The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #51

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    Years ago on this forum, a member who as best I remember taught at the UNT jazz program said...

    (I'm paraphrasing). The jazz guitar program only really helps about 10% of the students that enroll... The top 5% are good enough that they don't need UNT, the bottom 85% will never be good enough to be successful jazz performers, that leaves the middle 10% (86 to 95 percentile) that actually benefit.

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  3. #52

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    And Jack:

    Agreed reading well won't hurt your playing---we just use a different part of the brain.

    I must admit I trust reading less and less in groups and would prefer, as a leader especially, that the band cops tunes (including mine) by recording and hearing. No one can relax and play their best stuff with their nose in paper the entire gig. Different mindset and skill set.

    I know you know that---just saying what I've come to feel for myself. Never been a great reader and I'm lazy about it---but I DO feel the preceding about playing and learning tunes. Our 2 best friends are on either side of the face...

  4. #53

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    I suspect we - as players - suffer most from a lack of time on the bandstand these days.

    And as a result, the music, as well.

  5. #54

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    Quote Originally Posted by fep
    Years ago on this forum, a member who as best I remember taught at the UNT jazz program said...

    (I'm paraphrasing). The jazz guitar program only really helps about 10% of the students that enroll... The top 5% are good enough that they don't need UNT, the bottom 85% will never be good enough to be successful jazz performers, that leaves the middle 10% (86 to 95 percentile) that actually benefit.

    The top 5% are usually only going to school to make connections, hang with the good instructors, like the old saying... If you graduated Berklee you weren't that good. From the schools I worked at and/or attended I'd say that middle 10% make a career in music. The bottom of is full of people just avoiding having to get a real job. I remember a number of students who had already finished another degree and going to music school was a gift before heading into the degree field. Many are there just because they got scholarships, or someone paying for it and music sounds like fun major. I think a lot the ones Bruce Forman was talking about fit into that category let go party in the US for a couple years.

  6. #55

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    Quote Originally Posted by docbop
    The top 5% are usually only going to school to make connections, hang with the good instructors, like the old saying... If you graduated Berklee you weren't that good. From the schools I worked at and/or attended I'd say that middle 10% make a career in music. The bottom of is full of people just avoiding having to get a real job. I remember a number of students who had already finished another degree and going to music school was a gift before heading into the degree field. Many are there just because they got scholarships, or someone paying for it and music sounds like fun major. I think a lot the ones Bruce Forman was talking about fit into that category let go party in the US for a couple years.
    They're going to school to get a little bit pregnant.

  7. #56

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    Quote Originally Posted by goldenwave77
    BUT...it is a legitimate question about how to make a living with this training. I think students have started to re-evaluate the whole college music training scene, and whether it is worth doing.
    As the cost of college has skyrocketed beyond all rationality and common sense, that question is being asked about college in general. While college graduates make more money over the course of a lifetime than high school graduates, if the cost of that college education costs you most or all the difference then the value of college is greatly diminished from an economic perspective (it may have continuing value from other perspectives).

    This is a sign of my age: my BA (1981) and MA (1988) together cost about 1/2 of what 1 year at my college costs now. Tuition is now over $40,000 a year. My BA, MA, house and car together cost less than 4 years at my old college costs now. It's absolutely crazy.

    When I was considering a doctoral program back in the early 90s, it would have cost me about $100,000. One of my mentors asked "wait, you have to pay for a doctorate now?" When she went to graduate school, doctoral candidates were a rare enough commodity that their work for the college or university (as TAs, researchers, etc.) paid for their tuition and lodging. Now that doctorate would cost me $250,000.

    So, one can pay $40,000 a year to learn jazz guitar and get a degree. To do what? Play $50 gigs in a tiny New York bar? Teach 8 year olds cowboy chords? How does that pay back the student loans? If there are no students in college jazz programs, it is because market forces have caused it. There is basically no viable market to make a decent middle-class living in jazz except for a very few musicians. Most other music genres are in the same boat.

  8. #57

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    Quote Originally Posted by Stevebol
    They're going to school to get a little bit pregnant.
    It's pretty common for people from smaller cities and towns with lots of skills to go to school to get exposure, to meet the people that can get them on the professional path, while filling in holes they might have in their knowledge. When I went to GIT Scott Henderson was like that, day one when he played ever one was like why is he here. The music school I worked at saw quite a few students who were ready and came to launch their careers. As well as students who were the hot musician where they were from that found out they they weren't that good in the grand scope of things.

    The big music schools are about finding out where you are in the food chain and realities of making a living in music.

  9. #58

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    West Virginia University has a great jazz program, and has produced several grads on jazz guitar.

