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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
At the risk of appearing obtuse, I would say one learns to draw by being taught to draw. An art teacher shows the student how to see the subject, and how to use the media to represent it. The seeing and the representing are entangled, not separated activities.
But then, art differs from music because it has subjects.
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08-26-2023 07:03 PM
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Originally Posted by Litterick
Taking that raw material and spinning differently—placing it differently in the measure—pushing the harmony—applying concepts in different ways. People do that. I’m not sure you can be taught to hear differently (per Christian that might be a bit of a paradox) but the listening and transcribing is where you learn how others heard the music differently, and worked through that raw material differently.
One can be taught to draw—but is there more to find in the imitation than can be imparted through instruction.
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Originally Posted by Kirk Garrett
Painting is still taught in art schools, and the "art" you put in quote marks is still art. In the twentieth century, music, literature and art changed. New forms of artistic production became prominent, photography and cinema especially. And jazz. Music was recorded. Teachers and students thought in new ways about the nature of art forms: what a sculpture or a concerto is. Creators were liberated from private patronage by state support and markets for their products.
If art had stayed the same, it would have been ridiculous. It would have been like programmes at the Lincoln Center where all the jazz is at least fifty years old and all the musicians are Afro-American, as if ECM never happened. Things change; or at least they did.
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Originally Posted by Kirk Garrett
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Originally Posted by Litterick
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
You might not be able to hear differently, but you can listen differently. Attention is key.
Imitation is necessary if you want to paint in the style of the artist imitated, but there is not much call for that — at least outside those Chinese factories that produce exact copies of works by the Old Masters.
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Originally Posted by Litterick
You can train your listening. It can be different than it was. But I’m not sure you can train someone to listen in a unique way. The best you can do is train someone to listen as broadly as possible. Hopefully something interesting springs from that.
And out of curiosity … how would one be taught to listen if not by listening and imitating?
I’m really not sure if painting and drawing is different than music, but it seems like maybe your conception of what goes into imitating is narrow. Or maybe imitating is a bad word choice on the part of whichever one of us started using it first. Transcribing is more like close study. Listening, singing, thinking about the articulation and time feel, reproducing on the instrument, working out other fingerings, analyzing, breaking down into component parts, changing and adding and subtracting, copying the rhythm.
Is that part of what happens when an aspiring artist copies an old master?
It would seem to me that in any art, imitation can be flat and dull in the hands of someone not inclined to make interesting. But useful and enlightening in the hands of someone looking to be enlightened. I’m not sure any instruction would teach the former to be original. And the latter would probably be original if they were in any other field.
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Originally Posted by Litterick
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Originally Posted by Litterick
Can I not learn how to use light masterfully by studying Rembrandt? What better way to study him than trying what he did?
Copying doesn't mean you never move beyond it.
Jazz players should understand this...why so many study bebop? Just to copy it? Hardly.
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All artists study the works of others. Writers study writers, composers study composers.
An improvised solo is different in important ways. It happens in a unique circumstance, when other players have offered their musical comments, or even solo improv happens in a specific time and place, with a specific history of other playing informing it, like Keith Jarrett.
The last solos I learned verbatim were Hendrix's "Voodoo Child" and Zappa's "Willie the Pimp", back in the 70s. For jazz it has been learning the vocabulary, the elements, the words (riffs) and sentences (heads) used by others. Most riffs come out of the building blocks of heads, either the one being played or another in that vein. And the best jazz is a conversation, like improv theater. The players react to each other, build on the previous player.
I found it was the accumulation of riffs I copied, and tunes I learned, that gave me the vocabulary and stock of stories I could tell. In a conversation at a party, one wants to offer a joke or story that adds to what another speaker offered.
So of course you learn what other players do. But copying an entire conversational response from a particular party is probably more than is useful. Copying how a particular player delivers a head, learning the way they started their solos, is enough, I would say. Those things will get used, while an entire Joe Pass or Pat Martino solo won't.Last edited by Tom Wright; 08-26-2023 at 10:37 PM.
