[HN Gopher] Jazz Comping (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
Jazz Comping (2021)
Author : RickHull
Score : 69 points
Date : 2023-07-19 04:41 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jazz-library.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jazz-library.com)
| Pannoniae wrote:
| I find it funny how jazz piano players have stopped using their
| left hand since 1950 or so;)
| MrGando wrote:
| This is a very uninformed opinion that I see very often. In
| bebop, LH can be deceptively simple (but actually rhythmically
| it's not so simple). However things have dramatically changed,
| Brad Mehldau who's a foundational modern jazz pianist, probably
| the most relevant one after the last Big Tree (Hancock, Corea,
| Tyner), popularized things like LH counterpoint in jazz. Some
| of his arrangements if you watch them in mute, you could thing
| he's playing a Bach Fugue almost. The amount of pianists that
| followed this style after the 90s, is hard to keep track of,
| probably every single relevant pianist took things from brad,
| and LH counterpoint was one of them (a big one there too was
| Fred Hersch, who heavily influenced Brad).
|
| Then, I recommend you to check out what Sullivan Fortner is
| doing. Probably the next really heavy one that has managed to
| push the jazz lang forward after Brad.
| myfavoritetings wrote:
| I don't understand this comment
| staunton wrote:
| I guess it refers to them playing very fast and elaborate
| solos (right hand) with minimal accompaniment (left hand +
| bass player + drums). Minimalistic comping will also mostly
| leave the low notes (left hand) to the bass player and comp
| in a fairly high range, with more notes allocated to the
| right hand than left.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Basically, since the advent of bebop, the overwhelming
| majority of pianists use sparse comping. This means that they
| don't really provide bass, they just provide shell/rootless
| chords for themselves to play, the main focus is soloing in
| the right hand, or when others solo, just providing chords in
| pulses. The actual bass is provided by a double bass player,
| who plays a bassline.
|
| Before that, the prevalent comping style in the left hand was
| stride, which provides a rich bass backing. (You know, the
| oom-pah stuff) Contrary to the common criticism, if
| coordinated well, this can also work in the presence of a
| double bass player (just check out Fats Waller recordings,
| many of his Rhythm recordings had a double bass player!)
| mastazi wrote:
| The OP article contains a video of a performance by Emmet Cohen
| (who was born many decades after the 50s) doing a complicated
| solo based on stride piano techniques.
|
| PS In your other comment you blame bebop for this, but I don't
| think that contemporary jazz is necessarily all in the shadow
| of bebop, I think it is actually very diverse, with so many
| genres that are not necessarily close to bebop such as neo-
| swing and funk-jazz.
| midiguy wrote:
| Well that's not really true in any sense. Almost any jazz piano
| player today worth their salt will favor two-handed voicings
| for comping, and comp with left hand while soloing.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| Spreading a chord over two hands isn't really using your left
| hand though.... and playing random shell chords isn't really
| either. Playing an actual walking bass, stride, four-to-the-
| bar chords, arpeggios or boogie patterns is more like it.
| midiguy wrote:
| > Spreading a chord over two hands isn't really using your
| left hand though
|
| Kind of like how running with both legs isn't really using
| your left leg? I don't really understand this train of
| thought.
|
| > playing random shell chords
|
| Not many piano players these days use bebop era shell
| chords. It's all about rootless, cluster and quartal
| voicings. And just because they are played without
| regularity doesn't make them random. A skilled player
| places them very intentionally.
|
| > Playing an actual walking bass, stride, four-to-the-bar
| chords, arpeggios or boogie patterns is more like it.
|
| These techniques create a metrical regularity that is
| antithetical to the spontaneous and forward-pushing rhythym
| of post-bop era jazz. It's fine for certain styles of
| music.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Can't there be a game that plays like Mario bros where it goes
| super easy, but still have an incentive/fun system to let you
| progress slowly to high levels? Is there such thing even close to
| this?
| trane_project wrote:
| That's pretty much what I've been trying to do with
| https://github.com/trane-project/trane/
|
| I wanted something like you describe, but as far as I know
| nothing existed. So I've been hacking at this and the basic
| idea does work. It's now just a matter of designing the courses
| and polishing the user experience.
|
| I am just coming up with the structure for how to define what
| music would depend on each other. Trying to do it based on
| music theory would be ideal, but probably beyond my capacity.
| So I think the historical development of the genre you are
| trying to learn is a good proxy. For jazz, for example, this
| would be something like learning African music first, then
| spirituals, then blues songs, then new orleans jazz, then basic
| standards and so on. Trane works based on a graph, so the
| progression does not have to be linear.