  10. #59

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    Quote Originally Posted by Cunamara
    As the cost of college has skyrocketed beyond all rationality and common sense, that question is being asked about college in general. While college graduates make more money over the course of a lifetime than high school graduates, if the cost of that college education costs you most or all the difference then the value of college is greatly diminished from an economic perspective (it may have continuing value from other perspectives).

    This is a sign of my age: my BA (1981) and MA (1988) together cost about 1/2 of what 1 year at my college costs now. Tuition is now over $40,000 a year. My BA, MA, house and car together cost less than 4 years at my old college costs now. It's absolutely crazy.

    When I was considering a doctoral program back in the early 90s, it would have cost me about $100,000. One of my mentors asked "wait, you have to pay for a doctorate now?" When she went to graduate school, doctoral candidates were a rare enough commodity that their work for the college or university (as TAs, researchers, etc.) paid for their tuition and lodging. Now that doctorate would cost me $250,000.

    So, one can pay $40,000 a year to learn jazz guitar and get a degree. To do what? Play $50 gigs in a tiny New York bar? Teach 8 year olds cowboy chords? How does that pay back the student loans? If there are no students in college jazz programs, it is because market forces have caused it. There is basically no viable market to make a decent middle-class living in jazz except for a very few musicians. Most other music genres are in the same boat.
    To the extent that post-secondary education is supposed to be vocational, for a great many vocations the cost:realistic-income-potential is completely out of balance. But if you think of music as being just like any other liberal arts degree and aren't completely set on a career as a musician (perhaps unrealistically for most ...), it's great training for other kinds of knowledge work (e.g., I know many people with music degrees with successful IT careers).

    That leads you to the question of the value of higher ed in general, which is not an easy thing to figure out. Bottom line, most people I know work in careers that don't have much connection to their fields of study (pro musicians with engineering degrees, musicians in IT, linguists in design, architects in finance, philosophers in civil service, nutritionists with law degress ...)

    But the cost has made the whole issue very difficult to figure out what kind of degree (if any) to go for. For someone who is smart, and from a family that can provide some support, but doesn't quite know what s/he wants to be when s/he grows up, I think it's still a good idea to major in something interesting at a selective school and figure it out as you go. But that's viable for a shrinking number of people.

    I think it's important to note that the big change over the past 30 or so years has been the shifting of costs onto students engendered by declines in public funding to higher ed institutions. Our national higher ed policy is now based on guarantees to loans passed through a chain of banks->students->schools rather than simply giving the money directly to schools, which is nuts. Under a saner approach (like what we used to do and what most developed countries still do), other factors (chiefly Baumol's cost-disease) would still drive the cost, but that cost wouldn't be borne so heavily by students. There's a series of pieces in the Atlantic Monthly documenting how the total amount spent on subsidies, financial aid, guarantees, etc. is enough to fund public university tuition for everybody in the country. But the distribution system (and the idiotic arguments that underlie it) is so fouled up that students have to pay unsupportable tuition. [/scattered thoughts and rant]

    John

  11. #60

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    I agree completely with nearly all of the points made in this thread. There are two more points that I'd offer:

    First, college tuition doesn't have to amount to $40k/year, though it clearly can. I mentioned WVU in my earlier post. Here are the undergraduate tuition and fee numbers per semester:

    Resident of WV $3,540 $648 $4,188
    Non-Resident of WV $11,160 $648 $11,808

    As you can see, even out-of state costs are less than $24k/year. Here are their programs:




    And this brings me to my second point, which is that while there is a Jazz Studies program, the Music Industry program (along with selected courses in other programs) can provide useful skills that could supplement the performance programs, or that represent music industry careers in their own right.

    My point is that studying jazz (guitar or other) at the collegiate level is certainly not necessary to a successful music career, there's a bigger picture here, and music degrees with or without specialty in jazz guitar can be much broader than what is required to play $50 gigs and teach beginners. And the costs don't have to be sky-high.

  12. #61

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    Quote Originally Posted by RWJax
    West Virginia University has a great jazz program, and has produced several grads on jazz guitar.

    Trouble is it's in West Virginia.

    I was born in WVA and even my father would say... West Virginia is a great place to be from, a long way from.

  13. #62

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    Quote Originally Posted by docbop
    Trouble is it's in West Virginia.

    I was born in WVA and even my father would say... West Virginia is a great place to be from, a long way from.
    Aw, don't be a place snob....

    There certainly are parts of WV that are not great places to live, but as college towns go, Morgantown is right up near the top. It's a terrific environment for students and has lots to offer.

    If you're looking for big city nightlife, this isn't the place, but for the kinds of activities students prefer, it has a lot going for it -- always ranks in the top 10 party schools, e.g.

    As a place to work and live after graduation, that's up to you. Kiplinger lists it on its list of 10 great places to live.

