MUSIC: Why You Shouldnt Analyze. I always tell my musician-students why things work, and a little bit about how they work. But usually with the playing during the lesson, it does fly right past them - they refer to their recording of the lesson later on to recall what was said. By trying to explain to yourself with words, what is happening in music, why this works, and how to do it such-and-such with words....you will keep from growing the normal way of experiencing the automatic connection of the fingers with your ear, which doesnt happen with words but only by the physically playing of music patterns. Words are not music, but practicing music is music which develops your musicianship. Words and logic are for engineers, computer techs etc....musicians need a different language of sounds, groups of pattern notes, grouping notes around the chords which you will be required to play, and knowing by ear how chords move, as well as hearing the notes of the chords and the fills which go between the chords so you can anticipate chord changes. No amount of analyzing nor words can take the place of the actual music training. And so why waste time with analyzing at all? It doesnt solve anything and in fact delays the actual education training you need to learn to play real music. If you want to play music, you dont read an engineers manual, nor read the stock market news or horse-betting pages of a newspaper, nor figure out how to put a model airplane kit together.....or build a ship. Music isnt like that, it doesnt function like an engineers mind at all. Back to the theme of my post here: Its very hard to teach with words....without an instrument in my hands and an instrument in your hands, its almost impossible. I do remind on this Forum to *not* analyze but rather just do the practice. The less thinking, the better. Its like when you get into the car to drive, you dont have to think why the brake works nor how the car operates to go, you just go and its the same with music. You do your preliminary practice, getting used to this and that with practice (did you think when you learned to drive a car, outside of where things are? You dont think when you learn music either) and then you just go....! But say, if you wanted to analyze, how much time would it eat up? Let me give some examples: OK, youre playing a G7th chord and you want to play a nice jazz line that sounds good. Aha, a diminished is G7...lets see, if you just add a b9th to the G7, it then is Abo, same notes and you can ALWAYS add the b9th to the 7th chord as one of your quick options for changing the 7th chord.....OK where do you start the diminished line? I know 1 fret below Ab, oh..thats G, so you start on G for the G7 chord and play the most common dim. line, the 1 fret 2 fret line....OK I can do that. Add to that if youre still thinking in un-workable note-scale terms and you instantly add 1-2 hours of really bad thinking on top of the above scenario, plus you would then give up since old thinking didnt work before and it sure wont work with the correct but contrary ways of learning real musicianship now -- playing this xzedx note-scale over that chord, and this zxqxaxxx note-scale over that chord...you never play something over a chord, you play the chord! You see how ridiculous it is that all that later-invented non-musical non-experienced ways of thinking are destroying any semblance of real music learning. No analyzing is necessary to do all that excessive wasteful and unnecessary thinking: Just play G7, start on G and go into the dim. line you know (and have practiced). You dont need to even think I am playing Abo because.....G7b9 is the same as Abo, therefore... ....la-de-da-da-da-da etc...You see how nice just the one sentence above is Just start on G for G7....no problem. You drive the car easily. OK, take another one. You want to play something really sharp for Am. OK, lets go for the back-cycle substitute chord....lets see, back cycle for Am, that makes it E7....so let me see, I can play the E+ for Am, OK, that can start on one of the E chordal notes: E, G# or C (Root 3rd #5, and C is the #5 of E). So anyone of those notes I can start on to play the E+ and the augmented notes go every 2 frets (some math needed here but again, its all automatic, no thinking really required) hahaha, you see how much you have to think above as well as look for those notes?! Theres some math needed here but again, its all automatic, no thinking is required....just do it. Have you ever seen the chord Am maj7? The maj7 is G# of A....not that that matters but that chord is really the E+ backcycle chord of Am. Just start one note down from A (G#) and begin to play your AUGMENTED chord pattern on that note, thats all you have to do - thats Am, and when you get used to playing more, you dont even have to think Am. you hear it and just play it, using either the back-cycle, or some other way of play Am (like the minor is always the ii of the ii iii IV V of the chordal scale, or try using the m9 that is Am: b5 of E7 is Bb7/Fm Fm9 is the back-cycle of Am chords can move like this Am backcycle E7 (Fm9) then Am again in your patterns...aw heck, just play Am stacked triads and then Fm9 - just find your first note in relation to A of Am, then play Am notes again....see? no thinking! No analyzing! Just do the practice of the patterns and you instantly find them....once you connect with the chords. You dont have to name the chord E+, tho it is that, just start 1 fret lower than A (its Am youre playing right?), thats all you have to do to play Am, play any of the augmented patterns....theres only TWO places on your neck to play any augmented chord (it repeats every 2 frets!), doesnt take a scientist to figure that one out. Also when chords cycle (and they mostly do in all tunes), move a fret down to play the next cycle chord for the augmented pattern (or for the minor patterns too!). Another substitute chord: lets take the 7th again (the dominant chord is 7th, 9th, 11th and 13th, either one of these is a dominant chord). You can play the Bird Lick (I gave it that name and now others on the web are calling it that)....see your Jazz Improv For Bass book for that lick - practice it, get it so you can play it automatically, its one of the most common jazz patterns youll hear on recordings and good live jazz. And you either repeat it up 3 frets to put motion into the chord, or go to the b5 substitute by doing this...play the Bird Lick and where you end, start on the same string DOWN A FRET, thats where your b5 version of the lick starts.....duh....no thinking involved! You could say out-loud, OK I just played the Bird Lick, now what is the b5 of the chord Im playing, C7....oh yes, its Gb, so where is Gb from where Im at (looking at your board to try to determine where you are etc.)