|
| It's pretty early stages at the moment. Only one course for now
| since I've been trying to work out the process first:
| https://github.com/trane-project/trane-music/blob/master/cou...
|
| These "transcription" courses first ask you to loosely sing the
| song, then loosely improvise over it with your instruments (you
| can customize your own), then sing in different keys and do it
| more thoroughly, then improvise more closely to the actual
| song. The last step is what is normally called transcribing,
| but the course is meant to progressively lead you to that. The
| whole process is meant to recreate the apprenticeship process
| that all the early Jazz masters went through.
|
| Ideally there's a graphic interface that downloads the music
| and lets you loop, slow down, and change the pitch. But for
| now, there's only a command-line interface and the user has to
| do that themselves. Not ideal, but it works.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Practicing is a creative skill. Practice really is a terrible
| word for it, because it suggests s dumb, inefficient way to
| learn. Research, investigation, pushing boundaries get at the
| idea better.
|
| Adults have a hard time learning new things largely because
| beginner's mind feels so alien and tedious to them. A kid is
| shocked to discover how great that first E major chord sounds,
| and experiences like that are motivating.
|
| It's easy for beginners to find low hanging fruit, because
| there's so much of it. But if you periodically step back to map
| the terrain, there's always something within your reach that
| will feel satisfying when you get it, no matter how much you
| already know. How is my rhythm? Can I play to a click? Do I
| recognize chords as fast as I want? Can I play doublestops? Can
| I do funk? Counterpoint? Odd time signatures? How are my
| biomechanics? Bichords (that's two chords at the same time)?
| Symmetric scales? Microtones (instrument permitting)? Can I
| convey peace? Excitement? Morose? Military? Exultant? Afraid?
| Call and response with someone else? Between my two hands?
| Within one hand?
|
| Also it's helpful to avoid the goal of "dominating" such
| targets. I will never dominate "rhythm". It's too big. But I'll
| keep improving.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| For those reasons, I'm skeptical any game will be good for
| very long. It doesn't know what you need. But that said,
| there is software that can teach you a lot. Practica Musica
| was a mind-expanding experience for me.
| cevn wrote:
| If you can play it slow, you can play it fast.
|
| Start by listening to music you like, then pick an instrument.
| Copy what they did, note by note, but 100x slower. It may not
| be fun at first, but you will pick up speed slowly, and soon,
| you're making music, and maybe you'll learn something along the
| way.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Parrot playing, I do that but I'm only able to play that song
| and not really improvise much. Any ideas?
| dgunay wrote:
| For me the ability to improvise music emerged slowly after
| doing a lot of playing other things by ear and embellishing
| songs either from lead sheets or coming up with
| premeditated variations on pieces I already knew. But
| that's just how I did it. If improv is your goal then you
| could probably benefit from doing it in a semi structured
| format like 12 bar blues, where it can start very simple
| and you can build up complexity.
| mastazi wrote:
| IMHO - parrot playing is concerned with "what" is being
| played, and it's OK in the context of non-improvised music.
|
| If you want to learn improvisation it helps to also
| investigate "why" - why this particular rhythmic figure
| (e.g as shown in the OP article), why this chord voicing
| (e.g. block chords? Quartal harmony? Drop-2?), why this
| melody (e.g. ascending or descending? Arpeggiating the
| chords or "playing outside"?) etc etc
|
| Edit: One more thing: it's OK to improvise with the help of
| something like iReal Pro, but nothing replaces improvising
| with real humans, find a group of like minded people that
| would like to play with you
| gerhardi wrote:
| Learn scales. When you understand and know the scale of the
| song you can quickly start improvising then.
| trane_project wrote:
| I don't disagree that this type of transcription leads to
| good results, and in fact, it's what you should eventually
| do, but I've found a different approach to transcription that
| to me is easier, more fun, and more powerful.
|
| Take the song, load it up in transcribe
| (https://www.seventhstring.com/) or similar software, pick a
| part. Up to here, this method and yours is the same. But
| rather than try to worry about the exact notes being played,
| study the context by just singing and playing over the song
| and seeing what works and what does not.
|
| There's just a lot more information than just the notes that
| were played. So this type of transcription gets you to
| navigate the same context the musicians were playing in. And
| as you do it, you'll start hitting the actual notes, and
| eventually you can close in on them. What's great is that
| it's fun, playful, musical, and you can do it even with songs
| that are way out of your level when transcribing note by note
| or learning from a score.
|
| Using a human language analogy, your suggestion would be to
| mimic conversations and mine would be to babble in other
| people's conversations until you become fluent. It's clear in
| human languages that one is much faster than the other. Sure
| babies are geared for it, but I think the babbling would work
| for adults too if they became cute as a baby or puppy, got
| over themselves, and could shamelessly babble onto other's
| conversations.