    I like small towns, so it suits me fine. All the amenities of a college town without the hassles of big city traffic and congestion. And I've known a lot of long-time residents who've come here thinking they'd stay just a couple of years and move on. But hey, if you don't want to be here, please don't come!

  14. #63

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    I don't think it's a demise, more like a bubble, the bursting of which will have a long duration.

    In our high-tech, hurry up, instant gratification, self-serving, violent, economically disruptive world I am highly skeptical that culture and art will be as valued as they were in past times.

    Whew. I guess that'll do for my Donny Downer, get-off-my-lawn contribution of the day.

  15. #64

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    Instead of demise, it probably has to do with the current overabundance of guitarists. It is still one of the most popular and most used instruments.

  16. #65

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    Jazz in spirit isn’t classical music, but it now suffers from many of the same ills that classical music does in regards to performance.
    I think it was around the late 1940's that the first Jazz courses start to emerge. I think it was David Ake who wrote something on the formation of the NT University course. It was about 1947? when classes in jazz ensemble started in as part of the programme.
    But it was stage band - and it only got entry because of the analogs this playing had with orchestral playing- or at least the type of big band playing that holds to those values. Ake talks about the departure from the essence of jazz in college starting very early on where voices were trained to blend , toward a western aesthetic of elegance - which while it has its virtues didnt reflect the dynamic of the early jazz players, or any real in depth study of improvisation.
    But I think this has evolved in some institutions - not all.



    Codification is schools' gravy train. No codification, no racket...
    True dat. I hate to say it but whether publicly funded or not ,Universities have become corporate like everything else. To run a great experientially based jazz course costs huge money, especially when compared to a lecture based musicology or English Lit course. One on one lessons are constantly in the crosshairs - so rationale after rationale is spun to justify cost cutting them , ensemble classes and performance platforms - which gradually erodes the point of having instrumental music as a formal study. Here in the deeper South (of the equator) the University system relies on about 25% public funding ,the rest comes from private sources including research and industry. It reflects the Government's and the country's general laissez faire with education in general.

  17. #66

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    Why not? It's the American Way.

    If you detect sarcasm (or disgust) here, you got that right...

  18. #67

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    Quote Originally Posted by gator811
    I think it was around the late 1940's that the first Jazz courses start to emerge. I think it was David Ake who wrote something on the formation of the NT University course. It was about 1947? when classes in jazz ensemble started in as part of the programme.
    But it was stage band - and it only got entry because of the analogs this playing had with orchestral playing- or at least the type of big band playing that holds to those values. Ake talks about the departure from the essence of jazz in college starting very early on where voices were trained to blend , toward a western aesthetic of elegance - which while it has its virtues didn't reflect the dynamic of the early jazz players, or any real in depth study of improvisation.
    But I think this has evolved in some institutions - not all.
    Great observations! Another way to view this is that instruction via classroom is necessarily structure-based, while the original jazz experience leaned more to free-form. It will always be a challenge to teach in a structured environment something that is unstructured. Difficult to plan spontaneity! Ha!

    That said, not all of jazz through its history has been spontaneous and free-form. At its peak, the bands of the 40s and 50s were much more structured than we often think of them. Lots of arrangements, and woe to the band member who strayed too far from the script! Of course the after-hours jams were where much of the innovation occurred.


    Quote Originally Posted by gator811
    True dat. I hate to say it but whether publicly funded or not ,Universities have become corporate like everything else. To run a great experientially based jazz course costs huge money, especially when compared to a lecture based musicology or English Lit course. One on one lessons are constantly in the crosshairs - so rationale after rationale is spun to justify cost cutting them , ensemble classes and performance platforms - which gradually erodes the point of having instrumental music as a formal study. Here in the deeper South (of the equator) the University system relies on about 25% public funding ,the rest comes from private sources including research and industry. It reflects the Government's and the country's general laissez faire with education in general.
    The shift from public to non-public funding for universities seems sadly to be a global trend. And I wish that here it were only laissez faire, instead of a growing level of anti-intellectualism and antagonism. At WVU, where I'm a prof (in geography, not in the music program!), we have gone from > 50% state funds 40 years years ago to < 20% today. Fortunately, we have a couple of local venues that host jazz ensembles (mostly from the music school) and jazz jam sessions (music school coordinated but open to walk-ups) at least a couple of times a week. Not bad for an MSA with less than 100k population, I think.

    As for the student experience, I only see the twice per semester jazz ensemble performances. 4-6 grad students assemble ensembles of 3-5 people, prep 3-5 tunes, and perform live for the public. It's a treat to see the newbies progress from first through fourth program each year, and to observe their progress as they mature through their uni years.

