Jazz music and technical prowess of the performer

[kris]

The technical mastery of the instrument has a fundamental impact on the level of music performed... Jazz is an excellent proof of this.
The more exercise, the better I play.

[Doug B]

The more exercise, the better I play.

This applies to any worthwhile activity. For example, since March I have been bike riding every day and increasing my mileage. The more I ride, the better I get! :-)

Doug

[AllanAllen]

I insured my back somehow and going through physical therapy, mostly core exercises, for the last month. I've never felt better during the 3rd set, still energized and with ideas flowing, compared to before, I was dog tired and sometimes just going through motions.

[Jimmy blue note]

The longer I've been playing, and the longer I've been teaching the more deeply I feel that many jazz students use study of theory and book knowledge as a convenient way to avoid actual playing and hands on trial and error music making with their actual instruments in hand.

I'm surprised at the number of students who are slowing their progress towards becoming fluent in the making music in real time... because they're trying to get the "correct" fingerings from somebody's TAB or transcription of a piece they can't hear the harmonic signposts that inform melody.
This comes from making choices to bring one closer to playing-by playing.
I'm honestly taken aback by the number of graduates at the school I went to who can't play a tune by ear from start to finish, no less create a lyrical line that is a true tribute to the piece involved.

I'm also amazed at how exceptional any player can become simply by having a playing partner to play with, for the joy of it, and to have fun.
Short story, if you learn to love playing, you do it, maybe when you could or might be doing other things. And the ways your ear learns and teaches you is the backbone upon which theory you learn becomes your language.

The people I've known and who have achieved what we see as "mastery" or "genius" are not exceptional geniuses. But they have entrusted their lives to loving making music, and have from very early on. The instrument taught them what a teacher's dictates could not; and from the perspective of the teacher, they learned their lessons faster and more deeply.

[AllanAllen]

I'm honestly taken aback by the number of graduates at the school I went to who can't play a tune by ear from start to finish

Do you mean they can't even play autumn leaves without a sheet?

[Jimmy blue note]

Do you mean they can't even play autumn leaves without a sheet?

Not if they hadn't memorized it by rote. If you're expecting to perform it, and you memorize it by rote but can't play it or another tune by ear, in a different position. For me knowing a tune means knowing the music, the piece, the instrument that you play music on. Not moving your fingers in the same way each time and running scales for some changes on a real book page.

These are skills that come from forming a close relationship between ears, fingers, knowing the fingerboard and spending enough time learning to play so it's a creative process. Yeah this takes time but it takes doing. Not the same thing.

[rpjazzguitar]

This is a guess.

Back in the day, say 1950, musicians would know tunes from the past 35 years, mostly, I'd guess, tunes people knew from radio or very popular movies (once there were talkies). Sheet music was available but no so cheap. Musicians learned by ear to a great extent, or they didn't know what they needed to know on gigs. Big ears all around.

Nowadays, there are a lot more tunes to know and a lot of ways to learn them. This has made a certain level of musicianship accessible with "smaller" ears. I include myself. I'd have struggled on gigs where the leader starts playing any tune in a random key and you're expected keep up. I recall the NYC wedding musicians of my youth showing fingers up or down to designate key and then it's 1 2 3 go.

[AllanAllen]

I'd have struggled on gigs where the leader starts playing any tune in a random key and you're expected keep up. I recall the NYC wedding musicians of my youth showing fingers up or down to designate key and then it's 1 2 3 go.

Are gigs of the first type even around anymore?

Even Frank Vignola on Guitar night works out sets beforehand to make sure the band knows the tunes called.

I think these sink or swim gigs are strawmen. As a bandleader, there is no better way to lose a gig than making your band look bad. Clients and venue managers don’t care beyond the band sounds good or not. At least, at pickup standards gigs.

The old school wedding guys yeah, I can see that 50 years ago live music was still a serious way to earn a living.

[jazzyfan]

The technical mastery of the instrument has a fundamental impact on the level of music performed... Jazz is an excellent proof of this.
The more exercise, the better I play.

Yes, exactly.
It's not mentioned much, but all the "musicality" in the world sounds so stupid when the guy is struggling with technique.
There are so many like these around. Teaching and pontificating.
Get your technique together man, and stop babbling on about "musicality" when your "musicality" is totally hampered by your lack of discipline and lack of effort to get your technique together.