....oh yes, down 1 fret from where I ended the last phrase!.....you dont have to go through that. Just start 1 fret lower and with the SAME FINGERING, play the Bird Lick -- the elec. bass is tuned in 4ths so you can use the same fingering where-ever for the same lick by changing chords! Another one. The 2nd chord of Green Dolphin Street is Cm (goes from C to Cm).....OK you can do some thinking of ok I have to flat the 3rd, wheres the b3rd? when the simple solution is just play the same lick you just played, only play it up 3 frets....youre essentially playing Ebmaj7 which is Cm! But you dont have to think of that, just move the danged thing up 3 frets and youve got a very hip way of playing C and then Cm! See how easy jazz can be.....! The Jazz Improv Soloing DVD Course has all this in the course, easy ways to get your jazz going, just like everyone did in the 1950s....its not rocket science and when you start to function chordally, like real music does, it becomes so much fun then...your ears/finger connections start to work automatically and take you down roads you never thot youd ever see in your musical world, and youre playing, really playing. And no you dont just use the patterns - trying to fit them in here and there like pieces of a puzzle, music is not like building a ship......the patterns are used yes, but theyre more than that, theyre ear-building --- they help you hear chords, they get you into the musical learning and practicing you need to help you build your ear and fingers natural/automatic connections, and you learn other notes that belong in those chords. This leads the way to help you compose your improv. Theyre the way to begin and soon your fingers-ear connections begins to play all sorts of great patterns. You know how you listen to nuances of peoples voices, how you automatically assess a persons true feelings, and/or their motivations by the how the voices sound, and the way they express themselves? Our ears are very important to understand musical pitches of peoples voices, the pitch of things in our general life more than is talked about. Its that way with music too.....the more you listen to music, the more you practice the chordal tones (and associate those notes, patterns, lines etal. with names of chords too), the more musical you are. Also remember, the most popular traveling notes are chromatic runs, sometimes a major or minor scale yes, but for short hops, its mainly chromatic runs that go from one area to the next for the next chord to play. That is all mathematical in a way too. Your ear will assess how many frets (tones) you need to go at a certain speed to arrive at another part of the group of chordal notes youre aiming for. This is a natural thing, dont even try to practice it. Much like when youre driving a car, and you naturally assess how far, how fast youre going to get from one point to another point (without hitting someone) etc. Wink Turn loose your penchant for analyzing, dont do that...just do the practice with no thinking - dont waste your valuable time going over why things work..... thats not how jazz musicians functioned at all when they got their creative improv together. The little-used music-creative right brain starts growing and takes over for the ride of your life when you start to really play and create - youre on automatic pilot then, and have little control over it....thats when the real fun begins. PS. Another thot came to mind. All this I described above not only saves you time and energy but it also puts you instantly in the right musician-thought process, which is where you need to be to be a complete musician. It also keeps you away from the nonsense posted on the web that is not only wrong but detrimental to any learning you need to do. Dont waste time on non-working and downright crazy stuff that people seem to come up with. Only learn from the experienced who have honed their craft over decades and youll not only save time, and money, but youll actually enjoy putting it all together knowing youre in the right hands - it does happen quickly for your pleasure being a musician then. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ And....... I noticed early on when beginning to teach bass 1969, that increasingly, musician-students needed to know the why of learning which really was no problem for me to explain. So Ive simply included the why for every musician-student since tho with some it didnt matter, they wanted what I taught period. But much later on I also noticed the incessant (esp. on the internet postings) analyzing going on more and more....its as if everyone posted this and that online as if doing so made them into musicians....funny thing tho.... Real musicians NEVER ANALYZED! No-one ever did what theyre doing today with trying to figure out how and why things work in music. They just played, or if one heard a pattern, they might say play it again so they could cop it from that person - all was learned by ear on-stage. But of course everyone had chordal education back then, very different from now. One more thing different from musicians in the 1950s vs. musicians today, they didnt come from a background of rock either....you dove right into the pool of good music to play (and work). Musicians never questioned why anything they played worked at all, it just sounded *good*, thats what was important to them, tho they were quite aware that most of the chords to the Standards (and consequently jazz which was derived from Standards chord changes) were Cyclic, and an occasional phrase like back-cycle was common if someone was missing the chord changes....essentially all was done by ear. NONE of the current craze for analyzing ever existed at all, and certainly none of the nonsense scales either.
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 02:14:36 +0000
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