|
| The best book on the matter I've read of how to learn by ear
| is "The Gift of Music" by Victor Wooten. It's kind of weird
| in that it's written as a fiction book, but there are
| definitely music lessons. And if some of them feel too out
| there, just listen to him play. He's a master, not a stoner
| pretender.
|
| There's also "Thinking in Jazz", but I am only a fourth or
| third of the way and so far it's mostly about the historical
| and cultural background of improvisers. It's not gotten too
| into the weeds musically speaking.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| rocksmith works like this i think
| gnulinux wrote:
| [deleted]
|
| Sorry, I think what I said was misunderstood and was not very
| accurate, so I made the decision to delete it.
| epiccoleman wrote:
| In the context of the example I'll grant that it's a bit silly
| to think of it as an E7. In the context of a band scenario, it
| might make perfect sense. If you're playing a jazz tune from a
| lead sheet, it might be very reasonable to mark that chord as
| an E7, and the bass might be playing the root, in which case
| thinking about it as a viio7 would miss some context.
|
| The problem with music theory is that it's _extremely_
| contextual, and I think you have to at least get a sense for
| some of the "rules" of chord construction to be able to make
| sense of the notation. Music theory is just a language for
| talking about sounds and harmonies, and while there are cases
| where "just focus on the intervals" would make sense, there are
| just as many times that it's useful to say "it's a ii-V-I in Ab
| major." Having the language be based on the diatonic chords of
| the key you're in can make it easier to express a lot of
| different concepts in a shorthand, instead of having to spell
| out the intervals of every chord you come across.
|
| My advice to folks learning music theory would be to check out
| the Signals Music Studio channel - that dude has helped me make
| sense of theory concepts that I never grokked in years of
| playing music. I think it's really one of those cases where you
| have to get a good sense for the language before you start to
| get frustrated by the limitations and blemishes of the whole
| system.
| macawfish wrote:
| In my mind the point of calling it a "rootless voicing" is that
| even if the bass player does play the root, not everyone has
| to. Playing a rootless voicing is a choice to be made on the
| fly given the knowledge of the root, melody and key, rather
| than something you'd typically want to prescribe. It's a matter
| of interpretation. The listener will often have the root in
| their ear (the mode really) even if nobody is currently playing
| it explicitly. Or maybe someone just played the root and nobody
| is now but the rootless voicing still rings. Or maybe the last
| chord had the same root and the sense of it is lingering. Or
| maybe the root is in the melody.
|
| If I couldn't have any information about the key, I'd still
| want the root and the melody.
| [deleted]
| anon291 wrote:
| Honestly, I have to say I do not understand the obsession on
| Hacker News and more broadly on music theory. Music theory is
| interesting, but as an amateur jazz/blues/rock pianist for the
| past twenty years or something, it's not going to make you a
| better player. The best thing to do to learn these styles is to
| simply play. I do agree you need to know some things (like if
| you see an E7 in a jazz book you shouldn't play the E), but
| really there's not that much complexity to it. Music is a
| language, someone shows you how to play some licks and you take
| and expand on that by practice practice practice. I honestly
| couldn't tell you any of the theory behind half the stuff I
| play.
|
| Thus, when I hear things like "Of course, a rootless 3-7-9-5
| so-called I7 (E7) chord is actually a diminished seventh chord
| (minor third, diminished fifth, diminished seventh (major
| sixth)) viio7 (D diminished 7th chord)" it makes sense in my
| mind what you're saying, but I'm also thinking... if someone
| showed you how to play it, rather than attempted to 'teach' you
| by showering you in theory, there wouldn't be a whole lot of
| confusion.
|
| At the end of the day, the American styles of music are
| ultimately all aural traditions, whereas 'classical' has --
| unfortunately, in my opinion -- become transformed into a
| written one.
|
| But going back to the E7. Only the piano pays Gsharp, B, D,
| F#/F. The Bass player will play E, so while it's rootless on
| piano, it's not rootless in a band. Which is probably another
| reason you're confused. Jazz comping should not be played
| without a band. If you're just playing jazz piano then you
| should certainly play the root at some point (unless you want
| to sound cerebral, in which case don't do that).
|
| > My advise to people who are learning music theory is to
| ignore terminology as much as they can and focus on intervals.
| Intervals are the true source of truth of harmony and
| everything else is someone's opinion as to how a particular
| structure should be named, perceived or modeled.
