What can science teach us about jazz guitar?

[Jonzo]

"Studies that test how much new material is retained x amount of time later have very little to do with the day-in, day-out playing of jazz guitar."

Do you agree or disagree?
Why?
Are any types of studies useful?

This thread is open to guitarists of any level.

[3625]

Is that a quote you got from somewhere or is it your own? As a statement I kinda get it, but it could be written a bit more clearly.

[ecj]

I think it came from the giant mess of a thread that started with the Howard Roberts lesson.

I feel the same way about jazz and guitar that I feel about diet/exercise. There are a million studies comparing low-carb vs. vegan vs. high protein vs. vegetarian diets, and countless articles on steady state cardio, or interval training, or weights, or calisthenics, or Crossfit, or, blah blah blah.

At the end of the day, I'm interested to hear the conclusions of the studies, but I have to stick with what actually works.

I mean, maybe it's true that there is some superior method to learning, but there might be myriad reasons why the superior method doesn't actually work in the real world. The example that came up in the last thread was about focused practice versus TV practice. Who knows, maybe focused practice is scientifically proven to be "better", but if I can only sustain it for 15-20 minutes and need to play a lick 100x to really get it ingrained, I'm going with TV practice.

It's like people who theorize about what training regimens might improve the performance of pro NBA or NFL players. Maybe there is some way to make them better, but they're already best so whatever they are doing is working. Why mess with success?

I think that's kind of what Henry was saying. You can read a paper about the "right" way to play guitar or strength train or whatever else, but at the end of the day you are going to have to reconcile those principles with what the best people actually do.

[AlsoRan]

"Studies that test how much new material is retained x amount of time later have very little to do with the day-in, day-out playing of jazz guitar."

Do you agree or disagree?
Why?
Are any types of studies useful?

This thread is open to guitarists of any level.

After being led astray with "scientific" studies, such as the many medical studies that tout one thing only to be refuted by another (think aspirin), I no longer give them the weight I would have given as a naïve youth.

In the case of premises such as the one you stated, I always believe that it applies only to the "other" guy - not me. I have already defied so many theories that I am always confident that I can beat them.

Consequently, at the risk of sounding as though I have no scientific curiosity (which I do), my answer is I don't care enough to agree or disagree.

In too many "studies," ulterior motives and agendas have been exposed, and in too many studies, the scientists were found to be unable to be fully objective and instead become dogmatic so I just no longer buy many of them.

"The emperor has not clothes..."
There is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny.

Forgive me, Jonzo, if this comes across too strong but I am getting cynical in my old age, and these are my true feelings.

[kenbennett]

No study has anything to do with anything. The study of a thing is supposed to remain separate from it. But now we believe that you can't study a thing without changing it.

The question of retaining information is the same for every discipline. Studies about how much dentists retain probably has very little to do with everyday dentistry.

The statement itself is flawed. Certainly you have to retain what you've got in order to work. You may not bring everything you know to the gig, but what you do bring bears on the work at hand.

[mr. beaumont]

Here's how you learn jazz guitar.

Pick a bunch of tunes. Learn the melodies. Learn the chords. Use the notes in the chords as touchstones when you improvise a melodic line. Do as much by ear as you can.

Practice that for a few hours a day for ten or so years.

You can get science involved if you like. I'm sure it'll be a huge help with "All of Me."

[3625]

Right - I missed that thread entirely. I once saw the HR compendium books - to be honest I was a bit put off by the term 'praxis' that was mentioned right at the beginning.

But as for the vibe of the opening statement - my2c (and it really is 2c in this case) - studies on learning and memory tend for the most part to be very specific in focus, whereas 'playing jazz guitar' is a mammoth concept in terms of what neurological/cognitive mechanisms are involved. As far as any learning/memory strategies that might help someone become a better player, they would only be a small part of a greater whole - I don't see any shortcuts in terms of overall playing. Which is maybe what the quote is getting at. I'm seeing it out of context so it's hard to say.

[Cunamara]

After being led astray with "scientific" studies, such as the many medical studies that tout one thing only to be refuted by another (think aspirin), I no longer give them the weight I would have given as a naïve youth.

There are reasons for those contradictory studies that you see, some of them related to experimental design, some to the ins and outs of statistics and a lot to misrepresentation of the findings in public discussions of the studies. About 44% of medical studies are confirmed by subsequent research (most are never re-tested to be confirmed or refuted and many that are turn out to have had design or methodology flaws). Basically our ways of testing these things really isn't very good but it's the best we've got.