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Originally Posted by Litterick
This was in the context of a discussion about the role of imitation in developing 1) skills and 2) an originality or authenticity of one’s own.
Schools walked away from teaching painting and drawing for decades. To some degree, young people have rekindled an interest in obtaining those skills.
“Art” is really anything at all, which is why I used quotation marks there.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
See the word “necessarily” in the post you’re referring to. Conceptually led artists did not — necessarily — rely on the acquisition of a given set of skills.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
The ole Modular Lick Compendium, exhibit A.
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
You would not be alone. Rembrandt had many followers and imitators. The Rembrandt Research Project, organised by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek between 1968 and 1998, found half the signed Rembrandt self-portraits in museums and private collections to be copies or pastiches.
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Originally Posted by Kirk Garrett
Art is not anything. Art is what the art world accepts as art.
Artists, the good ones at least, have always striven for originality. What changed in the twentieth century was the scope of possibility.
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
'That bedrock conservatism -- belief in a jazz canon, skepticism about the idea of progress -- is far more than an intellectual abstraction to Crouch and Marsalis. It drives the way they program at Lincoln Center.'
Wynton Marsalis And The Jazz Rage
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Well, I often make excuses for not transcribing too… society is to blame!
Eat yer greens!
But I’ll back up there . that’s not to say there isn’t a nuanced conversation to be had on these subjects, and some points to be made. I’m not myself 100% in the camp of ‘everyone must read’ or ‘everyone should transcribe.’ In another situation I might be arguing against those positions.
The worst thing about this kind of discussion is rather inevitable way everything ends up in a for or against camp. If this is an inevitable product of internet discussion it explains much in the modern world.
I’ve seen my own position stereotyped not just by those arguing ‘against’ me. I’m not saying ear learning is even necessary, I’m saying it’s not in opposition to creativity.
‘Transcription’ is not the be all and end all. It is not however, opposed to originality in music. Most often it is used as a gateway into becoming a functional musician. Quite often players who’ve done a lot of ear study of one player obviously end up sounding like them, so Litterick is correct in that. At this point it’s quite common for the community to step in and advise the young Metheny or whoever to stop playing those Wes licks.
but to draw from this the conclusion that imitation of a model was a mistake or a blind alley, or that ear study always leads to the parroting of others styles I think isn’t supportable from evidence or experience. Actually I think for many players sounding like someone else is a perfectly legitimate stage to go through, provided there’s a development from there. It’s not how I did it, but many have.
Personally, much of the time i study stuff by ear because I hear something I like that I can’t identify and I am curious - what’s going on there? What’s that chord change? I haven’t felt the compulsion to learn and play a solo for a long time, but the one time I did I learned a tremendous amount. playing other people’s music tends to have that effect.
If I learn a whole piece of music - a tune, or a solo - it’s because I love it and I want to play that. Believe or not most musicians, including the particularly creative and original ones I know, are not really doing stuff for any more complicated reasons that that. What a cool tune/solo/piece! I want to learn it.
Reading between the lines I think what litterick actually objects to is actually a perceived connection between transcription and the canon. Which is to say why the Old Masters (prez bird etc). This is not a product of ear learning per se. Is that correct, would you say?
I think the idea of a canon is always questionable. Otoh great stuff is great…
I’ve transcribed plenty of contemporary jazz. I’ve done ECM stuff, contemporary jazz, you name it. I took down a Brad Shepik tune with quarter tones the other day (that taught me something). I don’t think that’s unusual behaviour… Very often you kind of have to do that because the charts are not available if you want to play those tunes or study them. And you can see plenty of stuff that people have taken down on Scribd.
Above all it teaches you to hear better and more.Last edited by Christian Miller; 08-27-2023 at 04:05 AM.
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Originally Posted by Litterick
I expect that probably isn’t what you are saying.
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Originally Posted by Tom Wright
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Anyway. I posted and deleted a whole thing. Not really a discussion I’d like to have on the internet.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
Cheap floating humbuckers
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