-
I'll have to agree, those are pretty thorough theory requirements.
Originally Posted by JohnRoss
-
05-26-2010 02:15 PM
-
Its a fascinating thread we're on here!
I'd ask what do we mean by Classical? or Jazz?
If you find a good teacher with a good teaching style try and ask them as much as possible and listen to plenty of music in your free time. Maybe take additional ear training lessons. Gain control of your musical development. Don't be content to be tame and spoonfed. Buy CDs of a range of Classical guitar composers and try to discern different approaches. By learning Classical guitar you arent enrolling in the army! there is a rich heritage of music in the Western Classical Tradition with some radical innovative figures.
Eventually all styles meet and feed into each other.
I started on classical guitar for 3-4 years. there were the usual frustrations of a beginner. It has shaped my harmonic taste quite a bit for better or worse.
I'm fond of late romantic harmony (Chopin, Rachmaninov etc) as well as neoclassical shred stuff. Sometimes I get bored by standard diatonic "Classical Harmony" and feel a need to Jazz things up. After 4 years I was playing a few grade 8 pieces, some by J.S.Bach but still if someone asked me to play a "C chord" i wouldn't know how to do it. However, there was a lot of good knowledge laid down during my classical studies even if most of it was quite sedate. After 15 years of electric guitar playing I've developed a kind of anything goes approach to theory but still value the grammar of classical music.
+Folk-Medaeval-Rennaisance-Baroque-Classical-Romantic-Impressionist-Modernist-Atonal-+++Popular-BluesJazzRockPostmodernTechnoNeoFusionProgessive.. .. + a bit of good old strumming?
-
Wow. I am amazed at the replies I have received. Thank you all for the feedback.
I am going to go to a couple of classical lessons and see how it goes. I really want to academically learn the guitar and music theory before going deep into composition, improvisation etc.. I just feel this route will eventually make me a much more capable player and give me a deep understanding of what I am actually playing. I am still pretty young (22) so hopefully have plenty of years playing ahead of me. My goal is to eventually perform and compose my own music.
This forum is great man.. lot's of great feedback and opinions.
Thanks again.
-
A question for all you guys who've gone to Berklee, etc... If you majored in jazz guitar, what was the breakdown of your time there?
-- classic guitar (any?)
-- performance
-- theory (classical, jazz)
-- composition
-- what else?
-
Either path will expose you to the same big money and pretty woman. You can't loose. ;-)
-
That's where I went wrong. I chose the path of warm beer and cold women.
-
At CU-Boulder, the program in which I'm enrolled breaks things down as follows (all units are credit-hours): Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
BM-JAZZ STUDIES
(Available for Jazz Trumpet, Jazz Trombone, Jazz Saxophone, Jazz Bass, Jazz Drum Set, and Jazz Guitar)
REQUIRED MUSIC COURSES (83 hrs.)
Applied Instruction – Classical/Jazz 26
Large University Ensemble 2
Jazz Ensemble/Jazz Combo 9 (1 per semester)
Theory MUSC 1101, 1111, 2101, 2111 8
Aural Skills MUSC 1121, 1131, 2121, 2131 4
Keyboard Musicianship PMUS 1105, 1205 2
Intro. to Musical Styles & Ideas MUSC 1802 3
Jazz Piano Class PMUS 1515 2
Recitals MUSC 3997 and MUSC 4997 2
Jazz Theory/Aural Foundations MUSC 3081 3
History of Jazz MUSC 3642 3
Jazz Improvisation 1 MUSC 3061 2
Jazz Improvisation 2 MUSC 3071 2
Jazz Arranging 1 MUSC 4031 2
Jazz Arranging 2 MUSC 4091 2
History of Music 1 & 2 MUSC 3802, 3812 6
Non-Western Music MUSC 2772, 2782, 4012, 4112, 4142, 4892 3
Music Electives MUSC or PMUS (not in major applied area) 2
NON-MUSIC ELECTIVES (30 hrs.)
Written Communication (see A&S Core Curriculum) 3
Foundations of Ethnic Studies ETHN 2001 3
African American History HIST 2437 3
Other non-music electives 21
FREE ELECTIVES (7 hrs.) music or non-music courses 7
REQUIRED TOTAL 120
* 8 credits of classical applied study minimum for bass and drum set majors.