One of the things that teachers and psychologists can tell you is that different people have different learning styles and that there can be no one best way to teach any subject to everyone. Unfortunately educational policy makers don't usually understand this and thus try to create these one-size-fits-all approaches that are doomed to fail for a significant percentage of learners from the get-go. "No child left behind" is a great sound bite but is a practical impossibility for a variety of reasons.

Ditto jazz guitar. What works great for one person may be a bust for another. We have to take responsibility for learning how it is that we learn. Some copy licks and phrases from records with great precision, some learn extended theory, some learn on the bandstand, some have to sit with a teacher, some learn from instruction books, some learn from videos...

[cosmic gumbo]

Science has taught me that jazz guitar is the music of unemployment. It is statistically true.

[Jehu]

There are reasons for those contradictory studies that you see, some of them related to experimental design, some to the ins and outs of statistics and a lot to misrepresentation of the findings in public discussions of the studies. About 44% of medical studies are confirmed by subsequent research (most are never re-tested to be confirmed or refuted and many that are turn out to have had design or methodology flaws). Basically our ways of testing these things really isn't very good but it's the best we've got.

A big part of it is the way that science is reported in the media. Science journalists keep their eye out for novel, splashy findings in the published literature. The nature of novel, splashy findings is that they often have not yet been replicated, so "science" hasn't actually had a chance to run its course before the finding is publicised. Then, when replication attempts obtain null findings or findings that contradict the original publication, the headline is that Scientists Don't Know Anything.

[ColinO]

I imagine that if you took two people - one you told to learn a lick by spending 1 hour of concentrated practice and the other you told to sit in front of a TV and noodle, the former would learn the lick the best. However, if you take those same two people and were asked to design a course of study and practice that would, over the next 20 years, improve their playing the most, that previous experiment would say almost nothing about what method would be best for them.

If I wanted to find out what the best teaching method was to take those students as far as possible over the next 20 years, or the next two years for that matter, I would not ask a scientist to tell me - I would ask great players and great teachers.

In my mind, to discount the experience of great players just because a study comes out to say something different, without showing that the method the study is espousing actually works in the real world, is absurd and is definitely not science.

The other problem for those who favour studies over experience is that studies usually do not speak to anything beyond a narrow issue and small piece of any puzzle. Pseudo-scientists and newspaper reports often extrapolate the results and call them proof of some larger truth than they are actually evidence of. It's like the latest wonder food - is it blueberries now? Studies might say that the best food for you is blueberries. Does that mean I should only eat blueberries and no other foods? Of course not. And nor does it mean that a diet of only blueberries is healthy. It doesn't even tell me that, if I don't eat blueberries at all, I will be any less healthy.

It would be the same thing to suggest that just because 20 minutes of concentrated practice has in a study shown to be more effective than distracted practice, therefore the best way to construct an entire lifetime of practice would be in 20 minute segments of concentrated practice and no other kinds practice at all. And never mind what the opinions are of those people who have actually spent a lifetime playing and practicing and teaching - if they say something that differs from the sacred study, then their opinion is "flat out wrong".

Last night I spent about half an hour of solitary practice and then noodled in front of the TV. I plan to do the same tonight.

[Jonzo]

Some people are jaded about the results of studies. One year blueberries cure cancer. The next year they don't. And so on. Mostly we are jaded about studies that contradict our preconceptions. I sometimes tell my wife, "The studies have not caught up with my opinions yet."

I think that people should do there own studies. If you want to know how well a certain method works for you, test it against another, and do it as scientifically as possible. For example, don't compare 5 minutes of focused practice to an hour of practicing in front of the TV. There is some up front hassle, but over the long haul whatever improvement you make to your study method will multiply your gains. There are also problems in using only yourself as a subject for a test, but you do the best you can with what you have.

Of course, if you enjoy a method, or just don't care, or just want more guitar time no matter what, don't bother.

I don't understand the suggestion that the long-term trajectory of learning the guitar somehow nullifies these types of tests. After all, your guitar teacher will set a goal for you to be able to play certain patterns by next week. How is reaching these short-term goals efficiently subsumed by some long-term effect? Isn't continually and efficiently reaching the right short-term goals the most efficient way to reach long-term goals?

If I learn one pattern well using one method, and another pattern poorly using another method, the poor one will still be the poor one the bandstand, unless I put in additional time to improve it. It is not going to magically be more useful to me because of how I learned it.

I recognize that one problem in this kind of thinking is that it can lead you to only doing things that are quantifiable, which is not effective. In jazz you have to put in plenty of time playing and exploring. But for those skills that are quantifiable, why not test them? Any improvement you make is forever.