[rpjazzguitar]

Are gigs of the first type even around anymore?

Even Frank Vignola on Guitar night works out sets beforehand to make sure the band knows the tunes called.

I think these sink or swim gigs are strawmen. As a bandleader, there is no better way to lose a gig than making your band look bad. Clients and venue managers don’t care beyond the band sounds good or not. At least, at pickup standards gigs.

The old school wedding guys yeah, I can see that 50 years ago live music was still a serious way to earn a living.

I thought those wedding musicians had an awesome skill level.

In my area, I'm unaware of that kind of gig. If it's a pickup band, I see charts. I've been called for pickup jazz gigs and have been given charts every time, including tunes that everyone can be reasonably expected to know.

The closest it comes to the old days is when someone requests something like Ipanema. You're expected to know it. It's usually played in F, but the original vocal was in Db so I've played it in Db a time or two.

Even some of the top players in the area, playing old standards on Senior Living gigs have charts on their Ipads.

EDIT: I know a singer and piano duo that play some of the big hotels. The gigs are the singer's and he insisted that the pianist memorize all the tunes. Pianist is a good musician who didn't find that too troublesome. I don't know how many altogether, but I'd guess several dozen.

[Jimmy blue note]

This is a guess.

Back in the day, say 1950, musicians would know tunes from the past 35 years, mostly, I'd guess, tunes people knew from radio or very popular movies (once there were talkies). Sheet music was available but no so cheap. Musicians learned by ear to a great extent, or they didn't know what they needed to know on gigs. Big ears all around.

Nowadays, there are a lot more tunes to know and a lot of ways to learn them. This has made a certain level of musicianship accessible with "smaller" ears. I include myself. I'd have struggled on gigs where the leader starts playing any tune in a random key and you're expected keep up. I recall the NYC wedding musicians of my youth showing fingers up or down to designate key and then it's 1 2 3 go.

Oscar Peterson had a long working trio with Herb Ellis (sometimes Joe Pass) and Ray Brown. Ray couldn't make it and put the call out for a sub. A friend of mine, really good player took the gig. Oscar asked him on the phone "You know my book?" (standards, all standards. No originals), yes, and he was told what time they were to hit for their first festival gig. No warm up, no rehearsal, no questions, barely a greeting exchanged.
Introduction by the MC. And Oscar begins playing. No book. No set list. No key indicated. No indication of what tune they were playing. At all.
My friend lost a bar and a half before he found the key, tune, pocket and the groove, and it was solid after that. Each tune, same thing, Oscar begins solo and you're supposed to know exactly where to jump in.
The set was a success... or so my friend thought. Oscar meets him after the curtain is down and gives him a killing look "You told me you knew my book!"

That's the level of expectation when you're a professional.

You don't get there without playing a lot. You don't get there without a LOT of mistakes each of which teaches you more about what you need to know to know a piece and re-compose it in an original and note-able way.

I'm sorry to say it also doesn't come from outside of yourself. In a big band, you learned by doing and tripping and being accepted. With playing with others in a small group situation, you learned by playing standards, getting bored with merely being competent and raising the bar to discovery every time.

I haven't watched any YouTube video that makes this point.

I had a good teacher early on. He was a piano player who played with the greats. I asked him who his teacher was. OJT. OJT?, who's that? On the Job Training.
Great teacher. He had us playing Tea for Two for two months. Each week the bar was raised higher. After a year, he said "Go out there and play. When you have questions, come back to me and we'll have a lesson then."

[RLetson]

So--does all of jazz have just one level of technical competence, or might there be more and less accomplished players? Is there perhaps a minimum required metronome setting for "Cherokee" or an all-twelve-keys requirement for the entire Real Book? And are there levels of professionalism? (I'm thinking of what a dick Oscar Peterson sounds like in that anecdote.)

Asking for a friend--I'm just an amateur swing-rhythm hack.

(FWIW, I agree that the way to learn to make music is to make music. Technical ability helps, but technique is not necessarily musical.)

