6. developing style part 1 2 hal galper

8/15/2019 6. Developing Style Part 1 2 Hal Galper

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Historically, the technique used for bringing out your own voice hasbeen, and still is, to copy or ―model‖ the music of players from precedinggenerations. This modeling generally took two forms: A student selectedone single player to emulate or took the eclectic approach by modeling

many players. In either case, the lineage of the model or modelsemulated became an integral and evident part of each new generation‘splaying. For example, just to name a few, one can easily hear the lineagein the music of the following players: Roy Eldridge‘s influence on Dizzy,Louis Smith‘s on Bird, Duke‘s on Monk, Dizzy on Miles, Prez on SonnyRollins, Dexter on Coltrane, Errol Garner and Nat Cole on Ahmad Jamal.The list is endless. Over the years, through this process of ―selection,‖the mentor‘s influence led each player to develop their own style. In amost basic sense, individual style is developed by through eachindividual‘s application of the selective process to the history of themusic.

The Selection Process

Implicit in the preceding is that fact that to develop one‘s own voice, youhave to listen to a lot of music for a long time. You have to exposeyourself to every possible variety of jazz in order to be able to decidewho or what you want to copy. As there is over one hundred years ofmusical history to select from and as there is not enough time in any one

person‘s lifetime to select everything within that history to copy, itbecomes evident that one cannot copy everything. The question thenbecomes ―how do I decide what to copy that will bring out my ownindividual voice?‖

The selective process is guided by being sensitive to and trusting in yourintuition and emotions. Most students don‘t believe they have theinstincts to make these decisions, or that you can make a wrong decisionabout what to copy. There is no such thing as a ―wrong decision‖ when itcomes to copying. In truth, most of the materiel you‘ll copy over the years

you‘ll not ever play or throw out. Having a clear idea of how you want toplay is a rarity and, to a great degree, you find out how you want to playthough a process of elimination. You try something new and it eitherworks for you or it doesn‘t. If it works, you keep it. If it doesn‘t, you throwit out. Truly, finding your own voice is often, through a process ofelimination, a matter of finding where you don‘t want to be rather thanknowing where you are going. There is no substitute for the agonizingand on-going process of experimentation and trial and error that is a partof each player‘s learning process!


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As a teacher I‘ve always felt uncomfortable with most student‘s tendencyto diminish their discriminative abilities by casting the teacher in the roleof the ―expert‖ who knows everything, and the student as one who knowsnothing. A teacher‘s true function is to develop the individual talents of

each student as opposed to stamping out carbon copies of the teacher.In this way we are not so much teachers but more like coaches. We mustbe sensitive to and develop each student‘s own way of thinking andfeeling about music. I can‘t tell how many times I‘ve showed a studentsomething and they‘ve responded by saying ―Gee Hal, I was feelingsomething like that but didn‘t understand it until you clarified it by puttingit into words.‖ This reaction can only mean one thing; that students dosense what‘s happening, but don‘t trust themselves or believe it becausethey have put themselves into the role of ―students who don‘t knowanything.‖ The first element in developing your own style is to trust yourinstincts and emotions! With out this trust, you won‘t be able to apply thedecision making process to the selective process.

As I mentioned earlier, the elements of your individual style are alreadypart of your mind and body. No two people are the same. No two playersbody‘s are the same. The science of psycho acoustics is based on thescientific fact that no two people hear the same way either. We arealready individuals, we just don‘t know have a technique for bringing thisindividuality out.

The Mystery

It would be safe to say that we spend most of our musical careers tryingto solve the mystery of ―how do I want to play?‖ As in any mystery,finding it‘s solution is a matter of looking for musical clues. These cluesexist in the history of the music and in ourselves. In this sense we aredetectives, ever on the lookout for clues to lead us down the path ofdeveloping our own voices. This is what makes learning how to playmore of an exciting adventure than an onerous task. Learning how to

play music is a process of self-discovery, of learning more aboutourselves and how we feel about music, and for that matter, life.

The clues can be found only by trusting your instincts and emotions andlistening to a lot of music. It is a matter of using outside stimuli todiscover your internal emotional individuality.

No two people have the same life experiences. When you‘re a viewer orlistener of any artistic event, you bring your total life‘s experience to theevent along with you. The event is perceived through these experiencesand appreciated to the degree that the artist has established a


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resonance with the you as the viewer. An art can only be appreciated if abond has been created between the artist and viewer and the viewer can―relate‖ to what the artist is trying to portray on an emotional and intuitivelevel. If you don‘t relate to it, you don‘t appreciate or understand it. The

function of art is to create a greater understanding of oneself and theworld, both as artist and viewer.

