Friday, January 21, 2011

Aebersolds: Why They Are Still Great Teaching Tools

The best way to really learn jazz improvisation is to get a gig with a great jazz group that goes on the road or plays every night in a club. Ha! I am well aware that this is not 1955, so those sort of opportunities are rare at best. There is touring still, but it has been getting dry as the decades progress. Even within my limited career, I remember tours in the late 90's that went between 9 and 11 weeks. That's a lot of playing! Nowadays, a weekend stint is a blessing, and 10 days seems like a really long tour. (Talk to older cats about going on the road for months and years at a time! I think the only people that do that currently are pop stars and maybe Chris Botti.)

So there isn't a lot of touring, and for some students, there are few or maybe no local gigs to give them a chance for bandstand experience. And I admit, while the bandstand is a great place to learn, you also need to have a concept together before you get on the bandstand. So how can a young player work out their ideas without a steady gig or even a decent rhythm section at their disposal?

Jamey Aebersold
I am constantly encouraging my students to practice with the Jamey Aebersold recordings. (And trust me, I am not a paid spokesman!) For those of you not familiar, Jamey Aebersold is a saxophonist, pianist, and highly successful jazz educator. From Indiana originally, and now a professor at the University of Louisville, Aebersold introduced his Play-A-Long recordings in the late 60's. The Aebersolds, as they are affectionately known, are essentially Music Minus One recordings, which is much like the Karaoke concept: you hear the backing track and then you provide the melody.

However, the Aebersolds are specifically designed for jazz and to help you learn how to improvise. The first few in the series of 126 recordings are focused on the basics: chords and scales, ii V I progressions, and blues forms. Eventually there are recordings that feature the repertoire of one jazz great, such as Charlie Parker, or Miles Davis, or Cannonball Adderly. There are accompanying books of course, and the charts of each song are clearly written, and also transposed for Bb, Eb, and Bass Clef instruments. Furthermore, the solo forms are clearly delineated, and for each chord, there is an appropriate scale written. It's essentially handing you the keys to the gate of jazz improvisation on a silver platter!

The great Ben Riley
The best thing to me about the Aebersolds, beside the clarity of the presentation, is that there are some really legendary cats in the rhythm sections of these recordings. The idea that you can play along with Kenny Barron, Ron Carter, and Ben Riley while sitting in your practice room is fairly amazing, Now, are you actually playing with them? Are they actually playing with you? No. However, it might be the closest that I'll ever get to playing with those cats. ( Barron and Carter were colleagues of mine when I taught at Juilliard, and I STILL never got to play with them!)

I believe that having the experience of playing in time with a recorded rhythm section is a form of training. One-it trains you to play in time in a more stimulating way then if you only played with a metronome. Two- it reinforces the form of these tunes. Three- it trains you to play and listen simultaneously. All of these things are essential for playing real jazz, and these things-time,form,and listening, are so often missing from young jazz players.

Sheets of Sound.....
I still recommend the old fashioned ways of transcribing solos and playing along with your favorite recordings. However, this can be very time consuming, and I know some players who had transcribed many solos but couldn't really "put it in their own words", so to speak. It makes sense that you would use a combination of techniques to learn good jazz playing. I personally did a lot of listening before I had ever heard of the Aebersolds. And I did try to play along with recordings, however laughable that must have sounded at the time. ( I think I was in 8th or 9th grade trying to play my trumpet along with John Coltrane on "Summertime" from My Favorite Things. Trane was playing "sheets of sound". I was playing "sheets of toilet tissue.")

Randy Brecker
I hope some of my students will read this and maybe, um, take the hint? I still play trumpet along with Aebersolds in my office when I have time between students. And recently, I asked Randy Brecker how he maintained his technical accuracy on trumpet. Brecker told me he plays along with Aebersolds every day. I contend that it's a fun way to practice: not the only thing to practice, but combined with listening and other things, it's a great help in developing a concept. Hopefully, you will then get a chance to try out your stuff on a real bandstand!

