| LearnJazzPiano.com archives: Freedom vs. planning in jazz | |
| mooondancer -- 08/03/2004, 14:38:28 -- #6225 | |
| I am leading a jazz group for the first time on piano. For anyone more experienced, I want to know how much you plan out your arrangements as opposed to listening and letting an arrangement emerge during performance? I have heard that during some of his best years Miles Davis would give outlines to his players minutes before they played, saying maybe "D minor". Or "G to F#". Then he would count them off and see what happened. Of course this does not guarantee a good performance unless your musicians are top-caliber with lots of ideas. But over-arrangement can be even worse. I have been kind of tightly arranging my pieces, giving directions for what should happen in each chorus, as in who plays and basically the sound I want from them. The problem with this is we have to remember long arrangements, and because we don't have to listen closely to pick up each others' ideas, we don't. They are already planned. But is it safe to depend on the group to spontaneously change direction and make up its own arrangement? I suppose it depends on the skill of the musicians, and also the type of tune -- a salsa number with exacting rhythms vs. a blues or Footprints. I'm asking, what kind of directions do you give your musicians before you play, and how much freedom? | |
| smg -- 08/03/2004, 15:14:11 -- #6228 | |
| Hey MD,see you've been posting a lot of stuff here;good luck re-leading this ensemble/music in general....there's some stuff on the old forum about all the interpersonal aspects of this you might want to check out.......(use "search"under 'group playing situations/Dave Liebman'..as far as the subject here- Miles's bands in the 70's and beyond that dealt with the concepts you're talking about were in fact (as you suggest) based musically on structural thinking that allowed for this type of thing..my advice to you as a former bandleader would be to always tape your sessions and use whatever develops spontaneously,working that into the groups' approach for that song..if you get a chance to hire cats that are much more advanced than you (like I did for some better paying gigs as "sidemen"),the situation quickly changes into you trying to keep up as they create new arrangemnts on the spot,often involving reharmonization/recomposition that you can use when you get back to being "the leader" of your regular group..... Check out "360 degrees" for more.............. | |
| mooondancer -- 08/04/2004, 23:00:34 -- #6263 | |
| Good advice to tape our sessions. I was surprised today when I rehearsed. Things actually do develop spontaneously. I turned my keyboard way down so I could listen better -- we have an excellent drummer and two auxillary percussion players in addition to a bass, so I have a lot to listen to. This made all the difference because we can change direction just by listening to one person's idea. I would love to play with some people much better than me, but I don't think I'll have a chance like that in the near future. Maybe I could just hang out in Chicago :) | |
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