View Poll Results: Time it takes to learn pro level Jazz improv?
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To understand what some Musicians say in interviews/workshops/soundchecks/etc., is not so easy for me.
Anyway in a video of a Joe Diorio seminar he says: "In music, 20 years are the warmup...."
Ettore Quenda.it - Jazz Guitar - Chitarra Jazz
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03-13-2023 09:58 AM
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The jazz musician's skills are only part of it.
There is also marketing work which is very important.
You must have a manager or be one.
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definetely, marketing is maybe 50%???
Originally Posted by kris
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i’ve been playing for 40 years
I’ll let you know when I get it together !
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I've finally reached the point where I'm happy with my playing and it sounds like 'jazz' to me. Only took 20 years! Lol. I think if you get to the point where you play jazz legitimately and competently, it naturally sounds good to the listener regardless of taste. I first plunked a piano when I was 18 in 04 in my spring semester of my freshman year of college at San Diego Mesa College. I believe I started class piano and started working at piano more dilligently around the year after that.
Last edited by Bobby Timmons; 12-11-2024 at 10:29 PM.
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2-5 years esp if you're in an environment where you can learn and thrive like a good music school. Depends on what your playing level is before Jazz. Best thing for a jazz guitarist is to have other technically demanding styles under their belt beforehand.
After reaching proffessional competency then it's a lifetime of learning/studying esp for improvising musicians. My partner is a classical musician and kinda rests on her laurels to some degree, hehe.
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^ Sounds pretty accurate but maybe only the top players could be decent musicians beforehand and then hit studying jazz and come out pro level in 2-5 years. I think the thread is more about total time tho.
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For sure, not everyone. Originally Posted by Bobby Timmons
Hard to put put a value on it but the top 1/2 I'd say if that's what they want to do. Many move on to other pop gigs and don't keep up the jazz. The top are already pro level in school in my experience bc they went to arts middle or high schools or enrichment programs where they learned Donna lee by ear at 14.
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A dedicated musician who is competent in another style can get to a level where they learn some standards and develop rudimentary jazz improvisation skills good enough to play in corporate or wedding gigs in 2-3 years. But I wouldn't call them professional jazz guitarists.
To me, a professional jazz guitarist should be able to hold their own in dedicated jazz venues playing alongside experienced jazz pros in front of real jazz audience who are used to seeing a certain calibre of jazz musicianship.
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Here's another thing.
I figure it might take a few years to play the guitar well enough to be a gigging jazz musician.
But how long would it take to listen to the music you'd need to have listened to?
Like a competent college freshman could play most of Grant Green's stuff. So they've maybe been practicing seriously for two or three years.
But how many times do you have to listen to Charlie Christian and The Quartets with Sonny Clarke and Jazz at Massey Hall and the Robert Johnson recordings and Bud Powell to actually sound like Grant when you do it?
A couple hours of daily listening for .... years and years and years and years.
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I think there's plenty of pro level improv amount young students or just out of undergrad born after 2000 at the Emmet Ray, Drom and the Rex. Maybe they dont gig w heavies but they're certainly at a pro level. What you're describing is what I would call a Jazz Master. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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Why do you think my description excludes them from being jazz pros? Originally Posted by bediles
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I would say that "a certain caliber" is doing a lot of work in that description ... so it kind of excludes everyone or no one or everything in between. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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It's meant to exclude those who can fake a chorus of Autumn Leaves in a loud corporate holiday party where no one is paying attention to the music. As opposed to playing in a venue where people specifically go to listen to jazz. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Nothing when I reread it. I was really stuck in thinking only about music students. Originally Posted by Tal_175
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I'm now at 45 years of studying jazz and still don't play at a pro level. I am starting to suspect that my lack of actual musical talent might be the issue.
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doubt it Originally Posted by Cunamara
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Join Open Studio. :P
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Whats that? Originally Posted by Bobby Timmons
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It's where you pay $47 / month and get way better. Why would anyone want that.
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Your talent is easily the 3rd most important part of being a working musician. If there's a nice guy who suggests appropriate tunes, but all his solos are licks and diatonic 3rds, I'll pick him over the shredder who's drunk, in jeans and wants to play a tonal freakouts at our wallpaper gig.
There's a baseline, so I went with 2-5 years, but that's just the baseline, always be improving, your music and your personality.
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hmm Originally Posted by Bobby Timmons
never heard of it
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What is pro level?
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An arbitrary moving goalpost. Playing gigs is pro level, unless you don't make enough money to live off it, then it's only pro level if the gigs are at Smalls and people like you, unless they don't like you because you are too avaunt guard. At that point it would be okay for you to paint signs or have a similarly romanticized part time job to cover the bills. Welder would probably also be acceptable. Teacher is unacceptable, teachers ruin jazz. Real jazz anyway, the kind you used to learn from people, but not teachers, you had to learn it from people who weren't teachers in 1940, and no books or reading music, Wes never explicitly said he could sight read, so he was illiterate. Only illiteracy makes you pro level, unless you are Pat Martino. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Basically it'll boil down to "my favorite guy is pro level and here are the reasons kids today aren't"
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