Originally Posted by
dasein
Frankly, I'm just glad that posts I made 10+ years ago aren't embarrassing to look back at.
Yeah, I took a couple lessons with Mike Longo when I first moved to NYC. Had to stop because... well, I just moved to NYC, and money was tight. He died during the first wave of COVID, a great loss. But I'm glad he got his "Rhythmic Nature of Jazz" series out, because there is some serious wisdom in there, and it could have been lost.
But I did know about the ridiculous time of Louis Armstrong before then. I've been lucky to have good teachers, and one of them pointed it out to me. The guitar player he said that had a similarly unbelievable rhythmic precision? Grant Green.
If you wanted to learn how to swing just from records, you could do a lot worse than getting the Hot Fives and Sevens, plus the Basie Decca recordings (with Lester Young), and the Dizzy Gillespie big band recordings. Throw in some Charlie Christian and those Billie Holiday/Pres collaborations, and yeah, you're set.
I've thought a lot about this, and spent a lot of time around outstanding musicians, and here's what I've decided: there's no such thing as talent, but there is a thing as "Getting It." Very official terminology.
Everyone's brains work differently. But this isn't static, either. What you learn, practice, and experience also shapes how your mind works. When you work on playing chess and go from a beginner to an expert player, the entire way you see the board and the game completely transforms. When you start learning higher level mathematics ("real" math, the stuff you start with in analysis class, what mathematicians call gainin "mathematical maturity") your mind is not the same as when you started. And the same is true with music. Infants cannot perceive that an octave is the "same" note. When you're a rank beginner, bebop sounds like chaos. You just learn to hear it better. The stimulus is exactly the same, you're the one that's changed.
"Getting It" is when your brain gets to the point where it stops struggling with a domain. You are no longer paddling against the current; you and the knowledge are all flowing in the same direction. It is similar to what's usually called a "flow state," except it's not a momentary thing. For outside observers and people struggling with the same material, it looks like it just comes easy to you.
There are certain people who, for whatever reason, seem to already "Get It." Sometimes it's because they started very young. Some people, it's like they come out of the womb with their brain already wired that way. Those are the ones with "talent." Sometimes it's a mysterious thing, sometime's it's not. Mozart got thousands of hours of private instruction before he hit puberty from a demanding, professional musician father who forced him to practice and perform. Beethoven's father and teacher used to wake him up in the middle of the night to force him to practice. In those sorts of stressful, sink or swim situations, kids can be really good at figuring out what works.
Other times, they just happen to figure it out, through sheer luck or again, just how their brain works. When I see that video of Art Tatum play, his technique looks flawless. When you study his right hand runs, you see how logical the fingerings are. Is that talent? Luck? Did he stumble upon that technique, and just recognized it was working? Did he have an innate kinesthetic genius? Maybe all of the above.
There are people in all kinds of field who just seem to immediately "Get It." In math, there's Gauss and Ramanujan. In chess, there's Morphy, Capablanca, Fischer, Carlsen, etc. And there's countless music prodigies.
But here's the key thing: there are people who don't "Get It" at first who can learn to "Get It." This is a mysterious thing, too. These fields are complicated. I really do believe that we are in the infancy of learning how to teach most complicated things. Most students who learn to get great at something do it in spite of the instruction (even though I think most teachers are doing their best with what they have).
It's a tricky thing. Most people, if they find they're not immediately good at something, quit. You have to love something and be fine without being good at it. And then you have to find that thing that makes you "Get It." This can take a long time. Some people never get there. Some people get there through hard work and experimentation. Other times, it really is just one piece of knowledge that transforms everything. I always think of Randy Johnson, spending his entire 20's struggling to break into the big leagues, all this physical talent but could never get it together. Nolan Ryan personally sought him out. "I'm going to show you something it took me 10 years in the majors to figure out." Bam. Lightning flash. Randy Johnson was immediately one of the greatest pitchers ever.
Look at Charlie Parker. His early jam sessions, he gets laughed off the stage. He goes home to practice. He figures SOMETHING out. He claims it was about the upper partials of a chord. I'm not sure it was exactly that, but the point is he clearly thought there was some point where it all clicked. He practices like a madman for a summer. You can say that the practicing is what did it, and certainly that kind of work is necessary to get to his level. But I would say this: until he Got It, the practicing wouldn't have been as effective. And it's much, much easier to practice once you Get It, when it doesn't feel like you're running uphill anymore.
And then there is the ultimate poster child of a jazz musician who was not born Getting It: John Coltrane. I will argue this until I'm blue in the face: Coltrane was not a "talented" guy. Have you heard Coltrane's earliest recordings? He sounds... OK. Workmanlike. Nothing in there that would indicate what he would later become.
Yes, he practiced a lot. But here's the thing: he ALWAYS practiced a lot. After his military service, by all accounts, he practiced obsessively. He started studying with Dennis Sandole in 1946. He studied with him into the early 1950's. Sandole said Coltrane was his hardest working student. But was the output matching the input? I would argue no. Those early Coltrane recordings are solid. He's really good. But is he better than Sonny Rollins, who was younger than him and very much a guy who Got It from Day 1? I'd say no. I'm not sure Coltrane was better than Johnny Griffin at this point.
No, it wasn't until he joined Monk that Coltrane became the guy they built churches to honor. If you read interviews with Trane, he himself seemed to think so. I don't know what Monk taught him. And yeah, getting off heroin definitely helped. But something just clicked for him. Every single year, until his death, he just got better and better. If you listen to Charlie Parker's earliest recordings (stuff like "Billie's Bounce" and "Now's the Time"), you can hear basically the same player you do in the 1950's. If you listen to Coltrane's early solos, in Dizzy's band or Johnny Hodge's band, there is NO way anyone could predict that player was eventually going to make "A Love Supreme."
If you don't feel like you are talented, you have two options. You can accept it: be fine with where you're at, or give up if you can't. Or you start searching relentlessly until you find that moment or that piece of knowledge where you Get It. That might take a long time. It looks different for everyone. Here's what you need:
- There is a little bit of faith involved. Not the arrogant, self-assured, sneering attitude you see so often passed off as faith, especially in America. It's a kind of faith in the face of hopelessness, of impossibility. You have to keep going in spite of all evidence, of all logical arguments. You need to believe you can get there.
- You need to be relentless and eclectic in your pursuit. Seek out knowledge everywhere. Try different teachers. Study great players. Read interviews. Sometimes you need to read between the lines. Try different approaches. Try everything. If it feels like you're banging your head against a wall, move on to something else. Maybe come back to it later.
- If you keep going, you will eventually find something that works. It will just feel right. Things will start falling into place. When you find that thing: keep going. I don't care if your teacher says it's the wrong way to do it. If they are any kind of real teacher, they will recognize it's working for you and encourage it. Do not let yourself get blown off course. Do not get distracted by the way other people do it. You found what works for you. Take it as far as it lets you. Only stop when it stops working.
Will you get to be as great as your heroes? Maybe not. The better you get, the more you realize how great the greats truly are. But you will get good enough that your old self, the one at the start of this old journey, wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the two of you.
Reply With Quote
Recommandations for Hollowbodies for $600 and under?
Today, 05:20 AM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos