Transcript Summary
Played just about with every entertainer that comes into San Francisco.
Recording artists for commercials, TV.
Record, well you can't say records anymore.
But he's just been, he's just been up there all the time.
I've really admired what he's been doing for the last ten years.
So here's Dave Bendica.
Applause
Okay, I'm going to talk about how to play jazz and how to learn to play jazz and all that kind of stuff.
Jazz is an aural art, a-u-r-a-l, which means there's a lot of this involved.
A lot of people, when they're starting out to learn to play jazz, they see a lot of books and these volumes.
Every lick note a man, I know Indiana puts some out.
They're fine, but people kind of get overwhelmed and think that if they could just memorize all the rules
and memorize all these little licks and phrases, they'd be able to play jazz.
It really doesn't work that way.
It occurred to me a few years ago that maybe the way to learn to be a jazz player would be the same way
that people like Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker and Freddie Hubbard and Clifford Broughton,
whoever you admire as a jazz player, learn to do it.
Instead of the way that some guy who never attained their level of playing decided that
it should be taught, which is usually somebody who maybe stuck away teaching classes somewhere.
And that's fine, they got a lot of good ideas, but it kind of took a left turn a while back.
So, the main thing that you need to understand is that jazz is a craft that you learn by doing.
You don't learn it by reading books and that kind of thing.
So, one of the first things you need to do is start to develop a vocabulary.
It's like speaking.
To my way of thinking, any kind of music is that way, whether you're playing classical or jazz or whatever it is.
If you're playing just by rules, chances are you're not going to be saying much.
Frank Catarabba, who was here a few years ago, started off as a jazz player.
He was a commercial player, had a band, I don't know what they called it.
Some band, they probably were coats like Claude had, and video and whatnot.
Which to my way of thinking, part of the reason that he had such beautiful phrasing for anybody who was here,
he played a concert at Claude's camp a few years ago, was that he's using his ear instead of,
there's a crescendo here, well it should start at the end of two and then it goes over to the end of four
and then we stop and it's like a computerized sort of way of playing.
So that's the way I like to approach jazz, is an ear kind of thing.
And the way all the great players learned to do it when they were coming up was they learned their scales
and they learned their chords and they learned some theory and they would get records of their favorite players.
Charlie Parker was real into Lester Young, he had every Lester Young record that he had done.
And they'd listen to him a lot and try to copy him, okay.
And for example, Charlie Parker went up to the Cats Guild or somewhere, he had a job over the summer
and memorized every solo that was on the Lester Young records, just by ear, he'd hold them all.
Probably even write them down, just memorize them.
I advise you to write them down unless you're kind of a freak of nature and you're a genius or something,
you memorize them and go through that process of writing them out.
A couple of items, oh, keeping on that, keeping on that, what they did was they'd work on solos,
they'd memorize solos of their favorite players and they'd get together with their friends
or go to jam sessions and just play a lot, work out their craft that way, okay.
Now this is a little different than looking at a D minor chord with your play along record and saying,
okay, I can play Dorian with this and that's that scale.
D minor concerto.
Okay, now that's for a trumpet player and I'll talk in front of the keyboard.
It's a D Dorian scale, okay, which is a C scale.
You start on D and this is the way they usually teach you.
Now you learn, you see that chord and you play this.
And you use whatever notes are in that scale to make up something.
Well, that's like teaching the English language by teaching somebody the alphabet
and saying, okay, you know what the sounds are, say something.
It wouldn't make any sense, would it?
So try to get yourself to think in terms of vocabulary.
Now when I hear that tonality, I'll play an annotation for that.
Okay, and I've played some C sharps and an A flat in there
and a bunch of different notes that don't happen to be in D Dorian.
But it's a statement, it's a musical phrase that came up.
And you learn that by, like I said, transcribing solos, copying licks,
working them out in all the keys.
Okay, now before I get into, what I've done is I've sort of systematized this.
Guess who I took lessons from?
Yeah.
So we'll get into that in a minute, like how to organize all this stuff into a routine
so it makes sense to you and you're not just flailing away.
A couple of items that you need to do.
You have to memorize everything.
When you're on the bandstand with whoever you're playing with,
it's pretty rare that you get to bring up your fake book
or your list of scales or your notes or your transcribed solos or something.
So it's all got to be in here.