Finally, should you test a teacher's method, or just accept what a teacher says? I would depend on a teacher to tell me what to learn, but I would try to find out how to best learn it by doing my own tests. Not everything, every time. But I would gradually try to determine what methods work best for me. If I get a new teacher with a new method, I will test it against my old one. Are my tests invalidated by the teachers experience?

Does anyone else ever try to do these types of tests?

[ecj]

A lot of us have tried stuff like this, Jonzo, and we found that it didn't work.

[mr. beaumont]

Yeah...I think the problem is thinking too linearly...short term goals that add up to long term goals. That's not really how learning jazz works. You can set those kind of goals for a raw beginner to the guitar or instrument in general.

[princeplanet]

If yer gonna get good at this Jazz guitar caper. methinks yer gonna get good without needing the planets to line up in addition to having all your ducks in a row... In other words, you could do everything "text book" right, and still be a lousy player, or you could learn with some very dubious practices, and still turn out great.

If you "hear it", you'll hear past the distractions. The distractions might slow you down a little, but can also make learning the instrument more bearable..... If you learn Jazz guitar under the strictest discipline, you won't have an interesting life, so how would you expect to say anything interesting on the instrument? It's Jazz fer chrissakes, it's not classical violin, you're meant to tell stories, your own stories. Live a little, go down some dark alleys sometimes....

[Jonzo]

ECJ--Could you elaborate? I would like to know what you tried and what happened. Anyone else too.

I am curious if most advanced players agree with Mr. B, that short term goals are not useful for advanced players. Or is it just a matter of having different types of short term goals?

I want to be sure I am clear that I am not advocating a system built entirely around achieving short term goals. I always come back to comparisons with language and sports. They are not identical to learning jazz, but they require the coordination of skills in response to changing conditions: fluency. So you generally see people working on building blocks in isolation--vocabulary flash cards, jump shots--and then integrating them into either a real life situation, or a simulation of a real life situation. Eventually with languages, most people get to the point where they are fluent enough to incorporate new language on the fly, or they have enough to get by and don't want to work systematically on building blocks anymore. Pro ball players never seem to stop working on their building blocks.

When I discuss the most efficient way to drill a building block, I am not saying to build your whole system around it. That would be the equivalent of drilling all of your basketball moves, but never playing in a game, or memorizing grammar and vocabulary, but never having a conversation (I got to see how that turns out when I taught in Japan).

Given a limited amount of time, the more efficiently you can drill your building blocks, the more time you can spend incorporating them into real playing.

I started this thread because a highly regarded teacher and musician suggested practicing building blocks--scales, chord progressions, licks-- while watching TV. (So, if you think working on short-term goals is "too linear", that is really a different subject anyway.) My contention was that you could test how well this method works compared to playing without the TV. Some people suggested that only an expert guitarist could answer that question, and that the results of short-term tests were invalid.
So, getting back to my original question, are such tests useful?

[ColinO]

I didn't take HR to say that you should only practice in front of the TV. I took him to say that you should practice and then even when you aren't practicing formally, it is beneficial to always have a guitar in your hands like maybe running scales and arps that you already know while sitting in front of the TV or something like that. You said that he was flat out wrong about that.

You appear to be suggesting that the only way you should ever practice is when you can fully concentrate and devote your whole mind to the experience.

HR supported his theory with years of playing and teaching experience. You have supported your theory that HR was flat out wrong based on a study you haven't cited and your own statement that HR lacks knowledge in this particular area.

I doubt that the study you mention refutes what HR actually said in the video, but if it does, I disagree with it insofar as it suggests that there is no benefit to be had from taking advantage of non-focussed practice time in the way that HR suggests.

If all you are saying is that focussed practice is more effective for learning than distracted practice...well duh. If you are actually saying that it is a good idea to supplement focussed practice with distracted practice whether in front of a TV or otherwise, then I wonder why you disagreed with HR in the first place.

I also didn't see anyone say that short term goals are useless for an advance player. Where is that said?

[ecj]

Jonzo - have you actually tried doing what you're suggesting? I'm not just being aggressive here. I do like a lot of your posts about teaching methods, etc., and am generally interested in trying new things. For example, I liked your idea of the hopper of basic skills that ranked frequency of repetition by fluency. I'd love to integrate something like that into my routine for 10-15 mins a day, but don't have the tech savvy. Instead I have a totally randomized "skill bank" that I'll pull things from. Stuff like intervals, scales, arpeggios, triads, chords, chord progressions, licks, song heads, changes, chord/mel arrangements, soloing techniques, etc. Everytime I learn something new, I drop it in the "hopper" and it gets added to the regular rotation.

