What I Got WRONG About Jazz
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 เม.ย. 2024
- Get access to my 4 Nebula Classes, Quarter Notes With Aimee Nolte, several pdfs and extended/bonus videos and the ENTIRE Nebula platform when you sign up for Nebula using my link (40% off an annual subscription) go.nebula.tv/aimeenolte
How a huge misconception of mine shaped who I am as a jazz pianist and musician who improvises.
Video recorded using
Earthworks SV33
Earthworks PM40 piano mic
Hallet Davis baby grand piano
my website: aimeenolte.com - เพลง
I love how very instructed people are always careful not to generalize.
I play jazz piano, and teach jazz, which I've been doing for the last 30 years. Learning to play jazz is akin to learning a new language - you have to study and practice many things - grammar, vocabulary, sentence structures, tenses, correct pronounciation, genders, etc. The same is true of learning to play jazz. *Here are the 20 main factors which have to be learned and internalized in order to become a fluent jazz pianist:*
1) HARMONY/FUNCTIONAL HARMONY - a massive subject all on its' own, and this can become very complex.
2) MODULATION from one key to another wihin a particular song or piece, including how this is achieved (II-V-I progressions, cycle of 4ths/5ths, etc).
3) THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SCALES - one Major, four Minor, Wholetone, Chromatic, the 7 Modes of each Major and Minor scale, the Diminished Scale and the Jazz Altered Scale, the American Blues Scale, the Bebop Major Scale.
4) ARPEGGIOS BASED ON VARIOUS SCALES/MODES - typical 'be-bop' angular arpeggios especially.
5) THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HARMONY AND MELODY/SCALES
6) THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HARMONY AND BASS LINES - including diatonically rising and falling bass lines, use of inverted chords, chromatically rising and falling bass lines, bass lines following the cycle of 4ths/5ths, etc.
7) THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MELODY AND BASS LINES
8) RHYTHM AND RHYTHMIC STYLES - Swing, Salsa, Rock, Shuffle, playing in different Time Signatures, playing rubato, using 'punchy' rhythmic phrases when soloing, etc.
9) CHORD VOICINGS (rootless chords) - especially for the left hand. Which scales can be used over which chord changes or individual chords, especialy whilst using rootless chord voicings in the left hand.
10) BASS LINES - including walking bass for swing, bass lines for various Latin rhythms, etc.
11) SOLOING - The use of arpeggios and scalar approaches, how to combined these, use of rhythmic devices, phrasing/length of phrases, building a solo. In this I use 'copycat' phrases and 'question and answer' (call and response) phrases to help students to get a good rhythmic and melodic 'feel' for jazz, espeically be-bop.
12) CHORD 'EXTENIONS' - where a left hand voicing is used with harmonies in the right hand based on the various scales (such as the Jazz Altered Scale, lydian, dorian and mixolydian modes, diminished scale, etc.
13) DEXTERITY, FINGERING, ETC.
14) When to use LEGATO PEDDLING, and when NOT to use the sustain pedal.
15) PLAYING WITH A BASS PLAYER (just piano and bass)
16) ACCOMPANIMENT OF SINGERS (just piano and voice)
17) ACCOMPANIMENT OF FRONT-LINE INSTRUMENTS, both with piano + one instrument (sax, or flute, etc.)
18) PLAYING IN TRIOS/QUARTETS etc. - including 'comping' using rootless chord voicings and using rootless (left hand) voicings with chord extensions (in the right hand).
19) HOW TO RE-HARMONIZE A MELODY. Like harmony itself, this is a huge subject demanding a great deal of time to become fluent.
20) READING FROM TOP LINE MELODY AND CHORD SYMBOLS (as per the 'Real Book,' 'Fake Book' etc.
Learning to play Jazz is a huge task, but with immensely rewarding results.
And the most forgotten: melodic construction, both in composing a melody and melodic soloing!