Link to Jamey Aebersold site

7 comments:

  1. Another great one from JazzTruth. Thanks, George!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi George
    (sorry for the long post in advanced and thank you for your time…)

    This is Chris from Toronto (Ontario, next province) and I started studying jazz improvisation very seriously since 4 years ago i'm 32yrs old and very hungry for all jazz improvisation related information. I found your blog via some of the interviews you posted. I just want to say this is SUCH a blessing and you’re really COOL guy to want to dedicate your time sharing insights and experiences openly as although there are a lot of information out there for jazz students but they are not specific enough on describing the actual process of learning how to improvise or more specifically how to acquire and maintain a musician’s jazz vocabulary in our brain/mental database. Could you shed some light please x3~

    For example, I started transcribing about 2 years ago and I’ve been transcribing a bit everyday and went through 4-5 solos in past 1 year (Aaron Goldberg’s piano solos on Jimmy Greene’s Introducing CD track: Con Alma, Flower and Fly Little Bird Fly), I’ve practiced to the point that I have lines memorized I can sing them in my head from start to finish (I can only hear/sign it coherently to the solo i.e. if I think how it goes from chorus 2 measure 1, I would have to sometimes sing from beginning of solo) and I’ve analyzed the harmonic ideas of his outlines (although the more I memorize the solo, I tend to not be conscious anymore of the harmonic and chord changes but it’s more playing out of muscle memory, and I’m not sure if this is effective or not) I’ve practiced some 2 bar lines in all 12 keys on the guitar (20-50 times for that line a day --> is this not enough to memorize line correctly?) and then move on to next line and repeat again next day or work on new projects, usually I can only remember the lines vs. fretboard for few weeks then memory start to fade or become inaccurate on fretboard even these are lines that I had memorized so well.

    The result…and improvement to my actual playing… well not much. When improvising on the go and I don’t have time to reflect of anything, I end up still going to my familiar few patterns and few licks (and I dont know how these 2-3 main licks became so embedded and the new licks aren't), if I slow down or just sing alone without the guitar, the odd time one of Aaron’s transcribed idea will come up while singing.

    Then eventually I get so tired of the transcribed solo and fear that I’m not progressing the speed I should be that I move on to new solos for inspirations and then results are the same.

    Recently I read a book by Lee Konitz (Conversation with Improviser) and he said that LennieT used to ask his students to write a chorus etude and memorize it. So I’ve been doing that over common standard progressions and naturally if I can slow down time I hear really good ideas that I even surprise myself and have time to think how to connect changes linearly. But for my brian/fingers to be able to improvise in real-time at the rate this is going i'm afraid I will be like 80 year old.

    Q1.
    Is the way I’m studying jazz improvisation normal? Or am I going totally the wrong direction?

    Q2.
    Do you have a recommended way to memorize lines and a system how to maintain your vocab (I forget them after a while) and how to discern which line you hear/feel so quickly when you’re in the bandstand situation which notes you hear

    Or if you can just post any info you feel it’s important to share to this regard, or how did you actually practiced when you first started in grade 8-9th for span of few years and how to learn and built your vocabulary etc…

    (oh boy…I’m overwhelmed even trying to organize my thoughts)

    Either way, George thanks so much!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Forgot to say one thing hopefully to clarify my situation, currently when i try to solo, i would say 80-90% or learnt lines (some i can't even tell what I'm playing because the fingers are going faster than my brain can think on the spot, but my ear tells me it sounds harmonically fit or not) sometimes some cats will say "just keep going and you'll get it" so from an experienced person's point of view, is it true... that if I ckeep repeating the process I'm going through now one day I wake up I'll be able to hear and play and connect these ideas faster and more effortlessly, and another 10 years after that hopefully execute ideas in real time and start to have free have brain power to allocate to think how to play cool rhytmic ideas? Thx again ck~

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Chris I think my response will make a good blog post. Look for it soon in something called Viewer Mail.......

    ReplyDelete
  5. The result…and improvement to my actual playing… well not much. When improvising on the go and I don’t have time to reflect of anything, I end up still going to my familiar few patterns and few licks (and I dont know how these 2-3 main licks became so embedded and the new licks aren't), if I slow down or just sing alone without the guitar, the odd time one of Aaron’s transcribed idea will come up while singing.computer problems fixedcelebrity rumors

    ReplyDelete
  6. that if I ckeep repeating the process I'm going through now one day I wake up I'll be able to hear and play and connect these ideas faster and more effortlessly, and another 10 years after that hopefully execute ideas in real time and start to have free have brain power to allocate to think how to play cool rhytmic ideas? Thx again ck~
    pv solar panelsfiber cable

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thank you for this article. That's all I can say. You most definitely have made this blog into something special. You clearly know what you are doing, you've covered so many bases.Thanks!
    Cheap Runescape Gold
    Cheap RS Gold

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.