I think what you're suggesting about learning things in bite sized chunks is not bad, per se. I think this is worthwhile for a lot of basic skills (the things listed above). The problem I've noticed is that, eventually, everything has to be synthesized into the ability to play music. And the only way to play music is to play music. I think you'll find as you start to rehearse full tunes and arrangements that you can't bite size performance. If you want to be prepared to play a 2 hour set of tunes, you really do need to just practice playing tunes for 2 hours. I've tried just doing the skills stuff, and my playing falls apart at gigs if I don't rehearse leading up to it.

For pro guys I think this is different in some respects, because the nightly gig becomes the practice of performance. For mortals like us, you have to do "fake gigs" at home to recreate the experience. That's why the Aebersold tracks are so handy, in addition to allowing you to work on little fragmented bits.

Sometimes this amount of practice is just too much for your brain, and you have to auto-pilot it. I run tunes while watching TV all the time when I can't get up the mental energy to just sit in a room and play. Or I'll go busk just to keep the skills up.

I really challenge you to post some vids or clips of your playing. I think you'll find out that in order to create something that you're proud of to put online, you're going to have to practice it in a way that is totally different than the things that you are suggesting.

[princeplanet]

Only an experienced teacher who plays the way you wish to, can suggest to you how you may wish to time manage your short and long term goals. Without that overarching perspective one is just "experimenting" with one's own self-teaching methods.

And that's OK too, some of us are happy to do that, after all it can, and indeed has, yielded some of Jazz's more interesting players.

On the other hand life is short, and we don't wanna waste years practicing "how to practice" If you're worried about wasting precious practice time (don't we all from time to time?), then get with a teacher who can show you how he/she learned. I for one am pretty sure there is no such thing as definitive research on the optimal regime for Jazz guitar study. I looked into it myself years ago, and then realised there are as many "methods" as there are players. Even novices would have you learn via their own "method" ! If you're a rational guy (and I think you are), I say take the slightly longer route, and write your own method. Gotta be more rewarding, and more fun, but ultimately the real payoff is you'll offer the world a unique voice for your trouble.

Best we can hope for on this forum is to compare our experiences and pick up ideas based on other's trevails, particularly if they resonate with us. Much more useful than any scientific research, as interesting as I myself find it. I have a million questions too, like how many concepts can one learn at any one time? Is it best to learn them serially, or in "parallel"? etc, but I don't expect definitive answers because no one can test these things given the myriad variables in each of us.

Eventually I test myself on these things, and yes, I have tested the "TV" practice vs practice with no distraction and can say that the latter is more productive when looking for improvement, but not so much for basic retention. I also find learning new things in the morning is easier for me than at night.

But again that's just me. YMMV.....

[SuperFour00]

In my experience, players who continually look for technical or scientific methods of acceleration the learning process, or improving physical ability on an instrument tend to be the individuals who deny the importance, or even the existence of, talent and natural gifts. I think there's a personality type that believes the orderly mind can accomplish anything, so if they study hard enough, or work at exercises long enough, they will achieve great musical skills.I don't agree with this and the musicians I've known who exhibit this particular brand of conceit bear this out. Generally, they tend to be teachers or local pros who never quite rise above a certain tier, but are maybe a little deluded, and can't really admit they aren't playing at a world-class level. As long as they are happy, no harm done, who cares?

Music is like language. Some very bright people learn the grammar and vocabulary of several languages, but never get good at speaking them. Others seem to have a gift. I know two Jazz musicians, one who studied Spanish in college, and became so fluent he can go to Spain and converse with anyone there on any topic, including scholarly or scientific subjects, with only a slight American accent to distinguish him from the natives; and the other is a great sax player who learned Japanese as an adult ... speaks it fluently, has lived and worked there, and other than an accent, speaks as fluently and accurately as any educated Japanese native speaker. These guys have great ears, play great Jazz, and can pick things up, linguistic and musical, with amazing speed and perfection. IMO, that's talent, that's a gift. Similarly, I've known self-taught musicians who improved at unnatural rates, and could play very well in just months, achieving levels of skill and creativity that elude life-long students. It's not always about the method ... sometimes it's about the genes, or the earliest childhood influences, whatever.

Therefore, I encourage anyone challenged by a talent deficit to explore any method that will help them. I admit there are individuals out there with super-normal musical abilities, and perhaps they benefit from some mutation. If science can help the talent-challenged, that's great. It won't level the field, but any music is better than no music.

[Jonzo]

ColinO--

There are a lot of reasons one would want to practice while watching TV. I'm not saying to do anything, except make informed choices. I have been surprised that some people think that a normal person is not capable of making these choices for themselves.