Welcome to the club. My mentor Joe Solomon was taught by Lennie Tristano. The main thing he taught and is now passed along to me is each student is required to learn and sing solos first. Embed it in your ear and only then try to play it on your instrument. Ive learned to sing every Charlie Parker solo, or Lester Young....and embed that in your ear as a daily practice. Hearing and playing happens almost instantaneously.
Aimee, for me this is one of the very best videos you've ever done. True to yourself.
Agree
When pianist Ran Blake taught improvising at the New England Conservatory, he told students that they had to be able to sing a line before they could play it. I doubt he carried that to the sixteenth note level, but he did want students to know what they were doing, and not just finger-noodle through scales.
Further to your point... I'd add that in my sortof 'earlier days', even though I was still focusing on keyboards, I would often listen to George Benson, as he would frequently sing with his improvisations.. and many have suggested that technique is something to aspire to learn - a way to get 'into' the music in a more 'connected' way...
Not all singable things are musical, nor are all scale based patterns less melodic as singable ones. Everything is fair game. Always approaching something the same way gets samey, be it playing scale exercises, or melodic singable ones. Mix it up. Do both, vary things. Be able to do both
I love jazz and always play it at jams but I know that sometimes I don't get success I want because I always sing what I want to play while young musicians just play fast without even trying to do that. So this is a second side of the coin - sometimes You can't play fast
Yes, part of what is killing jazz is the idea that solos have to have many notes and show how technically proficient they are. The average listener just does not understand or like listening to this. Making music is not about how many notes you can play, it is about expressing ideas, and how you are personally feeling. Melodic knowledge is the most important, how to make a melody. So many jazz schools do not teach this. To keep a listener listening and understanding your Improvised Solos they have to have melodic ideas, have contrasts, have tension and release, have humor, have emotion! Keith Jarrett as an example!
The faster they play the less rhythm there is and rhythm is what makes music. Take that away and it's just morse code.
Very well said and so true!!!!
Not necessarily. Variety is key. Both ways are valid if you mix and match and vary things. You need both. Before I could even play instruments, much less jazz, I knew what I liked, and it included everything...from simple melodies, to complex outright atonal burning sheets of sound, and everything in between, high level post bop burning, Coltrane did all that, so there you go. You dont have to always be one thing. Not everyone likes simple melody all the time. I do but I also love blurs of fast complex patterns. And everything in between. If one REALLY likes music they like almost everything in some context. I crave variety. Cant be all simple or all complex all the time.
@@RocknJazzer Yes you are an exception. The average nonmusician listener listens to what they are familiar with. They listen differently than the musicians. Musicians analyze what they are listening to such as melody, rhythm, production, sound quality, technique etc... but the average listener hears the melody with lyrics and the basic beat. They do not analyze what they are hearing. They might get an emotional response from the music but do not know why. I was taught to listen to music completely starting when I was about 4 sitting next to my mom on the piano bench while she played. She would ask things such as; is the music sad or happy and what time signature the music is. Today listeners are pegged by social media to only listen to what they have been previously listening to. Very different than your experience. Thus this is problem with jazz and the reason it is the least popular music today. It is not the musician's fault but I think, like Coltrane, they need to interpret more current popular songs, like he did with My Favorite Things, and Miles did with Someday My Prince Will Come. Jazz needs to play more current music and make them standards, and not smooth jazz that just plays them with a bossa beat. Recognizable melodies that people under 40 would recognize!
@@PeterWetherill i guess it also depends on whether you are playing to try please people or yourself. Usually its a compromise..
The one thing I’d like to point out is that you have incredibly high music aptitude. Many of us do not. For some … just having “one or two” two voicings for each basic jazz chord is decades of work. Very little of what I play is actually singable by me. Melodies can take decades to learn… there are song which I have been playing almost every day for 40 years and cannot play .. have never played…… we are all different in our learning…. Many times people with high aptitudes do not quite grasp that. Love your channel!
I’m a drummer . I don’t know any songs , not do I have a good ear for figuring them out . But I have a good ear for creating my own melodies . This guitarist , the great Yoshiaki Masuo recorded my tune here in 1979 .. He played and toured with the great saxophonist Sonny Rollins for the better part of a decade (Well known arranger Horace Ott did the strings ). He recorded a few of my other tunes too.(Toots Thielmans was originally booked for this session but regrettably sent in a sub).
