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It’s a lifetime of work and learning, but it has to be fun. Practice shouldn’t be drudgery.
For me, it started to click when:
(1) I learned songs
(2) I learned a way to play songs that gives me maximum flexibility to play the songs in a solo manner -for me it is the Barry Harris
(3) I learned that the most important thing in this music is rhythm. So whatever methodology I used to play the songs allowed me the freedom to work on the material in #2 that was playing #1 in such a way that the whole thing was a drum emulation.
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08-01-2024 10:51 PM
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My personal experience with this is that first you need a guitar teacher to get the mechanics to the instrument under your fingers.
But when it comes to improving my skills at soloing (which I have never liked doing and still don't), I've had better results from working with someone who does not play guitar- a saxophone player. Their thinking about the music is different than the guitar and dealing with them feels fairly uncompromising because you have to translate how they think to the matrix that is the guitar. The guitar tends to lean you towards certain notes that are convenient to reach but playing especially bebop requires reaching notes that aren't convenient and phrasing very differently than guitar players tend to do. It's slow and frustrating for both of you especially if, as like me, you are unlearning 40 years of ineffective habits, but the payoff is significant. You need somebody with the ears and experience to say "that line sucked, here's why and how to make it better."
After this I suppose I should study with a pianist to learn more about playing chords. I already think I do that well; I'll probably find out I don't do that very well, either.
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Or Cooper Black? Hmm ...
Originally Posted by Bop Head
Anyway I am gonna sell it under the label "52nd street wear". (Hereby copyright claim.)
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There's guitar technical material, scales, arpeggios, chords, etc, then there's all these things to learn, soloing, the language, comping, listening, band interplay..
Then there's the music. I still enjoy playing songs I first played more than 30 years ago. I think the best approach to studying jazz is to just focus on the music, listen to and learn as many tunes as you can, transcribe a lot, practice the instrument enough applying all these techniques to the music, learn enough theory to understand what you are doing. Play with people as much as possible.
For me it's an equal triangle: Learn the music, learn the instrument, learn to listen and interact in a band.
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[reply typed before yesterday's database issues:]
I don't really know how we got to peer review (which isn't there to hold scientific theories to their required standards; it's rather concerned with the scientific researchers).
Oftentime that's perfectly normal too. What's worse (if we're discussing the PR system) is that sometimes things get through or (more often) do NOT get through because of personal agendas of the reviewers. Or simply because data or views being presented are a little bit too controversial or non-conforming to their taste. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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My own experience with (early music) soloing is limited to short diminutions but as far as that's relevant I can confirm that you can't really learn to do that on your own. There are period (= old) methods and written-out examples that you can work on but to make them your own and apply them to come up with your own variations is really a lot easier when you play with others. In fact, it will kind of start to happen automatically. Originally Posted by Cunamara
(I remember a question from the teacher during a summer school about "pre-canned" diminutions, "do you want to sound like an Englishman?"
)
Again, I have no idea if this can translate to actual improvised performance but I'd be tempted to start to learn first to be part of the texture (accompaniment) and then see what kind of sense of soloing evolves from that.
Reminds me of an introduction of sorts to playing the blues I heard (I think from Bob Brozeman in the Resonate 2008 documentary about National Guitars), something along the lines of just play that bass over and over again until the urge to play a melody note becomes too strong.
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Peer reviewed papers of course may concern theories or experimental evidence. The fact that either appear in a journal does non mean they are either correct or not challengeable by other researchers. It simply means that their works comes up to a basic methodological standard to be publishable. Not perfect because it is done by humans, but also I think both a higher hurdle and a lower standard than many might think. Originally Posted by RJVB
I mean it is a bit relevant - researchers would be more than happy to develop new theories of physics should meaningful discrepancies in the data be found. Quite often papers are published that suggest these have been found but the process of the interpretation of data being challenged in the literature and so on is ongoing. Sometimes these ideas can be quite controversial and very occasionally these controversial ideas are correct (such as the Higgs Boson for example .) The jury can often take decades to come in… meanwhile individual scientists can think all kinds of stuff (but at least within their own field they will know what work has been done.)
