Howto improvise over ain't misbehavin?

Jon

Hi Guys,

I'm going to chime in in defence of theory here for a second (sorry in advance). The ear and theory are, when properly developed, exactly the same thing. People don't seem to get this. When we say someone has good ears, it doesn't mean that they just hear all the good notes by chance - then they'd just be ignorant, and probably wouldn't sound too good. Someone who has good ears hears things in terms of theory. Whether or not they know the name for an A minor chord is not the judge of whether they know any theory or not. The theory is just knowing, when they hear that sound, what pattern, or patterns of possible notes it represents, and understanding the relationships between them, and some ways in which they can be manipulated. Whether or not you can read or name a note is not theory in the deeper sense.

Much is made of the fact that famous musicians can't read music - usually by people trying to find an excuse not to read it themselves (and admittedly, in certain styles, like this one, it's not that important). But you can bet your life Django knew about theory. He may not have used linguistic names for the things he knew (or understood notes on paper) but that he knew them systematically and played them consistently is obvious in his solos and compositions. Everything is easily explicable - nothing is just weird or comes out of nowhere. Same with any of the major players. People say this all the time about Wes too, and it's rubbish. He knew exactly what he was doing. No magic, just knowledge, listening, and practise. Music is a language, and these guys learned it, and the grammar and vocabulary of the language is theory.

Don't write theory off - even at it's driest it's a useful thing to know something about - and at it's heart, it is aural training. One really easy way to go wrong in music is to decide that any one part of it is less worthwhile than any other. A really complete musician knows it all.

Two more things - if you don't have naturally great ears (like most of us), any recognised method for making them better will involve a good deal of pattern recognition, chord naming, and interval naming...theory. Also, learning to sight read well - or better yet, sight sing - is one of the best ways to improve your ears. I've almost never met a working pianist with bad ears, whereas I've met hundreds of good guitarists who are tone deaf...pianists read from the cradle...guitarists most often not at all.

Those of us who missed out on the early childhood drilling in of music that people in strong traditional cultures get need to find another way - a way that works for adults, because our brains are not as open to it as they would have been at 3 - and not accept that they are just better than us. We just have to keep working hard at it.

My advice then for learning how to play over Ain't Misbehavin', is to learn all the arpeggios, chords, licks and intervals, but learn to sing them too. No shortcuts, no magic, learn to do everything. No one thing in music is more important than any other. Learn it all. Like Gonzalo says in his lesson at Denis' site, (I'm paraphrasing) "You always keep moving toward a goal that you can never reach - so basically, you'll never be happy again".

Sorry for the rant, but I'm one person who found Benjamin Givan's book on Django a real page turner

Jon

Jon

One more thing - the analogy with language learning is interesting. It's true that we all learned our native languages naturally and without too much care for grammar etc. But as adults learning a second language (which is a closer analogy to what we're all doing now), while it helps and is very important just to jump in and copy etc, most people who don't get a thorough grounding in grammar theory wind up speaking the language pretty awkwardly. I say this as a poor to intermediate German speaker. Kids brains and adult brains work very differently.

Jon

Dario Napoli

Great points Jon, will look for Givan's book

Mark DS

About Wes playing at 19 - there's a really great NPR documentary (starts here if you want to give it a listen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfLtx8lcpbc), and he actually started at I think 12 or 13 on a tenor guitar learning Charlie Christian, and moved to a 6-string when he was 18 or 19, which is when he started playing professionally. It's a really interesting documentary, if you have the time.

marcelodamon

Good points Jon! You are indeed correct about the differences in the brains of children and adults. Before I delved into biochemistry, and medical school, I used to have quite a different opinion about learning music. As mentioned, I went to college for music and learning the theory, as well as how to read music (I didn't read a note of it before college as I was self taught) made me a better all around musician. Reading charts, knowing scales, arpeggios, etc was helpful as a medium of describing what was played.

Unfortunately, there was only 1 class that addressed the art of improvisation. My teacher, Chuck Mahronic, a brilliant teacher and pianist (who played with Chet Baker when he was younger), really taught us that theory was only good as a means of describing musical phrases in an academic way. He, like Joe Pass who I quoted earlier, said that you should never think about theory in such an academic way while improvising, rather just let the ideas flow from you from your musical subconsciousness. If you play melodically and creatively then naturally the concepts that comprise theory will come out in your playing; naturally because such things are woven into the fabric of our musical heritage, and are wholly unavoidable (unless your name is Arnold Shoenberg and invent a whole knew way of composing based on a strict academic methodology).

Anyway, about the brains of children and adults, the only difference to me, from having studied the sciences, is that when we are children we tend to view things holisitically and not analyze the inner workings of things. This is why language is learned easier in our youth; as we don't evaluate the elements that comprise the language (grammar and vocabulary). Children learn by emulation, and the parallels here to learning to improvise should be very obvious.

