-
Originally Posted by ArchtopHeaven
And as you mention Django - well it’s a matter of conjecture how he thought about music, but again learning his music by ear is the way Manouche and Sinti jazz players learn to this day; and not a jot of theory. For the players within the community they often learn this at a very young age, as a ‘mother tongue’. But even adult learners interested in ‘gypsy jazz’ are encouraged to learn it this way. And Andreas Varady is a great example of a non Django style player from a similar community who learned to play jazz guitar by ear alone at an early age.
I still think you are a bit hung up on stuff that isn’t quite connected to what I’m saying, it seems that you think I am making an argument I am not, that theory is never useful. But I would also dismiss an argument that theory is necessary for learning jazz as well through my own experiences but also the weight of historical evidence.
It may be necessary - or more accurately we may feel it’s necessary - for you or me - but for what it’s worth there really are jazz players out there who don’t know much or any theory; it’s less common these days but it exists.
sometimes these arguments are like ‘I didn’t do it this way so I can’t imagine anyone else doing it that way.’ For the record I didn’t do it this way either, but my playing progressed the most when I started focusing much more on ear learning. My theory background was always strong.
But actually, I can easily see how someone can learn to be conversant in straightahead jazz guitar through the appropriation of vocabulary by ear and fretboard mapping via chord ‘grips’, and learning a ton of tunes. It’s the way Manouche style players continue to learn as I say. This might not be the be all and end all, but I don’t think there’s any great mystery to it; in fact for early stages jazz guitar it’s a time honoured and straightforward learning strategy you can see reflected in players from Herb Ellis, Charlie Christian, Joe Pass and even to an extent Peter Bernstein (who certainly knows theory but often bases lines on ‘grips’) and you actually need to know very little formal theory. Most of all I know people who actually learned to play this way. Most of them are ‘lick players’ but they all sound good.
This understanding is helpful to focus on what is important on music, and I daresay I don’t need to tell you that it isn’t what’s in the theory books.Last edited by Christian Miller; 10-23-2021 at 04:32 AM.
-
10-23-2021 03:43 AM
-
To take an analogy it’s like saying that just because you had to use a textbook to help you learn French, everyone in France learned this way..
-
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I don't think that's true. I think you're being a romantic.
I'm not sure what you think I'm getting hung up on, we're just having a discussion and my point still is germane to your position.
You can't keep talking about weight of evidence without providing any. You mention the manouche, you could mention roman gypsy. They hand down knowledge to the young. Joe Pass studied for 8 hours a day. Do you think he wasn't learning scales and harmonic ideas, likely from a teacher or book?
You are also taking extreme positions based on my comments. It is not say that people 'never practice' I claim that they deny how much they practice. Which is a common human trait.
I'm also fully aware that there is many ways of doing things. I'm far less dogmatic than you think.
Cheers.
-
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
-
There is a truth to the language analogy but I find that people tend to push that analogy too far. I'm sure Wes Montgomery had to put a lot more conscious afford towards developing his musicianship and learning jazz than he did to become a native English speaker. The subject is precisely the conscious afford.
The correct analogy is not between becoming a jazz musician and being able to say "mommy I want some milk." in your native language.
The analogy is becoming a jazz musician and becoming a literary writer in your language.
-
Originally Posted by Tal_175
Well again there’s plenty of counter examples.
Read interviews with writers and you realise that they learn by, for instance, reading a lot of great literature and writing a lot of crap until they get better. So it is a good analogy, I think? (This can of course be done in college on a creative writing course; but it doesn’t have to be.)
You might go to uni to STUDY English or French literature, say, but I found that my studies of literature at school had little to do with the process of writing; more analysis of Chaucer, Shakespeare etc. It may help you write, or it may not… there’s also the difference in music between university and conservatoire/trade school (that has become blurred in jaze. A pivotal date is 1974 and Berklee’s accreditation to teach at College level.)
I often feel on this forum that people think I come to my understanding of music via some sort of theoretical exercise and therefore that it is debatable. Which is why I hate discussing it. My views have changed a lot over the past 25 years.
OTOH I’ve found it very hard to change peoples minds about this. People have a lot of skin in the game too - how much does it cost to go to jazz school in the US? The psychology is not hard to understand. I’m not trying to say this stuff is worthless anyway, just that knowing a bunch of theory cannot teach you to play jazz. And I can’t imagine anyone who can play disagreeing with that.
