-07-22T12:00:00.002-04:00

While looking at seminars on YouTube I came across this one of Kurt Rosenwinkel filmed in Italy.

In it, he talks about something I heard him discuss in a master class he gave a number of years ago while I was at Berklee-- the idea of playing "through" changes. At the time he was talking about his song "Cubism" that he had written using all 12 keys in order to force himself to improvise through them. The idea intrigued me and I ended up writing the song "Absolute Convolute" using the same idea.

Though any great improviser plays through chord changes, perhaps even coming to this naturally after years of practice and performance, it's rare you hear a professional musician talk about a method or practice technique in order to get there. Kurt clearly thinks about what it is he wants to be able to do and then devises ways to accomplish it. That's a good habit to get into.

Here's the seminar. Below it I have a transcription I made of the first minor Pentatonic example he gives at about 39 seconds into the video:

The transcription of the line at about 39 seconds in:

(click on chart to see full-size)

Great, right?

Notice how he's not jumping around to different positions on the neck each time he announces what Pentatonic he's playing. He just grabs the next available note from the scale and continues from there-- that is playing through changes.

This is not easy to do. It's challenging for any instrument but especially on stringed instruments that deal with positions. The challenge on guitar especially is to not start each key change on the root or move to comfortable positions but to stay relatively close to where you are on the neck and just shift to the next scale. Kurt does this beautifully. You're looking at the result of hours of practice here.

Is it hard? Yes. Is it doable? Definitely.

I think I might be most impressed with his ability to speak while playing this line. Improvising while talking takes practice. Maybe that's my new regimen...

Bonus:
How do you practice this? Unless you're already prodigious at quickly switching between Pentatonic scales, I would suggest breaking things down.

Set your metronome to a comfortable tempo for you to play the scale, then:

1. For guitar, start with one key and every measure move to a different position in order to make sure you're comfortable playing in all of them. On other instruments, make sure you're proficient in playing the Pentatonic scale through the full range of your instrument.
2. Add another key. Every bar, switch to the other key. Example-- Bar 1: C Minor Pentatonic. Bar 2: A Minor Pentatonic. Bar 3: C Minor Pentatonic and so on.
3. Add a third key and continue the method.
4. Try it over a pattern like Kurt has done-- chords going up in Major Seconds -- or chords going up in Major Thirds, Cycle of 4ths etc.
5. The real world challenge! Try it over a song like a blues, "Cherokee", "All the Things You Are" or "Giant Steps".

You can see the possibilities for this are virtually limitless, the idea is to get comfortable wherever you are on your instrument so you can play what you want, when you want. This is always the goal, everything else is just a way to get there.

Bonus Bonus:
Here's my song "Absolute Convolute" mentioned above with a chart. There are 12 bars and every bar is in a new key. It starts in the key of B and goes through the cycle of 5ths (B, E, A, D, G, etc.). I've put the key of every bar below each staff and the analysis (at least the way I like to think of it) above the staff in red.

(click on chart to see full-size)

Though you could probably get this together relatively quickly, it's difficult with this much static tonality (just the Major key) to play musically, at least I find it to be. When my group plays this live, I always have a mixture of excitement and dread.

Easy to play, difficult to master. Enjoy.

So Much Sound Is off the Ground

2009-07-20T09:08:00.000-04:00

"Improvisation is like a conversation: you say what you know, but you don't know what you're going to say." --Marcus Roberts

A friend of mine once had a short conversation with Marcus Roberts a number of years ago about improvisation and this was the money quote. Even his remarks swing. Amazing.

I've shared this quotation with many people and thought a lot about how it pertains to writing and improvising music. It's easy to focus on the brilliance of his idea, an idea that seems obviously true as soon as you hear it.

But what if you don't know anything?

That's the reason to practice and listen and check out other musicians and go to jam sessions and buy books and talk about music. So we can learn something. So we can be inspired and create something new. So we have something to say when the time comes.

I'm starting this blog so that when you go to those jam sessions, or have a gig or sit down to write a song, you don't repeat yourself. You'll have something new to say, and the best part is, even you don't know how it's going to come out.

That's the fun of creating.