[Cunamara]

The technical mastery of the instrument has a fundamental impact on the level of music performed... Jazz is an excellent proof of this.
The more exercise, the better I play.

You have to have enough technical ability to play the music that's inside of you. That might be folk music at the coffee shop, Segovia at Carnegie Hall, Frank Gambale playing in Chick Corea's band; there's a pretty huge range. There are jazz musicians who play beautiful, moving music that isn't particularly demanding from a technical perspective. There are people with immense technical skills who play with the passion and emotion of a coffee table. It's like listening to a computer. For folks who are interested in chops and technical ability, that might actually be satisfying; I guess I'm not one of those people. And, of course, there are people with great technical mastery and wonderful things to say with it which is the best of both worlds.

Technical mastery is only a toolset IMHO; you still have to have something to say. Mastering every scale on the planet will not give you something to say, any more than memorizing the dictionary will make you a great author. Get out of the practice room and live some life to have something to play about.

Also, when it comes to practicing, there is a point of diminishing returns and a point beyond that where further practicing is actually causing harm. Most of us use ourselves poorly in relation to our instrument, resulting in repetitive strain injuries (which are, by definition, self-inflicted) and not playing as well as we might. Apparently at Berkelee they tried academically penalizing students for injuring themselves by overplaying and over-practicing (jimmy blue note has talked about his discussions with Mick Goodrick about this). It didn't work; the drive towards perfection is very strong for some folks. There is a fairly high rate of attrition in music schools as a result of people harming themselves playing their instruments. It is a very high pressure environment placing a lot of demands, some of them contrary, on developing musicians. Many music schools offer training in the Alexander Technique to try to help students learn how to prevent hurting themselves.

Almost every time I talk with professional musicians and educators, I feel kind of happy that I pursued a different professional course in life and kept music as an avocation, something to be enjoyed and treasured rather than worked at. There may no better way to ruin something that you love than by trying to make a living at it- especially when it is something with a tiny market and a low probability of being able to make a decent living at it, like jazz. At the same time, as a jazz lover, I am very grateful indeed that there are people willing to take that on and produce this wonderful art form to experience- and for them to have developed enough technical mastery to play the music that is within them effectively.

[AllanAllen]

Oscar Peterson had a long working trio with Herb Ellis (sometimes Joe Pass) and Ray Brown. Ray couldn't make it and put the call out for a sub. A friend of mine, really good player took the gig. Oscar asked him on the phone "You know my book?" (standards, all standards. No originals), yes, and he was told what time they were to hit for their first festival gig. No warm up, no rehearsal, no questions, barely a greeting exchanged.
Introduction by the MC. And Oscar begins playing. No book. No set list. No key indicated. No indication of what tune they were playing. At all.
My friend lost a bar and a half before he found the key, tune, pocket and the groove, and it was solid after that. Each tune, same thing, Oscar begins solo and you're supposed to know exactly where to jump in.
The set was a success... or so my friend thought. Oscar meets him after the curtain is down and gives him a killing look "You told me you knew my book!"

That's the level of expectation when you're a professional.

You don't get there without playing a lot. You don't get there without a LOT of mistakes each of which teaches you more about what you need to know to know a piece and re-compose it in an original and note-able way.

I'm sorry to say it also doesn't come from outside of yourself. In a big band, you learned by doing and tripping and being accepted. With playing with others in a small group situation, you learned by playing standards, getting bored with merely being competent and raising the bar to discovery every time.

I haven't watched any YouTube video that makes this point.

I had a good teacher early on. He was a piano player who played with the greats. I asked him who his teacher was. OJT. OJT?, who's that? On the Job Training.
Great teacher. He had us playing Tea for Two for two months. Each week the bar was raised higher. After a year, he said "Go out there and play. When you have questions, come back to me and we'll have a lesson then."

Herb Ellis left the group in like 1958, so yeah. 60 years ago, you could do a hotel lounge at lunch, a cocktail/dinner gig and then an after hours gig. These were all the scraps guys like Oscar Peterson didn’t take. That’s the OJT your teacher was taking about.

So if you got “called to the majors” and didn’t know Oscar’s songs after saying you did, it’s expected to be chewed out.

Why OP didn’t pick up on the problem and throw your friend a bone with the tune name and key before staring is beyond me. People at the gig may or may not have been sharp enough to know the bass was off and could have assumed Peterson isn’t all he was cracked up to be. A pretty big gamble if you ask me.

Calling it The Oscar Peterson trio means he gets credit for the good AND bad parts of the show.

[Cunamara]

So--does all of jazz have just one level of technical competence, or might there be more and less accomplished players? Is there perhaps a minimum required metronome setting for "Cherokee" or an all-twelve-keys requirement for the entire Real Book? And are there levels of professionalism? (I'm thinking of what a dick Oscar Peterson sounds like in that anecdote.)

Asking for a friend--I'm just an amateur swing-rhythm hack.

(FWIW, I agree that the way to learn to make music is to make music. Technical ability helps, but technique is not necessarily musical.)

Obviously there are more and less accomplished players, there are more or less accomplished people in any field of endeavor for that matter. I am an example of a less accomplished player.

Back when OP was growing up and making his bones as a jazz pianist, the old jazz guys were pretty brutal all the way around. There was an expectation that you had 2-300 tunes under your belt and could play them in any key at the drop of a hat. If you couldn't, you caught shit for it. Someone would ask the tenor sax player "do you know such and such" and then call it in the key of B. Pat Metheny talks about this happening in Kansas City when he was in high school; he'd be on the band stand with these old guys, they'd say "do you know such and such a tune" to which he'd reply no and they'd say "1-2-3-4…" It was music learned on the street and on the bandstand, not in the conservatory.

Those were the dues to be paid. You got embarrassed, you got belittled, you bounced back and gave it your best at the next set. Or you gave up. Now the dues are music school, student debt and the Slonimsky scale book. Times have changed.

OP could dish it out. There's a story of him playing with Lenny Breau, at a time when Lenny was really considered the hot stuff guitarist in Canada. He jammed with Lenny, walked all over him and didn't give him any space to play and basically demoralized him. On his way out the door, he told somebody "that kid's never gonna make it." The guitar chair in the Oscar Peterson Trio was a tough spot to occupy; OP was a monster player and you had to be a monster to be able to hang with him.

[kris]

Yes, exactly.
It's not mentioned much, but all the "musicality" in the world sounds so stupid when the guy is struggling with technique.
There are so many like these around. Teaching and pontificating.
Get your technique together man, and stop babbling on about "musicality" when your "musicality" is totally hampered by your lack of discipline and lack of effort to get your technique together.

+1

[Christian Miller]

Are gigs of the first type even around anymore?

Even Frank Vignola on Guitar night works out sets beforehand to make sure the band knows the tunes called.

I think these sink or swim gigs are strawmen. As a bandleader, there is no better way to lose a gig than making your band look bad. Clients and venue managers don’t care beyond the band sounds good or not. At least, at pickup standards gigs.

The old school wedding guys yeah, I can see that 50 years ago live music was still a serious way to earn a living.

I’d say it’s quite common in older styles of jazz. You are expected to be able to play tunes in different keys, know the repertoire well enough to at least bluff it, and on dance gigs in particular there’s very little turnaround before the next number and often no set list. Good apprenticeship! But it comes from a genuine requirement of the gig.

A jazz club or concert date is different, you put more thought perhaps into the tunes the order of solos etc. Here's a chart I did for recent gig and many bandleaders do this type of thing (the tunes are not standards in this case but the concept is the same):



You know with Vignola that if you call Doctor Jazz in G or something he'll be all over that. It's basically inconceivable to me that he doesn't have a repertoire of hundreds of tunes and wouldn't be able to transpose vocal standards at the drop of a hat, and wing tunes on the stand, or learn them by listening to the recording once or twice. It's simply a requirement for him to be where he is as a player. It's the community of practice.

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[Question]

Kris' statement has some truth but there are many aspects other than just physical technique to being a well rounded and in-demand musician. (others have already mentioned some of them)

Your geographical location, era and type of work also has an impact on what you need/needed to know in order to survive.

There are some skills for freelancers that are universal and transferable such as good time, reading, knowing styles, repertoire, reliability, good ear, good sound as well as being an uncomplicated person that other musicians like to be with, especially on tour.