And memorization is just a skill that you learn through practicing it.
It starts out being a little difficult, maybe.
I mean, you've all gone through your scales, right?
I mean, you remember the first time you had a C scale,
it was probably pretty hard to get that done.
Then they wanted you to do F or G or whatever.
By the time they hit D flat, it was incredibly difficult.
But now you've gone through, although this is like nothing.
And you can probably learn your minor scales a lot quicker
once you have a base to build off of.
So memorize everything.
Get yourself a little notebook.
A notebook with manuscript paper in it.
And write down any kind of ideas you come up with.
They could be licks.
In jazz music, a lick is the same as a motif in classical music.
It's a short musical phrase.
Or it could be a long musical phrase.
It could be my favorite Miles Davis lick.
So write down anything in your notebook that you could think of
that makes sense to you, that you want to remember.
I'd suggest that you get another notebook to do your transcribed solos.
So it doesn't turn into a big mess.
So it could be ideas like 2-5-1.
Anybody know what that is?
Sure you do.
When you have a C major scale, if you build chords off of each note of the scale,
a C chord, which would be C-E-G, you always skip by thirds,
would be a I chord.
Build a chord off the D, D-F-A, that would be a II chord.
Off the E-E-G, that would be a III chord in the key of C.
So on and so forth.
So you have a II chord, D minor.
V chord would be G.
And a I chord would be C.
So you could write down in your notebook, they're also Roman dominoes,
2-5-1 and say what that means because you wanted to remember it.
Well it can be verbal ideas too, it doesn't just have to be a notebook full of licks and stuff.
I also, somewhere I have at home, like a notebook of licks.
So I just kept all of those in one place.
And I go through them like it's a larks or something.
Take one and do it in all the keys, and the next one you can do it in all the keys.
You can pick ones out here and then slew it through the tongue too.
Well you can, if you want to.
Anyway, so you want to keep a notebook.
You want to study technique with the best teacher you can find.
You can get with Claude if you live near where he teaches.
That's great, get with Claude.
Because if you have no technique, it doesn't matter how many ideas you have,
you won't be able to say them.
A real simple illustration of that is like you give me a saxophone,
I can play all kinds of stuff on here, but I can't do anything on a saxophone.
So I would need to get with a teacher and learn all the technique for it.
So I can use it to make a statement.
Time is very important.
A lot of times we'll talk about time, and we use that to refer to time, feel, or tempo,
keeping your tempo in your own playing exact, or knowing where the time is.
So you know where that beat is all the time.
That's a very important aspect of any kind of music.
But especially in jazz music, the time is something that's extremely constant.
99% of whatever kind of playing you're going to be doing, you have to know where that beat is.
Who in a band, let's say you have piano, bass, drums, and trumpet, who's responsible for the ride?
Everybody, including the trumpet player.
The time is the time.
The time is there no matter what you're doing.
That tempo is going on just like a metronome.
So when you're playing, if...
Play something along with it.
One, two, one, two, three, four.
Oh yeah?
It's supposed to be a half-step lower.
This will be great.
You know, we're all going to play along with this.
Yeah, it's interesting.
It's supposed to be blues and B flat, but somehow this thing's running a little fast.
So we're going to blues and beat today, I guess.
Is there a speed thing on there?
I have a pro arm in there.
Is there a speed thing on there?
I have a pro arm in there.
Oh goody, oh goody.
That'll probably be right where it is.
What did April saw it in the news?
It's specialized for the blues a million times.
I need to use that tape.
Not necessarily.
Anyway, the time doesn't change.
But I'm going in front of it, behind it, and around it, but I always know where it is.
The ideal thing would be if I had an a cappella solo for a whole chorus, 12 bars,
and I was playing with no clothes on.
No, that means all by yourself.
It could happen.
The ideal thing would be that I would play those 12 bars,
and when one came of the 13th bar, I'd be right with them.
So the way to learn how to play in time, you play along with these records,
and don't let the record take care of the time.
You'll always be trying to lay it down yourself.
Also playing with a metronome when you practice licks or whatever you're practicing,
is a metronome.
Practicing scales is a metronome.
The whole point is to get it so that your body and your fingers are doing everything exactly
when they should.
One of the first signs of a player getting any kind of maturity is when he starts getting a time sense.
Okay.
Enough of that.
