Ear Training III: Time to Learn Tunes and PLAY
Dec 30 '05
The Bottom Line All it takes is a little structure to help them synch up what they are playing and what they are hearing.
Once my students have mastered several (all is nice, but several will do) major scales over the full range of their instruments and have done scale studies, it’s time to practice jazz improvisation by developing the ears further and getting the players to play with other players or backgrounds. This can happen as early as 7th grade, but generally I use this approach to get started with 8th graders and high school students.
I’ll generally run a player through a couple of sessions where I’ll set up a Bb blues play along and have them play without giving them any direction at all. If the kid is a little spooked, I might point out some notes that will work over the key or say what my first jazz teacher said which was:
“Play a note. If it sounds good, play it again. If not, play a different one”.
I do this to confirm that a student has developed their ears well enough to recognize a clinker (bad sounding note in a particular progression) and resolve it to something better. If not, I’ll have them work on scales particular to the progression they are playing. Whether good fortune or good teaching, the students who have worked hard on major scales to that point generally do very well.
The next step is to start hearing how the scales and the chords fit the particular tune. For purposes of this example, we will use a standard Bb blues, played by an alto sax. That puts it in the alto sax key of G.
I want to state that much of this approach was what my teacher at DePaul, Mark Colby, worked on with me. For his work with me, I will be forever grateful. I’ve made some modifications based on available books and CDs and the fact that I am teaching younger students that
I generally use the Jamey Aebersold Jazz Improvisation CD, Vol I for this, because it has on one of the tracks a great sounding band playing the blues at an accessible tempo and he has the scales and chords written out on the lead sheet for each different part.
Here will be the example progression (again, transposed for alto)
G7 C7 G7 G7 C7 C7 G7 G7 Am7 D7 G7 D7
I ask my students to learn the blues as follows:
Chorus 1: Play a head (an easy but good-sounding melody designed to make the players feel like improvising). Tenor Madness is a good head. So is C Jam Blues. I encourage them to make up one of their own by telling them honestly than ANYTHING they do will be better than some of the ones I’ve done. It’s true, too. I wrote some really lame heads when I first started playing jazz. I still do, actually. The good ones get played. The stuff I write that doesn’t sound good gets forgotten and I move on to something else. But I digress.
Chorus 2: Play the arpeggios for the chord symbols in each measure. I tell them that I use 8th notes, but they can use quarters, if they like. So, for G7, they would play G B D F, then for C7, C E G Bb and so on. Over time, I look for them to memorize the chords through their scale work and other study. However, playing the chords, even without memorizing them, registers the sound of the chords over the backgrounds in the player’s ear and brain.
Chorus 3: Play whole note chord tone long tones over the chord progression, but with the minimum movement from chord to chord. This introduces the concept of voice leading, which basically consists of composing or improvising (or composing, since improvising is spontaneous composition) in a linear manner through shifting chords. By doing so, the player invokes tension with emotional notes that are then released.
One particularly good release is to take the third or seventh of a dominant chord (for D7, this would be the F# or C) and resolve it to the note in the tonic, or major key, a fourth up. The F# in this example will resolve to an G. The C will resolve to the third of the G chord or a B. In jazz there is an almost inevitable movement from a dominant chord a 5th up to the tonic chord of the piece. It is one of the most important chord progressions in
Jazz. I like getting my students hearing this right away.
Another important progression is the II V I resolution. In the example progression, this is in bars 9-11, where the chords are Am7 D7 G7. This combination shows up in a lot of different songs. If the resolving chord is a G and not a G7, then all three chords emanate from the same key, with A minor being a G major scale starting on A and the D7 being a G major scale starting on D.
If the students get through the arpeggios and long tones ok to begin with, then I have them stop. I restart the music, play a head with them and have them “let it fly”.
As students progress, I have them do some or all of the following over the blues progression:
• For a chorus while playing the chord-scale in every measure. In Vol I, this is written out. As the students progress, I like for them to do this from memory.
• Play “blues scale” patterns over the progression. A blues scale is not a major scale, per se. rather it is a group of notes that are well-known to sound good over a blues progression. This consist of (in terms of scale positions) I, bIII, IV, #IV, V, bVII, I. In G, this is G, Bb, C, C#, D, F, G
• Other scalar patterns can be played, such as scales in thirds (in G this would be G B A C B D and so forth) or others.
• Jamey Aebersold suggests climbing up the scale by playing the first 2 tones, then 3, and so on.
• I also have them start applying musicality concept to their solos like having a beginning, middle and end, applying space through rests, using a bit of repetition,. Etc.
I want the students to get to the point where they can do a lot within the key from memory and hearing without reading it off the page. At that point, they’re ready to move on to the blues in a different key, following the same approach.
The students can also use this approach to learn other tunes from memory and improvise them or apply them to the various workout tracks available from Aebersold and other sources or in background software like Band In A Box.
Students who do this well will have the ears and chops to play along with a band doing the same thing. Over time, their horizons and repertoire will expand.
There are many, many approaches to learning songs. All of them work for somebody. The approach I listed above has worked for me and several of my students on melodic (non-chordal) instruments. If you are an aspiring jazz musician, I hope they work for you.
If you have any questions, please email me.
Thanks for reading. God bless.
You might be interested in some of my other music performance and education reviews:
Improve Your Intonation
Ear Training I - Beginning and Intermediate Players
Ear Training II - Prelude to Improvisation
My worst gig
Putting a Jazz Band Together
Being a one man band for fun and profit
How to get your child started on an instrument
I compose the way I play
What music has helped me learn about myself
Fast fingers are important
How to eliminate recurring mistakes
How I help my students learn new music
I learned about a lot more than music from my music teachers
The value of creativity
Develop a business as a private music teacher
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