vesterberg.se

For a long time I have had the desire to branch out to play jazz. My present band has a steady flow of rock cover gigs and I do enjoy that and will continue with that. But I want to play jazz also. I listened much to jazz, fusion and funk when I was younger. Weather Report was my favorite. Lately I have explored jazz more and all of its combinations with other genres. I like to listen to the improvisational and unpredictable nature of jazz.

Last summer I decided to start my journey into playing jazz by working through some books of Ed Friedland: Building Walking Bass Lines, Expanding Walking Bass Lines and Jazz Bass. Here comes a brief report.

By now I am have almost finished Building Walking Bass Lines and I have done selected parts in the other books. I really like the way Ed writes and take things one step at a time. He also shares a lot about what is taking place in a jazz gig; he explains the common forms and unspoken jazz conventions.

I found out that I had to raise my level of awareness and concentration when playing. I learned to play bass mostly by following tabs and sheets rather than by jamming with others or playing by ear and I really had to work on breaking out. Sometimes when I did not have enough level of attention, I got frustrated and felt like getting nowhere. Just like I have to warm up my fingers, before playing complicated and fast songs I have to “warm up” my mind and seek awareness. Just as relaxation is the key for my fingers, so relaxation seems a key ingredient in awareness. You cannot force yourself. Probably it will get easier to enter into this state and easier to stay there despite distractions as time goes by. Plan quality time for your practice and try to get rid of distractions.

Ed Friedland lays out how to start with roots and fifths, how to add chromatic, dominant and scale approach notes. Then he moves on to scale wise motion, arpeggios, indirect resolutions and other stuff. To me it was important not to skip the simple things, but to make sure that I played all possible combinations all over the fretboard again and again. Do the small things many times and often. I had to deemphasize learning his lines and instead concentrate on creating my own lines on the fly. I want to play purposefully and understand the principles and not just play by chance. The same learning rules seems to apply on how to play improvisational as in other areas. Divide the task into smaller units that you can understand and master and then put them back together.

Persistence and even stubbornness is important ingredients. Each one has to find his personal way and the best way to learn. Only if we really desire something very much, we will keep holding on to our dreams and see them come to pass.

I am always looking for ways to effectively use my time in learning and one idea I had was to record Ed’s comments by reading them myself from the book. After creating mp3’s of comments and tracks I copied them to my mp3-player and listened to them while biking to my work. This was particularly useful regarding the Jazz Bass book in which he discusses different styles, intros and endings with tracks as examples. After a while I got the explanations and tracks into my system and it was easy to play the examples and apply them. This is a good use of biking time.

Recording your playing on your computer while listening to Ed’s playing makes it possible to compare even the wave-shapes of the reference playing and your own playing. Extreme? Perhaps. But a great way to pinpoint the attack, decay and the placement of notes. I have done this while learning from other sources, but I found out that I had to avoid recording and listening for these details this time. I wanted to put emphasis on finding and playing notes and not how I formed them.

I have made it to a project to dig out, listen to and learn as many “jazz standards” as possible. I found this site helpful. By listening closely to vocalists and other instrumentalists, not only bass players, I have learned a lot about how to play and phrase tastefully. Immerse yourself with what you want to play.

I set some goals for myself to be reached by July 2007. Why do I write about this? There might be someone out there that is doing the same journey. Keep on sailing…