My point is , don’t compare yourself to others . Aimee obviously has fantastic ears, much better than mine . But only I could have written THAT melody . It helped that the great Jerry Bergonzi showed me how to play a 2-5-1 progression. So don’t worry . Like Cass Elliot of the Mamas and The Papas so famously said : “Make Your Own Kind of Music -Sing your own special song”.
th-cam.com/video/0n9nRRlY5yw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=hxVG8JnjtNjSefmP
Videos like this address the weak part of my ability to hear though , especially the pointing to the notes and then singing . Still my favorite tutorials on the internet .. Always the right stuff , taught the right way.
@@WyattLite-n-inn 100% agree. Hearing music “like a language” is the highest form of musicianship. Too often music is thought of as “some have it and others don’t” which is not really true … every musician can improve their aural understanding of music…… my point is that there are levels of aptitude and so r things are not possible for some musicians regardless of how hard you try or how much you care……
@@mbmillermo Looking at his channel, he can "definetely" play (very well indeed!) I think he didn't mean it literally when he said he cannot play it after 40 years...
@@mbmillermo Are you adressing me? I have literally millions of views on TH-cam (see “Rappin’ With Steve Harvey).. You obviously didn’t press the included link where my
fully orchestrated original song is. You misunderstood. I meant I can’t figure out other people’s tunes but I can write my own . One of them paid for my move from New York to LA.. So yeah, you misunderstood..
...playing with the ear, from the heart...versus...playing with the hand, from the head...ongoing self-improvement path...such wisdom and truth...encouragement to remain true to yourself rather than trying to impress...thank you...
You said what I wanted to say, but you said it better! Thanks! Facility is there to serve the ear and the heart
Man, we're so lucky to have access to inspiring people like this...
As a house bassist at Rusty’s Jazz Cafe for many years in Toledo, a variety of incredibly talented musicians would come and sit in and play alongside Eddie Abrahms, the pianist that was the core member for the club. Sometimes cats would come in and try to cut Eddie, in a typical Bb blues, playing the most advanced lines, the altered scales, arpeggios et al you’re referring to here, occasionally tossing notes directly behind Eddie’s ears, as if to say, “what you got man?”, “can you play that?”, etc. Headcutting being a thing, these guys would overplay glad to be sitting in taking too many Many choruses, 12, more 23 perhaps, end with flourish as if to say, now whaddaya got to say after all that?!
We would bring that whole swinging Bb blues down dynamically, and Eddie would start his solo with one single Bb note, right in the middle, and play that single note starting to repeat the same note with a rhythm and build from there into the next chorus, adding an octave above, starting to groove a pulse, adding an octave below, pushing the momentum, double octaves in both hands, shifting the range of the B flats up and down now as well cruising forward, bringing the volume up, chorus leading to the next, the rhythm becoming frenetic and powerful, literally an exclamation of this is how to make this music truly exhilarating and his hands would become a blur thrashing out an incredible wall of B Flats and we’re swinging hard as hell now, driving a freight trains worth of flying down the tracks and we would come to that inevitable top of this mountain of energy, and as we’d come to the top of that next 12bar, BANG! Eddie would play every incredible fast line he ever knew in the world, and the audience was on their feet, clapping shouting smiling overcome with the power of this Jazz-Blues Beautiful Moment!
Man, he’d cut those cats with ONE Note!!
Nice
Reminds me of the fictitious piano duel between the two pianists in the _Legend of 1900_ (movie), incpired by the novel _Novocento, Pianist_ by Alessandro Baricco.
Thank you for talking about this. Music in it’s very nature is difficult to explain and you do it beautifully.
2 comment. 1 Keith “the singer” Jarrett. He seems to do what you explained.
2. I’m a very poor guitarist who literally falls asleep playing things over and over and over. Because I’m trying to play tempos I physically & mentally can’t do. It turned playing from joy to hatred. So, I learned at 66 that playing at whatever speed is really ok. Sure, theres a reason to play fast, but playing slower is okay by my lights.