In fact, even today there’s diversity in approach and background out there among professional level practitioners including people who don’t know any theory. (You can say my friends are lying to me of course haha.)
You may not believe me (or my friends and colleagues) either, but that’s not my problem lol.
So anyway my original point naturally follows on from that really. I’m not trying to argue how jazz should be taught, but rather pointing out my own experiences as a working player and teacher. Take it or leave it.Last edited by Christian Miller; 10-23-2021 at 02:24 PM.
-
10-23-2021, 08:09 AM #57Dutchbopper GuestOriginally Posted by Christian Miller
Christian is 100% right. Jazz is a language, not a body of applied theoretical concepts. You can learn it like any language, by mere exposure, without studying its theoretical (grammatical) rules. Plenty of players have proven that. The greatest player on the planet (Bireli) has proven it. He knows nothing about music theory (by his own words). The gypsies in a camp less than 20 miles away from my home prove it (the home of the Rosenbergs yes). These guys do not even know the names of the chords they are playing. You enter the local music store here and and a 14 year old kid will blow you away on Donna Lee without having the slightest idea what he is doing. They have learned it as a first language. They start at a very early age and assimilate what they hear from the older players.
The opposite is true too. You can know all about theory and type a great solo here and still sound like shit. Theory and scales are NOT the jazz language. You have to go to the source itself. The sounds, the idiom, the vocabulary, the stylistics of it.
Is CST bad? No. It may help. Especially "foreign" learners, so those that learn it as a second language. But do not confuse it with the actual language of jazz. Try learning how to speak German by means of a grammar book only. You need exposure to and assimilation of the real thing. Best thing is to move to Germany at an early age IMHO.
DB
-
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
My point is there is no meaningful distinction between theory and any form of conscious learning. The language analogy (when it's pushed too far) downplays the role of the conscious mind in achieving mastery in any subject.
We learn a lot of musical skills subconsciously like we learn our native languages. Pretty much every 3 year old can sing as well as they can speak. That's because every culture is musical (unless they suppress it artificially). Every non musician has had an enormous amount of subconsciously musical learning. If you could find an adult who has never ever heard music for a single moment, and you play them music, it would be very difficult for them to make sense of it. But the difference between a musician and a non-musician is the conscious afford and training.
I think every good musician, especially jazz musician develops their own conscious mental organization and approach to music and their mental model of music informs how they practice and play it. Is every musicians conception of music the same as theory they teach in colleges? Who knows. But likely a lot of it is just a different way of looking at the same thing.
-
Originally Posted by Dutchbopper
Illiterate yet perfectly intelligent adults are probably are another good analogy, in that, obviously enough, not all literate adults are equally good writers, whereas illiterate adults may have a lot to say but be impeded by the extremely hard time they have learning to read and/or write (both are not the same) later in life, with many literate adults who perhaps don't have nearly as much to say drawing a total blank as to why it should be difficult to acquire these skills (if a child can do it).
-
Originally Posted by Dutchbopper
I do not see how it is possible for a gypsy player to know nothing of music theory. They just don't call it theory. Again that human spirit of 'look how mystical and god like I am to have done this all own my own talent'.
Bireli grew up in a gypsy institution of music with its own language and ways of teaching.
I find it far more likely that an adult said to him as a small child, here is a guitar, here is a chord play this lick over that chord. Otherwise Gypsy music would be completely ferrel and it isn't. It has quite a predictable theoretical style.
It is very much in the lineage of eastern classical music and old French musette.
Just as many blacks in the early days of jazz didn't go to 'music school' although many did, they learnt the 'rules' of jazz from others through osmosis, through the band stand and those bandstands, would have been buzzing with the lattes theoretic ideas.
Later on those ideas were codified in a 'college' but this in my opinion is just an advancement of the gypsy camp and the bandstand, where as before, a style of music was created and developed.
It is possible for a ferrel guitar player to play in a style of 'jazz' like Alan Holdsworth who made up his own theory and for all we know, Bill Frisell or John Scofield don't need to know anything about Jazz or theory because the music they invent, has a completely different structure, than what came before. Yet they are all well educated musicians in the language of jazz, as is the gypsy guitarist who grew up on the travellers sites.Last edited by Archie; 10-23-2021 at 11:26 AM.