|
| I always tell people attempting to learn improv and piano to
| 'play what sounds good and don't play what doesn't.
| midiguy wrote:
| > but as an amateur jazz/blues/rock pianist for the past
| twenty years or something, it's not going to make you a
| better player.
|
| Knowing theory won't necessarily make you better at playing
| music in a certain style on a certain instrument. But it will
| make you a much more adaptable musician who can pick up
| styles and instruments faster, communicate musical ideas more
| efficiently, and form a mental conceptual model of a piece
| much more effectively.
|
| Particularly in music as harmonically complex jazz, if you
| can't speak the language of theory other musicians frankly
| won't be able to communicate with you on paper and thus won't
| take you very seriously.
|
| Now if you want to play for example punk or Appalachian folk
| music and nothing else, I would agree with you. But a working
| musician these days needs to be adaptable.
| jdietrich wrote:
| HN has a slightly nerdy preoccupation with theory for its own
| sake, but a solid understanding of theory is immensely
| useful, particularly in jazz. You don't _need_ it per se, but
| in an awful lot of situations it 's the difference between
| desperately faking it in the hopes that no-one will notice
| and confidently choosing from a broad palette of options that
| you know will sound good.
|
| When taught properly, modern jazz theory is a clear and
| pragmatic aid to improvisational fluency. The time investment
| needed to get to grips with theory is really quite modest in
| the overall scheme of learning to be a jazz musician.
| coliveira wrote:
| I think some basic understanding helps, but the problem is
| to think that you need to master theory, especially
| esoteric scales, to be able to play. Jazz is more
| experimentation than anything else, you play what sounds
| good. Practicing scales and chords per se will not take you
| anywhere.
| midiguy wrote:
| You can experiment all you want, but to reproduce those
| results consistently in any situation that might arise
| you need to contextualize your experimentation within the
| framework of theory so your mind has something to grasp
| onto other than 'moving this muscle makes this sound'.
| Let's say you are on the gig with a singer who wants to
| do a standard piece in Eflat and you only practiced it in
| G. Someone who knows theory well will be able to
| transpose on the spot. Someone who relies on muscle
| memory and ear will likely be pretty useless in that
| situation.
| coliveira wrote:
| > I do not understand the obsession on Hacker News and more
| broadly on music theory
|
| Agreed, jazz teachers have the tendency to overcomplicate
| things. Jazz is not that difficult (on the theory side),
| because most of what players do is to decide on the fly what
| sounds good or not. All the complex analysis of scales is
| just something that is introduced afterwards to try to
| understand what is going on, not something you need to learn.
| The only concepts that I believe you need to master to play
| jazz is basic chords sequences (II/V/I style) and voice
| leading. Everything else follows from that.
| wizofaus wrote:
| > if you see an E7 in a jazz book you shouldn't play the E
|
| "Shouldn't" seems a strange way of putting it - if you're
| fortunate enough to be playing in an ensemble with a
| dedicated bassist then sure, it's their job to provide the
| root (for any chord!) but I've never heard it suggested as a
| pianist that you should avoid doubling it...
| coliveira wrote:
| It is common in jazz for other players to avoid the root
| note in its lower position, the idea is to give more
| freedom to comp, and to avoid repeating the low note in the
| bass. Remember that unlike classical music where the
| composer can decide where each instrument will support the
| music, jazz players have to do this on the fly, so they
| need to follow some common rules like this.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I'd agree you'd normally not use the root position if
| you're playing with a bassist (unless they're soloing),
| but whether or not I avoided including the root at all
| would depend entirely on what fit well under the fingers
| and "felt right" at the time. I never imagined there was
| any sort of "rule" around it...
| anon291 wrote:
| There are no rules, which was exactly the point of my
| comment. There's no studying of systems to be had,
| because there is no system. I said "I always tell people
| attempting to learn improv and piano to 'play what sounds
| good and don't play what doesn't."
|
| The particular sentence you quoted sounds rigid on its
| own, but when put into the context of my entire comment,
| it's clear that I'm not trying to give a hard rule, but a
| general convention. Like I said... you should play what
| sounds good; and don't play what doesn't
| anon291 wrote:
| typically pianists do avoid doubling the bassist though.
| Playing jazz piano solo you do a whole different set of
| things than if you're playing together.
| [deleted]
| wizofaus wrote:
| > We have a "rootless" chord that's named after the unsounded
| root
|
| From my reading of the article there wasn't a suggestion the
| root was unsounded, just that it wasn't provided by the piano
| or guitar voicings, i.e. left to the bassist (or potentially
| even the soloist). Having said that I'd say there clearly are
| times even playing solo it makes sense to think of a particular
| chord as rootless, given what it's leading to or what it's
| substituting for, or what you might reasonably expect a bass
| player to do if they were present.