Another thing to think about is the kind of sound that you get out of the end of your horn.
That's what the audience hears, and that's what you're using to make a statement.
So it would behoove you to really think about what kind of sound you want
and how you're going to get it, and like that.
I changed to one of these flugelhorn mouthpieces and this thing.
It kind of helps me to get a full-back sound.
So it's the kind of thing that you can sit in front of, and it's probably too offensive.
If I was playing something like a reeds and one of these really bright horns,
sometimes, unless you really want to do that, that might be a little, I won't say incorrect,
but it might not quite be what you want for playing with a rhythm section in a small group jazz situation,
playing a passanova or something.
If you want that, fine.
I'm not going to say what's right or wrong,
but be thinking about what's coming out of your horn, how you want it to sound.
Very important.
Like, everybody know who Freddie Hubbard is?
When you listen to a Freddie Hubbard album, he gets a certain sound out of his hand.
It has to do with the tone quality of it, but it also has to do with the kind of vibrato he's using,
the way he finds notes, and the way his attacks are.
I happen to like it a great deal.
Now, you could take a Freddie Hubbard solo transcribe and have, you know, say,
I don't know, somebody with a real bright sound, like John Faddis or somebody,
and play the same thing, and it wouldn't have the same effect at all, even though it's the same notes.
So the sound that you're getting is extremely important.
When you're transcribing your solos and trying to learn to be a jazz player,
try to copy the sound that the players get.
Try to copy all the phrasing.
That doesn't just mean how fast or slow the notes come and how loud or soft it is.
When you bend notes, the tone quality will change.
If you listen to any real good jazz player, they don't just keep the same tone quality the whole time.
They'll change it according to whatever their mood is.
It may change on a note, you know, one single note by itself.
Okay, you know, there can be different amounts of air.
Complete air, nothing but air.
Sometimes you'll hear a player at the end of a tune.
And it just kind of fades away into here.
Well, that's a sound.
We don't all have to go, you know, with our correct vibrato and then just stop it.
To me, it says a lot more with other things going on.
Okay, so enough about sound.
When you play, here's another little idea for you to kick around.
When you play and you're trying to play a solo, a lot of people will go,
I can't think of anything to play.
Now, when you're playing jazz, what you're doing is when you're playing a phrase,
to think of that phrase, you're responding to cues.
Okay?
And it may be a piano player does a certain thing and it gives you an idea
of something you had thought of before or worked on before.
Maybe it's something new that the piano player plays a little thing
and you've got enough ear and enough ability from having worked things out
that you can pick up on that and play it back at them and make something out of it.
But either way, try to think of it as you're responding to cues, okay?
That's one thing that jazz is all about is communication, right?
So you've got a rhythm section.
The drummer does something and you can pick up on that.
Or you do something and the drummer picks up on that, okay?
When you're reading changes, chord changes, like you see C7, that's a cue.
That's a cue.
So from having practiced a lot of things where you're trying to work something out on C7,
that will cue you to coming up with something.
And I can't explain it beyond that.
That's just the way it works and it's good to know about.
So, all right.
Now, let me get into the routine here.
Music theory, okay?
Jazz theory.
It's not called jazz or music fact, right?
It's called theory.
And always remember that.
All theory is is somebody played something or wrote something down
and then another guy tried to explain why it worked in words, okay?
It doesn't mean that that's the way it's supposed to go all the time.
Theory for jazz, for anything, is just the language of music, okay?
And you've got to know it.
Any great jazz player, any great player knows a lot of theory.
At least what the chord symbols mean and what all the scales are
and things about playing outside the chord changes and that kind of thing.
Put that stuff down in your notebook, okay, when you're going through that.
So, every day try to study a little theory, okay?
Sit down at a piano.
Find a piano somewhere.
Buy one of those cheap Casio keyboards or something.
You'll probably get something for like $50 or something.
Or less, $20 or something.
We'll see.
Something.
Hopefully it'll get more than one over the time, right?
Okay, so you want to work on that every day.
Now, the way I approach the system of learning to play jazz is
you want to work on scales every day.
You want to work on chords every day.
In our case, that would be arpeggios.
You want to work on licks every day.
You want to work on transcribing solos every day.
And you want to play on tubes.
That could be along with Aversole or whatever.
So scales, chords, licks, transcriptions, and playing with tunes.