-
So how long were you over here in the UK then Big Daddy? Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles
-
Five years! But you don't thing we have cold women in the frozen north? Originally Posted by musicalbodger
I'm alluding to some Tom Waits lyrics:
warm beer and cold women, I just don't fit in
every joint I stumbled into tonight
that's just how it's been
all these double knit strangers with
gin and vermouth and recycled stories
in the naugahyde booths
with the platinum blondes
and tobacco brunettes
I'll be drinkin' to forget you
lite another cigarette
and the band's playin' something
by Tammy Wynette
and the drinks are on me tonight
-
One of my all-time favourite choons. In A flatonmyfacesoon mode, sometimes....and the drinks are on me tonight
(Be ' good f'llow and don' leaf y'r glass on th' amp, the beer seeps in and makes the sound sticky).
-
How about "the piano has been drinking".
-
Oh yeah. Tom Waits has a shrine at my house.
-
Should have mentioned the excellent Trinity / Guildhall course called Plectrum Guitar that is perfect for someone going towards jazz and session playing. You wouldn't have to be a genius to work out what books would go with the exam material. These exams are not prescriptive in what you will be playing, offering a wide selection of material from a lot of sources (there's no grade book with each exam, just a syllabus on the website and choices to follow.) It is the only Guitar Course aimed at a jazzy style of playing with a lot of chord melody material. But you do need to be able to read music from Grade 6 if you want to actually do the exams - no need for self study - but a lot of the mre advanced material is written in notation so betterto learn. Originally Posted by JohnRoss
Last edited by ChrisDowning; 01-06-2013 at 07:12 AM.
-
It is interesting to contrast this thread with the advice my violinist son is getting from his mentors. He is primarliy interested in jazz and other improvisational forms, but unanamously--by both jazz and classical musicians--he has been encouraged to enroll in a classical program and add jazz to that. In violin, the techincal foundation that you learn from the standard classical pedagogy has no counterpart in jazz. One professional jazz violinist told him that everything he is studying in jazz should be reviewed by his classical teacher. If you want to sound good on the violin, the route is through classical.
Last edited by Jonzo; 01-06-2013 at 11:27 AM.
-
I studied classical guitar to the point that I have my grade 9 Royal Conservatory.
This thread is interesting. In my view, the theory that you learn in classical guitar is not particularly helpful in learning jazz because it is not applied in performance. You might learn some theory in terms of composition if you are lucky, but not nearly to the extent that you need when performing jazz. Further, when performing classical peices, theory is basically irrelevant. You are learning the notes as written and not thinking at all about harmony or how the notes fit into the music as a whole.
My daughter has her grade 10(Royal Conservatory) in piano and has done the theory requirements as well and would almost have to start over if she wanted to learn how to play jazz - I know, I've talked to her about it. And she has been doing piano for more than 10 years.
That said, you will develop some good technique. But there's no reason you can't develop good technique by starting with jazz either so I don't really see the added benefit.
I think - if you have a passion for jazz, then learn how to play jazz. There is no reason to think that you would be better at playing jazz with a few years of classical training rather than a few years of jazz training.
-
My musical journey has taken many twists and turns along the way; learning clarinet in the 1st grade under an awesome teacher. After much whining, I received my frist guitar a age 10 and boy was I hooked. My one and only teacher at this time was a very hard working jazz( ,Bebop) session and studio player. I guess I had some talent(good sight reader) because he didn't take on just anyone. As my reading was good instead of ordinary scales he had me playing Charlie Parker and Dizzy heads with explanations on how they relate to other forms of music. After several years of study, he suggested I try classical guitar As this coincided with my college studies, Music Composition and Theory, I jumped at the chance. All the while I was playing jazz and doing studio work. My clarinet training got me through college {"who know how to play the alto and bass clarinet?"}. I volunteered and was a quick study. After several years my love of jazz returned to the forefront.and I continued gigging;taking on anything I could -bass in rock bands, jazz guitar, teaching and even an occational classical recital. But my love was jazz..My classical years were not in vain, however, as it taught me how to listen, experiment and structure. I don't recommend this method to anyone starting out. I was blessed and am grateful for it. This knowledge help me in almost all my music today. But this is just me. We can all acheuve or goals through different means. I taught my son to play classical guitar and now he is a very good bass guitarist in the area. Sorry about the life's story, bit I guess my point is to absorb and music that places your ultimate goal in sight. Music and the stories and parts of our soul that are placed into it are where the love and honesty come from.
