Jazz Quiz. Omg, I failed miserably.

[Tom]

Ok, so this came up today on Jazz Advice.

He makes a very good point about the “beginner cycle.”

Ok, I am not a jazzer, but I am starting a jazz class to see if I can crack a little of my block head (testa dura). I got EVERY question wrong which just proves that I can find so much more to learn, and that my good friend JerryPH is right as usual.

Where are you on the cycle?

Are You Stuck in The Beginner Cycle? Take the Quiz • Jazzadvice

Many beginning jazz improvisers skip over ear training, visualization, jazz vocabulary, and harmony. Learn these skills for fast improvement.

www.jazzadvice.com

 

[Chickers]

TOM:
Not trying to make it comforting to you regarding your quiz results; BUT, you are not alone, you have lots of company,
we all have soo much to work on.

CHICKERS

 

[colinm]

If Art Van Damme can play from music, I can

 

[Ignacchitti]

Thanks for sharing, Tom!
That was a lot of fun!
I like how they tried for a balance between theory and listening/playing (familiarity with chord sounds and with creating melodies in your head).
Wishing there was more content!
However it seems like they intentionally went for tougher questions - only flat/sharp scales that are not the most played, and chords full of alterations...

 

[John Doe]

There are quite a few method books out there for jazz chordal structures. Though I can't seem to find it just now, the Bugs Bower chord progressions (for trumpet- but just what the doctor ordered for unning through the chords in twelve keys on the right hand) are a decent bet.

I used them on trumpet and sax- and though they are out of print (as in from the late fifties early sixties) how many "Bugs Bower" music book can there be? Ebay music suggests itself.

There are a lot of books out there for sax/trumpet/clarinet and they are excellent for leaning the structures. You'll wand to take them as chords on the keyboard after you figure hw they're made up of course. The Deiro chord method books are fine but they generally don't go much into the chords you'd be after for much jazz from the forties on. There are also a boatload of jazz chordal books out there for piano and even guitar.

If you limit yourself to accordion books- there are quite a few but most of them are sort of like wading in a pool where there's an underwater cliff from the four foot depth to the 12 foot section- you get a bit shocked. Learning the basics first really eases the transition. There's just a greater volume of instruction out there for the wider world of instruments and it can easily be used for all that it doesn't say "accordion" on the cover.

 

[Tom]

TOM:
Not trying to make it comforting to you regarding your quiz results; BUT, you are not alone, you have lots of company,
we all have soo much to work on.

CHICKERS

Thanks Chickers!!!! It’s true! If we didn’t discover so much worth working on what’s the point? Keeps us young(er).

 

[Ventura]

If Art Van Damme can play from music, I can

i agree.. saying to yourself something like
"if that a_ _ hole can do it so can i"
and sure natural ability and talent and starting when you are 4 years old
has advantages, but if ?whomever/ can do it, damn straight so can eye

AVD not only could play from, he also wrote his own charts
for the Quintet, and then for Trio the charts he used when
touring and picking up a Drummer and Bass player in local
towns worldwide.. and he knew every note and every hit
of every chart by heart and could run the session guys through
them like a pro conductor

 

[John Doe]

- but could he sing How High the Moon in F# while in the shower...

 

[Ventura]

- but could he sing How High the Moon in F# while in the shower...

what a great tune !

i actually have the iconic sheet music Les Paul Mary Ford
version, and of course we revere Ella for making the song
her own, but for me i always tried to channel the Carnegie Hall
live version from Benny Goodman with Harry James on the trumpet..
i can only sing it in my key and my chart is a MIDI i wrote from scratch,
to include the 4 bar break for "Deep purple"
back when i gigged with the 960 MIDIVOX and a rolling
rack of synth modules.. it was part of my Big Band set..

 

[John Doe]

THE bop anthem. My father made me a tape back in the sixties with 23 versions from his gargantuan record collection.

 

[losthobos]

In my experience these advertisments for jazz courses are designed to make you feel inadequate and lost just so they can extract the fee from you......they can go fucough....I don't need know salesman to tell me I'm not up to the mark, not strong enough, not beautiful enough, not cool enough, not interesting enough....blah blah...go pick on someone else...I'm already aware of my ineptitude.....and only my experiences and practices will improve the skills "I" need to express myself/grow ...

 

[32251]

I have played guitar and bass professionally all my life. That test is worthless. Just learn some jazz tunes and go play.

Me playing some jazzy wizard of oz. I made that guitar out of a $4 piece of southern yellow pine from Home Depot.bGo play!

 

[Ignacchitti]

That test is worthless. Just learn some jazz tunes and go play.

Barry Harris said something to the effect of "I don't know the explanations of those modes and theory they're talking about. BUT I KNOW HOW TO PLAY JAZZ!". Boy, that was an understatement.

 

[Ffingers]

Formalised Jazz is an oxymoron.

 

[Ventura]

then again.. some people (like Cory) can listen to a blistering
jazz improv and hear when an incorrect note is hit, and i don't
mean a wrong note or a flub, i mean not corectly following the
structure it is creating using the context it is weaving
or based upon

did that make sense ?

i guess i mean jazz means one thing to me, and the stuff i can do
and like to do, but JAZZ is a helluva lot more than i know and i
realize that and it has these structures and rules just like any other
type of music

i like the Tango's i do too, and some Pro's loved to dance when i played
and were regulars following us around town for decades, but there is a
lot of Tango way beyond me.. that Piazzola stuff you guys all got
excited over and turned into a cult is over my head.. most of that stuff doesn't
even sound like a tango to me any more than Miami Sound machine
could pretend to play a Conga !

so for some people, they follow a discipline for Jazz, for Tango, for lots of genre's
and those disciplines can be very exacting and follow lots of rules that don't
maybe make sense to a lot of us but they are legit in their own space

1,2,3,
1,2,3,
waltzing my way out of this !

 

[colinm]

I have played guitar and bass professionally all my life. That test is worthless. Just learn some jazz tunes and go play.

Me playing some jazzy wizard of oz. I made that guitar out of a $4 piece of southern yellow pine from Home Depot.bGo play!

Precisely

 

[JeffJetton]

There's just a greater volume of instruction out there for the wider world of instruments and it can easily be used for all that it doesn't say "accordion" on the cover.

A good point. Mark Levine's "The Jazz Piano Book", for example, is one of my favorites, and it has a lot that an accordion player would get something out of.

 

[JerryPH]

First I failed with a 6 out of the10 questions answered correctly.

Second, that was no beginner set of questions, not even I ter.ediate... butI do know that I could come up with 10 questions for him about classical composers and theory and I bet he will score lower thanI did on his test.

In short, please no one feel bad that you could not answer any of these questions within 2 seconds... that was a lot of BS.