Playing tunes.
If you have friends, if you can get a jam session together,
that's the best way to do it.
Sometimes it can get a little funny if you aren't real good players
because you never know what chords are going to come out.
The records are important, too, for that.
Okay?
Memorize everything.
All right, so.
Wow, we're at it.
If you're getting started out trying to learn to play jazz,
this has all this stuff in it.
It comes with a tape.
And the tape has a thing where you trade tunes
and it helps you hear a lot of stuff.
And all the things I'm talking about are in here.
Even if you're a little more advanced, this is very helpful.
It helps to turn your head in the right direction
and focus you in on the direction you want to go and how to learn.
That's all I did in these books was show people how to learn jazz.
Okay?
So that you can grow it.
And this one outlines the system that I'm specifically doing it here,
which is, you know, we have some theory every day
of scales, chords, licks, transcriptions, solos, and playing on tunes.
And I have, especially the playing,
well, the transcription of playing on tune section.
I have a lot of helpful tricks and whatnot
that will assist you in your endeavors.
All right.
Okay, so let's look at each one.
Now, scales, you want to keep everything real organized
instead of jumping around, okay?
So the first thing you're going to do is your major scales.
And I just have them written out.
There's a lot of different ways you could do them,
but this way works and it's basic and it's simple.
So we'll start with it.
Do your major scales up and down three times.
Slurred.
Don't swing the notes.
For anybody who doesn't know what swing is,
that's where, when you have eighth notes,
instead of...
. . .
you do kind of a dotted eighth, 16,
kind of sort of triplet feel, whatever.
And they don't write that out.
If you play a big band or something,
they don't write it out that way.
They'll just write eighth notes.
But that is called swing.
Anyway, your scales, don't swing.
Just play them straight.
Okay, so big.
. .
Starting on the lowest note of your instrument.
Three times.
No mistakes. You're making mistakes.
Start over.
You're just making mistakes.
Especially if you, you know,
clam a note.
Clam is a term for mistake.
If you make a clam at like the same spot
in every piece, you're going to get real good at it.
Okay?
So you make a mistake,
you go back and correct it.
It gets real obvious in the recording studio
and real costly
when you start blowing it like that.
So you play like you practice.
It's important to go for it.
We talk about that.
Just put that heart in your face,
take a big breath,
and that's good.
But once you get to the point where
you kind of got it down,
don't let your mistakes go by.
You have to make it perfect.
Absolutely perfect.
And then you'll get a reputation for that.
All right?
So at any rate,
you do your scale like that, then you go half step.
Then you go up by half steps.
As high as it is reasonable.
This is not a range study.
So maybe high C
or whatever you feel comfortable with.
The next thing you do after that
would be chords.
So we'll start with major chords.
It's all written out.
It doesn't have to be like this.
The exact way I do it.
Okay?
Three times and you go up by half steps.
Okay?
The next thing you do is work on a lick.
Say it was a simple lick
in C minor.
Okay?
That's your key.
And the lick might be
Right?
One, two, three.
Okay, that's the lick.
Now we're going to start on the lowest note of the horn.
So that lick was C minor
and it started on a C, right?
So we want to do F sharp minor
and we're going to start on an F sharp.
So you have to think a little bit, figure it out.
For the first few of them
you could write them out in all the keys.
Get away from that as soon as you can.
Like I said, you can't take that stuff with you.
So.
Three times.
And then again.
Then you go up a half step.
Three times and then go up a half step.
Okay.
And after that you're going to work on transcribing the solo.
Now, for that what you do
if you're just getting started
the great book has a tape
and I have fifteen lessons in there
and each one has a solo for you to transcribe
so it gets you started from
something real easy
where you can learn to transcribe solos
instead of
That's a nice picture but nobody got that.
Bug on my nose.
Instead of trying to do that off of a record
trying to figure out what that is
just start with something real simple to transcribe.
When you're transcribing
take one note at a time.
Okay.
So you've got to have your finger on the stop button
so it gets up to the first note
That's the thing I just played.
That's from a tune called Theme for Kareem.
It sounds great how real.
The first note is
it's playing along that
stop if you're not sure what that note is.
Let it ring in your head.
Try it again.
That's the note.
You write a little dot on the B flat line.
Don't worry about the rhythm first.
Just do dots.