Thank you for saying this and letting me know others question themselves, mostly just overburdening ourselves to meet other standards. Well done.
Hands down the best video I’ve seen here on youtube….maybe ever. As someone that went to music school too and didn’t always get what everyone else was doing, I always followed my own path. And yet now I understand what I didn’t as a teen. Listening is sooo important….for vernacular, but also running the “exercises” helps develop the ear by exposing new sounds that may be outside what makes sense for a young ear. This was amazing. Thank you!
So right !! It's all about developing *the ear * !! I believe more so than singing . The more you can hear the more you can advance . And advance to things that may have been outside your grasp previously !! Truly hope this helps you. 🎉💥👍
True
Gosh darn it I just love you and what/how you share and teach and inspire so openly.
Ahhh thank you Jay
Girl, what you're doing is totally amazing
Agreed
Amazing Aimee!
So good!!! Thank you!
Thanks Aimee! Great stuff.
Thanks for sharing this, Aimee. It was so helpful to hear.
Thank you, Aimee! 🎶🤗😎
Really useful to get your perspective on this. Appreciate the balanced outlook.
I love hearing your thoughts, you contribution is genuinely so lovely to hear and really resonates with my current journey with using my ear
The best music lesson I ever had was being told "if you can sing it, you can play it". But you really take it to the next level!
And the next step is to say, if you can't sing it, don't play it.
Thanks for the confession….
I started playing jazz in 1952.. on sax and clarinet… in 2023 I decided to learn piano..with no formal instruction,
I used what I knew as a base for piano.. bad idea. Now relearninng the cord structures
@@BluesPiano100 I bet that's working great with chords. How are the overtone singing classes going?
@@BluesPiano100Some people can't sing. It doesn't have to stop them playing. Of course you probably mean singing internally, but I kind of disagree all the same. Being able to sing what you play is nice, but isn't essential IMO. Playing an instrument, however, helps fix some singing mistakes, such as intonation and incorrect scales.
After I started playing jazz trumpet, my (general) music teacher congratulated me on the improvement in my sight singing. My ears had improved.
Thanks for this post. Great encouragement!
WOW!!! Your story was AMAZING!! Thanks for sharing. ❤❤❤ btw I LOVE the way you scat your notes. Beautiful!
You have managed to articulate hugely creative complex thought processes very clearly. It's magical to be touched by your words and feel inside that I really get it. Thank you x
This video and the insights revealed are as , if not more, important than any technique or theory video, although those are super important too. Thank you for sharing this!
Thank you so much, Ms. Nolte! That helped me to sort out and better understand many years of my own musical experience, and also to be able to find more access into your current level of development and demonstration! You bring a humble, good vibe! 😊
Deepest thanks for your honest and heartfelt sharing and for the mastery of two instruments throughout your life, your voice and the piano. Best wishes! 🙏🏻✨✨✨
Really interesting! Thank you so much for sharing.
I love how you talk about music. So cool to hear about your process.
Great content! Thank you so much!
Thanks for this. Fabulous! Going to watch again now, to catch onto the #5, #9, altered scale practice you mentioned.
what a fantastic video!! Thank you 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
Thank you for those insights and bearing your soul somewhat. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the thoughts of “I’m not cut out like the musicians i look up to” and figured I should aspire to their levels. I do push harder because of it, and it’s “comforting” to hear you - someone i also look up to - have similar feelings.
I love how you fuse the concept of hearing and constructing musical ideas. Thank you for pointing out how both concepts interact. This is a deep level of reflection rarely seen on this platform.
Your sincere candor reaches more voicings than there are frequencies and grooves Ms. Nolte. Good on ya pard.
Great advice Aimee......!!!
Possibly one of the most important video I've watched in my jazz short journey (and I've seen many). Sometimes it's important to get your head up and to have a bit more general view of what you are trying to do and where you want to go. Thanks for that thought provoking tale of your early journey.
Love your videos here!
Great insight, thank you!