I am American, but have learned to speak French, Portuguese, and Spanish, not by studying the grammar, but by simply learning things holistically. Phrases, situational dialogues, slangs, etc I picked up from songs, movies, and online news in those respective languages. As far as music and languages are concerned, I try to have "the mind of a child" when I am learning new things. In the beginning I had to learn not to analyze what I was transcribing or hearing, but rather allow it to permeate my conscious and subconscious mind as the beautiful musical phrase that it was. Rather than say: This was a great such and such arpeggio, I learned where this "sound" was on the guitar and how to play it in various permutations.

So that is my further 2 cents!! Have the mind of a child when you learn!! I seem to recall that childhood was a brilliant time to be alive!!!

Lango-Django

Great topic, and some great posts above... I'm going to chime in with some stuff that's worked for me.

First of all a disclaimer--- if you consider Django as a "10" and all these great hot GJ players of today as "9's", well, on that scale I'm probably a "4".... so be warned! But here's stuff that's helped me get from "3" to "4"....

-Practice soloing both with and without accompaniment. I know that the latter flies in the face of advice from Gonzalo in one of his books, but playing without accompaniment helped me hear and finger some of the changes better.

And, hey---- don't try to tell me that Django only practised with accompaniment!

-But I totally agree with Gonzalo's advice about chords--- if there are too many happening for you to be able to think, then just eliminate some of them, don't try to play each and every single one of them.

This tune, like many others that have become standards, repeatedly uses some really basic chord cliche changes that you've probably worked over a million times from other tunes, frinstance:

Bar 1, bar 9, bar 25: Eb6 / Edim ---- just forget the dim chord and play some Eb major stuff... make it your business to know where to find those chord tones (Eb, G, Bb, C) on your neck in lots of different locations... of course, sticking just to those four notes would be pretty boring, so feel free to spice it up with some passing notes... once you get more proficient at this, you'll find the you'll instinctively be able to find and throw in that little "E" note that is the only difference between an Eb triad and an Edim.

(For the first few bars, I try to emulate Django who often began his solos with some super-simple phrase, maybe even just using one or two notes from the chord he was playing over... Have you ever watched a good strip tease artist? She doesn't start out just ripping off her clothes in a big hurry! She knows she's got what you want to see, but builds your desire by revealing it slowly at first! So over bar one, try just using a chord tone or two--- if you can use a string bend in the process to add tension, so much the better!)

Bar 2, bar 10, bar 26: Fm7 / Bb7----- like every jazz player of every instrument, you have to make it your business to woodshed lots and lots and lots of iim7- V7 ideas in every possible inversion--- and of course, steal ideas from everyone else, especially Django!

Bar 3, bar 11, bar 27: Eb / Eb7 --- another common change you can to expect to find in almost any garden variety jazz/pop/folk song--- you probably have a stockpile of such ideas already, but if you don't, get busy!

Bar 4, bar 12, bar 28: Ab / Abm--- ditto the above

Now, for bars 7 and 8, I like to add a bit of variety and play over these chords:

G7 / C7 F7 / Bb7

I find I can get away with using these arps even if the rhythm section doesn't play the same chords along with me--- though of course it's even nicer when they do!

This chord pattern, known in English as the "cycle of fifths" and in French as the "harmonic march" is used frequently in 20's to 50's pop/jazz tunes, so once again, you have to expect it and have some cool stuff in your back pocket that works over it.

One of my favourite little licks over these chords uses Django's D-D-U stroke, usually using an open string whenever it's an upstroke. This three note pattern just naturally creates syncopation as it goes along since three doesn't go evenly into four!

You can fool around with the RH picking pattern that creates the "three" in a lot of different ways, try U-D-D or whatever, (I even met one cat who uses U-U-D--- WTF?) but here is a super-simple LH fingering that will work through those changes:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----10--------------9--------------8-------------7-------------------------
-----9--------------8--------------7-------------6-------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

...and of course, once mastered, this same idea can very easily be transposed to other string pairs and other keys

Well, me and my big mouth! That's probably enough for now, except just one more thing about this tune.

The bridge uses that beautiful change from Cm to Ab7 that I really love... I think Fats Waller may have lifted it from Gershwin's "Embraceable You"---? Who knows?

Anyway, I won't go through all the other chords in the bridge, but I've found something that's fun and works real well for me is to quote the main melody from "The Hall of the Mountain King", which I like to play in octaves.

Improvising using octaves is another skill that's great to have in your back pocket! Django used it to add extra volume and excitement ("Honeysuckle Rose" is one great example) and once again, it's something to try practising both with and without accompaniment... you'll find you can actually get away with quite a lot using octaves because usually mistakes sound more "hip" than "wrong"... but of course, it's even better if you know exactly where those chord tones are at all times! Which I wish I did, but sometimes I don't!

Well, I hope you can have some fun with some of these ideas.... they ain't genius level, I admit, but what the hell, ya gotta have some fun, too... this GJ shit is hard enough, you know?

Will Wilson
Niagara-On-The-Lake, ON

murillo

Wow, the replies I got from this post exceeded my wildest fantasies. Thanks to everybody, and a special thanks to Lango-Django, you seemed to know exactly what I was looking for.

Best regards

Steveareno

Love this song, Fats Waller was a pretty bluesy guy so after playing the head, throwing in blues licks over the chord changes works for me....same with Honeysuckle Rose.
Swang on,