hi it's Geoff Chalmers here from discoverdoublebass.com which is the
home of online courses lessons and interviews all designed to help you learn the double bass
and i'm joined today by one of our faculty at one of our jazz experts somebody who is a wonderful
player he's known for his work with the WDR big band with Jamie Aebersold he was a columnist for
bass player magazine for over 25 years i think and he is the author of the jazz bass book which
is essential reading for any serious student of the double bass so let's welcome John Goldsby
John fantastic to have you here yeah thanks Geoff nice to be here well it's just brilliant to have
you back for a second time we've been filming uh this week covering a wide range of lessons on jazz
bass and we reached out to the audience to ask for questions and i had a question from Antonio
who was basically wanting to know your approach to improvising over jazz standards and kind of what
you're thinking about in terms of memorizing them I'd really like to hear how you approach learning
adjust under John well when i'm learning tunes uh i think there are two approaches one you have to
understand understand the tune intellectually but you really have to hear it you have to be able to
retain uh the music in your ear so a lot of times i'll listen to a recording if i can find
yeah classic recordings of a standard if i don't have a recording
maybe somebody sends me sheet music and i have to just analyze the tune as i go along
then it's a more intellectual process but i i think it's very important to hear the tune
there's that old saying if you can sing it you can play it if you can hear it you can
sing it and then you can play it so is this the melody and the harmony is this the whole thing
it's the whole package so uh on standard jazz tunes usually they have a singable melody a lot
of these broadway show tunes have melodies that were originally sung on a in a show with lyrics um
you know i'm thinking of like a standard uh you'd be so nice to come home to
it's a beautiful tune yeah great tune uh i think the first recording i heard of that tune
was a jazz recording a Jim Hall record from the 70s with Ron Carter on bass Steve Gad on drums uh
then do you know this uh recording with Red Mitchell and Lee Conan it's just a duo yeah the
i concentrate our new album yeah fantastic it's that that is absolutely essential listening for
uh for anybody who's into jazz bass isn't it it's really a wonderful thing and of course Jim
Hall is such a the guitar player is such a rich source of records that heavily feature the bass
player he did an album called some of my best friends are bass players right and it has Scott
Coley Christian McBride it has well all manner of incredible basses so yeah it's wonderful material
right so if you take a tune like that you can analyze it theoretically it's a 32 bar tune uh
it's not a typical AABA form i'd say the form is a b a c so the their their two a sections
which are eight bars long and then there's a b section you know a b then there's a then
there's the last section the c section so if i just think of the melody to that song yeah
so to me that that's a very singable melody and that's the first eight bars
it's easy to remember actually
so if i know the tune starts in in g minor
so that's the first eight bars of the tune and i often do that i'll i'll play the melody then play the root movement of the bass line i'm not worried so much about
well i'm a little worried about whether the chords are major minor dominant but the main thing is to
get the melody up top and the root movement in my ear and once i have that then the harmony
in between seems to fill itself in um and are you thinking in terms of uh the national number system
you kind of thinking uh you know one two you know different chord numbers are you thinking about
you know g minor down to c minor how or is it a bit of both well that tune starts in g minor it
ends up in b flat major so i know okay the whole tune sort of revolves around this g minor b flat
uh sound and the important thing is to find the landmarks where it comes to rest
at the end of the first eight bars it it rests on an e flat major so it starts at g minor turns
around in g minor then it does a 2 5 1 and e flat major so now i'm thinking theoretically but if i'm
to me that's very clear as a 2-5-1 in e-flat major the b section of the tune the so the second eight
bars uh starts at two five one and g minor uh the last four bars of the b section e have diminished
a7 a half diminished d7 and then we're back to the second half of the tune yeah so
i'm constantly thinking of things theoretically but i really want to have them in my ear i see
a lot of students who they'll they'll need to learn a standard they want to learn a standard
they get the chart to you'd be so nice to come home to put the chart the first thing they do
is put the chart up on the music stand and then they keep playing through the chart and thinking
i can't memorize this i can i can't memorize this and they're trying almost like they're trying to
memorize a mixed up alphabet or something if they if you would just listen to some recordings of the
tune get the melody in your ear then it's much easier uh to add the harmony and retain the tune
uh so it's really just four eight bar sections and they're all pretty simple once you you know work
your way through those four sections you have the tune in your ear and it's there forever hopefully
so do you try to close up the fake book with your students then try to close the real book the uh
you know to stop people looking at the changes i find that i get addicted if i'm at a jam session
to keep my eye on on the page even for tunes that i might know or that are fairly simple and sure
and i think that sort of uh throws a wrench in the jazz tradition uh works
you know a lot of jazz players back in the day they just learn tunes on
the band stand or somebody played the tune for them or showed them the tune uh
i i think if you get stuck on the page
then you're always going to be stuck on the page and sometimes sometimes you have to flip it over
i remember i did a student jam session and we were having a hard time finding a tune to play
and the bass player said well i i know so what maybe we could play that i said oh that's a
great tune and so everybody got out their phones and started looking up so what i said
wait it's only 16 bars of d minor then eight bars of e flat minor and eight bars of d minor oh no
but i need to look at that i said no just listen you know count to eight count to eight again
and then go up to e flat minor you know it's uh and if in doubt look at the piano player's hands
so it's those kind of situations where you have to challenge yourself
to use your ear because that's what jazz is all about jazz is not about interpreting what
somebody's written out on a page it's about listening and reacting to a living breathing
version of a a tune i that's a great thing and it's wonderful to hear all of these tunes you know
um you'd be so nice to come home to it's one that i haven't heard for years and you just played i
thought fantastic and we're chatting about the different recordings and stuff and hopefully
there'll be many more people out there playing these tunes that we can hear their interpretations
of so john thank you so much for joining me today john's been here this week in the uk filming a
series of lessons and uh it's really inspiring stuff so i think we're going to finish off by
cutting to a little bit of a performance so you can hear him play and if you want to learn more
about john please go and check out his courses over at discover double bass and lastly if you're
a fan of jazz bass let me also we've got a visual cue here check out his book which is available
on our backbeat records at the back beat what is it who's it published by John um Hal Leonard so
you can buy it anywhere amazon or yeah yeah but you all enjoy it anyway it's a superb work and uh
yeah let's cut to john we're going to hear him play something uh something beautiful
in this wonderful space right now thanks for watching and we'll see you next time