You are the best Aimee! Best regards from Argentina
Super important message for any instrument. Thank you!
People gravitate to their strength. You have a great ear and the way you can scat and play notes is incredible. It’s your strength.
If you started by practicing scales and scales and arpeggios after arpeggios you might not be as good as you are. Lots of people sound like scales. You have a lyrical style that is really unique.
Your best advice for me has been to listen, listen really closely to tunes.
You beat me to this.
Your videos are always interesting & educational Aimee! Love your approach and exceptional ability! 👏👏👌😁🎷
Your voice is magical. Subscription added
I love listening to you and learning from you, especially when you open your heart in the name of Music
I am always inspired by your content. When I was in High School and college jazz bands playing sax I was always amazed by my mom's ability to transcribe a song with "perfect pitch", (even though she was always a sight reader on piano) something I thought was a gift beyond me. Later in life I taught myself to play some jazz piano and have become a fairly proficient player of jazz ballads, and find myself able to predict note pitch, so maby perfect pitch can be learned to some degree.
Thank You for this inspiring post! It's just as much fun to watch You speak about Your work as it is valuable to pick the lessons in it that You provide. Let's see what I can make out of that for myself...
As someone who started with technique and learned my own kind of point and sing later on, you are spot on with this.
This is a really good analysis of how it works. Great insight to share.
Brilliant and insightful. Subbed. Thank you.
Thanks for sharing all this very personal information.
Thank you so much for this
Thanks Aimee, great video. I’ve been playing Jazz Trumpet for 40 years and to a certain extent have always been able to improvise. Although I’ve learnt a lot of theory, my best solos have and continue to be when I just use my ears and try to feel the groove, listening to the band and reacting to what they are doing. I’ve tried to explain this to fellow musicians but it’s really a personal thing.
I think we’re all different and you learn and use whatever works for you.
Lyrical improvisation is definitely a great approach but I find that there’s a bit more to it. I used to focus mostly on change-running or creating melodic lines out of scales and modes that fit the harmony and I got good at it. But I had a feeling that this may have been competent jazz but not particularly good jazz because I wasn't really saying anything worthwhile. Then one day something dawned on me. I went to my piano and started improvising on All the Things You Are, only I placed more focus on rhythms than on pitches. My solos immediately came to life. It’s amazing how interesting and appealing even a simple, one-pitch phrase can sound when played with a tasty, irresistible rhythm. It instantly changed my whole approach. Then I realized that there is a value in change-running but it should be used as connecting tissue to the rhythmic-lyrical creations. And at that point I really saw the importance of space in that it gives the listener a chance to process what you’re expressing and it creates suspense, which is huge and really brings a solo to life. So I recommend being lyrical but with rhythmic creativity as the main emphasis. And leave plenty of space. Just try it.
This is brilliant....carefully thoughtfully worded...this helps. Very generous
This video is awesome!
Incredible and inspiring many thanks 🙏
Im glad I found your channel. As a saxophonist, i connected with everything you are saying. I often sing the lines that I want to play in my mind as it is relative to my horn. This form of mental practice has been helpful, but I too have felt limited. I am going to start trying to find chords on charts and learn the scales associated with them. Thanks for your teaching.
This is such a great Video... so mind opening for me as a musician... resonates big time with where I'm at in my musical journey... thankyou so much for this
Aimee; good one!! I like your internal sincere thinking.
You are such an excellent teacher. Sounds like you took the right approach. Thank you for the inspiration,Maestro Aimee.⭐🌹🔥🌹⭐
Thanks for sharing this
Thank you for this
dear Aimee. I just want to let you know, that the chords you play in this video had so much impact on me, that I now learn this scale in all keys, discovering so many chords with a new harmonic richness to me - It was a gift! Thank you for your work!
Thank you very much
Thank you for sharing this. I needes to hear it :)
I’ve always admired your ability to sing what you play…. And play your internal vocal ideas. Love this
What an amazing story! Thank you so much for sharing it with us! Your statement totally resonates with me! Now... It's time to get back to the practice and play these crazy-sounding scales until they sound normal.
