Groupings of tunes?

flaco · April 29

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/121195#Comment_121195

I just manually added my own list to Anki based on the tier 1 and tier 2 tunes for Django in June.

paulmcevoy75 · April 29

CVH's discord and his books are absolutely the best jazz instruction I've had in 35 years of trying, including a famous music college degree. For the record.

djazzy · May 2

I find it very helpful to group tunes. And to divide them into their musical chunks. Not just AB or AABA but cadences and important chords so that they can be harmonically distilled rather than taken on as a long string of chord changes. I imagine lots of us do this. And yet that so many of these songs even within the same group can be both similar yet also slightly different can still get one tripped up when learning them. (Damn that muscle memory!)

So getting them to sink in properly indeed takes time. And it should....since performing & playing music involves different kinds of multi-tasking & focusing of our attention. This is something singers & actors do all the time when they learn & prepare. So the question is, I think, what do we want to specifically focus on given whatever our skills and abilities are at the moment? Is it pumping along seamlessly with standard voicings (which should still require a certain kind of detailed attention even if we're roughly in semi-automatic gear,) or something maybe a little less automatic, like trying to come up with some cool phrasing on the fly for leads? or when trading fours? I think thats the balancing act. Being both in and out with where the focus is. And I guess the never-ending aim is to hone skills for these tunes so that we'll be happy...,the kind of stuff that we'd like to actually sink successfully into the subconscious, so that we can focus more direct attention on interpreting in the moment, being free and flowing, doing stuff on the fly, and the like. That was an awkward sentence but I think it makes sense. Keep learning, keep growing.

Buco · May 2

Which Anki app do people use? Is the flashcards app the same thing?

Buco · May 2

Not just AB or AABA but cadences and important chords so that they can be harmonically distilled rather than taken on as a long string of chord changes.

What I did a lot during the COVID downtime is to loop small grouping of chords, 2-4 bars usually, and spend time exploring. Could be easily an hour on one of those groupings. What that did was after a while "pathways" started appearing and then ways to connect these pathways. So that now I can navigate just about any song using these pathways. It's a straightforward stuff musically but what's nice is I don't have to rely on licks phrases I learned from others or any sort of "system". I suppose what I do is a "system" in a sense. Then I try to incorporate phrases I heard from others that I particularly like. And then some of those phrases become part of those pathways.

blfeguitar · May 2

Thank you all for your responses! Very helpful.

TheGarethJones · June 1

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/121271#Comment_121271

I will volunteer to be the purchaser of the Buco system

Buco · June 2

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/121693#Comment_121693

Ha, thank you. I think I do have a unique perspective as a teacher because I've been getting better at a later age. I also realized that everyone has to, at some point "write" their own system. And all those system books, you're reading years of practice distilled in a few dozen pages. The more pages in a book, the more years it took person who wrote it to get there. And that's another thing I learned, no system is as as effective in teaching as the time you put in. Time you put in trumps any system. Stephan Wrembel said that for a long time he resisted the calls to write a method book. He's the one who likes to say "just practice, it'll come".

That's what I've been doing, especially during pandemic years. Low and behold, last year, at Django in June, after the morning warmup I was facilitating, one guy turns and says to me, "man, your playing is solid". I was like, holy cow, I've arrived. Lol. But it really had an impact on me because for years I was saying, to myself and others, I just want to take a little that I learned and make it solid. Of course when I say arrived, it's just a first base camp of climbing the mountain.

Here I am at the local coffee shop, having a cortado and writing a little essay... If I ever do write a book, I have a title though!

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Fix What Doesn't Work