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#11
06-13-2006, 12:11 PM
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Re: Me and my Friends Jamming Tonight.
[ QUOTE ]
very, very cool piano starts a little slow, but I really like how it picks up and the bass line is interesting as well. are you part of an ensemble? [/ QUOTE ] Nah, we just jam around. I played classical piano when I was younger and started picking up jazz about a year ago. 
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#12
06-13-2006, 02:31 PM
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question about \"jamming\"
I've never played an instrument in my life, so apologies if this is stupid:
when you "jam," what are you thinking about? Where are the notes you play coming from? Are they various pieces of other things you've played or heard and you just go from there? It is completely new? You get what I'm asking here? On a related note...ha! note! get it?? um...when a guy goes in to record his guitar or sax solo...has it usually been written down before or is THAT a jam? I know it'll depend on the artist but I've always been curious....
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#13
06-13-2006, 02:50 PM
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Re: question about \"jamming\"
Often a solo is a collage of riffs and notes. Talented soloists will often have an idea where they are going with the solo conceptually (pertaining to speed, dynamics, interaction with the band etc.), rather than just playing the notes of the scale as fast as they can. Some artists will memorize the entire solo and others will only remember certain pieces or riffs. Charlie Parker is an example of someone who had ridiculously complicated and fast solos that were pre-written, but often seemed as if they were being improvised. A soloist going into the studio will often have a very distinct idea of what he is going to play.
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#14
06-13-2006, 03:05 PM
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Re: question about \"jamming\"
[ QUOTE ]
when you "jam," what are you thinking about? Where are the notes you play coming from? Are they various pieces of other things you've played or heard and you just go from there? It is completely new? You get what I'm asking here? [/ QUOTE ] There are twelve unique notes in western music. (Middle Eastern music uses half tones and quarter tones to get more unique notes). Different scales group these notes together in different ways. I don't want to go crazy into music theory here, but wikipedia probably has a good article. Music Theory. Really me and the bassist agreed to stick to about 8 or 9 of the 12 possible notes, and generally agreed we'd stay centered around E, B, or possibly D. That means most of the riffs start/finish/center around those notes. That is, I was primarily sticking to the key of DMajor/Bminor with my chords, and jamming on top of those with mostly the B blues and E blues scales. As far as where the melody or rhythm came from? No idea. It's got to be a mix of what keys I'm close to, how the drummer's making me "dance", what I'm hearing, and what I've heard in the past. Also a big part of it is "I've never tried this before..." Actually, one time in this jam I kinda tapped into some Chili Peppers. Right around 1:16 in the first Jam I played some riff that sounded like part of the Chili peppers song "Hey" (track 14 on Jupiter, Stadium Arcadium), and so for a little bit I kept up the rhythm of the vocal melody for that song in my head, and let my fingers fall into it. "What would you say if I changed. I'll change everything but my name" The Rhythm is "DOO doo doo DOO doo doo DOO". We're playing in three here, so it's a pretty simple rhythm to fall into, but for a little bit at least it made me think of the peppers. This is pretty uncommon for me. Usually when I'm jamming it's all stream of subconcious. I'd bet good money that this sorta thing is going on way down there in my head though. [ QUOTE ] um...when a guy goes in to record his guitar or sax solo...has it usually been written down before or is THAT a jam? I know it'll depend on the artist but I've always been curious.... [/ QUOTE ] Nearly everything you've heard on the radio that happened after Jazz wasn't ever written down by the artist. Was it prepared beforehand? Depends on the artist. Nearly all songs recorded have some premeditation involved. The best music usually has an element of freedom in it though. It really depends on the artist. Britney Spears? Completely planned beforehand, recorded 30 times, and the best of each take spliced together. Phish? Probably single takes where mistakes become part of the music. One of my favorite musicans, John Frusciante, wrote this describing how he recorded on of his albums: [ QUOTE ] Josh and I knew the songs well and always did the basic tracks (guitar and drums) in one or two takes. The vocals were all done in the space of a few hours. We felt that recorded performances in the 50's and 60's had an exciting energy to them because in many cases one or two takes were the only chances the artist got. For me, recording quickly is when music comes alive. When one doesn't force a preconceived notion on the music, but lets the music go where it pleases. And when mistakes come along, you welcome them and let them mold your image of the song. This record was a celebration of flaws, and in the course of approaching things this way I was reminded of the Laurie Anderson story about the family who had a yearly ritual which at one point started getting invaded by tigers, who would make a mess of it. Then after a few years of this they decided to make the tigers a party of the ritual and then the tigers never came back. In the same way once I welcomed my flaws into my recordings, I ended up unable to find anything undesirable in the finished piece. [/ QUOTE ]
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#15
06-13-2006, 03:14 PM
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Re: question about \"jamming\"
[ QUOTE ]
Charlie Parker is an example of someone who had ridiculously complicated and fast solos that were pre-written, but often seemed as if they were being improvised. [/ QUOTE ] Wrong. Bird improvised on the fly.
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#19
06-13-2006, 04:05 PM
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Re: question about \"jamming\"
[ QUOTE ]
listening to stuff like this makes me wish i hadnt quit playing the piano/alto sax [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img] [/ QUOTE ] Pick it back up. Play it hard. You'll be good in a year.
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#20
06-13-2006, 04:50 PM
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Re: question about \"jamming\"
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Charlie Parker is an example of someone who had ridiculously complicated and fast solos that were pre-written, but often seemed as if they were being improvised. [/ QUOTE ] Wrong. Bird improvised on the fly. [/ QUOTE ] He had solos that were pre-written as well as solos that weren't pre-written (as did pretty much every jazz musician of the era). How do I know this? Because he plays the same solos in various live versions of studio recorded songs.
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Linear Mode