There is some overspill from the previous thread into this one. All I asked in the OP here was whether the results of learning studies were "useful". Then I expanded on that with the idea of performing your own studies. As always, the thread gets diluted because people think I am implying other things, or I have been unclear, or they take a tangent, and then people respond to those tangents, and so on. This happens with most threads.

I realize that not everything is worth testing, and sometimes results are obvious without making two groups of similar exercises, etc. But sometimes we also think results are obvious, when they really aren't. One that I hear a lot is immersion v. classroom for learning languages. Sometimes people will say immersion is more efficient, without taking into account that one person is spending most of each day working on language acquisition, while the other is spending an hour a day.

One thing that is coming up a lot is that there is more to learning jazz guitar than reaching short term goals. And I get that. So I could see how an experienced teacher would help you bring your goals into proper balance. It is also easy to become obsessed with measurable progress, when play and exploration are at least as important. But in terms of reaching the short term goals, particularly patterns, it is really easy to determine how well certain methods work for you compared to others.

ECJ--Yes, I have tried what I am suggesting. For example, I recently did a test to see whether I could memorize tunes more efficiently by reviewing whole tunes, or by dividing tunes into phrases and reviewing each phrase on its own schedule, according to how difficult it is. So, are my results of any use to anyone else? Or are they irrelevant because I am not an expert guitarist?

I admit that I have made the mistake of focusing too much on measurable goals and not enough on playing and exploring. (If I ever wrote a book on achieving short term musical goals, the first paragraph would be about not getting wrapped up in achieving short term musical goals.) Partly this is because I am just as interested in these tests as I am in learning the guitar. The guitar is not that big of a deal to me. I did the same thing with jiu jitsu. I'm just curious about learning skills. There has been a lot of research done on learning information, and I want to see how those findings translate to learning skills.

There is definitely something to be said for just picking a teacher, and doing what he or she says full bore. Maybe, for practical purposes, most people achieve their goals by simply putting one foot in front of the other, without concerning themselves with efficiency. On the other hand, Kenny Werner wrote an entire book about undoing what some of his teachers had done to him.

My guitar playing is not worth presenting. As always, I make no pretense of being a good guitarist.

[ecj]

I admit that I have made the mistake of focusing too much on measurable goals and not enough on playing and exploring. (If I ever wrote a book on achieving short term musical goals, the first paragraph would be about not getting wrapped up in achieving short term musical goals.) Partly this is because I am just as interested in these tests as I am in learning the guitar. The guitar is not that big of a deal to me. I did the same thing with jiu jitsu. I'm just curious about learning skills. There has been a lot of research done on learning information, and I want to see how those findings translate to learning skills.

...

My guitar playing is not worth presenting. As always, I make no pretense of being a good guitarist.

Then what you are doing is not science, Jonzo. You are not experimenting, you are reasoning. Reasoning is fine for some things, but it's not a good way to adduce truths about how things work in the real world.

All of the studies you are citing would require people who are learning things to demonstrate that learning in some way. If you never try to present your guitar playing, how can you be sure you've actually learned anything? You say that you've successfully "memorized tunes". Can you actually play them? What do you even mean that you've memorized them.

Take an arpeggio or lick or something. Whatever it is you're trying to learn. Do some vids of your process and demonstrate it.

This is why folks aren't really taking your speculations seriously, because even you, the biggest proponent of your ideas, can't demonstrate that they work. Do you not see that this is a problem?

[Jonzo]

ColinO--I admit I could be wrong about the whole TV thing. I don't want to re-argue the other thread, though. I think anyone can do a test to see how well it works for them. Just do it correctly. An hour of TV time practice against 15 minutes of focused practice is invalid. My real issue was with the claim of two types of memory--and that was probably too nit picky.

What I do have a hard time with is the suggestion that after I do this experiment for say a month, and I test myself on the patterns, that the results might be invalid because of something about the guitar, or the subconscious, or whatever. If I test myself on licks, the ones I play well during the test will also sound best on the bandstand.

Or am I missing something?

[Jonzo]

ECJ--It is nice of you to speak on behalf of the folks.

Very few scientific studies involve a video recording of every step of the process. Studies can be faked in a lot of ways. Ultimately, it is the reproducibility of results by others that validates a finding.

[ecj]

ECJ--It is nice of you to speak on behalf of the folks.

Very few scientific studies involve a video recording of every step of the process. Studies can be faked in a lot of ways. Ultimately, it is the reproducibility of results by others that validates a finding.

How do you think you can evaluate what the best way is to learn a new tune?