TromboneChat

As a follow-up to the thread about why trombone players don’t improvise well, I wonder whether anybody has spent time working on David Baker‘s How to Play Bebop books? It seems like a fairly structured, step-by-step, approach, that if you worked at it consistently for a period of time, you would show some concrete results. Anyone?

Back when I lived in the Chicago area I knew and played with some great musicians who went to Indiana University and studied from Baker. One of my old teachers, Tim Coffman, had great things to say about him. If I recall correctly, Tim felt that many of the criticisms of Baker's approach missed his point.

I don't have those specific books, but I have gotten some benefit from working out of some of his books. I should probably dig them out and get back into them.

Dave

What was the nature of the criticisms?

Some people criticize Baker's approach because it relies on practicing a lot of patterns/licks in all keys. It's said that it will make your playing unmusical and predictable, as opposed to using your ear and a more intuitive approach. To me, ear training and playing patterns work together.

I have all three volumes of the Baker Bebop series and I have a decidedly mixed reaction to them.

On the one hand, they go amazingly deeply into how the bebop scales are used and what the "rules" are. It's amazing that Baker took the time to flesh all this out.

But on the other hand -- and more importantly -- I find them pretty much impenetrable from a user/practicality standpoint. Every time I try to dig into them (starting right from the beginning of volume 1) I feel like I'm being bombarded with way more technical information than I could possibly take in, and at the same time not getting much that I can really work with in a practical sense.

Overall I find them kind of overwhelming and off-putting. I approach the material wanting to diligently and incrementally incorporate it into my playing, but inevitably I end up feeling like it's just way, way too much to take in.

I'd be very interested to hear about it if someone has had success working with this material.

My take was that they were "shifty" and required a superhuman effort to fight the horn. So I put them away.

I think the books might work better if used in conjunction with IReal Pro or BIAB.