The best way to learn the jazz language is to do a ton of listening
and work on coming up with your own licks/phrases over typical
progressions. That way, the licks and phrases become part of YOUR
vocabulary.
This what I have always felt. It has never felt natural to me to play
someone else's lines. Learn from it, adapt it, possibly, but if you
do the work, and I admit I don't come close to doing what is really
needed, and still, the note sequences get born of the rhythms and
changes and bits and pieces of things I've learned more than trying
to remember what Pat Metheny of Kenny Burrell played. But I spent my
formative years playing bass in a band the did all original music and
doing someone else's ideas became less satisfying. Even tho Burrell's
may be better, I'd rather play my own. They feel so natural to
play... for better or worse. In the time it would take me to
internalize Burrell's stuff, assuming I could, I could have learned
several new concepts on my own
Besides in a jazz venue the guys with ears are going `hah there's a
Howie Robert's lick, there's Burrell, oh its Parker lines, yep sounds
like jazz. But incest over time has it's affect of the gene pool. If
we just keep re hashing the cool guys ideas eventually people could
get jaded by the sameness. I know this is an over simplification of
what most people actually do. Call it worse case maybe.
All that said, I must admit I'm learning other peoples chord melody
arrangements with the hope it will improve my playing. So who's
kidding who? {;^)>
Ron
Living and playing outside the box.
On Nov 19, 2010, at 8:28 AM, dphidt wrote:
