Everyone can play jazz - yes or no?

[henryrobinett]

Double post.

[henryrobinett]

There are two types of teachers: some say .. forget these crap .. feelings.. ideas .. work this through first then let's see what ideas you have..

what's good - if the student is self-confident enough he can really learn quickly some techical stuff from such a teacher on high level even he is not much talanted naturally
what's bad - these teachers can bring student to the point that they would forget that it all was actually about feeling and end up polishing their craft forever waiting when it will be ready for feelings....

Another type of teacher cares about bringing out musical ideas and feelings from student first and let technical issues follow it...

what's good about them - they can really lead a student very personally and can really teach to be really musical - not to fake musicality...

what's bad - they will probably lose those students that are not sensitive and gifted enough naturally

Yeah. I don't know. Apologies up front for not having followed the thread. I generally don't know or maybe respect the second type of teacher. I've seen this type of teacher teach R&R licks and tunes and do hit and miss all over the place: where ever the student wants to go, goes the teacher. Personally I've never seen this as effective, but I certainly haven't seen everything.

What is teaching fake musicality? Sorry, I'm confused.

I do not know how to teach emotions. I don't think emotions can be taught. I can request the student play with emotion. I can remind him or her about the importance of it. But I cannot teach it. I can teach technique. I can teach understanding and application of the fretboard and jazz language. Certain basic human elements have to be in place in the student to begin with though. I HAVE given a list of emotions and had the student play melodies through the list. So I have done that. Not very much. Maybe I should return to that.

I've been caught many times surprised and dumbfounded when I made certain assumptions. I've said this elsewhere but after months of teaching scales and arpeggios and discussing applications and giving a tune or two I opened up improv and said "Let's improvise on this ii-V in Bb." The student looks at me blankly. I realize that the student didn't do what I told him. Mess with the scales. They practiced them dutifully. Knew them all more or less flawlessly. But couldn't do jack with them. I realized I had to cut it down into much smaller chunks and explain every little detail.

This surprised me. NO ONE EVER HAD TO DO THIS FOR ME. And because of that I didn't think I had to break it down for others. One tends to be the teacher one needed. So I had to make sure I told the student to play with everything. Make up things even if it sounds terrible. Have fun with it.

People know how to do this. I don't know anyone today who buys a smartphone and reads the instruction manual in detail to figure out how to use it. Or the new computer. They PLAY WITH IT.

I can teach the fretboard. I can teach application. I can teach how listen to music, to a certain degree. I can get you to transcribe. I can help you analyze. I can teach you chords and chord melodies. I can teach songs. I can hope the light bulb turns on. I can lead the horse to water. But the student has to bring the rest. Himself as a human being.

I don't know how to tell someone to play with love or anger, or to hear the emotion in that piece of music. If one can't one can't. Music is a straight track to the heart, at least it always was for me. If someone doesn't know that I can't fix that kind of broke.

[mrcee]

One of the greats, probably Miles Davis, said that you can't teach a person how to play music. All you can do is give them advice.

[Jonah]

Hi Henry,



I will try to explain my idea… excuse if it is too long... probably it is not much diofferent from what you describe after all... but I think I just separate some things.. maybe I get too much into details.. but this os the way I am


I am not saying that one should literally speak about emotions or abstract ideas studying music (though it’s possible too probably…)

I am speaking more about hearing.. What is artistic hearing?
I can make analogy with seeing in visual art because it could be easier to illustrate since we belong to visual civilization and often take seeing things for natural


Obviously every seeing person can see a cathedral.. but an artistic seeing means that he ca see the relations between its parts, can see the rhythm of the colonnade, can see reinforced bases of the columns

I am not speaking about education, and also I am not speaking about verbal expression of these relations…
What I mean is seeing as primary natural contact.. it can be absolutely ignorant person who know nothing about architecture and can hardly coherently express his impressions.. but he has artistis seeing… when he looks at this cathedral he gets the meaning, the content of the piece of art directly without transferring it into words or some other conventional system…

I think that this primary vision is necessary …
It’s either you have or not… if not then it’s useless to explain all the architectural details and to teach… but sometimes there’s chance a good explanations may suddenly make a person see it, he breaks through… but from experience it happens very seldom and mostly he goes as far as appreciation of these ideas and then slides back to his seeing again.
He can even understand the principles!
He says: ok… I see that this column is higher m and this base is bigger and they have to compensate it… he can understand but he does not feel it.. it does not work.