For example: You‘re listening to a Coltrane solo. It will be a sure bet thatnot every idea within his solo will have a uniform emotional effect uponyou. Some ideas will strike you harder than others. Those ideas that hityou on a gut level are clues to the way you feel about music. Arelationship was established between you and Coltrane and he showedyou something about yourself. These clues must be copied and explored(I‘ll show how you explore these clues in Part 2). They will lead the way

to your own individuality. You may not know what it is in the idea thatappealed to you. You may never know. It‘s not important to know that.What is important is to follow the musical clue to where ever it takes youas a guide to solving the mystery ―how I want to play.‖

A case in point: Rather than select one particular model to emulate, Iended up, over the years, picking a series of models. When someoneasked me who‘s playing I liked, my answer was ―anyone that can playsomething I can‘t.‖ I started out copying pianists Dave Brubeck and

George Shearing. I guess at that early stage, they were the easiest forme to hear. Then I graduated to John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartetuntil I heard Red Garland. I copied everything I could about Red‘splaying for years. Now at this point, you might wonder how copyingsomeone so closely could lead you to your own individuality as opposedto stifling it?

In the 1950′s I attended the Berklee School of Music, as it was called atthe time. A wonderful man named Harry Smith, was teaching there as avocal coach and pianist. He had perfect pitch and could hear anything

under the sun. He also was very generous with his spare time and had anotation hand that was almost machine-like in it‘s perfection. At that timethere weren‘t as many published transcriptions as there are now. Youcould go to Harry and request a copy of any solo or voicings and twoweeks later he have them for you.

I‘d run to the piano and play Red‘s solo‘s and voicings along with hisrecordings. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how accurately Iemulated his playing, I sounded nothing like him. At first I found this to be

depressing. After trying this for a while the truth became evident. I didn‘thave the same hands as Red. Nor the same ears. The only thing I could


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What is important is to copy only those ideas that strike you on anemotional, gut level. Make them into exercises and learn them in alltwelve keys. Once you‘ve learned them, try to alter them to fit over othersets of changes. Redorder the components in the idea to find different

ways to put them together. By exploring that idea in as many ways aspossible you are exploring your own way of hearing and playing.

Deciding what to practice is always a challenge. When it comes topracticing use one rule and one rule only: Practice only what you like! Idon‘t mean that once you learned a lick that you play it over and overagain. I mean copy only the ideas you relate to strongly on an emotionallevel. Let your feelings be the guide. Trust them.

At this point most educators would jump up with accusations of ―heretic,

heretic!‖ Their concerns misguidedly being that by practicing only whatyou like you may not be thorough . Being thorough should not be one ofyour concerns. There is too much to work on to worry about that. Also,that‘s a particularly western attitude toward learning music that reallydoesn‘t apply here. Western attitudes tend to separate ideas into theirsmallest components in order to analyze and understand them.However, non-western thinking assumes that everything is connected toeverything else. Thus is particularly so when discussing the body-mind-emotion relationship. When you learn something new you don‘t only

improve just in that one area, you improve in all areas because the body-mind-emotion relationship is all connected together. Everything affectseverything else. There are no isolated events! They only appearislolated.

A case in point: I joined the Phils Woods Quartet in 1980. During the tento fifteen year before that I was heavily involved in learning how to playpentatonics. It took a while but eventually I became quite good at it. Asyou can see from some of my preceding anecdotes, my primary andearliest roots were based in the bebop tradition. Phil‘s band was a true

bebop band in every sense of the word yet I was still playing a lot ofpentatonics and I felt I was sounding out of context with the band.

One night we were to play a concert at a New York venue called TheBottom Line. I was grappling with this problem of being out of contextand realized I was approaching the bandstand with a preconception ofhow I wanted to play – pentatonics. As if I was saying to myself ―I‘mgoing to play this way tonight.‖ As any performing artist will attest,approaching the bandstand with any preconceptions about what you‘re

going to play can lower the quality of your performance. I already newthis but had forgotten it.


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That night, before the gig, while sitting at my kitchen table having coffeeafter my nap, I decided that I was going to approach the bandstand withthe proper attitude, no preconceptions. My attitude was going to be ―whatcomes out is what‘s happening.‖ I‘m just going to go up there and play

and what ever comes out comes out. And that‘s what I did.

What was so illuminating about that experience was that all my earlierbebop roots came out. My bebop playing had improved over the fifteenyears that I had been improving my pentatonic playing, as if I had beenplaying bebop during those intervening years!

