10 ms·

Jazz Comping (2021)

122 points by RickHull 3y ago

gnulinux 3y ago
[deleted] Sorry, I think what I said was misunderstood and was not very accurate, so I made the decision to delete it.
- epiccoleman 3y ago
  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.
- blurbleblurble 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    [deleted]
- anon291 3y ago
  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.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    > 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...
- spankalee 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  > 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.
- megmogandog 3y ago
  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.
m3kw9 3y ago
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?
- sitzkrieg 3y ago
  rocksmith works like this i think
- cevn 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    Parrot playing, I do that but I’m only able to play that song and not really improvise much. Any ideas?
    - gerhardi 3y ago
      Learn scales. When you understand and know the scale of the song you can quickly start improvising then.
      - Jeff_Brown 3y ago
        Scales are great -- but before or above that, I would say ear train. It's a secret (literally -- shockingly few musicians know about it given how useful it is) weapon. It only takes 15 minutes a day for a few months to be able to hear a melody and know what's being played (at least in relative terms -- perfect pitch is harder but unnecessary). After that you can literally study by simply listening to music, which is both more rewarding and more enjoyable than practicing patterns. (Okay, technically a song is a pattern. But it's a really nice one.)
Jeff_Brown 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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 3y ago
      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..... :)
Pannoniae 3y ago
I find it funny how jazz piano players have stopped using their left hand since 1950 or so;)
- myfavoritetings 3y ago
  I don't understand this comment
  - staunton 3y ago
    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 3y ago
    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!)
    - tunesmith 3y ago
      This sounds more like the difference between playing solo and playing in a combo. If you're playing solo these days, you pretty much have to switch between a variety of these styles in an artful way (which I find really freaking difficult). Even pre-bop, like singing Great American Songbook stuff while playing the piano, requires this. Like, for the head while you're singing you can get by on bass and chords while you sing the melody, but when it's time for your piano solo, you're basically trying to fit three responsibilities in two hands. Stride is only one way to do that, and you really only want hints of it.
boomskats 3y ago
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 3y ago
  Right? It's almost enough to make you want to reach out and make contact with some people ...
jancsika 3y ago
> Sometimes this would include a vibraphone (Gary Burton could really comp), or even a jazz harp. Citation needed for the jazz harpist comping chords. (No points for solo jazz harping-- only for jazz harping from inside the rhythm section.)
- defrost 3y ago
  Possibly heard in some of Valérie Milot ensemble work, I have no example to hand .. but she has the discipline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdUztFVwi3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdUztFVwi3I More seriously: Jakez Francois https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA7mM128jqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA7mM128jqk comping behind a piano solo https://youtu.be/Z9goA1ZhElg?t=185 https://youtu.be/Z9goA1ZhElg?t=185
  - jancsika 3y ago
    The first link is solo groove-based, and in the 2nd the harpist is playing what sounds like a written out accompaniment to their own melody. (Or even if it's improvised it's a kind of ostinato pattern.) Ok, that third link is a harpist actually comping. Boy, that's tough! The pianist has to drop their left-hand and even play rather quietly in their right hand so that you can hear the chords the harpist is comping. It makes me think of Michael McKean as the harpist bandleader in Primetime Glick, where the audience nearly never hears any harp sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMTXtmhVRr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMTXtmhVRr4
    - defrost 3y ago
      > Ok, that third link is a harpist actually comping. The first two were * tongue in cheek * on the path to ... I left them in as evidence of the evolution of my response to your challenge .. which was a interesting one, thanks for that. Nice response, although it actually reminded me of more of the many great works by Dave Brubeck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qs1J612nZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qs1J612nZs
electrondood 3y ago
This is an outstanding post. Well done.
iainctduncan 3y ago
If you are interested in jazz piano comping on a deep level, the best books are the Jeb Patton books, "An approach to comping" Vol 1 and 2. Nothing else comes close in its thoroughness. Also, the online course site openstudiojazz.com has first rate courses.
- zarzavat 3y ago
  Open Studio is one of the best things to happen to jazz piano in a long time. Peter Martin is one of the few “old” jazz piano masters still active. He is a highly practical player who (self-admittedly) doesn’t doesn’t know theory that well, which is the perfect antidote to the more theoretical Berklee-method educators (e.g. Adam Neely) that dominate the scene.
  - colanderman 3y ago
    The theory-heavy approach has seemed stranger to me the older I've gotten. Watching a lot of improvisational players in jazz and jazz-adjacent genres, a lot of their playing seems to be "structural" (based on physically where certain notes are, and the direction they're moving in) rather than theory-based. Think "just hold the octave while walking this triad down chromatically" vs. a reasoned series of extended chord resolutions.
- gtani 3y ago
  Thanks for that OS jazz link, will investigate. These days i play maybe a couple days a week, Oscar Peterson's Minuets and Etudes and a pile of guitar books by Mimi Fox, Doug Munro and others. My top-down approach is to work books as best i can, i need to incorporate "bottom up" which is listen (50x if necessary) and transcribe. (and i have another TODO for Barry Harris' books/vids etc)
  - iainctduncan 3y ago
    BTW, there are very good videos on open studios on the Barry Harris approach too. One of the teachers is really into it.

