Jazz standards

G

Grolubao

Senior Member
Hi guys,

I'm starting with Jazz recently but of course I'm overwhelmed with the sheer amount of information.

Regarding the Jazz Standards does a drummer really need to know them all from the Real Book or some are more staple than others? Is there such a list?


Thanks
 
Hi,
I don`t think that knowing standards is mandatory for jazz players but it of course helps. These tunes became standards for some particlar reason - other jazz players considered they to be great because of melodies, harmony, propably because of some great performance.
For begining jazz adventure I recomend you such a thing. Because jazz playing include so much styles and approaches it will be good to start from some classics like early Miles, Monk etc. Then you will hear basic ideas of jazz drumming and get familiar with standards.
In my opinion to play jazz you need to develop "soft touch" and learn to avoid some phrases which are good for rock or pop and listening to standards played by masters will help you for sure.
 
As a drummer, recognizing song forms can get you a long way. Most standards are either in a blues form or 32 bar AABA (these can be swing, straight 8 or latin). So if you've played any other instruments, hearing the cord changes will help you knowing where you are in the tune. This takes a bit of training. But it is definitely worth it when you go to a jam and all the others agree on a tune that you didn't catch the name of or can't recognize before they start taking choruses (playing solos, if you're not familiar with the term). I've been there.

Once you're familiar with or know the song forms, you start to recognize similarities between tunes and hear when it starts and ends. And if you're lucky enough to have sheet music, you start seeing things like "Oh, this is an AABA-song", "Oh, this is actually a 16-bar blues" or "Aha, see what you did there Gillespie. It's an AABA, where A is latin and B is swung. And there's a tag at the end, and it's played after the head and each solo".

As for tunes more staple than others, yes there are. Here are a few to get you started:
- All the things you are
- All Blues
- Angel Eyes
- Autumn Leaves
- Blue Bossa
- Blue Monk
- Footprints
- Girl from Ipanema
- Love For Sale
- Mr P.C.
- My Funny Valentine
- Night in Tunisia
- Someday my prince will come
- Somewhere over the rainbow
- St. Thomas
- Straight, no chaser


I've skipped a lot of tunes, and it seems to me that there are different tunes more staple that others from jam session to jam session. But these are some of the ones that I've come across more often than others. In any case, the best thing is to know as many as possible and being able to fake it when you don't know it (drummers possibly have the easiest time here, unless it's a tune like Night In Tunisia). If you're planning to go to a jam session that is. You could also always go and not play the first time you're there. Just listen and talk to the folks who are playing. For more tunes, just google something like "most played jazz standards". Once you get to know these tunes, I highly recommend learning some more ;-)
 
In my opinion, there's absolutely no substitution for listening to the music to learn the music. You need to spend your time listening, listening and listening some more. Like many others, I grew up listening to this music and continue to do more each and every day. When I say listen, I'm talking about active listening. Not having it on as background music. Get involved in the recording as you would watching your favorite movie.

Get to know the history by getting to know the music and the players that created it.

Start at Louis Armstrong with the Hot 5's and Hot 7's and work your way up from there. Get to know what came from New Orleans, Chicago and New York. This will cover much ground. Small group jazz to big band back to small group.

Yes, it will help to get a Real Book and perhaps follow along the head and learning the structure of the song. But, in the real world recordings there are many times where the arrangement of what's actually played may differ from what is written in the Real Book.

If you want to get a sense of what happened from a high level historical perspective, while it's not a perfect collection, the Ken Burns Jazz DVD set will help. It doesn't cover everything (as it couldn't), may miss a lot, but it also does cover a lot.

Want to know drummers? Check out Danny Gottlieb's book on the Evolution of Jazz Drumming.

Listen to the PAS interview recordings with Mel Lewis http://www.pas.org/experience/oralhistory/mellewis.aspx these are free and a breadth of information.

Most importantly, listen to the music and watch recordings of them play it on YT. Access to information like this has never been easier.
 
dmacc said:
In my opinion, there's absolutely no substitution for listening to the music to learn the music. You need to spend your time listening, listening and listening some more. Like many others, I grew up listening to this music and continue to do more each and every day
Click to expand...


Amen.

Not directed at the poster, but maybe because I'm 50 plus, and an old fart, and there's a generational difference in how learning happened when i was growing up, but now I know so many young musicians today, who need a "HOW TO" or " ...IN 30 DAYS".. way of absorbing things.

I know young guys who are learning the alto saxophone, piano theory, jazz, learning & transcribing Coltrane solos, while playing pop, and classical gigs at the same time. AND.. these guys aint that good... at any of the above. They seem very confident and think that the more things they tap into, the richer their education will be.

The answer is so simple really. Listen, listen and listen.

Each time you'll hear new things-and the more things you hear, you'll start to make connections between tunes, eras, styles, the popular stuff, the stuff musicians thought was cool etc etc.

Let that beetlejuice soak deep under your skin and into your soul.Then you'll know what to do with.

( Shitze, I sound like a hippie.. )



...
 
dmacc said:
In my opinion, there's absolutely no substitution for listening to the music to learn the music. You need to spend your time listening, listening and listening some more. Like many others, I grew up listening to this music and continue to do more each and every day. When I say listen, I'm talking about active listening. Not having it on as background music. Get involved in the recording as you would watching your favorite movie.

Get to know the history by getting to know the music and the players that created it.

Start at Louis Armstrong with the Hot 5's and Hot 7's and work your way up from there. Get to know what came from New Orleans, Chicago and New York. This will cover much ground. Small group jazz to big band back to small group.

Yes, it will help to get a Real Book and perhaps follow along the head and learning the structure of the song. But, in the real world recordings there are many times where the arrangement of what's actually played may differ from what is written in the Real Book.

If you want to get a sense of what happened from a high level historical perspective, while it's not a perfect collection, the Ken Burns Jazz DVD set will help. It doesn't cover everything (as it couldn't), may miss a lot, but it also does cover a lot.

Want to know drummers? Check out Danny Gottlieb's book on the Evolution of Jazz Drumming.

Listen to the PAS interview recordings with Mel Lewis http://www.pas.org/experience/oralhistory/mellewis.aspx these are free and a breadth of information.

Most importantly, listen to the music and watch recordings of them play it on YT. Access to information like this has never been easier.
Click to expand...

Dave nailed it to the wall

listen , listen, listen !!!

there are a whole lot of things that go into the development of becoming a jazz player .......but in the end there is no substitute for knowing melodies

the more melodies you know the more developed and adaptable your vocabulary will be

this shouldn't be a chore nor should it feel like cramming for a test

if you don't enjoy the process of listening and absorbing the tunes it's possible that jazz is not for you

with that I'll leave you with one of my favorite versions of one of my favorite standards

listen to the melody...its F'n beautiful the way the band speaks to each other .......something magical was captured here

Charlie Persip with some wonderful tasteful drumming on this date

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4H9k-d9fBk
 
Assuming they've kept all of the weird late 60's/70's stuff in the current edition, you should know about half the tunes in the Real Book. You figure out which ones those are by hanging out and playing with people, listening to a lot of records, and seeing what other people in your town are playing. That's the natural process for acquiring new tunes. Don't start with a list out of a book; start by going to some people's gigs and seeing what they're playing, and learn those. Or set up a session and see what the others want to play.

Actually, I'm noticing that a lot of younger players-- even ones with jazz studies degrees-- don't know a lot of tunes at all. So don't let fear of being the one clueless guy stop you from approaching people to play.
 
Awesome information! Thank you guys, I definitely need to connect with all the Jazz style by listening which is something I admittedly don't do that often.

Thank you all, I'll be keeping this as a reference!
 
toddbishop said:
Don't start with a list out of a book; start by going to some people's gigs and seeing what they're playing, and learn those. Or set up a session and see what the others want to play.

Actually, I'm noticing that a lot of younger players-- even ones with jazz studies degrees-- don't know a lot of tunes at all. So don't let fear of being the one clueless guy stop you from approaching people to play.
Click to expand...

^^^ ever wish you included something in your own post when someone else says it?^^^^

yeah....... that just happened to me



oh and go buy "little played little bird" by the Todd Bishop group if you want to hear some killing jazz

sorry ....just had to plug it Todd
 
I would get books of songs by the following composers: George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers and Irving Berlin. Sit at the piano and read through them, none of these songs were written as jazz numbers. Most of them were not written with swung 8ths. Getting to know them in their original form will help alot in recognizing the variety of interpretation and deviation that occurs when you jazz up a number. It can be very surprising. It also helps you learn the chords and song structure and to recognize common chord substitutions.
 
I agree with listening to the greats play tunes. Blue Note records recorded very many jazz artists. I would listen to the recordings made in the 50's and 60's first, then dig back into
roots. There were other record companies like Prestige and Savoy that also recorded many of the jazz greats.

The reason the Real Book became popular was that if became a collection of tunes that "if everybody had that book" students of jazz could take to jams etc and everybody would have the same tunes, chords, melody etc. Before the "Real Book", a lot of time was spent at jams trying to find out what tune each other could try and work on. The book saved time with that. The downside has been that decades later too many students of jazz only play what is in the various Real Books. There are thousands of other great tunes "out there".

Still, since it is in widespread use, it behooves you to know what's in it and listen to the recordings of those tunes.

Have Fun!
 
Yes, you're going to help yourself a great deal by getting familiar with the standards. I wish it wasn't so, because I hate the standards, they're musty and predictable and they smell bad, but if you want to be a jazz musician wouldn't you want to learn that important part of its history, and more important, wouldn't you want to be able to play those classic tunes when you're called to do so?
 
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