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It’s one thing to “play to the song”, but what about when there’s no song- then we play to the sound and just follow the path by instincts and reflexes. It’s pure in the moment stuff.
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01-10-2024 02:33 PM
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Yea... Mark I agree. You do it well.
years ago many musicians did... Jams... maybe start with a tune and completely end up somewhere. I'm talking 60's and early 70's. It seem we all had ears ....
There also is that... audience awareness etc...
Anyway... I like the above post.. thanks
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Originally Posted by Reg
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While I was at music school, there was no real program for free improvisational music. The curriculum was focused on teaching students the skills of playing on structured harmony.
It happened that a number of students at the time had come from backgrounds that included real time composition and improvisation, and it happened that all these students worked with one particular teacher at the time.
This man was Mick Goodrick and the last phase of his long teaching career was heavily focused on visual arts, free improvisation and ways of playing that were closer to Ernst Toch's Shaping Forces in Music than the Real Book.
Because there was no real program of free improvisation at the time, we formed a group that met after hours and evolved a community of improvisors that included well versed jazz players (Julian Lage was a regular part of our group, Wolfgang Muthspiel was a real mover, David Tronzo was a regular contributor and mentor) but also classical players who had never improvised a single note, artists who had never played music before and folk and bluegrass players new to any free or jazz playing.
The collaborative effect was astonishing. Everyone learned to listen to EVERYTHING, and learned the abilities within each of us to create. Everyone learned to play and control melody, rhythm, dynamics and self created phrases that others could then compose with.
And it was easy and fun. I think just about everyone who worked in this group went on to become very accomplished improvisors within their native genres because the process of improvisation had become crystal clear and freed from specific rules that had become more important than the process of playing.
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Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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^ This post is in no way meant as an offence to anybody and not related to anybody in this thread. The topic came up in a discussion with a friend who has a several decades long experience in teaching, also with kids. He stressed the importance of teaching people listening to what they are playing themselves. Seems obvious but it isn't. I was always listening to myself (also in relation to the playing of others) but had never thought about that fact and somehow taken for granted that everybody does it. So the possible necessity of pointing people to listening consciously to their own playing was new to me.
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
In New York I played with loads of Berklee dudes. One of the first guys I met there was a Berklee guy who was mutually friends with college friend. And once you know one Berklee musician, then you basically know only Berklee musicians because there are so doggone many. (12 Berklee grads in one three story apartment building — they called it “grad school”)
Anyway … I used to go over to their place for reading sessions with a bass player who lived near me. Not reading big band charts or whatever, but bringing unfinished fragments of original tunes and that sort of thing. One day, on the way home from the session, the bass player looked at me and said “man … you can give them a piece of paper and they just turn it into music.”
Which is about the highest compliment you can get, I think. At least as it pertains to having big ears etc.
(as an aside: that apartment was on Aberdeen Street and most of those Berklee grads and tunes turned into the band Aberdeen which is super cool and worth checking out.)
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
You'd think that it'd be the fundamental order in an institution of creative endeavour like a music school that listening to yourself would be a given, but in a glib, personally biased and saddened observation, I'd say that one requisite of listening to yourself is knowing yourself, your own propensities, filters, biases, weaknesses, strengths and natural abilities. That's far from a given in a big music school where proficiency against an objective metric and being graded for your progress within a rigid calculus is more important than the development of your own self, or language.
I do believe listening is a carefully and finely honed skill/ability. How does an institution measure or grade that? How do you then use those grades to keep a regular semester by semester flow of cash to the bursar's office?
If you want to learn the craft, Berklee can take you far. If you want to learn the art, you have to learn to think, listen, hear and create on your own terms. Free improvisation is one pure way to confront the elements of music creation. It's not taught at Berklee.
My own opinion and only my opinion.
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Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
Im sure you’d have to seek it out, though.
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
At its best and best applied, Berklee is a place where inspired and inspiring students do their own thing, using some classroom resources along the way. Berklee is a funny place where the best graduates had what they needed before they ever applied and used the place to network, or found something they didn't imagine and let it grow in spite of the classroom curriculae. The most successful ones make friends, play with them, transcend the limitations of the school and ...move to New York and play until what you do is greater than what you learned.
That's why improvisation is SO important.
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Originally Posted by pamosmusic
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Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
I meant such simple things, being or better becoming aware of what you are doing instead of simply letting your fingers move around mechanically on the fretboard after muscle memory learned by rote*). Before being aware of who you are and what has to be worked on (in life and in music) comes becoming aware what is happening at the moment.
*) Of course muscle memory is important, but it makes only sense musically being connected to the auditory senses.
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
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Is Berklee to blame for John Mayer?
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
All the things you mentioned are things nobody except yourself can perfect. The biggest secret of musical mastery: You are your own teacher. The best mentor you can find can guide you as you come up against the good questions.
Mark's advice on recording yourself-spot on. Listen mindfully and find your own weaknesses. It takes time. Patience.
No school can give you what you can't give yourself when it comes to being your best.
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Originally Posted by Jimmy blue note
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That’s a lovely way of putting it. “Everything you’ve ever loved”.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Autumn Leaves (Fingerstyle Chord Melody)
Yesterday, 11:56 PM in Improvisation