Leave yourself plenty of room in the bars.
Maybe two measures per line.
At first it's going to be real weird
because you'll have three notes
and then the third beat starts
and you're already at the end of the line
but you'll eventually get it
so you can feel where the downbeat is
and where the notes should go.
Yes.
I showed one of my problems to a teacher
and he said,
okay, you'll be able to do this
and then I'll be able to do the fourth
each measure.
Is it that when you're chance grabbing
these things, you need to learn how to do that?
Not at first.
You've probably got enough problems
just getting the notes off the record, right?
When you're getting started, right?
We'll have to do that for a couple months.
Yeah.
Well, if you can get the chords, that's great too.
Find the bass note.
Figure out what notes the bass is playing.
It may or may not be the root.
You're going to have to learn some piano
and have kind of a working knowledge
of piano
so you can sit there and play your thing
and hit a chord.
Does that sound like the right chord?
So you have to know what the chords are.
Kind of like that.
Unless, like I say, you're a freaking H
or you have a perfect pitch
or you have just an ability to do that.
You just go, okay, that's a
Bb7 or b9.
He's got nothing to base.
Something like that.
Playing piano a lot will help you with that.
But I wouldn't worry
about playing piano.
Okay, so you get the notes down.
Then worry about the rhythms.
Go back, count with your fingers.
If it was
That's one, two, three
Now you're trying to figure out where that
is, right?
So you're going along and it's in 4-4
so what I do sometimes is I'll just have my fingers
going a few measures before
and my hand on the stop button
and I stop it.
Right after three so it must be the end of three.
So you write it down there.
You'll figure out what the rhythms are.
Then once you have it down
Once you have it down, you can mark some notes
that are short or long or whatever
if you want that new phrasing.
You want to be reminded of that.
Then you have to memorize it.
Okay?
Now this is all over a period of several weeks.
Or whatever.
Alright.
Then you memorize it.
Do it with a metronome.
Get it faster than it is on the record.
Then play along with the record.
If it's a standard tune
usually you have like an Aversole thing for it.
Play a solo along with the Aversole.
Or play it on a job.
Okay?
You got it.
You know, so it's some
Woody Shaw thing on
satin bow.
I would suggest
playing that at the society
you know, dance
job.
It might be kind of strange.
But yeah,
that's what you want to do.
It would be a real far out style
for that kind of situation.
So you've got to get your taste for that.
Alright.
So that's transcribing.
And then the last part would be playing on
tunes.
Now for that
you want to
you've done your chords and scales, right?
So you're going to know what the chord changes are.
You go and pick out a tune.
Usually you can find a tune that you're going to work on
that's the same as the tune you're transcribing.
Okay?
So if you're working on something on
Stella by Starlight
then try to make that the tune that you're going to
be playing on.
So I'm saying if you're working on transcribing, somebody's solo on Stella.
You're going to make the same thing.
And the first thing you want to do
is find some chalk.
Can I erase it?
Is this important?
First thing you want to do
is say that we had
I had to do this tune
and it would never be another tune. It's pretty simple.
We're going to have one of those stab things.
Then
Okay
Now there's a pick-up note.
C
Oh, and the key of F.
Right? 4-4
Alright.
Like this.
Okay.
The first chord is an F major 7.
Alright.
You've got to know the theory. You've got to know what that triangle means, right?
F major 7.
And we have
E half diminished to an A7
flat 9.
Now one thing about
this kind of music is you'll see a lot of
different designations for the same chord.
Like an
A major 7.
They might write
M-A-J
7. They might
write M7.
You know, small
lowercase A-J.
Some guys do it this way.
So, it all means the same thing.
You've got to know that stuff.
Sometimes a
minus 9 will be a flat 9.
Okay?
So, you'll figure it out.
Being innocent.
Now
first thing you want to do when you try to learn a tune
you write out the melody
and make it on a double step.
Okay?
And you write out the chord underneath.
Okay?
Open it open. It's an F major 7 chord.
Then you knock them over.
I have to put an acronym on top because we're going to make the scale
fill in the blanks.
Okay?
Now, there's your chord, there's your scale.
Right?
Same thing here.
E half diminished.
I have a lot of room here.
Okay, there's your E half diminished.
Then you knock it over.
Right there.
And
E half diminished.
Okay, now
the A
seems real sloppy
over here.