It’s certainly not true that individual scientists are not invested in their theories and coolly indifferent to the results of observations and experiments - no one who spends their career working on something can be emotionally detached in that way - but I can say from my own scientific education that they are certainly trained - inculcated - to think of other possible analyses of the data other than their pet ideas, and if they don’t do it, others will. That’s part of the self correcting nature of it.
Whereas music theory just doesn’t do that. Music theorists aren’t looking for some discrepancy that disproves their pet theory. Quite the opposite I would say. Which is fine. The problem comes when music theory presents itself as objective. Which it often does for cultural reasons.
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I didn't really intend to go too far down this rabbit hole, but indeed. What I was getting at re: peer review and holding theories to their standards is that one doesn't usually present a whole new theory in a single article, or at least not a theory as all-encompassing as music theory aims to be. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Peer-reviewed papers in empirical science are typically to present the results of a study investigating a hypothesis formulated on the basis of some theory. If those results lead to a new theory it is usually a "simple" one, or a variant of an existing one, and presented in a Conclusions/Discussion section with an obligatory "more research will be necessary".
I never thought of it this way, but I indeed don't think I've ever heard of studies trying to falsify a hypothesis emitted based on some part of music theory. But then again I never followed the literature the music theoriticians must have.
And then again there are composers who take care of those empirical studies by excusez-le-mot generating a bunch of notes according to some new idea and seeing how many people accept it as music.
Oh, another difference I don't think you touched upon: in science a claim doesn't become true by saying it often and loudly enough (not unless you have actual data backing it up that is). Play and defend something as music often enough, and people will start hearing it as such (and I do mean even the ones who don't care if it fits some formal definition of music)
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I'm not sure the parallels between music theory and the natural sciences are all that strong really.
Music theory is more an analytic endeavor than an empirical one. From my experience it's more concerned with understanding musical structures (harmony, melody, rhythm, etc) than why those structures are the way they are (either determining the thought process of the composer, or more fundamentally why humans perceive them the way they do, which is venturing into neuroscience). The structures are what they are; you can think about them in different ways, but those different ways are more like a change in mathematical coordinate systems than competing empirical theories. There is no empirical way to discover which is "correct". Or maybe I'm just out of touch with the academics and they do spend time arguing about Bach's system of music theory. Maybe my perspective is from the practical way it is taught to music performance students rather than academic analysis for their own sake.
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I do know one thing for sure - approaching music with the mindset of a scientist doesn’t work.
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There's a word missing there at the end, I assume you meant the Barry Harris "way". Originally Posted by Navdeep_Singh
What exactly are you referring to? The harmonisation of a scale in m6 / dim7 patterns, so you can harmonise the melody?
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I guess it's a joke,Christian?I do know one thing for sure - approaching music with the mindset of a scientist doesn’t work.
When I play music,I can't replace my brain with another
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Originally Posted by Hyppolyte Bergamotte
I would think that's a correct statement for some people. It's similar to how a Judge in Texas can wear two hats. Depending on the situation they can operate as a Magistrate or a Judge. If you are scientist and a musician you need to adopt a different mentality depending on what scenario you are dealing with in that moment.
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It took science to work out what musicians' brains were doing :-)
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Music theory IMO is nothing if not empirical. Empiricism is knowledge derived from the senses... I'm afraid I don't understand why you say music theory is more analytical than empirical - surely using ones senses (i.e. ones ears) is an absolute prerequisite to analysing and understanding music? Of course there are many different ways of hearing and analysing... Originally Posted by BreckerFan
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Yet many of the scientists I have known and know about are/were (more than) decent musicians. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Oh, it/they did? Beyond showing what parts of the brain "light up"? Originally Posted by ragman1
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Maybe it did in the beginning. Pythagoras (570 – 495 BC) discovered two strings under the same tension but differing in length in ratio 1:2 sounded the octave, and in 2:3 sounded the fifth. According to Dick Feynman, this was the first example of any numerical relationship in nature outside of geometry. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Or may be not, if music found the first example of numerical relationship before science.