It‘s not necessary to take a linear, straight lined approach to practicing.Jump around and practice a variety of things. It doesn‘t make anydifference what you practice as long as you improve in that area. Any

area you improve in improves all other areas of your music. Practicingshould not be boring, it should be interesting and fun. It should be aprocess of self exploration and discovery. I can‘t think of anything moreexciting in life than learning something new about yourself.

As published in Jazz Improv Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 1

In Part One the processes involved in the development of style wasdiscussed. The proposition being that style is based on the selectiveprocess . That you use your intuition and your emotions to select those

musical ideas you wish to copy. This article examines the questions: howmuch copying do you need to do and what to do with the ideas you‗vecopied?

―The Myth Of Information.―

When I first started at Berklee College in the early 50′s I was under theimpression that to become an improviser one had to learn thousandslicks, practice them in all 12 keys, and string them together when soloing.It appeared to be an awesome and mechanical task. However, over thedecadesas I learned more about the learning and playing processes, Ibegan to see these processes in a completely different light.

When I had my quintet in the 70′s, every time we went to the bandstandMike Brecker would say ‖ oh man, you‘re going to have to listen to mytwelve licks again.‖ I had a similar experience when I was playing withJohn Scofield‘s quartet . He‘d say ‖ Oh man, you‘re going to have tolisten to my seven licks all night. ‖ I thought they were kidding. Then Mikeand John would get on the bandstand and play every kind of idea under

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It wasn‘t until I examined Coltrane‘s solo on Giant Steps and isolatedseven of his solo‘s most repeated 4 note groups that I realized the key toimprovisation wasn‘t the information but the attitude toward theinformation that was crucial. I transposed these seven groups into all the

keys finding infinite ways of using them to spell out any set of changesinside or outside of a key. In a very true sense, what Mike and John weretalking about wasn‘t very far from the truth.

This truth was best expressed by the great jazz educator David Bakerwho once said ―If you want to learn how to improvise, take one bebophead a month and learn it in all twelve keys. By the end of a year you‘llend up with enough of a musical vocabulary to be an excellentimprovisor.‖ The point being that you don‘t need to collect massiveamounts of licks, you need to collect a small amount of the right kind of

information and learn how to get the most out of it.

Developing Style Part 2―The Big Picture.‖

What you get from applying the following techniques is what I call ―TheBig Picture.‖ Contrary to popular thought, you don‘t memorize a bunch oflicks and then try to play them as a solo. That‘s not improvisation, that‘scraftsmanship. You‘ll discover that although you might be making somenice sounds by playing rote ideas , you will be, guaranteed, bored totears and so will your listeners. It won‘t be what Wayne Shorter call―spontaneous composition.‖ You don‘t want to play what you practiced.That‘s not what practicing is for. Both you and your audience want theadventure of making stuff up as you go along, playing ideas you neverpracticed. That‘s why it‘s called improvisation.

I‘ve defined the goal of practicing as a quest for self knowledge. That,however, is just one of our practicing goals. Another goal of practicing isthe development of an intuitive understanding of how musical ideasrelate to each other. How they work together. It‘s the cultivation of thisunderstanding that eventually leads to an underlying concept of how

things work, or the big picture. It‘s this deep understanding of ―how thingswork‖ that you take to the bandstand with you when you play. It develops


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your musicality so that while improvising, it‘s working in the background,on an intuitive level, helping you to spontaneously make up strong ideas.

Understanding how the mind collects and manages it‘s information canbe best explained by combining two of science‘s most current discipines:―Chaos Theory,‖ and ―Information Theory.‖

The premise of Chaos Theory is that there are no isolated events. Apparently isolated events are an illusion. Though their relationship maynot be readily observable, all events are related to each other. Theyappear to be unconnected because we lack the information needed toachieve a perception or point of view with which to observe theirconnections.

Information Theory studies how the mind stores and utilizes it‘sinformation. The mind collects and stores individual bits of information. As the number of bits increase, some of them eventually combine to forma concept, which, when further combined with other concepts, becomesa perception or point of view.

For example:

If you don‘t have another idea to compare or relate it to, it‘s difficult to

understand a single idea in a vacuum. It has no meaning.

As soon as you add a second idea to a vacuum, although not readilyapparent, the possibility beings to exist that the two ideas may havesome relationship to each other and may mean something.

When you introduce a sixteen ideas, the possibilities increasesexponentially and two ideas may interelate creating the beginning ofmeaning.