    Another good thing that WVU Arts does is sponsor a World Music program. Every summer a group takes to a different, usually remote part of the world to learn the local music and dance, then put on one or two performances that bring that part of world art back home. It might not be jazz in the purest sense, but the polyrhythms and such that characterize certain places are very rich and relevant!

    ok, that's at least $0.02....

  19. #68

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    I think rock guitarists have a bit of limited view of what technique is and what it’s for. Good technique can be completely transparent because it facilitates the music.
    Yup. Too many rock guitarists focus on technique without regard for musicality. The two aren't mutually exclusive, of course. I used to throw speed, hammering and other Impressive Techniques™ into every solo because that was what made one an "awesome" guitarist. It took me a long time to learn that all I was doing was highlighting my technical competence, rather than playing music. Hell, a bassist in an old band of mine, we used to joke when doing demos about the 32 bars of rhythm in the middle, saying, "That's where we'll put the typewriter guitar." But after a while, the joke got serious, because it was a dead-end for me.

    I still have most of the technique and can call on it if need be, but you're right -- the technique can be the means to lay out a complex idea, but it ought not be the destination. It's easy to fall afoul that line.

  20. #69

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    Quote Originally Posted by jzucker
    I had contacted some local universities to inquire about doing a sheets of sound clinic. I was surprised to find that many of the local universities have almost no guitar majors. One had zero, the other had 2.

    Really disappointing...
    What's really happening is that instead of getting a $60-80,000 performance degree on guitar and then getting a job at Domino's Pizza, they're just going ahead and starting work at Domino's right out of high school to save lots of time and money. Kids ARE getting smarter...

  21. #70

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    Quote Originally Posted by Thumpalumpacus
    Yup. Too many rock guitarists focus on technique without regard for musicality. The two aren't mutually exclusive, of course. I used to throw speed, hammering and other Impressive Techniques™ into every solo because that was what made one an "awesome" guitarist. It took me a long time to learn that all I was doing was highlighting my technical competence, rather than playing music. Hell, a bassist in an old band of mine, we used to joke when doing demos about the 32 bars of rhythm in the middle, saying, "That's where we'll put the typewriter guitar." But after a while, the joke got serious, because it was a dead-end for me.

    I still have most of the technique and can call on it if need be, but you're right -- the technique can be the means to lay out a complex idea, but it ought not be the destination. It's easy to fall afoul that line.
    There's a danger of stating that anything's all good or all bad. I wouldn't make a statement like that myself----about rock or any other kind of player. For one thing, I haven't met every rock player and couldn't know. For another it might show ignorance and even disrespect for the players who AREN'T like that. I was a blues/rock guy back in the Bronze age, and always went for music. So did all my guitar playing buddies. Maybe it changed, I lost track long ago.

    Better to look for the good...

  22. #71

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    In reference to the original post; At times I would agree with the shift from guitar (more from a retail side of things), but the college I study at has 10 jazz guitar students, and like 12-13 last year. So yes that number has gone down, but in the last 5 or so years that number has been increasing along with the rest of the department's enrollment. That could be an exception.

  23. #72

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    Quote Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
    What's really happening is that instead of getting a $60-80,000 performance degree on guitar and then getting a job at Domino's Pizza, they're just going ahead and starting work at Domino's right out of high school to save lots of time and money. Kids ARE getting smarter...

    Music education is a big part of Rick Beato's latest rant.


  24. #73

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    That was impossible to watch. These web rants are so self-indulgent.

    Executive summary for those of us who don't have all day:


    1. Music has always been a tough way to make a living.
    2. These days, it's even tougher.

    The End.

  25. #74

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    Quote Originally Posted by fasstrack
    There's a danger of stating that anything's all good or all bad. I wouldn't make a statement like that myself----about rock or any other kind of player. For one thing, I haven't met every rock player and couldn't know. For another it might show ignorance and even disrespect for the players who AREN'T like that. I was a blues/rock guy back in the Bronze age, and always went for music. So did all my guitar playing buddies. Maybe it changed, I lost track long ago.

    Better to look for the good...
    Well it's a good thing I didn't say it's all good or all bad, then!

  26. #75

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    Quote Originally Posted by Jazzstdnt
    That was impossible to watch. These web rants are so self-indulgent.

    Executive summary for those of us who don't have all day:


    1. Music has always been a tough way to make a living.
    2. These days, it's even tougher.

    The End.
    yeah those things make me laugh. I mean I'm sure Rick Beato is a great guy, great player, but I haven't got 58 minutes to spare. I started watching one of his things and I just got annoyed with it, he never got to the point.

    In my job I sometimes have to explain systems stuff to important clients who are not IT-knowledgeable, and you have about 1 minute max to make your point, or you lose their attention (and respect).