JM
-
I think as players we often forget how difficult itis to get to paly well enough to start playing jazzy stuff. It's a bit like trying to be a racing driver before you even have a licence to drive. (ok ok I also know young people who can do this - but you get my drift...) Getting a solid foundation is where it starts, and I can tell you there are plenty of players who haven't even done that and get stuck later on. I can understand the route from classical or formal training on the guitar into jazz playing - not sure I understand too well how that first part could be skipped. I think we may be getting mixed up with formal, traditional learning, and classical guitar/music. A fomal syllabus would have correct posture, finger placement, thumb positing, scales, all the chords, music reading, some theory, a lot on techniques, and a set of graduated music pieces to follow. I guess you could do all that and base it aronf jazz standards though. Again, take a look at the Trinity/guildhall Plectrum Guitar Courses syllabus and it pretty much follows that route - its their plectrum version of a classical guitar course. Here's a link http://www.trinitycollege.co.uk/resource/?id=4694 The plectrum version is definately not classical and has a lot of jazz standards to play. This would make a great course routemap for anyone wanting to do some serious practice.
-
Dear Chris, I think young people today are especially blessed to have jazz programs in universityand even high school education. When I was in school, this was unheard of. You took your classical training and the jazz talent grew through listening,a good private teacher and hard work. Of course my classical theory training and woodwind experience broadened my horizons as well as ear training. The composition courses also helped greatly. I will be ever grateful to all those teachers that gave me this education and especially to my jazz guitar teacher, who was one of those unique individuals that could take what I had learned in all genres and lead me in the direction I wanted to go. The musical life is a journey for sometimes with abysmal lows to highs in sight of the heavens. I am grateful to have this gift and the ability to teach others.
JM
-
I studied classical guitar. It is great for both hands. And you can adapt the fingerpicking to other styles.
However, you won't necessarily learn a lot of theory . That's another subject.
-
How does one even learn jazz? Modern method for guitar? Mickey baker? Online courses? Please. After years of practice i coulndnt improvise a tune if you put a gun to my head.
Im a decent basketball player but growing up thats what everyone did, they played basketball. You learned the game by playing. Tough to find that opportunity with jazz and I dont think i'll enroll in a university jazz program just so ican have people to play music with.
So, if the original poster is going to play guitar for fun as a hobby i say the path toward the ultimate goal of making music is clearer with classical. If becomes friends with a bunch of jazz musicians along the way then he can give jazz a try.
-
This is turning out to be a very interesting and informative thread on a basic need - "How do I learn jazz on the guitar?"
Many of us have had a stab at offering routes to jazz after getting the basic playing sorted out. 1 Classical training then jazz later. 2 Plectrum syllabus with jazz influences (me). 3 Go straight at it with a jazz player as a teacher. 4 Approach it on a wide front and multi-instrument study alongside theory studies.
I suspect all those routes can produce a good jazz player - a lot of practice will sort out those who make it and lack of practice, those who don't.
The basic problem is there isn't a guitar orientated syllabus to follow in the way you can learn classical orientated instruments. That's all to do with the history of instruments and their use in music, and the business of teaching.
Firstly, most instruments were used in what we now call classical music. So the development of how to play has been going on for 200 years+. As a result we have many examination boards offering up syllabuses based on that heritage and teachers who surprise surprise, came to playing through that same route. That's why when you go out there teaching in schools you bump into loads of classical teachers and you are outnumbered with these guys ten to one. It's how they got to where they are, and it's how they are going to teach their students the same way.
Secondly, its a business. There are a lot (thousands) of teachers like I describe in the paragraph above. So if you are an examination board trying to maximise your revenues from exam takers, and teachers are the ones entering students, you take the easy route. You offer exams that teachers can teach - and the bulk of teachers learnt the classical way - so that's what we have, dozens of exams for classical player from many examination boards. And you know what - they offered up classical guitar exams - and since that was all that was available for decades (or was it hundreds of years?) that's what got taught and taken until the mid 1990's. At that stage we got a plectrum guitar exam based largely on a classical syllabus, which has morphed into Trinity's plectrum exam set. And then RGT kicked off their electric guitar courses along with Rockschool who also offered up electric rock syllabuses.
So the landscape has somewhat changed, but is far from completed, over the past twenty years. It's business revenues that will change this in the future. Once it was recognised that there were enough rock players to make running exams viable, we got the exams. More recently we have had RGT acoustic/folk exams, but jazz is still a fraction of all guitar players and as such, still remains a niche market - so no exams other than Trinity's jazz influenced plectrum course.
However, it is not all depressing news. Once through the basics of Grade 8 classical or Grade 8 rock or standards, you can get signed up to a colleg/university course in jazz playing (yippee! At last!)
So where are we as teachers? I only get one student wanting to do jazz in about fifty students. So its not really worth any effort on my part, except I like teaching the jazz basics. So I would never trail myself as a jazz teacher, but a few students are quite happy to do the basics with me to Grade 8 and take it on with other teachers from there.
