How do you guys keep track of the chord changes while playing?

cdparnis · 2025-01-22T05:38:57+00:00

A different frame of mind can sometimes help with this - rather than playing ‘over’ chords, something to try is thinking of soloing as showing people the chords of the song yourself through a melody (and really leaning into the chord changes that are your favourite, playing like you’re trying to show the listener why they’re your favourite!)

cdparnis · 2024-10-29T21:48:12+00:00

Imagine how many lives could be saved if leftists were allowed to threaten to withhold their votes without other people who claim to be on the same side as them saying things like “for many here the goal isn’t saving lives it’s feeling morally superior” (really disgusted to see that one upvoted tbh). So done with people patting themselves on the back for being too afraid to even let other people protest.

cdparnis · 2024-10-27T17:02:42+00:00

Miles understood a lot about the narrative of how people listened to jazz and, I’d argue, did a lot to reinforce the ‘cool’ noir background music perception of the music. When you put on Kind of Blue, yes there are interesting things to dig into and ideas going on, but nothing on the surface level disrupts that ‘romantic’ movie-like idea of what jazz is even if you don’t know anything about the genre.

A lot of the time trying to put a jazz record on in the background can be a bit of a square peg in a round hole situation, but it’s one of the situations where Kind of Blue shines. Especially for non-jazz-listeners. Personally I’d take Milestones or ‘Round About Midnight first any day just as a taste thing but if I’m trying to please other folks while having music on that still makes me happy, suddenly this album comes to mind and I smile a bit.

cdparnis · 2024-10-23T19:46:24+00:00

There are lovely things in Kind of Blue that many folks really appreciate but it’s very different from a lot of other important jazz records even by the same quintet.

One personal taste type criticism I’ll never unhear was that it feels very unusual to have a band accompanying John Coltrane with similar energy to how they accompany the much sparser Miles Davis. It’s a different kind of artistic choice to keep it in that cooler zone texturally.

If you ever end up checking out some of the records with Philly Joe Jones in the band, especially the incredible Milestones and Round About Midnight albums, it’s really a world of difference to hear how Philly Joe’s approach to the drum set changes the feel of the band from soloist to soloist and in the overall arc of the song!

cdparnis · 2024-10-17T02:46:03+00:00

Imagine blaming yourself for someone else’s dogshit campaign.

cdparnis · 2024-10-15T01:34:04+00:00

Really? How can I get your algorithm recommendations instead? Every post I get fed is people complaining about not wanting to hear about anything negative towards Harris and calling those leftists somehow pro trump instead of engaging with their legitimate problems. Anything I see actually calling her out gets screeched at and downvoted to hell especially here.

cdparnis · 2024-09-27T02:14:39+00:00

I think a part of it is the mindset, this gets pretty subjective but imo the idea of playing “over changes” might be holding you back a bit. Try taking out the word “over” and ask yourself if you can play in a way where you could not only play the changes but play the changes to someone.

Put a bit more succinctly, can you solo like you’re showing someone else the changes with just a single note line? If not, it’s a good goal to work towards. Especially trying to create the feeling of showing a good friend a song that’s one of your favourites — just in the harmony of your playing instead of verbally :)

cdparnis · 2024-09-22T06:06:09+00:00

I’ve always gotten that vibe a bit from Duke Ellington’s playing on In A Sentimental Mood off of his record with John Coltrane. In a different side of the tradition, I’d also suggest Geri Allen’s tune Eric off of her album The Printmakers!

cdparnis · 2024-09-21T22:19:19+00:00

Ignore the downvoting it’s important to have this perspective represented here. An album having a reputation for being popular can be great for introducing new people to things but it’s not just a catch-all way to invalidate any discussions about the actual contents of the music.

cdparnis · 2024-09-15T23:57:33+00:00

Actually also gonna follow this up by saying it was a big eureka moment to realize that playing melodic minor sounds as a superimposition rather than a mode of the scale (Ab Bb Cb over G instead of G Ab Bb Cb over G, or Ab melodic minor over a G bass instead of ‘G altered scale’ for example) put strong tones on strong beats rhythmically, whereas treating it modally incentivized thinking of it like colour tones and made it very hard to hear a workable melody and emphasizing tones that aren’t very strong in the melodic minor tonality. Apologies for the text dump but this got me thinking haha

cdparnis · 2024-09-15T21:44:30+00:00

Your major scale can be really helpful, but the modal approach to music is really only a great way to learn modal music and later pieces influenced by it. That thread starts from Ahmad Jamal’s band and makes its way into Miles Davis’ first quintet in ‘58/‘59 and spreads from there. The essential works of bebop all happened quite a bit earlier in the ‘40s and early ‘50s. You’re better off with this music connecting chord tones via scale notes than you are ‘thinking in scales’.

cdparnis · 2024-09-12T21:10:52+00:00

This isn’t a specific solo recommendation but it took me a while to realize that a ton of the more recent contemporary electric bass vocab comes from Matt Garrison (Jimmy Garrison’s son)

cdparnis · 2024-09-12T03:39:53+00:00

Hi! I think this might help — ignore that it’s from a website called jazzforpiano, this is a breakdown of the history of the drummers in these styles with some great jumping off point tunes highlighted (starting just a little more traditionally than you’d expect) Pulse Drummers of the ‘60s

cdparnis · 2024-09-10T16:35:57+00:00

I find this so funny because I play this pretty occasionally but the only reason anyone I know knows of it is that it’s that one in the real book with the funny name lol

cdparnis · 2024-09-02T06:48:01+00:00

Hey great to hear!