I know several great players who, as a result of lacking in one or more of the traits listed above, don't work as much as they probably could.

[kris]

Kris' statement has some truth but there are many aspects other than just physical technique to being a well rounded and in-demand musician. (others have already mentioned some of them)

Your geographical location, era and type of work also has an impact on what you need/needed to know in order to survive.

There are some skills for freelancers that are universal and transferable such as good time, reading, knowing styles, repertoire, reliability, good ear, good sound as well as being an uncomplicated person that other musicians like to be with, especially on tour.

I know several great players who, as a result of lacking in one or more of the traits listed above, don't work as much as they probably could.

We can also mention musicians who do not practice but do gigs using the phone.
It often happens that weak musicians, but active in organizing concerts, invite better musicians to cooperate.
This is true

[AllanAllen]

I’d say it’s quite common in older styles of jazz. You are expected to be able to play tunes in different keys, know the repertoire well enough to at least bluff it, and on dance gigs in particular there’s very little turnaround before the next number and often no set list. Good apprenticeship! But it comes from a genuine requirement of the gig.

A jazz club or concert date is different, you put more thought perhaps into the tunes the order of solos etc. Here's a chart I did for recent gig and many bandleaders do this type of thing (the tunes are not standards in this case but the concept is the same):



You know with Vignola that if you call Doctor Jazz in G or something he'll be all over that. It's basically inconceivable to me that he doesn't have a repertoire of hundreds of tunes and wouldn't be able to transpose vocal standards at the drop of a hat, and wing tunes on the stand, or learn them by listening to the recording once or twice. It's simply a requirement for him to be where he is as a player. It's the community of practice.

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Do you mean older styles of jazz being played now, or jazz groups in the 1950s? The guys in the Metheny anecdote were likely playing 15 or more gigs a week and if you're out that much, yeah set lists are a burden and the new kid better figure it out or get fired. But now, you can't learn 300 tunes in your room and just go onto a gig ready for whatever gets tossed out in any key for your once a month coffee house tips gig.

The dance bands I've seen around Chicagoland all have books of arrangements, so while a setlist might not be provided they just flip the page and go.

That last bit about Vignola, yes I agree he likely knows more tunes than a few of us at the forum combined, but that wasn't my point. My point was, he makes sure the band knows the songs they are going to play. I wonder if it's extra care he takes with Guitar Night having special guests each week and being streamed and preserved on youtube, of if he does it all the time.

It's a simple way to make the band sound better.

[AllanAllen]

It often happens that weak musicians, but active in organizing concerts, invite better musicians to cooperate.

This perfectly sums up my role in my own band.

[RLetson]

There is clearly a side of music culture based on (mostly male) dominance games and competitions--cutting contests, hazing the newbie, hierarchy anxieties and ambitions. "Wanna sit in? You know 'Cherokee,' right? OK, key of D-flat" and a countoff at 400 bpm. Can't keep up, kid? Pack up your horn.

That's a first cousin to the boot-camp/hospital-residency model of training and joining the club, except that lives are not at stake and the basic excuse has a big dose of "That's what I went through to be accepted, so suck it up." It's one thing to set functional expectations for a given performance setting, and it's another to be a dick.

[rpjazzguitar]

The point I was trying to get at was that, back when, there was no alternative to knowing all the tunes likely to be called and being able to play them in whatever key was required. So, musicians had to have a certain skill set, requiring, apparently, the ability to hear the pianist (or somebody) start a random tune in a random key and immediately get on it. And, without charts, a guitarist had to be able to hear and accommodate whatever changes the pianist was using. All this requires "big ears" - which is not something anybody can develop. Don't ask how I know that.

Nowadays, a player who doesn't have such big ears can use IRealPro. Some allowance has to be made by the leader to announce the tune and wait a moment for the players to bring up the chart. But, nowadays, you don't necessarily have to play tunes by ear in random keys. And, bands have moved away from that earlier model, so that there are usually charts anyway. Which means, a player without "big ears" can cover gigs -- and that's different.