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With 32 ideas in the pot you begin to see how more single and groupedideas relate to each other making the information even more meaningful.

As more connections between ideas and concepts are established, akind of ―critical mass‖ (to borrow a phrase from nuclear physics) occursand you begin to acquire an overall intuitive understanding of theinformation and get ―The Big Picture‖ of ―how things work.‖ The conceptsacquire meaning. At that point you transcend mere information collectionand become a user of the concepts derived from your overallunderstanding of the information. This is a very dynamic process. Asmore ideas are added to the concept, the concept expands exponentiallyand begins to create more new ideas on it‘s own.

Although it would appear that this process leads to more complexity itactually does the reverse by simplifying and reducing apparentlycomplex ideas to their most simple and basic elements. If a musicalconcept appears complicated it‘s because you‘re looking at it wrong.Behind every complex idea is an elegantly simple one. If an idea lookscomplicated it‘s only because you are looking at the results of what it‘ssimple basis can produce. Mathematicians use the term ―elegant‖ todescribe a formula that is in essence very simple but has the potential forinfinite complexity. For an example of this see my article ―Melody andEmbellishment‖ on my web site at halgalper.com.

It‘s generally accepted that music and mathematics are close cousins.Joseph Schillinger demonstrated how any musical idea can be reducedto a mathematical formula. This idea was further confirmed by anexperience I had in the 70‘s while performing with the Donald ByrdQuintet at Howard University.

I met a musical mathematician who was a professor at Harvard

University. He had invented a computer into which he had programmedthousands of bebop melodies. The purpose of this was to create a

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machine that you could play for and it would analyze your playing interms of it‘s strongest and weakest attributes. A musician could thenwork on eliminating the weak ideas and enhancing the strong ones. Hetold me Coltrane had played for this machine.

His theory was that any strong musical idea has, as it‘s basis, a strongmathematical formula. That what we do when improvising is intuitivelysense the strength of various ideas while playing. He suggested wasthat, and it had, from personal experience, a ―ring of truth‖ to it, when weplay a note at a certain point in time and space (the changes and meter)it‘s sets up a certain number of possible strong (and weak) choices of asecond note. Of these possibilities we select one of the strong ones. Thisnow becomes two notes in time and space and these two notes createanother set of possibilities for a strong third note. We select one of them

and the process continues. Each time you add another note to the seriesit suggests new sets of strong possible next notes based on the previousones. As we begin a solo the number of possible good note choices issmall. As we progress through a solo sensing the direction the solo istaking, the number of choices expands. As we proceed toward theresolution of a solo the number of good note choices begins to reduceagain to the point that there are only a limited number of choices left fromwhich we select a strong ending.

Graphically represented a solo takes the following shape:

Beginning of solo———————————————————————————-End of solo

Naturally, the intellect works too slow to make these decisions on aconscious level. We intuit the mathematical logic of these choices. It has

been suggested that the intuition makes decisions at a speed 20,000times faster the speed of intellectual thought. The quality of thesedecisions are based on each player‘s sense of musicality and one‘s auralimagination (hearing) working in conjunction with each other. This senseof musicality is acquired by practicing as many strong melodic ideas aspossible.

By practicing and experimenting with strong melodic ideas, we eventuallycome to realize, not only on an intuitive level but an intellectual level as

well, the elegantly simple basis‘s of various musical concepts.

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For example; in the early ‗70‘s I began to work on pentatonic playing. Istarted with the one basic component I new, the pentatonic scale. Astime went by I learned, through experimentation and suggestions fromother musicians, the second, third, fourth and fifth components of the

pentatonic concept. At first the concept seemed complicated. When Ifinally learned these five components, the concept became simpler.

―Idea Expansion―

This process of interrelating single ideas to create more infinitepossibilities of ideas can be musically demonstrated in the followingexamples.

To demonstrate how to achieve the maximization of a small number of

ideas I‘ve selected one of the most common 4-note groups used in thehistory of jazz, the major and minor triad with an added note. Taking thegroupings 1, (2), 3, 5 and 1, (2), flat 3, 5 we‗ll see how many potentiallyinfinite ways they can be used on a set of II-V‘s, descending in wholesteps, two beats per chord. The directions of the notes within eachgrouping may be either ascending or descending.

Calling the first grouping ( 1, 2, 3, 5 ) Idea ―A‖ ascending, we‘ll findplaces where ―A‖ will fit on the changes.

Over the same set of changes we‘ll use Idea ―A‖ with the notes in thegroupings desending.