That's what it looks like from a teacher's perspective. Too niche to make a living specialising in jazz. No exams that are all jazz, No syllabuses to follow leading to jazz exams. What I do is based on some of the books available and take it up to a high level without inventing a load of materials myself- its just not cost effective to be totally original.
That's my take on the background to all we are discusing here. If I'm not reading the situation right from a teachers point of view would some of the other teachers like to chip in here?
-
I'm basically just thinking out loud...So lets say there are basically two approaches to learning to play guitar...
Understanding and applying this understanding to the guitar or memorization on the guitar and applying this memorization to your understanding. Most seem to do both...
Trial and error... memorization and perform. You learn by repetitive concept. Play this scale, arpeggio, some type of composition etc... memorize it and that's what it is. As you move along this path you develop a collection of memorized different aspects of music. Music and how you play the music,(tunes) etc... Sometimes as you journey on this path you get explanations of the how and why of these... If your lucky you become aware of traditional fundamentals of music, harmony, theory etc... this is what we generally think of as Major/Minor Harmony, Tonal music.
So basically playing and understanding Music are different subjects. I'm classically trained, know many professional classically educated musicians that make their livings performing with symphony, opera etc... Hang, play golf etc... have musical conversations... most don't have a clue about harmony, theory etc... beyond basic theory. (Not all...) This is not good or bad... just what it is. Most don't know what function means, and when they do it's in relationship to...Major/Minor Functional Harmony, and that's it, those are the golden rules.
Jazz uses MMFH and it's system of relationships... but also recognizes many other potential possibilities, different harmonic systems of organization to establish guidelines for relationships and their development.
I know some great classical guitarist... most have very difficult time playing jazz. And the ones who can play, sound like a classical guitarist playing jazz. Again not good or bad, just different.
My approach to playing guitar is to become aware of the concept and apply to guitar. The technical skills, fretboard awareness...are a separate aspect of playing. So theoretically learning to play classical guitar should also get your technical skills and fretboard awareness together... and all you would need is the understanding of what it is to play jazz guitar... just doesn't seem to work that way.
You want to play Jazz... you need to play Jazz, Live jazz... jazz isn't memorization and perform. Maybe could be understanding what you memorize and have the ability to create and develop relationships with what's being played using those memorized musical aspects as a reference for development of those relationships. Hmmm
-
I think we are in complete agreement Reg. There needs to be a point at which yqou can actually play some stuff from memory and by ear before you can perform. Jazz is really performed, not learnt, it's composition on the fly. Some people do it thinking scales, some think chords and chord tones, some both, some just wing it and have a great ear for what sounds good without knowing harmony, theory, they just have playing experience.
Teaching all that effectively is the problem for teachers, and learning it is an issue for students as well because they want a formula, a routemap to follow. The routemaps available can be based on examination syllabuses and then you get to the switchover point where they have the ammunition to go out and work live. When I started it was usual to be allowed to sit in as a rhythm guitarist. And only when you could do that without any flubs would you be allowed to take a couple of solos per evening. Slowly you got to do more solos - it was sort of organic learning by watch and do. I don't think you can create a study plan from that sort of learning.
But what's happening is there are so many music schools and colleges trying to make a business out of teaching, they certainly will try to create a college course from all this. I still need to be convinced that shelling out $50,000 for a three year course is necessarily going to get you to where you want to be with jazz. But if someone has been down that route and is now making a good living playing jazz because they went to college to study it, let us know, please. I am very willing to be convinced and promote that routemap. I come from an era where it was all pretty much done by show and learn on the road after learning the basics with a teacher so my perspective could be way out of line.Last edited by ChrisDowning; 01-10-2013 at 03:47 PM.
-
The only advantages of learning Classical will be the sight reading ability you'll get and the knowlede of harmony.
Apart from that, there are very few, if any, actual technical aspects you can transfer to jazz. I know because I spent years playing classical and loved it before making the switch. I did not realise how different it would be. I thought that with my classical technique I'd doing all those Joe Pass solo things in months. How wrong can somebody be !!!!
I found that the classical training had actually inhibited my musical imagination when it came to improv. I wanted to be told what to play and how to play it by my teacher. It took a long time to get over that.
If you are interested in classical guitar play classical or jazz then play jazz. If you have the time then do both. Either way, get a well qualified teacher.
-
I agree that learning the right hand classical technique is beneficial. Originally Posted by randalljazz
Doesn't the right hand classical technique also translate well to playing with 'fingerstyle' on steel strings?
Reply With Quote
Recommandations for Hollowbodies for $600 and under?
Today, 05:20 AM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos