jazz ukulele and improvisation techniques?

Mickey Baker

I am working my way (slowly) through Mickey Baker's Complete Course in Jazz Guitar Book 1. I was told by one of the more respected 'ukulele players in my area to buy it and just transpose everything over from guitar. The book talks about chords and lead guitar, but it is advanced stuff (what's Eb13b5b9 agian?). So you might want to give that a shot.

I have also written a small thing on soloing at: http://liveukulele.com/lessons/soloing/
 
When I was in junior high I played baritone sax. We had a jazz band class and for the life of me I could not improvize. I was so geared to reading music that I found it difficult to just make something up. As I am learning to play Ukulele, I am not eager to relearn to read music. I am hoping that learning to play by ear will make improvizing easyer. I have seen interviews of BB King and other artists who said that you need to be able to sing and then play the notes. I suppose that is why they make you play all those scales when you first start.
 
Jazz is a pretty broad term. I have heard people call all type of music jazz (even Jake Shimabukuro, which is probably arguable if you are into labels). If you mean straight ahead jazz (Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc.) I would recommend

- listening to and figuring out a lot of lines you like from recordings. Use a computer program to slow it down and loop it to make it easier.
- buying a good book of jazz standards to get familiar with idiomatic harmonic progressions.
- reading a really good on jazz theory book (Jazz Theory Book by Mark Levine is awesome and very comprehensive)

Going through a book like that can be daunting if you don't like to read, but if you can get through it it can explain almost everything you could want to know about jazz theory.

I think I would also recommend lessons with a good teacher who can help you to assimilate the music and theory faster.
 
about guitar and ukulele books... are there any good ukulele tabs and chord books out there that i can buy over the net?
 
Improvisation is not hard

In the words of Victor Wooten:

"People say to me 'I can't improvise', and I say 'but you just improvised that sentence'. If you can improvise in the English language, which involves knowing about 5000 words at least, then surely you can improvise in music, which only has 12."

Improvisation isn't about learning "licks" or "jazzy lines". If you use these then all your solos will end up sounding the same. The key to improvisation is listening to a lot of Jazz, and getting the feel of it. Once you have this feel, just experiment with what notes sound good, the first step on the road to developing your own style. DO NOT learn from books.
 
In the words of Victor Wooten:

"People say to me 'I can't improvise', and I say 'but you just improvised that sentence'. If you can improvise in the English language, which involves knowing about 5000 words at least, then surely you can improvise in music, which only has 12."

Improvisation isn't about learning "licks" or "jazzy lines". If you use these then all your solos will end up sounding the same. The key to improvisation is listening to a lot of Jazz, and getting the feel of it. Once you have this feel, just experiment with what notes sound good, the first step on the road to developing your own style. DO NOT learn from books.

You know your stuff! Thanks for the tip. I think I can improvise a bit... I'm just not all that great at it. I went through a voice lesson cd course and they had a section on improvisation. I can improvise different styles or genres with my voice, but I can't translate it into my fingers on a uke or guitar just yet :rolleyes: I'll keep workin at it!
 
You know your stuff! Thanks for the tip. I think I can improvise a bit... I'm just not all that great at it. I went through a voice lesson cd course and they had a section on improvisation. I can improvise different styles or genres with my voice, but I can't translate it into my fingers on a uke or guitar just yet :rolleyes: I'll keep workin at it!

Did you want advice on playing jazz or just improvising? I think I misunderstood the question. oops :rolleyes:
 
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Did you want advice on playing jazz or just improvising? I think I misunderstood the question. oops :rolleyes:

Both really. My goal is to just learn all I can with my uke! I've been playing aLOT lately too.

I guess as far 'jazzy' uke songs my goals are to learn a few along the lines of Takashi Nakamura's material. If I can play songs like his then I know I've learned something!
 
I am working my way (slowly) through Mickey Baker's Complete Course in Jazz Guitar Book 1. I was told by one of the more respected 'ukulele players in my area to buy it and just transpose everything over from guitar. The book talks about chords and lead guitar, but it is advanced stuff (what's Eb13b5b9 agian?). So you might want to give that a shot.

I feel a little weird about bumping a thread this old, but I'm really curious how the Mickey Baker book worked out for you. I have that book myself, and (before I read this thread, even!) I was looking through it, thinking I could adapt most of it to the uke. The thing is, I remember going through it on the guitar, and the chord shapes he teaches in the first couple of lessons are supposed (IIRC) to flow into each other. Since I can't really use the same chord forms on the ukulele, that's not going to work. And then of course finding some of the really wild altered chords is ... problematic.

But so anyway, how did Mickey Baker work for you on the ukulele, and do you have any advice for people who might be looking to try it?
 
I feel a little weird about bumping a thread this old, but I'm really curious how the Mickey Baker book worked out for you. I have that book myself, and (before I read this thread, even!) I was looking through it, thinking I could adapt most of it to the uke. The thing is, I remember going through it on the guitar, and the chord shapes he teaches in the first couple of lessons are supposed (IIRC) to flow into each other. Since I can't really use the same chord forms on the ukulele, that's not going to work. And then of course finding some of the really wild altered chords is ... problematic.

But so anyway, how did Mickey Baker work for you on the ukulele, and do you have any advice for people who might be looking to try it?

I think I probably haven't looked through that book since this thread. I really couldn't jive with the style - it was way too sterile.