Can I erase some of this too?
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay, we're going to do the
Okay.
Now,
we knock this one over.
Right?
Pull in the blanks.
Do the same with this.
Now, that's a B flat there.
So you can bet we're going to have a B flat here.
Right?
Shark
E
A
Okay.
Now,
the next chord is a D minor.
For those of you who haven't had any theory or anything,
this is part of a
2-5-1 progression.
And 2-5-1 chords
progressions tend to have the same scale form.
There's a lot of different choices
you can do here.
This tune goes like this.
So that's how it goes.
And the chord
is
A minor for your next one.
Okay.
So when we get to the E half diminished,
I'll play F.
Okay.
That was a C sharp and then a C natural.
What do you like?
Both.
Oh, we could put both in there.
I wouldn't laugh.
That would be a dramatic scale.
I'll play it with a piano.
What I'm getting at is
it doesn't matter.
It's a matter of personal taste.
You might use one at one time, another at another time.
Okay, that'll work, right?
Either one.
Kind of weird.
Personally, I like the C sharp.
But
you could have a C, but I'm going to make it a C sharp.
Which makes our life a little easier.
Because this one over here
already has all those notes in it, right?
So you don't really have to
think E half diminished and then A7.
It's just
E half diminished for two bars
or A7 for two bars, whichever way you want to look at it.
Okay?
There's a lot of little tricks. There's a million of them.
All right.
Now when you go to your D minor
you could still be using that scale.
What scale would that be?
D.
If you started that scale there, if you started on a D
what would that be?
Okay, then a flat six and a sharp seven
indicates the
natural seven.
Okay?
So
that's what you want to do. Now not all tunes
start getting complicated like this right away.
But
you write all that out for the whole tune.
Then you practice them.
Turn this into an exercise.
Now all you're doing this for is just to get
an idea of the tonality of what's happening.
So
Okay.
You go through the whole tune that way.
Memorize that.
Okay?
Then do your scales.
Whatever scales you decide are appropriate.
In this case somebody like the
seantral there so that's what you do when you play it.
You like the seantral.
And make it into
these scales you can swing
and make them
into a pattern.
Okay?
Into a pattern that
you know
goes with the time. It makes sense.
Don't just stop and make sure it's in real straight time.
Or use the seantral.
Okay? Do it like that.
You'll have all the stuff in front of you.
That will really
help your ear. Really help it so you can
hear the chords in your head.
Throughout the tune.
Okay?
That's just some basic stuff
to work on.
That's like an exercise for playing a tune.
Then slap on your play along record
and just play.
Try to work on whatever licks you're doing
that day.
I think that's
what I played earlier.
Okay?
Okay?
Make whatever lick you're doing.
It's one, two, three.
Either major or minor third on top.
Do that as an exercise
over all the chord changes.
You'll start to hear that.
Then that will work itself into your vocabulary.
So when we're
playing
. . .
. . .
. . .
whatever.
Stick that little lick in there somewhere.
You'll learn to
be playing along
and then try to think of these things at the same time.
That gets a little strange and complicated.
You'll get used to it.
Okay. So that might be the first day.
Of course you wouldn't get
the solo transcriber. Maybe you'd only
do four bars of it or something.
The second day, or the second week,
depending on how well you do it,
you have to judge your own progress. You would go to the
Dorian scales. Okay?
Scales, chords, right? So start off with Dorian,
which is a major scale, but you start at the second note
of it. And do all those roles
starting on the low F sharp.
If you get fast, these do a couple
scales every day.
So it might be major and Dorian the first
day. Whatever you decide.
According to your own Dorian.
Just keep doing that. Transcribe a lot of solos.
Play as much as you can and that will get you there.
Simple as that.
Any questions?
Do I have your brain? Yes sir.
Now the Dorian scale is quite again
a major scale, but you blacked yourself out?
Well, okay. I'll go through this.
Alright.
It's getting too low.
There are of course 12 key threads.
So I'll just do this in C.
Here's a C major scale.
Alright.
Start on this, it's major.
Start on this
and play the C scale.
We go from D up to D and back down.
Okay. That's Dorian.
Alright.
The next one from E to E and back down.
These are called the modes. The Greek modes.
Yes sir.
So you're going to play the C Dorian scale.
That would be a B flat major scale.
But starting on C.