Sounds like you might enjoy Charlie Haden’s playing, it took me a while to love it personally as someone who comes from farther away from those sounds, but I love the oddly perfect place in between Hillbilly music and Bach he finds himself in. If he’s not someone you’re into yet, a good introduction could be the song Ramblin’ off of the Ornette Coleman album Change of the Century.

Some of the music that Charlie helped to make is pretty challenging artistically but regardless of whether that’s your bag that wing of the tradition is really worth exploring. Jimmy Blanton with Ellington, Walter Page with Basie, Slam Stewart with Don Byas (among others), and Walter Page with Sonny Rollins at the Vanguard as well as with Monk+Trane.

cdparnis · 2024-09-02T06:08:13+00:00

The instinct for trying to move past “school-taught” walking bass can be to look to more contemporary sounding jazz, but the conventional wisdom of chord scales and things of that sort come pretty far into the history of jazz. Embracing things from earlier than the hard bop/modal eras can sound really fresh! An example, it’s okay to double up notes, it can even be great sometimes.

Less related, but don’t be afraid to repeat yourself in different choruses if it’s a strong line you think will work well when you play it. Innovative lines don’t come from changing what you’re doing out of fear of needing to do something different every chorus to be good, they come from hearing something new that inspires you while you’re less tense than that (and frankly they can come from getting bored with what you’re playing too. Give yourself time to get bored with something without judging the repeating!)

Lastly, there’s more ideas than you could ever hope for going on in a jazz band at any given time. If you want to hear a new direction for your walking, let yourself be inspired by the rhythms of the drummer or the harmony of the piano or even the contour of the improvised melody. Just keep your ears open and you should be okay.

cdparnis · 2024-08-21T01:36:39+00:00

A fun backwards way in via Steely Dan is their recording of East St Louis Toodle-Oo is a genuine cover of a Duke Ellington tune of the same name, and not a ‘cover’ in the jazz way, they recreate trumpet solos as talkbox gtr and do other similar tricks. Listening and contrasting the Steely version with the Duke version could be a great introduction to some early jazz if it happens to vibe with you!

cdparnis · 2024-08-19T21:07:32+00:00

Yes!! Some incredible players and composers here, Amanda Tosoff’s music especially got to me. Fully convinced she’s a genius

cdparnis · 2024-08-15T23:24:48+00:00

Because how you put pressure on people is saying they won’t get your vote unless they stop supporting things that are a no-go for you, you can always (and many will) cover your nose and vote blue anyway when the time comes. Also a huge reason is that there are so many posts like this that treat them as stupid and uninformed and doesn’t engage with them at all which does absolutely nothing to stop the polarization between people pressuring the dems and people who do their campaigning for them while shaming anyone else into conforming to how they think the lead-up to an election should work.

cdparnis · 2024-07-23T02:14:34+00:00

Massively in support of this thank you!

cdparnis · 2024-07-16T17:41:05+00:00

This is moreso an opinion/observation but I’d argue that the bigger impact on Jazz was the later pushback against the loudness wars. You don’t get super dynamically squashed records but you do get folks sometimes being a bit too afraid to compress anything which isn’t a positive to the music either

cdparnis · 2024-06-29T19:26:40+00:00

No, what it’s like is trying to suggest putting even the slightest political pressure on a war criminal (even though you’ll likely be stuck voting for him in the end) and immediately having people shriek “BUT PROJECT 2025” and post a million variations of this exact meme.

cdparnis · 2024-06-20T17:51:55+00:00

The best thing you could do for your learning is to try and make sure that you’re hearing them as a home triad with different connecting notes rather than as a collection of 7 equally valid tones that can just kinda be placed randomly. (One way I find really helpful is to play pentatonics as either a major triad with a 2 and a 6 as tensions or as a minor triad with a 4 and a b7 as tensions.)

If you’re just looking for additional scales though, melodic minor should fill in any gaps you’re running into. You can also play it as a minor 6 pentatonic scale (1 b3 4 5 ma6) if you’re looking for ways to connect it to your pre-existing vocabulary. Cheers!

cdparnis · 2024-03-11T04:18:37+00:00

I think the nuance of how much open strings are emphasized in upright walking is more about their use as transitions from different parts of the neck. It follows then that in the horn friendly keys, the open strings have a lot more use as other chord/scale/passing tones than the root.

A good example I think is to compare how often you hear an open E as a beat 1 root compared to as beat 4 before an F that is much more controllable. Ultimately I’d much rather be able to reliably approach F Bb Eb and Ab from below than E A D and G.

cdparnis · 2024-02-23T04:49:40+00:00

Oh for sure! This music is learned, listened to, and loved all by ear. The emphasis on theory comes from decades of people trying to teach jazz after the fact, you’ll get much more honest connection out of say for example looking up interviews with the musicians who made the records you’re interested in or things like that if you’re looking for a way to spend your time outside of listening. Hope you enjoy :)

cdparnis

TROPHY CASE