Originally Posted by
jordanklemons
Watch the documentary "The Universal Mind". It's Bill Evans flat out laying out his process and feelings about music in an interview with his brother. He talks and provides musical examples at the piano.
Essentially he says that the biggest problem for music students (in his opinion) is that they all want to gain the whole thing quickly, in one sitting. So they hear their favorite musician, they transcribe a bit of it, they can play along with it, and maybe they try and force a few of those new licks into their playing. He says that because the art is so big and can't be taken in all at once, a natural way to deal with it is for the student to attempt to approximate the end product. In doing so, they feel like they sort of touched the thing, but ultimately they haven't and this feeling of confusion and frustration will just compound and build on top of itself until they are completely lost.
His feeling is that the student should attempt to master (or at least learn) the basic fundamentals of music and give themselves the time and patience to be able to make music from THAT place. Learn to play authentic, genuine, honest music just by playing around with the simplest forms of musical ideas... but truthful music that's coming from their own thoughts and feelings. Once this is set, THEN this becomes the foundation on top of which we can learn and grow and add more advanced and complex ideas that will make sense and become integrated in a more wholistic way.
As far as his actual practice process... I've don't know exactly, but I'd heard that for every new tune he would write out an etude voice leading with x number of voices through the entire form. I forget how many voices he started with... could have been 1 or 2.. maybe 3 or 4. But he wrote it out and learned it. Then he'd play it in all the other keys. Then he'd write out another one with x+1 voices. I read that he did this all the way up to 10 voices. That was primarily for his harmony work. Melodically, I read that he would place the melody on a spectrum for himself. On one end of the spectrum he would be playing the melody exactly as is... on the other end nobody would be able to recognize the melody, but his ideas would still be entirely rooted to the melody in his own mind. So he'd start just playing the melody a lot. Then after a while he'd ornament it ever so slightly. Then after a while he'd add a little more ornamentation. This would continue until he started altering the melody entirely with new phrases, but still while thinking about and visualizing it as the original melody... and it would continue until his playing had no resemblance to the melody to anyone outside of his mind.
As for the foundation, I think music is somewhat subjective AND objective at the same time. There are some truths that simply are truths and that kind of it (so says the 34 year old me... we'll see if I don't hate myself for having said that in 40 years). But there are also huge aspects to it that are entirely subjective and up to the individual musician. I would assume (hope you don't mind Christian) that the foundation should be built with some Barry Harry type concepts and understandings? 6th and diminished chords... or some variation thereof? Some people might feel that some sort of modal or CST is where the fundamentals are. Some might think it's the blues. I don't know. For me it's just triads. They're just as simple as I can break things down to while still maintaining some level or tonality and organization, and yet they allow for essentially every advanced complex route at the same time. So they've proven to work perfectly for me as the foundation both as a student of the music and as a teacher. I've toyed with trying to get down to a 2 note way of thinking... but it was too ambiguous and with far too many options and avenues (though I did hear an interesting argument for the 2 note approach recently by Dr Shawn Purcell in his Facebook live masterclass on the Peter Bernstein Study Group Facebook page).
I'm honestly not sure what Bill would have seen as the fundamentals and the "proper" foundation if one were to have studied privately with him. But the plot is laid out. Get down the basics. Not just intellectually. Be able to compose and improvise simple, honest, authentic music with it... then grow from there by adding new layers on top.
Bill never ceases to be a lighthouse of inspiration for me. Glad to see you digging into him more Christian! Looking forward to hearing how it affects you and your playing and your ears.
A new Chords tool
Today, 05:09 AM in Comping, Chords & Chord Progressions