Critical listening by Bob Anram.

[GuyBoden]

Jazz Improvisation, Critical listening by Bob Anram

Originally posted here:
JAZZ Improvisation, Critical listening by Bob Anram | Sax on the Web Forum

Letter from Bob Anram

"Training your mind:

My goal in listening is never the pursuit of pleasure, though, paradoxically, I experience immense pleasure from listening. Rather, I view listening as training my mind, honing the skills that I view as essential in improvisation.

Ultimately for me, improvisation is defined by the art of creating phrases -the art of the phrase. One of my goals is to come to hear each phrase clearly defined as a separate entity and to do so without analysis of or reflection on that phrase, nor anticipation of the next. I trust that my mind is assimilating the defining aspects of length, direction, range, intervals, tonal characteristics, breath and attack,. melodicism, harmony, rhythm as well as its logical development from both the theme and previous phrases.

I use listening to train my mind to not maintain some form of parallel thought process. I believe that any such parallel thinking takes the mental focus away from your emerging phrase. It is only after listening that I delve into conscious analysis, but not during. I believe that whatever mental habits we employ in the listening experience tend to strongly carry over to the improvisation experience. To clarify experientially, try listening to a recorded book by a quality writer and a skilled reader. I guarantee that your verbal flow will improve and that you will find that your ability to speak in clearly defined phrases will improve. Yet, I doubt that you are actively analyzing during the presentation. We tend to accept this explicitly in verbal behavior but often feel compelled to violate this when learning to improvise.

I believe that in focused listening you train your mind to hear the individual notes in rapid passages. The ability to hear music in detail is an acquired skill and focused listening is critical to hearing in detail. I doubt that novice listeners hear the internal detail of Trane's more demanding passages. If you can not hear quickly, how can one play quickly? By the way, I think that the same is true for more unconventional harmony. I think that the common initial reaction to atonality is to be put off by the dissonance. However, listen enough to Anton Webern or Alban Berg and that dissonance becomes consonant, logical, melodic. Reach that point and the improviser has assimilated the non-conventional into their preconscious musical logic.

I strive in focused listening to build the capacity of hearing everything, but focusing on nothing.. This is precisely the state of mind that I strive for in improvisation. The longer that I can maintain that state, without breaks in concentration, the better I can sustain a solo. The more clearly I can hear the individual instruments in the rhythm section, while hearing my horn, the more they will influence my output and the fresher will be ideas, assuming a quality rhythm section. Focused listening help to train this skill. Incidentally, I always find accompanied bass solos to be useful, mainly because it affords an opportunity to focus on the light comping of the piano/guitar. Also, I make it a practice to bring focused listening to classical listening, which I view as the musical equivalent to lifting heavy weights in my physical workouts. Basically, if I can achieve the mental state of hearing everything but focusing on nothing for a complete Prokofiev symphony, it will make it easier to establish that state with a jazz quartet.

As I stated initially, I strongly believed that focused listening is an important, if not critical component to one's daily practice regimen.

Later,

Bob "

[voxo]

common initial reaction to atonality is to be put off by the dissonance. However, listen enough to Anton Webern or Alban Berg and that dissonance becomes consonant, logical, melodic. Reach that point and the improviser has assimilated the non-conventional into their preconscious musical logic.

[GuyBoden]

" If you can not hear quickly, how can one play quickly? By the way, I think that the same is true for more unconventional harmony. I think that the common initial reaction to atonality is to be put off by the dissonance. However, listen enough to Anton Webern or Alban Berg and that dissonance becomes consonant, logical, melodic."

I prefer this Webern with Rattle at the helm, atonal music is used a lot in films.