Jazz Comping (2021)

122 points by RickHull 3y ago

gnulinux 3y ago

[deleted] Sorry, I think what I said was misunderstood and was not very accurate, so I made the decision to delete it.

epiccoleman 3y ago
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.
blurbleblurble 3y ago
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 3y ago
  [deleted]
anon291 3y ago
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.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wizofaus 3y ago
  > 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...
spankalee 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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.
wizofaus 3y ago
> 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.
megmogandog 3y ago
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.

m3kw9 3y ago

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?

sitzkrieg 3y ago
rocksmith works like this i think
cevn 3y ago
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 3y ago
  Parrot playing, I do that but I’m only able to play that song and not really improvise much. Any ideas?
  - gerhardi 3y ago
    Learn scales. When you understand and know the scale of the song you can quickly start improvising then.
    - Jeff_Brown 3y ago
      Scales are great -- but before or above that, I would say ear train. It's a secret (literally -- shockingly few musicians know about it given how useful it is) weapon. It only takes 15 minutes a day for a few months to be able to hear a melody and know what's being played (at least in relative terms -- perfect pitch is harder but unnecessary). After that you can literally study by simply listening to music, which is both more rewarding and more enjoyable than practicing patterns. (Okay, technically a song is a pattern. But it's a really nice one.)

Jeff_Brown 3y ago

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 3y ago
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 3y ago
  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 3y ago
    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..... :)

Pannoniae 3y ago

I find it funny how jazz piano players have stopped using their left hand since 1950 or so;)

myfavoritetings 3y ago
I don't understand this comment
- staunton 3y ago
  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 3y ago
  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!)
  - tunesmith 3y ago
    This sounds more like the difference between playing solo and playing in a combo. If you're playing solo these days, you pretty much have to switch between a variety of these styles in an artful way (which I find really freaking difficult). Even pre-bop, like singing Great American Songbook stuff while playing the piano, requires this. Like, for the head while you're singing you can get by on bass and chords while you sing the melody, but when it's time for your piano solo, you're basically trying to fit three responsibilities in two hands. Stride is only one way to do that, and you really only want hints of it.

boomskats 3y ago

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 3y ago
Right? It's almost enough to make you want to reach out and make contact with some people ...

jancsika 3y ago

> Sometimes this would include a vibraphone (Gary Burton could really comp), or even a jazz harp. Citation needed for the jazz harpist comping chords. (No points for solo jazz harping-- only for jazz harping from inside the rhythm section.)

defrost 3y ago
Possibly heard in some of Valérie Milot ensemble work, I have no example to hand .. but she has the discipline. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdUztFVwi3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdUztFVwi3I More seriously: Jakez Francois https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA7mM128jqk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA7mM128jqk comping behind a piano solo https://youtu.be/Z9goA1ZhElg?t=185 https://youtu.be/Z9goA1ZhElg?t=185
- jancsika 3y ago
  The first link is solo groove-based, and in the 2nd the harpist is playing what sounds like a written out accompaniment to their own melody. (Or even if it's improvised it's a kind of ostinato pattern.) Ok, that third link is a harpist actually comping. Boy, that's tough! The pianist has to drop their left-hand and even play rather quietly in their right hand so that you can hear the chords the harpist is comping. It makes me think of Michael McKean as the harpist bandleader in Primetime Glick, where the audience nearly never hears any harp sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMTXtmhVRr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMTXtmhVRr4
  - defrost 3y ago
    > Ok, that third link is a harpist actually comping. The first two were * tongue in cheek * on the path to ... I left them in as evidence of the evolution of my response to your challenge .. which was a interesting one, thanks for that. Nice response, although it actually reminded me of more of the many great works by Dave Brubeck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qs1J612nZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qs1J612nZs

electrondood 3y ago

This is an outstanding post. Well done.

iainctduncan 3y ago

If you are interested in jazz piano comping on a deep level, the best books are the Jeb Patton books, "An approach to comping" Vol 1 and 2. Nothing else comes close in its thoroughness. Also, the online course site openstudiojazz.com has first rate courses.

zarzavat 3y ago
Open Studio is one of the best things to happen to jazz piano in a long time. Peter Martin is one of the few “old” jazz piano masters still active. He is a highly practical player who (self-admittedly) doesn’t doesn’t know theory that well, which is the perfect antidote to the more theoretical Berklee-method educators (e.g. Adam Neely) that dominate the scene.
- colanderman 3y ago
  The theory-heavy approach has seemed stranger to me the older I've gotten. Watching a lot of improvisational players in jazz and jazz-adjacent genres, a lot of their playing seems to be "structural" (based on physically where certain notes are, and the direction they're moving in) rather than theory-based. Think "just hold the octave while walking this triad down chromatically" vs. a reasoned series of extended chord resolutions.
gtani 3y ago
Thanks for that OS jazz link, will investigate. These days i play maybe a couple days a week, Oscar Peterson's Minuets and Etudes and a pile of guitar books by Mimi Fox, Doug Munro and others. My top-down approach is to work books as best i can, i need to incorporate "bottom up" which is listen (50x if necessary) and transcribe. (and i have another TODO for Barry Harris' books/vids etc)
- iainctduncan 3y ago
  BTW, there are very good videos on open studios on the Barry Harris approach too. One of the teachers is really into it.