Just thinking back ... the busiest musician I know, who plays weddings, wineries, golf clubs, that sort of thing, has multiple Ipads and hands them to the sidemen. I think he may control them from his Ipad. He has made a large number of charts of two pages or less. He uses two Ipads himself so that he can read each page in portrait mode. He complains that he plays the same 60 tunes over and over again. OTOH, I've seen him work a club crowd for requests and he's got everything anybody asked for on his Ipad, including songs I've never heard of.

I subbed for a wedding musician at a background jazz gig. Horn (top regional guy) and bassist who had played with names you've known for years. They had charts for everything, including iirc, tunes like Autumn Leaves and All of Me. What surprised me wasn't that they gave me the book (why take a chance with a new guy?), but rather that they opened it themselves.

I went to hear a standards gig by a guitarist who is another top regional guy. He hired a pianist friend of mine who has several albums out with good Downbeat reviews. They read charts all night.

Here was an exception. I was hired by a horn playing friend for a standards gig. Horn, guitar, bass. Bassist is a busy player gigging in multiple styles. The horn player didn't read on this gig (he can, he just didn't need to). He just called tunes. But, the bassist and I read them from the bassist's Ipad. The horn player (6 albums out under his own name) was a guy who'd have worked back in the day. But he didn't expect it from the bassist and I.

OTOH, it's not so difficult if you call the tunes, because you can call tunes you know. It gets tougher when somebody else calls the tunes.

I've told a jam story before where a prominent teacher at the camp insisted "no books, no books!". Then he called all the tunes, whispered the changes to the bassist and let everybody else try to figure them out -- and they weren't standards and they weren't straightforward. I ended up thinking, "if you're the one who says 'no books', then let somebody else call the tunes". You could say he was being a teacher, but it was an informal jam session, not a class.

It's another example of smaller ears getting into the room.

One more. At a local open jam the sitters-in are not allowed books. The leader (Grammy winner) knows every tune I've seen called. But, the organist (kicking bass) has his phone out. The saving grace is that the sitter-in calls his two tunes. But, if you want to stay up there, you'd need to know everything that gets called. To give you an idea, I first heard Evidence with hits at that jam.

[Christian Miller]

Do you mean older styles of jazz being played now, or jazz groups in the 1950s? The guys in the Metheny anecdote were likely playing 15 or more gigs a week and if you're out that much, yeah set lists are a burden and the new kid better figure it out or get fired. But now, you can't learn 300 tunes in your room and just go onto a gig ready for whatever gets tossed out in any key for your once a month coffee house tips gig.

The dance bands I've seen around Chicagoland all have books of arrangements, so while a setlist might not be provided they just flip the page and go.

That last bit about Vignola, yes I agree he likely knows more tunes than a few of us at the forum combined, but that wasn't my point. My point was, he makes sure the band knows the songs they are going to play. I wonder if it's extra care he takes with Guitar Night having special guests each week and being streamed and preserved on youtube, of if he does it all the time.

It's a simple way to make the band sound better.

just gigging players on the trad/swing/mainstream circuit.

As for myself, for example, I know a lot of swing and trad standards (maybe a few hundred? I have no idea tbh) and can transpose them etc and it’s down to doing 200 shows of that stuff a year at one point in my life between about 2010-15. I can bluff tunes in that repertoire when someone goes ‘button up your overcoat, Bb, 1 2 3 4’ which happens. It’s not rocket science. You certainly learn how to hear a II7 chord and a IV-#IVo7 haha.

Modern jazz players are in my experience more likely to use charts but even then it depends. Post modal jazz is a bigger room. It’s a different thing to memorise a Wayne tune for instance. OTOH if you are leading a bop tune the changes are often the easiest bit.

Some take this stuff more seriously than others. Straightahead scene is similar I would say. People get a bit snotty about people playing from charts for standards but if I want to give a new tune a go, I say why not? I’ll learn it for the next time.

Obviously with standards rep there’s overlap.

Ultimately this isn’t about flexing - I feel inadequate quite a lot of the time which is a Good Thing and keeps me growing. If my life had taken a different turn maybe I’d have the same level of knowledge about coding or something.

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[joe2758]

The technical mastery of the instrument has a fundamental impact on the level of music performed... Jazz is an excellent proof of this.
The more exercise, the better I play.

you're trying to tell me that mastering your instrument affects the level of music you can play? And practicing exercises helps? I require more proof, sir.