Achieve Rapid Progress
February 26, 2004 in Articles
doc-stl writes “Here is my method. It has reaped tremendous rewards. 1 Get a Novak machine. This slows down the song to 50% Start playing the melodies and solos as a whole and increase the tempo as your skill level improves. Take on one new song a month. This gives yourself plenty of time at each practice to go over the songs/solos you have learned (review a lot, go forward a little) What about scales, and patterns and this and that? What about it? The audience does not care if you know the blues in all keys. This is wasting our time. If the song you are working on for the month requires you to know D7 scales and patterns then focus you effort on that. This will round you out more. You will have Melody, Scales and phrasing concept as they relate to the songs you are learning. You will learn by example from the masters and your theory vocabulary will be directly proportionate to your melodic vocabulary. I have done this over the last three years and I know from others responses and comments that I am on the right pathway. I truly believe this is the way the masters did it.”
I wasn’t able to find this “Novak” machine. However, there are a number of great software programs that will slow things down and keep the pitch the same. And a couple of hardware ones as well. Jazz Books has some.
Are you advocating strictly playing by ear then? I think being able to work things out by ear is a great skill. BUT, that is not the only skill you should have. Being able to READ music is essential, as is being able to look at a set of chord changes and intelligently approach them (IE: know that 4 bars here on a song is really a messed up ii-v-i progression). You need to be fluent in all aspects of music.
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humbleseat said on February 27, 2004
Transcribe! is a good piece of software for slowing things down. Speaking of making progress, has anyone worked with Hal Crook’s method “How To Improvise”? It reminds me of what you’re saying about isolating things and working on one particular aspect of it.
Donsta said on February 27, 2004
I’m using a Sony Superscope psd 230 for most of my transcibing these days. You can set the percentage of slowdown on this machine. Often just slowing things down by 15 or 20% does the trick. It will go much slower but as you do so the sound becomes distorted. They are expensive machines but I’m using mine daily so it’s worth it. If you don’t have the funds and don’t mind being tied down to your computer then check out software that Reed Kotler has developed.
The software is very good. I just prefer to use a machine that is smaller than my laptop.
ericdano said on February 27, 2004
Hal Crooks book is very good. I really like his motivic way of approaching soloing.
zibalatz said on February 28, 2004
Although I agree that you are on the right path and that ear-training/playing-by-ear is the single most important thing for your development, there are many ways to develop it. Transcribing and playing with recordings is one way. Another way is to learn a little theory (e.g.: scales etc) and use that to develop your ears to hear those things. Someone once said that the purpose of theory is to train your instincts, and, to a point, I agree with that.
I have to say I’m quite certain that the “masters” (a bit of a generalization here…) had both excellent ears and excellent theoretical backgrounds. Whether their develop was lead by their ears first or their theory first is a different question- I’d wager a guess that it was a bit of both at the same time.
Also, as far as being able to play in all keys, you might think it useless, but one day you’ll show up to the gig and someone will call a tune in an unusual key… it’ll be quite useful if you are already used to playing in these unusual keys. (and if you’re thinking that this particular example is unlikely, you haven’t played with enough singers yet!)
Candlebain said on February 29, 2004
Wow…I used to think that rapid progress was possible…
I’ve been studying with some great players this last year (Garzone, Bergonzi, Brookmeyer…) and what I’ve gotten from them is that it’s maturity in your playing that separates you from everyone else. Problem is, that takes growing up and experiencing things…lots of time…
More on topic…you have to have great ears, and by the same token, you have to know your theory. They supplement each other. Ear players miss alot of nuances in the changes and theory obsessives tend to over-think their playing (excessive overgeneralization, I know). The best players I’ve heard (Coltrane, Miles, Rollins, Bird…) all knew their theory but put it into to practice with their ears. It doesn’t matter what came first. They all had/have both working for them at an instinctual level. Strive for that and know that it takes most of us years to get there.
Bottom line, I think this method (Novak thing…) has a lot of merit if you try and hear it and then figure out why it worked and where it worked so that you can do it again in other contexts. …my two cents…
ziquje said on September 1, 2009
For those of you who use linux OS, you might take a look at a free program called “audacity”. It can not only slow the tempo by percentages (i.e 10% slower, 50% slower, etc…) without altering the pitch, but it can also transpose the song to higher or lower keys. After all that you can then export the song as an mp3! Did I mention it was free.
So what I will do is first slow down a song and save it as an mp3 to transcribe the solo. I will then transpose the solo into another key. I will then transpose the song in a different key and export it as an mp3. Then I’ll practice the transposed solo along with the transposed song.
While it is free, (as I have previously mentioned), you have to be familiar with linux. I’m currently running it in Fedora Core 9. It might be possible to run it in MAC, but I’m not sure since I don’t us those machines.
admin said on September 1, 2009
Though audicty is available for all platforms, I don’t think the slow down part is nearly as good as The Amazing Slowdowner. That has the best slowing down of anything I’ve tried that costs less than $30.
Though the time stretching tools in Pro Tools 8 is amazing