Thanks for sharing your experience Aimee, I really appreciate it! I came at learning my instrument (guitar) from the opposite direction, memorizing the patterns and then (sometimes mindlessly) running through the shapes I knew while the chords were changing. I often got frustrated and always wished I could play more creatively/melodically like some of my friends. It's only the last few years that I've worked on my ear training and trying to vocalize more (although, I still really struggle with "singing"). I can definitely see the benefit of both types of learning.
woooow this is definitely where 11:45 I’m at with improvising wordlessly !! thank you for sharing Aimee 💖
So neat breaking down the voice/instrument relationship.. I relate every thing to singing also and it’s the easiest to listen to.. but thinking from the instrument instead of the voice allows you to go places the voice can’t go. It’s still “singing” in a way. Awesome
Sweet, honest, earnest, and inspired. Yes, Aimee, your music reflects who you are. Patterns and runs are just narrative, the part of the story that takes you from one scene to the next, and yes, they can take you to an unexpected location (which is awesome!) but when you arrive, the rhetoric (the part of the story that reflects your experiences, your perceptions, and your feeling about what is important) has to come from you if it is to be your original story, spoken in your own voice. You were never wrong about that.
your singing touched me 💚
WOW!! Point and sing. Awesomely great thing. Thank you. Great video, so so helpful. Thank you for your gifts.
So honest, from the heart, to hear about your experience.
5:19 Amy , this “simple “ little line here is so beautiful. I think I could listen to lyrics to your “simple melodies” all day;)
Interesting! This opened some new avenues to think about how I want to practice and learn myself. I've already started singing the notes and saying the notes while practicing scales, but I really liked what you demonstrated. Thanks!
Wonderful. Even if too old to experiment the journey, the way you explain it is enough. Thanks
Positive comment! please don't stop doing what you're doing and showing to us
Thank you so much for sharing your discoveries. I was little during the cool jazz age and heard those beautiful melodic ideas floating down the hallway at night when my Dad was listening in the living room. I turned into a multimedia artist, and now I'm learning music theory on a guitar. The structure and disciple of scales, patterns, and modes are so difficult for me, but somehow compelling because what you say is true. They help us know where to go, at least where we might wander to find that next note. Thx for inspiring me to keep learning. and Nebula looks amazing, i'll take a look.
Thank you for this honest speech. So so helpful for everyone in his or her own musical journey : hey, other people has been there too, l am not alone ! ❤
WOW.... I truly am speechless you are so deep plus brillant thanks for sharing.
This was a great talk! I think it goes in both directions - someone who has predominantly focused on hearing/playing/singing from internal melody benefits from focusing on more theory and technique. Someone who focuses primarily on theory and technique really needs to practice hearing internally first and expressing on the instrument and voice as secondary!
I think it's marvelous, developing an ability to take a melody from in your mind and not only sing it (I think many people can do that), and then translate that straight to your instrument. To then teach yourself to do much the same with complex harmonies is next level.
It's like some ultimate ear training exercise that would simultaneously take a student into so many other areas of musical development. What a thing to challenge young students!
Aimee, thanks so much for sharing this very personal tale of your journey. I can relate. I began playing piano by ear at age 4, and got "fired" by my first piano teacher because he was a strict "teach 'em to sight read music FIRST" guy and I was still learning to read ENGLISH, let alone another language. That didn't dampen my love of music one bit, and I found my way. And yes, eventually learned to sight read from a more enlightened teacher. I've been playing (and performing) the rest of my life, but mostly in blues bands. Having facility with the blues scales is No Way sufficient if you want to graduate to jazz proficiency, and I have been dragging my feet to really woodshed and put in the work of getting proficient with all the scales and modes. Hearing that a *month* of hard work got you such a long way gives me hope, and may push me over the hump of committing to that work. Wish me luck - I'm pretty sure it will take multiple months for me, but that's OK.