For the most part you can just learn your chords from a chord book (all the jazz chords - min6, min7, 9, maj7, etc...). Then applying them you can just learn songs. But to really understand your chords I would recommend another guitar book: The Chord Factory by Jon Damian. You go through and actually learn to build your own chord book. All of the bizarre chords are covered. It's a really solid book - one that is fun and has a ton of knowledge packed into it. There are also interesting side tracks to such things as non-standard chord clusters. Highly recommended.

As far as putting it all together... I'm still trying to wrap my head around jazz. I would love to be able to play it, but for me most of it's not super exciting to listen to so I don't study it that much. There are some jazz-oriented 'ukulele song books - the 'ukulele jazz masters series by jumpin' jim. Both the Lyle Ritz and Herb Ohta one are very high quality books. But that's just learning songs. Probably the best "how jazz works" book I can think of is by Joe Pass and it's called "Joe Pass: Guitar Style". All the examples are in standard notation only and very to the point. But the basic jazz stuff is there: chord substitutions, back cycling, chromatic in-between chords, etc, and then all kinds of lead stuff which I haven't looked into much.

So I wouldn't really recommend Mickey Baker any more unless you are a super driven person who thrives on boring material for which there is little about the inner workings.

Like Ed said above, Victor Wooten is a heck of a guy to check out for any style. His "Groove Lesson" DVD is one of the most enlightening things I've ever seen about music. Jazz is made up of a lot of "wrong notes" right? Well, Victor plays a solo on the DVD using ONLY wrong notes and it is the most lovely thing. The DVD is 6 hours of deep music instruction - not just bass, though that's the instrument he and his students play. He talks about the other parts of music besides notes. Hugely helpful to me. Overall, if I could recommend one music learning tool to anybody, it would be this.

That's kind of the long way of saying "Not very well.". But hopefully there are some pointers in there about finding some other good learning materials.
 
So I wouldn't really recommend Mickey Baker any more unless you are a super driven person who thrives on boring material for which there is little about the inner workings.

You make it sound so exciting! :D

Seriously, though, I'll have to check out the Joe Pass book and the Victor Wooten DVD. Thanks for the heads up.

Also, thanks for saving me more time struggling with Micky Baker. :)
 
The number 1 principal I've learned regarding improv?

It's primarily about...

RHYTHM!

Work on your rhythmic chops before trying too hard on melody:

http://playukulelebyear.blogspot.com/2010/03/3-questions-with-australias-azo-bell.html

Number 1 exercise to practice improv?

CALL & ECHO / CALL & RESPONSE

Try it: Scat a 2-bar phrase, then play it on your uke; scat the same 2-bar phrase, then respond to it on your uke like a conversation.

Of course, for a beginner, there is that 2-bar delay between scatting and playing. The ultimate goal for an improvisor?

SCAT AND PLAY SIMULTANEOUSLY

I wrote up a lesson on beginner's improv some months ago:
http://files.meetup.com/493577/Basic Improvisation 1.pdf

ALL the rest: learning SCALES, learning CHORDS, etc... are peripheral to the one principal and one exercise above and should be worked around them. Use the RHYTHM principal and the CALL & RESPONSE exercise with every book or video you buy. E.g. the Aebersold vol. 3 is excellent to practice call and response to. I like all the Aebersold CDs to jam with if you are a lonely guy like me with not many people to jam with. Another useful book that progressively takes one through call/response and similar tools is John LaPorta's 'A Guide to Jazz Improvisation'. And there are a gazillion books regarding jazz chords (extensions and alterations).

And of course, don't practice the above in isolation but learn it with REPERTOIRE:

1) blues
2) rhythm changes
etc... the standards... music you like... etc

In summary:
RHYTHM
CALL & RESPONSE
REPERTOIRE
 
PS. Of course. It might take SOME TIME before you are jamming along and & responding to a Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Wes Montgomery, Azo Bell, Joe Pass, Ohta san or Lyle Ritz recording... ;=)
 
I've used the Mickey Baker book for learning some basics in jazz on guitar. It is an extremely difficult resource even on guitar (I can't imagine how difficult transposing it would really be).

A good thread and musical development site for jazz is www.jazzguitar.be. I've been there for a while and I learn a ton (and there are a few ukers hiding in the forums).

I could boil it down to you needing to learn two things to start your way into jazz:

1) Comping - Better known as accompanying. This involves learning how chord voicings interact and how rhythm creates a background for a soloist.

2) Soloing - Not exactly limited to improve.

For the first, I would suggest getting some chords to Satin Doll (another good one is I've Got Rhythm) and playing around with it until you can comfortably play the song from beginning to end and sing along. Make sure you try really hard to play the extended harmonies (you know, the chords that have things like "9" or "13" on them). There are plenty of resources out there that can help you learn how to create those chords.

For the second, you need to first learn to play a melody. Try Satin Doll again and just play the melody. Then, start adding ideas (or "motives") to the line and try to get farther away from the original melody before coming back. It will take a lot of practice to really develop your ear for this, but it is totally worth it.

Also, you may want to record yourself or otherwise find a way to have someone comp for you. I like using electronic resources for this since I'm shy when I learn. The most popular one out there is Band In A Box (BIAB), but it is expensive and a little overwhelming to start with. I use a couple of other ones that you can find around. One of the best free ones is www.djangolizer.ch. It is web based and mostly free.

In the long run, learn your music theory. It will help. You don't necessarily need to learn to sight read music notation, but it can help. Keep at it and have fun.

~DB
 
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