We'll get to that in a second.
This from here is a D Dorian scale.
You always name the root.
The parent key
is C major.
So this would be D Dorian.
From E up to E is Phrygian.
That would be E Phrygian.
The parent key of E Phrygian is C.
It starts on the third
of the parent key.
Okay.
And just about any
jazz third book.
So Lydian,
Mixolydian, Aeolian,
and Locrian depending on
F to F, G to G, etc.
These are all numbered.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
The octave.
The degrees of the scale.
What happens here then.
So you have your D Dorian scale.
Based on C major.
How does it compare
to a D major scale?
You don't have any sharps.
D major would have an F sharp
and a C sharp.
Using D as the root.
Okay.
The third is flat.
Say this was D major.
D Dorian has a flat third
and a flat
seven.
It's a lot of stuff to learn.
But it's
real easy.
All the modes are that way.
So Lydian has a sharp
fourth, Mixolydian has a flat seventh.
This is all compared to the major scale.
Now when you're going through your modes
you're trying to
you'll get to the point where you start thinking about them a lot
and using them in your solos.
You hit a D minor chord
and you want to play D Dorian.
It's a D minor scale.
It's not a C major scale.
A lot of guys will say, well you're thinking C
and because it doesn't have any
sharps and flats.
Sorry, it's not a C scale.
It's a D minor scale.
You've got to think of that root of that scale as D.
Otherwise you're just trying to introduce something else
that's in there.
If you have a piano player or bass player banging out
the D minor for you
for you to think of C as the root
I can't do it.
I've got pretty good ears
and my brain is pretty strong.
To hear that in my head
I can't do it this way.
Play like a singer.
Singers don't know nothing about this stuff
but they can still make a statement
and sing real pretty and all that.
Phrase.
It's a good thing
like Miles Davis
Frank Sinatra
playing Orson Welles
he said.
Because Orson Welles has such a great phrase.
Phrasing ability when he talks.
And Miles, maybe he didn't have much technique
on trumpet but he's a true phrase.
Any other questions?
Yes.
The yellow one
is about all the theory
I can think of.
The yellow one has about all the theory
I can think of and it's real
pedantic and cut and dry.
The yellow one
has a tape and it takes you
a little more slowly.
The yellow one is nice just because it has a tape.
I mean it's nice because of other things too.
But it does have that tape
and you get to transcribe solos and it takes you step by step.
Any other questions?
You might just mention
like when they're doing their scales
they're going through all of them.
Yeah.
Kind of.
They don't realize it at the time.
You do that.
Right.
So that means that you'll be able to play
from start to play
as an actual.
When you're playing that however you are aware
pretty much that you're like
in C.
Even when you're playing
whatever you're doing
you can still hear that it's in C.
Right.
I know it'll sound like that
because that sounds like
the key to it.
Right.
Down to C.
That's the key to it.
As opposed to
That's in D minor.
That's in D minor.
Doesn't sound like it's in C.
Although it is under your fingers
whether you know it or not.
Yes.
What do you think of soloists
that you recommend starting off with
transcribing their stuff?
Simpler stuff.
Aside from the fact that I make money
I'd recommend that because it starts off
real easy and stuff.
But once you get to the point where you can transcribe
Chet Baker plays very nicely
and not too difficult.
Early Miles.
Lee Morgan.
Yeah.
Some Freddie Hubbard.
How about early James?
Yeah, if you're into that.
Bix or something basic.
Yeah, if you're into that style.
For sure.
I know guys who aren't into
Freddie Hubbard.
They're just into him.
Bix, Roy Elbridge.
He's getting modern.
And that's great.
You can take all this stuff
all this is is a tool.
You can take that and apply it to whatever
style of music you like listening to.
Any questions?
Yeah.
Do you always start off playing jazz
with a number of transistors?
I started junior high school
and I pretty much
most of what I do
is commercial playing.
And lately it's going on classical.
So I don't do any jazz
but it's what I
like to do.
It's been a
love of mine
since junior high school.
Any questions?
Keith?
I guess Bruce is
going to, if anybody wants him
we'll tell you the story.
There's a couple of records
and books.
You know
for you
the books are ten
the records ten
and the live records
five.
Do you have CDs?
I got two CDs.
Fifteen.
That's it.
So if you want anything serious.
Thank you.