| spankalee wrote:
| As a jazz player, I have to say it's not imprecise at all. It's
| more precise in fact. The root is important, and it _is_
| (often) played, just not by those voices.
| spankalee wrote:
| To expand on this a bit, you very rarely see specific
| voicings written out in charts, at least outside of big band
| arrangements and such.
|
| The player chooses what voicings to use, often on the fly.
| Voicings like 7-9-3-5 for a ii chord are only the most basic
| one-hand voicings that can give some minimal voice leading in
| common progressions.
|
| Once a player learns a lot of different voicings, and more
| voicing concepts, they will add other notes like the 11, 13,
| and yes the root. Two-handed spread voicings on piano might
| often have a root on top, or pass through a root via voice
| leading in a progression.
|
| The simpler voicings are there for beginners to teach the
| theory, enough practice to play a bit, and to emphasize
| getting the root out of the low register where it muddies
| things with the bass.
|
| So the important piece of information is the key and chord
| quality. For an E7 as a V7 chord, it really matters that the
| root is E (and that you're in the key of, and maybe resolving
| to D) even if you don't, right at some particular moment,
| play the E.
| megmogandog wrote:
| Where are you getting diminished 7th from? If you play the 3,
| the 5, the 7, and the 9 of E7 it's G# B D F#. At least in jazz
| we call that shape a "half-diminished" chord or "minor 7 flat
| 5", and it will stay that way no matter how you invert it or
| move the voices around between the hands. You'd only get a
| diminished seven if you flat the 9th to F natural (which
| actually often happens in jazz though not in the context
| presented).
|
| The point I think you're missing is that the blog post isn't a
| music-theoretical presentation of what E7 is 'ontologically',
| it's a guide for what jazz pianists should play on that chord
| in an ensemble context. And in that context what's written here
| is very standard advice, since it's assumed the bassist will be
| playing the E. If there was no bassist, say if they were
| playing solo piano, a pianist will often play the E in the
| bass.
|
| It's also clear from the way the article is written that
| they're already assuming some basic theoretical knowledge. It's
| never explained what notes are in an E7. If you don't know
| that, yes it will be confusing, but only because the article is
| not for you.
|
| Overall I think the post would be very helpful for someone who
| knows the basics and is just getting starting playing with
| others.
| boomskats wrote:
| Not much to add, apart from to say that the discussion in this
| here comments section has been the best thing I've read on HN for
| a long time. And I generally like the discussions on here, a lot.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| Empathy is a little-taught skill that's critical to, among other
| things, teaching, storytelling, and music. When you're comping,
| you want to be sure the listener (and the soloist) know where
| they are in the song, without getting in the way. Doing it right
| requires listening closely, because you want your dynamics
| (generally) to mirror the soloist's, you want to anticipate when
| he'll go slow or take a breath because those are the best times
| to say something. As an accompanist your rhythm should be simpler
| than the drummer's or the soloist's, but should also (or rather,
| it often sounds good if you do) reflect any temporary motifs they
| introduce. If the bass is playing a pedal tone rather than the
| root, you might consider including the root more important than
| it would be otherwise (it's common otherwise to play the third
| and seventh, since the audience can typically infer the fifth
| even if it's not in the bassline).
|
| These skills, which are often called "taste", are quite
| temperament-agnostic. They would apply equally to music with 13
| notes per octave.
| tmountain wrote:
| Taste is often in short supply. In my experience, most people
| overplay. My favorite musicians would often be referred to as
| restrained. A great example would be Ed Bickert's playing on
| Live at the Garden Party. It's just him on guitar with a bass
| accompanying, and nonetheless, he doesn't really come into the
| first song for at least two minutes. Instead he just does high
| range chordal harmony to complement the bass. It's beautiful
| playing that you really don't hear very often.
| klodolph wrote:
| I think part of the reason why restraint is so valuable is
| because of the band context. If you listen to a solo guitar
| piece or piano piece that you like, it might be really
| complicated, with a million things going on. If you listen to
| a guitar or piano accompaniment track from a song you like,
| you might hear simple triads or intervals, played sparsely or
| with a simple rhythm.
| Pannoniae wrote:
| I find it funny how minimalism is considered a virtue in a
| band setting. All those New Orleans bands can manage
| perfectly with everyone just blasting whatever into the
| air..... :)
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| That is a wonderful effect. However, while I've never
| been in such a band, I suspect "whatever" wouldn't cut
| it.
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(page generated 2023-07-19 23:00 UTC)