Where does this natural seeng come from? I don’t know… call it nature, genetic, soul, tradition, subconscious, culture, God.. whatever… for this topic it is not that important.

What is important that it has quality of direct contact… it’s only ‘you and me’.. it’s cathedral built for me’.. ‘ it’s Bird playing only for me’.. it’s direct communication…
This is what brings the Art so high for me… I see it is the only way for such possibility to have contact for every single person…
When I say contact I mean this miraculous almost mystic feeling that you can feel that there’s Another.. not understand it not with your intellect that you live in the society and all which is mostly not real contact to me but the idea of it in our head… but I mean just direct feel the presence of another soul.
The only other way to have this contact except Art is Love... I believe so

The same with with artistic hearing
We can teach person to hear – say – functional harmony.. he will perfectly hear cadences, modulations etc.
But will it be artistic hearing?
I am not sure.
Let us ask a student the following question (theoretically of course):
Why did you use triton sub in these changes?
Possible answer 1: I knew this concept could be applicable here so I just substituted this chord for that .. or I know it’s common to do it… or I just hear these changes commonly like that…
All these variants show that this person can knos the concept and probably he can hear it in the context very well..


Possible answer 2: I tried to make it sound smoother, softer… or these changes repeated a few times I wanted to avoid the repetition because it gives the wrong motoric to the song for me… or I developed melodic line and I heard the harmony of the sub will highlight its character better…

All these answers do not contain speaking about ‘anger’, ‘love’ etc.
But they show that the person feels the content of music and his choices depend on the meaning he feels and wants to bring in and develope. We do not have to name these meanings
I think this approach can be taught

[henryrobinett]

I got it. But if the student through example and much practice can't hear how to use a tritone sub tastefully I don't think there's any amount of handholding that's gonna do it. The student is responsible for coming to the table. I don't know how to teach that probably because I have no interest in going into that level of denseness.

[henryrobinett]

The only real problem I run into is with students who are too frightened to jump, to let go. They're simply afraid they won't get it. The answer to what I think you're saying is to listen to a lot if music and play a lot. A lot. Guys who can't do don't do. Some folks WAY over intellectualize shit. There's not a lot intellectually going on really. Once you've done the intellectual homework,
admittedly which is considerable, it's just letting go.

But if I can't get the student to listen to music we have a basic and fundamental problem. Yes I can and do point out things. I give him various points from which to listen and what to listen to and for.

But you might be right. It might be another one of those dumb assumptions I've made where I'm flying over the top of the students heads like with the improv thing. "Just learn to mess with it." Normally when I play them examples of using a tritone sub I'm making the assumption the student goes, "Oh yeah! THAT thing!"

But I don't think so.

[pingu]

we here all have feelings , when we listen to music ....

sometimes a particular line with a particular
change will just get you emotionally ... (you know !)

a small percentage of people (inc us) want to know how that process works , and to be able to do that stuff and maybe come up with our own stuff too

i think thats usually the motive for wanting
to learn music (well it was mine anyway)
but you've got to REALLY want do it !
because after your first couple lessons
you realise that there's a lot of stuff to do here !
unless you're very lucky to be born with
big ears , you have a lot of studying to even get the basics down ....

its not that bad actually but seems like
a maze on the side of a cliff at first
remember ??

so you practice .... you teach your ears
discern what the hell is going on
to recognise the sounds and colours
... this is never ending of course

luckily the process is learning by doing mostly so its fun ....

the French for rehearsing is 'Repetition'