Great talk! As a long time jazz improviser this is also something that I've been confused by and struggled with although from a slightly different perspective. I always felt shame that I would often play things that I knew I couldn't sing but nevertheless sounded good to me. But over time I found that those ideas would become what I heard. So, it's fine to approach improvisation from either angle - playing things where you know how they will sound or experimenting with patterns and harmonies to lead your ear to hear new things you wouldn't have thought of.
Building what one can hear... That's the stuff!
Very well said! My teachers used to say “you can’t hear a wrong note” and now I say that to my students. It’s hard to play only what you hear though!
Also what you say makes me think of how much contemporary classical music is so often unlikeable for me and so many people… it’s not coming from what the composers HEAR, it’s coming from what they think!
This is powerful stuff.
deep. profound. your truth. inspiring. there are many variables in the body - senses, mind, heart, finger memory, etc. there is no one way but it's a combination. get good at any area and it helps another area. accomplished musicians learn to work their mind-body-spirit as a whole. magic happens at so many levels and the amazing things is is even the most accomplished people can still be their own frequency - just like your own fingerprints - uniquely you. very helpful going thru your story!
Amazing very articulate video
Singing your solos is a great starting point. Once you master that you can take it further.
One of the ideas I apply to soloing is to construct longer phrases over several bars. It is good to know what you can play over a particular chord, but a tune will have a string of chords over which a melody can be constructed using a scale common to the string.
Another approach I use is to not over think what I am about to play. Perhaps what Aimee says she heard other students do was to allow what was in their minds to go directly to the instrument. This demonstrates a fluency not unlike when speaking a new language, where one doesn't need to translate their thought before speaking in the new language.
I have been able to apply these approaches to my soloing, mostly on bass, which is my primary instrument, but onto other instruments as well.
And scatting the solo along with your instrument is very cool!
Super! Danke!
Makes a lot of sense. I’m not a jazz player (but I love jazz) but guitarist, rock, blues. But I also went through a part where I learned “bursts of notes” or riffs as one thing, and then also go melodic back and forth, between the two types of playing.
off course it maybe not for everybody - very few are on your level - BUT you re inspiring! Thank you!
Love this. As I get older, I'm really appreciating the importance of singing for musical growth and creative opportunities.
As a musician over the years, I've learned that the more you think, the more difficult it is
To play music from your soul. To truly improvise you have to let your soul speak and not your brain. If you try to play and you're looking at the keys you should stop right there. I have found that closing my eyes and playing is an entirely different experience than looking at the keys and playing. My piano is near a window so I can see a beautiful view out the window. Even if I play looking at the beautiful view it's still doesn't give me the same feeling as closing my eyes and playing. Closing your eyes and playing allows you to tap into your soul voice that connects to the ether of the universe which is a cosmic connection. When a musician hits a really good note and he or she is feeling good what do they do? Close their eyes. When you pray what do you do? Close your eyes. There is the connection to the ether of source consciousness, emotion, heart and soul. This is where organic improvisation truly comes from. Keith Jarrett is a master of this technique.
So true !! Inorder for soul to speak it's not all about brain & true one can think TOO MUCH .... hindering the spiritual & higher playing level !! But l do belive from a teach stand point the upcoming // developing player must have a certain amount of Visual Learning ( be it seeing where they are at on the instrument or some outline of sketched music paper ) !! As guidelines to really develop towards reaching a spirit level l believe a student needs these guidelines before reaching a closed eyes level ❤🎉. Best Wishes to All 🎉
@@ronolds258 Thanks for the comment but I'll have to disagree. I know hundreds of musicians who've never seen sheet music in their life and were raised on playing by ear. They play better than some train musicians I know. I asked this classically trained musician to come jam with me and the Fellas and they said they don't know how to jam all they know how to do is read music and I'd have to supply some charts for them. That's about as far away as you can get from your inner soul speaking. I am one of those musicians who grew up playing by ear. I can jam with anybody in any genre without any sheet music.
I have nothing against learning how to read music but if you don't break out of that box you'll stay in it as far as improvisation goes because improvisation is not reading music it's feeling music through your soul. So what you feel in your soul is what creates the music.
This is what I needed to hear. I didn’t know this is how it was! Time to practice scales.
Thanks