-
10-23-2021, 01:14 PM #61Dutchbopper GuestOriginally Posted by palindrome
Plenty of the old masters were NOT into the CST thing. For, In the 1950s the CST thing as we know it did not exist yet.
DB
-
The basic difference is it used to be guys or gals that actually gig a lot have a way better understanding of how to speak the Jazz language.
It’s not just understanding the mechanics of it. It’s applying it with others in the real world, and not just understanding the theory part.As well as understanding others functions in the band and Listening!
And in the gigging world now we’re flooded with Jazz Theory students who sound very stiff and don’t Swing!
I think it’s much like your Blues Jam guys who don’t actually play Blues. But on a higher skill level
-
This thread is proof that every thread here has the capacity to morph into something else. Each thread has a life of it’s own.
-
Originally Posted by Dutchbopper
My only point, in fact, was that musicality being endemic in specific circles has a potential of getting misconstrued as a group-specific trait (or worse) rather than a combination of individual diligence and talent, but also a function of applied brainpower (given that many people, I'm sure, associate high-level performances of instrumentalists primarily with motor functions of virtuosity).
-
Originally Posted by Dutchbopper
-
Originally Posted by Dutchbopper
while in Europe you still find non college trained players especially in ‘gypsy jazz’ but even among people from outside the ethnic group who play that music.
Friends of mine talk about who Manouche players would cut visiting American stars at jams… (I’ve not been to Samois, never been able to make it down) - it has to be seen to believed. Ridiculous level of skill and virtuosity. The level where you are is crazy, some of my favourite jazz guitarists and not just the gypsy players….
of course, theres something special about NYC players - the energy and the swing is unique - - but that comes from being in NYC and being around that vibe all the time.
-
Theory informed learning:
Over the dominant chord, go up diminished from the third, come down tritone's minor (or altered) into the 3rd of the tonic.
A more natural, child like learning with no theory:
Memorize this over this (shows the same idea over the same chord).
Both can work especially if the student is driven and talented. But it's a bit difficult to see why the second approach is superior.
-
10-23-2021, 02:52 PM #68Dutchbopper GuestOriginally Posted by Tal_175
DB
Verzonden vanaf mijn iPad met Tapatalk
-
Well diversification is the name of the game when surviving as a pro musician. So without face to face conversations it’s easy to to bear off the rails, LOL!
-
10-23-2021, 03:11 PM #70Dutchbopper GuestOriginally Posted by jads57
DB
Verzonden vanaf mijn iPad met Tapatalk
-
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Lars Guilin was aa fantastic composer and baritone player who could swing like hell and fuse American Jazz with Scandinavian folk music.
Later on bands like Fattigfolket did well pushing those ideas further. I saw them live once at one off the best Jazz clubs in the world, Glen Millers bar in Stockholm. I've never forgotten that performance.
-
no iOriginally Posted by ArchtopHeaven
Actually Kenny was based in London for most of his life, originally Canadian. Glad I caught him before he passed, was playing right up to the end. Never got to play with him, although I do know a lot of players who did regularly. He did play with a lot of top US musicians so I can see why someone would think he was based in the US.
In terms of the future of jazz in Europe - the most original jazz guitarist I have heard for about 20 years is Reinier Baas, who is Dutch. He is equal technically to any of the contemporary NY players but unlike them seems to have escaped from Kurt’s long shadow.
I like a lot of Dutch musicians atm, for some reason, have been really enjoying Nora Fischer’s reinventions of baroque song with electric guitar (she also worked with Baas on some crazy jazz opera he wrote.) I think there’s a healthy irreverence maybe?
-
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
-
Originally Posted by ArchtopHeaven
-
I'm in South East England. I've seen John live 3 times. Unfortunately not in the early 70's or during Grace And Danger.
John Martin had what could be argued the greatest male voice ever recorded.
Sundays Child is my favourite album. I spent most of my early 20's trying to play and sound like John.
The guy I bought my Campellone off in Scotland went to school with John and lived across the road from him.
What about yourself?
Elias Prinz -- young talent from Munich
Today, 10:24 PM in The Players