SOTW Article: The importance of Learning Tunes and Standards

[Harri Rautiainen]

See Skip Spratt's brand new article:

http://www.saxontheweb.net/Spratt/LearningTunes.html

regards,

[Tim Price]

GREAT!!!!!
This is one of my major,major issues today.
Skip laid it out plain n' simple and very focused.
Ideas come from melodys...to be a great improv. player, melodys must be in yuor ears/mind etc.
This was a great one- COOL JOB SKIP.

P/S- I still am loving that transcription you did on my bass clarinet
solo 8)

[jazziz1]

I enjoyed this article, thanks for posting.

I've been playing professionally for the last 6 years, and I'm ashamed to admit I use the fake book more than I'd like. I first attributed it to not having time to "really" learn tunes while working a full time job (too tired to practice hard when I got home), but when my time freed up a bit, I realized that it was just a choice I had made...practice and learn the darn things or do something else. Too often I chose something else. Now that I have made the choice to work from home, I have quite a bit more time. This summer I plan to concentrate on learning more tunes, and living up to the role of a "professional" gigging musician.

[pepper]

thats a good artice, but short of telling you to buy the Abersold book doesnt really say a great deal about the process of memorising songs, which is the problem i have.

[rrex54]

pepper, I'm a relative new comer to sax -- and only returning to music after many years. When I was a kid, I learned to read music -- and played from music exclusively, memorizing only the simple odd song. However, in picking up the sax and learning it on my own, it's the notes and lyrics that roll around in my head that lead me to work out the tunes. I still do not have a well-trained ear, but will get there. The more you work on songs, the easier it should become.

Like Dexter Gordon, if I know the lyrics, I can generally play the tune -- and it helps with phrasing and knowing the sort of feeling I want to put into the song. For me the lyrics of popular/standard songs and our relationship to them influence our interpretation as well. The great Benny Carter recorded a very upbeat verson of "Over the Rainbow." However, for me the lyrics express a quintessential longing that cry out for a slow, soulful interpretation. The lyrics are with me as I play, tied to the notes I play (as I sing in my head) -- and the way I play them. Without the words I might not have "memorized" the song at all -- and certainly would not play it the way I do.

I suspect there are many individual paths here, but it is a sort of "whatever works for you" approach -- learning the lyrics, singing it in your head as you play, transposing to key after key when you have mastered one version, etc. In the end we need to do something that I have not done as yet -- ear training -- so that we can hear the notes others play -- and get the notes inside our head!

Bottomline, Skip's article offers some good advice even for those of us who do not aspire to performance. Thanks to him for writing it and to Harri for maintaining SOTW!

[werkinsnake]

Learning standard tunes is great advice. I've always had fun incorporating well known tunes into improv solos. I think it is a great way to connect with the audience and to get them on your side. It's funny how people don't remember your great licks and runs, and your great growls and altissimo, but they always remember how you played the theme from the Simpsons in C-jam Blues. Go figure :shock:

[pepper]

good post rrex. i'll try and use that, as it's something i'd not really considered too much.

[alsdiego]

This is an interesting thread... one of the things I found after returning from a 40 year layoff from music was that I had learned the eye-hand coordination thing (like sight reading), but I was woefully inept at ear-hand coordination. If I had it to do over again, I would have started ear training at age 12 :( Learning tunes and associated changes is really helping me in this regard. Also, learning tunes and changes gets easier once you've done it for a while ... trust me on this one!! We can all remember the melody to "Girl From Ipanema"... as the ear-hand connection improves, that melody can flow from your brain to your hands, so to speak, much as if you were singing it. To put it another way, WE WAS TAUGHT WRONG!! This was really brought home to me at the JA jazz camp this past summer. I got talking to a young trumpet player who sounded like Miles Davis when playing the blues. Turns out this guy had been playing trumpet for, get this, six months... could barely read music, was mystified in the music theory class, but could he ever blow a solo!! When I asked him about it he said he had listened to and loved Miles almost from the time he was a baby, and learned by simply playing along with some slow miles recordings. Fascinating stuff.


Al

[wainsworth]

Do any of you have a list, long or short, of jazz standards that are easy to learn to play by ear and play in different keys ? , or can point me to a thread that has such a list. I was going to take the nursery rhyme route but standards would be my best choice. "Girl from Ipanema" seems a natural.

[Franksparks]

Been playing that this week, not as easy as it sounds
mind you fairly new to this, got the sheet if you want it
could send PDF or what ever

[Oldgold]

Here's one great source - "Songs of the Forties" for alto sax.
Hal Leonard, publisher.
I can't tell you how happy I am that we are beginning to appreciate the great standards. Wonderful. Try "Misty" and "The Shadow of Your Smile" and
"Georgia on My Mind". Gorgeous gorgeous music. Play it in a sax and the angels sing.
Now a plea to Hal Leonard, Let's have the twenties and thirties. I'll help you sell 'em.
Oldgold