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I know quite a few. It’s almost like people can understand the difference between two separate areas of human endeavour and can approach things in more than one way. Originally Posted by RJVB
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The history is interesting. Mathematics, Magic and the idea of Music of the Spheres are ancient. Science is young. Originally Posted by pauln
The mathematical properties of intervals intrigued many musicians and intellectuals over the past few thousand years, who extrapolated the whole idea into the cosmic significance of music and the Music of the Spheres which might seem poetic today but as understand was quite literally understood back then. For example, in the medieval mind, music took its place in the Quadrividium alongside mathematics, geometry and astronomy as facets of the immutable cosmos rather than within the temporal and human Trivium.
Science as we understand it did not exist in Pythagoras’s era and even by the time of Kepler (one of the great early modern proponents of the music of the spheres) astronomers were still expected to cast horoscopes. Newton famously wrote far more on Alchemy than he did on physics. So many of the foundational thinkers on modern physics and astronomy were also invested in what we might call esoteric or magical pursuits.
We are still taught seven colours in the rainbow, because Newton liked the numerology. (Same as the diatonic scale, among other things.)
So on into the Enlightenment, we see music maintaining that connection with the cosmos in the imagination. JP Rameau’s Traite attempted to create a foundation of the ‘tonal’ harmony of the era in natural science and the young science of acoustics. He was immediately hailed as the ‘Newton of Music’
This is a modern take on a very ancient philosophical theme, esotericism dressed in a lab coat. I think it’s fair to say this idea was extremely influential on the next few centuries of thinking on music, especially in the German speaking world for many reasons.
Most musicians still subscribe to this idea in one form or another in my experience. It’s incredibly sticky.
Sent from my iPhone using TapatalkLast edited by Christian Miller; 08-03-2024 at 11:06 AM.
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I don’t understand how statement this relates to mine. Originally Posted by Hyppolyte Bergamotte
I said ‘mindset’ not ‘mind’ or ‘brain’ (which is not necessarily the same thing as mind).
You can change the way you think. You can be trained to think a certain way. (But that also doesn’t turn you into a different person which is not what I meant.)
I can unpack it a bit if you like, but I’ve already droned on enough.
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Watch out it’s the subject police! Originally Posted by Grigoris
Are they like this at the pub?
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Or maybe your playing a standard and they get upset that you aren’t just playing the melody over and over.
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I always wondered how people get to the point of having 8K posts on forums...
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It took me about 5 years to realize I'm never going to be a jazz guitarist. I top out at about 240-250 BPM. I have trouble remembering bop heads. I don't have the chops to play solo jazz guitar. Originally Posted by jazznylon
I have a problem with regards to learning jazz guitar and its been bugging me for a while. There is just so many facets to jazz guitar, one could spend a lifetime on a single tune and never really be done with it. At least with Classical Guitar (in my experience) once you got the piece of music down you move on to another piece. Sometimes one will go back to the previous piece just so to keep the repertoire intact but with jazz its like...
how do you know you know a tune? What does knowing a tune really mean?
There's melody
- Chords/Form
- improv
- endless amount of solos from great players to transcribe
- 12 keys
- an abundance of different possible string sets one could limit oneself
- Different positional systems
- different improv concepts
- chord melody
(sorry I'm evil)
- chord solos
- counterpoint
- Playing with a group
- Reading
- Voice Leading
etc etc
And of course one could mix some of these things with others so there is no end point really. Maybe I should just stick with classical guitar... I'm too dumb for this
It's just too much work to come up with more than a few songs.
I could do the solo blues thing but I'm not much of a singer.
Life goes on.Last edited by Stevebol; 08-03-2024 at 11:47 AM.
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