Using Idea‖A‖ again, we‘ll alternate directions.

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Using Idea‖A‖ again, we‘ll reverse the alternating directions.

At this point the possible uses of only one idea have increaseddramatically.

Combine each of the above examples into a single line, when played, itbegins to take on the quality of an improvised melody.Apply the aboveprocess to the grouping 1, 2, flat 3, 5, calling it Idea ―B,‖ ascending anddescending, to increase the number of possible ideas.

Combine these groupings and directions as in examples 2-5.

At this point it appears as if we are beginning to collect quite a bit ofinformation from just two ideas. But we have just begun.

Lets combine Ideas ―A‖ and ―B‖ ascending:

Combine these groupings and directions as in examples 2-5.

Change the order of the ideas and try Ideas ―B‖ and ―A‖ ascending overthe same set of changes:

And now Ideas ―B‖ and ―A‖ ascending and desending:

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The number of ideas increase exponentially by combining the twogroupings and directions in as many way as possible. So much so thatlimitations of space will not allow us to show every possible example ofthe many ways these groupings can be combined to come up with newuses for them.

However, just to show you how this concept continues to expand, try itusing them on some altered II – V‘s.

It should be apparent by now that applying the above techniques to asmall amount of information can greatly expand it‘s potential.

Before we go any further with these techniques lets backtrack a little to

Part One and and how it relates to what we‘ve done here in Part 2. Whenyou use your emotions and intuition to select an idea to copy you‗veembarked upon an adventure of self discovery . When the precedingtechniques are applied to copied ideas, you further clarify your personalstyle, learning more about your individual way of hearing.

You‘ll note that the above triadic examples contain no chromatics.Melodies that contain other types of melodic components need to betreated with different techniques.

Except for the preceding triadic examples, most tonal melodies arecomposed of four basic components in any number, order, direction orcombination: scales, arpeggios, chromatics (appoggiaturas andapproach notes), and intervals larger than a fourth (usually brokenarpeggios) and their ―connecting intervals‖ (the interval between the lastnote of one component and the first note of the next).

The following example contains all four components:

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Analysis: An ascending interval, to a descending half step connector, to

a descending chromatic appoggiatura, to a descending half stepconnector to a ascending two-note arpeggio to a descending whole stepconnector, to a ascending four-note arpeggio, to a descending half stepconnector, to a descending three-note scale, to a chromatic approachnote, to a four-note descending scale.

Reorder the components, their direction and shape, to find other ways touse a melody‘s content.

For example:

Discover other ways to use a melody on other chord changes and chordqualities. The melody line may also be applied to other chord changes aswell.

If you change the chord and the melody doesn‘t fit you can change anymelody note to make it fit.

―Four Of Everything‖

The information can be exponentially expanded by applying thetechnique of ―Four Of Everything.‖ The concept is based upon the factthat all musical ideas are built around either basic or superimposedchord tones. That being the case, there are always at least three otherversions of a copied idea based around the other three chord tones of achord or set of chord changes. This can be best demonstrated by takingthe first example above.

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Note that the first note of the example is the 5th. of the G-7. Move thewhole idea upward to start each new version of idea on the 7th., Root,and 3rd. Of the chord

In the example above I changed some intervals to make the line fit thechord. The line works well for E-7b5 – A7 alt. as well. You can mix andmatch any of the melodic components from any version with any melodiccomponent of any other version.

This process can be extended in the extreme by trying ―Seven OfEverything‖ where you move the line up diatonically in scale steps forversions that start on every note of the scale. They may not fit the

original set of changes but they will fit some others.

―Closing Comments‖

I‘m sure you‘ve noticed that when practicing an exercise, there is atendency for the ideas you‘re working on to take on a life of their own.They branch off into directions that were not originally intended. Do notresist this tendency. Let it lead you wherever it goes. This exploratorywork will take you into surprising areas of self discovery. At a later timeyou can always come back to the original idea you were working on.Practicing then becomes more of a creative than mechanical process.

In themselves, the techniques of Idea Expansion can be intellectuallyfascinating. They can open up limitless, new melodic possibilites for thestudent. However, the focus of this process is not the mere collection ofnew melodic ideas themselves but the global effect continuedimplementation and experimentation with the process can have upon themind! The musical ideas not only serve a higher function than their merememorization, they are the tools you use to achieve general state of

musicality. It‘s what one gets from doing this kind of work, ―The Big

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Picture‖ if you will, that eventually becomes one of the most basic toolsan improvisor takes to the band stand.

6. developing style part 1 2 hal galper

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