{"id":115034467,"date":"2023-04-15T20:12:19","date_gmt":"2023-04-15T20:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/learning-and-playing-stuff\/"},"modified":"2023-04-15T20:12:19","modified_gmt":"2023-04-15T20:12:19","slug":"learning-and-playing-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/learning-and-playing-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning and playing stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Not necessarily the Miles Davis song, although, perhaps, the Miles Davis song, which is a killer Miles Davis song.<\/h2><p>We\u2019ve talked a bit so far about tools and some patterns, but not about what we\u2019re trying to do when we say we want to learn to play jazz guitar, which, big surprise, is a fraught topic with a lot of heat and not always a lot of light. But, to go back to the subtitle, that is a pretty killer Miles Davis song, from the <a href=\"https:\/\/music.apple.com\/us\/album\/miles-in-the-sky\/158514326\">same album<\/a> that, one song later, had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.georgebenson.com\">Big Bad Benson<\/a> on the guitar.<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-9-16 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Miles in the Sky\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/album\/2lmGOFtczCsoZCzmWORyWt?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure><p>So, light, heat and jazz. The big problem here is that people want to fight about what is and is not jazz.  Is it a repertoire, is it a tradition, is it a method, is it a term that means, \u201cimprovised music\u201d ?  It\u2019s easy to get hung up, here, and it\u2019s also not a good idea.  This kind of hangup is what software developers call \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/thedecisionlab.com\/biases\/bikeshedding\">bikeshedding<\/a>\u201d, in that it\u2019s a trivial problem, without much of an obvious solution and it\u2019s a great way to take up time, seeming productive, smart and insightful, while accomplishing nothing. <\/p><hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/><p>So, how do we decide what to learn, how to learn it, and what to play? Let\u2019s start by putting some good limits on things to make decisions possible.<\/p><ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><p>Whatever \u201cjazz\u201d is, \u201cjazz guitar\u201d is playing jazz with and on a guitar.<\/p><\/li><li><p>We treat jazz as we would any other style of music, meaning that it has, but is not exhausted by,<\/p><ul><li><p>repertoire\/canon<\/p><\/li><li><p>technique<\/p><\/li><li><p>style<\/p><\/li><li><p>tradition<\/p><\/li><li><p> learning methods<\/p><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><p>We have a pretty good idea of what jazz is by looking at the consensus over time<\/p><ul><li><p>Players <\/p><ul><li><p>Musicians<\/p><\/li><li><p>Groups<\/p><\/li><li><p>Orchestras<\/p><\/li><li><p>Composers<\/p><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li><p>Recordings<\/p><ul><li><p>Songs<\/p><\/li><li><p>Albums<\/p><\/li><li><p>Live performances<\/p><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><p>The latter point is critical.  We don\u2019t have to worry about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.educative.io\/answers\/corner-case-vs-edge-case\">edge and corner cases<\/a>, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patmetheny.com\">Pat Metheny<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shakti50.com\">Shakti<\/a>. We can just enjoy what everyone already agrees on is jazz. And it turns out that there\u2019s a lot of documentation on these consensus entities. <\/p><p>So, what are we going to learn and practice? We\u2019re going to learn jazz <strong>by learning the songs that make up jazz.<\/strong><\/p><p>In learning to play these songs, we\u2019ll be working to learn the songs as songs, straight ahead, but, also building a sense of vocabulary that comes from them.  Most of these songs are in a canon that we call \u201cstandards\u201d, meaning that it is part of the standard repertoire that we are expected to know.  And, by know, we mean that we should be able to sit in with a band playing them or play them, using a reference, like a<a href=\"https:\/\/www.musicnotes.com\/blog\/learn-read-lead-sheets-theory-behind-musics-versatile-pages\/\"> lead sheet<\/a>. <\/p><p>This set of standards can be described as having many sub-sets, and you\u2019ll find that subsets can be defined in lots of ways. There will be many songs that are based on similar chord progressions, for example, because jazz is not unlike any other music this way.  There\u2019s an entire grouping of songs that are based entirely on the changes for <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/I_Got_Rhythm\">\u201cI Got Rhythm\u201d, by George and Ira Gershwin.<\/a>  <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-9-16 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: I Got Rhythm\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/24i0s7ptnw7WrVcE54WftJ?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure><p><a class=\"footnote-anchor\" data-component-name=\"FootnoteAnchorToDOM\" id=\"footnote-anchor-1\" href=\"#footnote-1\" target=\"_self\">1<\/a>These changes are so common that they\u2019re just referred to as \u201crhythm changes\u201d. Here\u2019s a sampling of what Spotify has on it.<\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-9-16 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Rhythm Changes: All Songs\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"352\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/playlist\/6z6J7ujeVogm51Rqbtr6CS?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure><p>Then you\u2019ll find songs that follow a II-V-I progression (see footnote), which I always think of as the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Autumn_Leaves_(1945_song)\">Autumn Leaves<\/a>\u201d progression.  <\/p><figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-9-16 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: Autumn Leaves\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/0X5DcGkbxCXSadgj01ZXd7?utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure><p>There are many, many more subsets, but these are two very common ones. <\/p><p>So, picking songs. How to pick, what are the criteria? Here are some things to consider.<\/p><ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><p>We want the song to be relatively easy.<\/p><\/li><li><p>We want the song to teach us a lot about jazz by teaching us something that many songs will have in common.<\/p><\/li><li><p>We want the songs to be fun to play.<\/p><\/li><li><p>We want the songs to easy configurable and able to be played in many different ways.<\/p><\/li><\/ol><p>I recommend not trying to learn more than a few songs at a time. Focusing on just one is hard for me, but it is a good idea. Looking at a few at a time, or in close sequence, may help.<\/p><p>Here are some that I think will work well.<\/p><ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Satin_Doll\">Satin Doll<\/a> (Ellington\/Strayhorn)<\/p><\/li><li><p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sweet_Georgia_Brownhttps:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sweet_Georgia_Brown\">Sweet Georgia Brown<\/a> (Bernie\/Pinkard)<\/p><\/li><li><p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Autumn_Leaves_(1945_song)\">Autumn Leaves<\/a> (Kosma)<\/p><\/li><\/ol><p>Every one of these songs has been played by many, many different people in many, many ways and can show us lots of great things. They\u2019re also songs that I happen to like quite a bit, and there are lots of arrangements available. Moving forward, practice sessions will be about these songs.<\/p><div class=\"footnote\" data-component-name=\"FootnoteToDOM\"><a id=\"footnote-1\" href=\"#footnote-anchor-1\" class=\"footnote-number\" contenteditable=\"false\" target=\"_self\">1<\/a><div class=\"footnote-content\"><p>You\u2019ll notice that I\u2019m using all uppercase for the Roman numerals. This is because I think it\u2019s a bad idea to disagree with <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3AkBqSh\">Jerry Coker<\/a>.<\/p><p\/><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not necessarily the Miles Davis song, although, perhaps, the Miles Davis song, which is a killer Miles Davis song.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115034467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115034467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115034467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115034467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115034467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115034467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115034467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}