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I wrote "keep leaning on an F#". You can definitely lose a gig doing that. I don't recall a track where Parker kept leaning on a natural 7 against a dominant.
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I can't quite discern the thrust of the argument.
If it's just that a great line transcends all theoretical considerations, I'm sort of in agreement with that.
It may also depend on what material you're playing. I often find myself having to solo on a tune I've never seen before with non-obvious harmony. It's not so easy to create the transcendent line in that situation. For example, even if you don't think about anything while playing All Of Me, you might find yourself struggling on the first run-through of Prato Feito by Toninho Horta.
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12-29-2021 06:21 PM
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Off the top of my head Cool Blues. Particularly fun as Parker plays a C Ionian melody with a really prominent E over an F7 chord as well as on the C7. Many Parker blues heads use major 7 in the first bar quite prominently. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
The way you put it it’s funny because it suggests that someone playing a gig would be leaning on that note without hearing it, just like completely oblivious. If they are doing that by accident without noticing, they’d probably lose that or any gig for any number of reasons lol. Just a thought…
I mean we all make mistakes sometimes, but it’s just funny, the idea that musicians work like that. We don’t just plug notes in from some theory and forget about it, we do actually hear some of what we are playing, you know?
FWIW i play major sevenths on blues all the time btw (it’s a natural part of bop blues vocab) and I’ve yet to lose a gig over it. Usually it’s for some other reason haha
Sight reading charts is never ideal for improvisation. it’s hard because you probably won’t hear it first time if it’s weird harmony. You can audiate the rhythm though. Maybe you get a chance to hear it a few times if you are soloing on the form. Practice helps of course.I can't quite discern the thrust of the argument.
If it's just that a great line transcends all theoretical considerations, I'm sort of in agreement with that.
It may also depend on what material you're playing. I often find myself having to solo on a tune I've never seen before with non-obvious harmony. It's not so easy to create the transcendent line in that situation. For example, even if you don't think about anything while playing All Of Me, you might find yourself struggling on the first run-through of Prato Feito by Toninho Horta.
If I have to play them on a gig and I have a heads up you bet your ass I’ll practice it every day. Those sight reading situations do happen though… In general I work from the voicings until I get a better idea. If you can comp something you can come up with a solo, just covert the chords directly into single note lines.Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-29-2021 at 07:06 PM.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
If you don't feel that there is a real distinction between something working and something sounding like a clam, then I think we've drilled down as far as we're going to be able to. I hear music that way. I know which notes are clams to my ear.
I can think of examples, as you point out, of non-chord tones sounding great, but I can't think of an example of a chord tone sounding like a clam.
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If by real you mean objective, quantifiable and you are talking about improvisation I would say you are on shaky ground. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
I mean I can say you played a wrong note in the Bach, but in your improvisation? How do I know what you meant to play?
Of course there is a distinction to be made between stuff that works and doesn’t. It’s just that it’s a subjective call. I make subjective aesthetic distinctions all the time in my own playing, that of students and the music I listen to. I wouldn’t be able to function as musician or teacher otherwise.
To tie that to some music theory? I mean, the logical endpoint of that type of thinking is - here Lester Young played B on a C7 therefore it’s a clam because the Bumper Fun Berklee book of Jazz Sudoku says so? Lester played a ‘bad note’ therefore implying he’s an imperfect musician?
Let me think about that for a seco….. NOPE
If someone who can’t play very well plays a B on a C7 it might sound a bit shit, but that probably has more to do with them just not being very good at music than any music theory one might cite.
One can neatly sidestep all of this silliness if you regard jazz manuals not as a description of the music and what sounds ‘good’ or ‘bad’ in it but instead as ‘interesting suggestions for cool stuff you can do if you like.’ Much more helpful.
Anything that’s out of time - disconnected or hesitant execution of rhythms, poor placement of upbeat accents, etc etc; those sound like clams to me. They jump out at me, stick out like a sore thumb. And they can be the most obvious chord tones etc and will still sound wrong.I can think of examples, as you point out, of non-chord tones sounding great, but I can't think of an example of a chord tone sounding like a clam.
And this is somewhere where I do think there are some objective criteria - you will hear the masters make these types of rhythmic mistakes hardly ever if at all. Plenty of funny notes, but no weak rhythms. So that speaks to me about the priorities and values of this music more than anything. Isn’t there a song about that?
(That’s what my teachers taught me btw and they were right. Subjectively of course :-))
Much much more than untidy or unconventional pitch choices these tend to make players sound less accomplished than they should from their knowledge and technical ability. Number one thing.Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-29-2021 at 08:41 PM.
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Well said. In fact, very well said. Originally Posted by Groyniad
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Repeat 5 times before every gig. Thumbs up from me. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Still fun thread...
Yea Rick... good points.
Clams... if one chooses, it's very easy to break down the theoretical levels of what makes clams. Obviously clams can be more than one note.
My point is if one composes or arranges a tune... generally you have an analysis that would define the musical organization. Analysis has very definable musical organization of very physical space within that tune.
Where I'm going is... generally claims are not define by how one feels about how it sounds. There are way too many one liners and jokes about what defines feelings etc...
Again with analysis there is a tonal reference, that is defined. There are also very common practice... theoretical levels of practice of expanding or getting away from that tonic, with guide lines. Musical relationships with that Tonic. When one develops those musical relationships, there can still be definable musical organization with guidelines.
As I posted above, personally I generally use major/minor functional harmony as the somewhat default... vanilla musical organization as one approach for using organizing that analysis and the resulting performing results.
That being having a Reference, such as a Tonal Reference and creating harmonic relationships with that Tonal reference and guidelines as to where the developments might go, during a live performance.
My preference is to also use that same type of musical organization... but with modal expansions, generally being dumping the resulting use of Harmonic minor derived expansion and functional organization of Maj/Min functional harmony. Using Dorian and Melodic Min. as Reference etc..
Personally it's much more fun and opens musical doors for Modal Interchange and musical organization for use of Blue note concepts.
Talking about these concepts is much easier that using them. Start soloing with chords.
I need to start another thread and post vids of me performing what I'm talking about. Looks like things are shutting down anyway....
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I've read very little - I got the John Mehegan books at the very beginning (1990) and got my head round I - ii - iii - IV - V - vi - vii half
used that to play tunes for twenty years - then discovered Barry Harris - then Garrison Fewell
but I have to say guys the Eureka moments I'm having here are pretty exciting.
I don't think I'm going to go on about it: if you just say it - it is always going to sound intellectualist and unmotivated - and you will always run the risk of alienating anyone who doesn't quite get the basic or more technical concepts you are using.
what I do think is that it could have special significance for guitarists because they have the nightmare of endless ways of fingering the same thing and the glorious benefit of move-ability - and this picture overcomes the first, and exploits the second very aggressively indeed.
I've been playing these two sounds through the songbook now for some time - it is only through this thread that I have finally learned how to say what is going on. I've been wanting to cough-up for ages - in some form or other (to spell out the picture I'm using) - but it has never quite seemed like a good idea.
(I thought it was fascinating when Reg said - when he was a kid there was only harmonic minor! - and I'm very interested that he should recognise something important to him in this movement away from 'the seven sounds' and towards two identical maj/min sounds a fourth apart (and the contrast between 'lame-arse' minor (with all those major triads in it) and proper, true - melodic minor). As soon as Reg says anything at all invoking the concept of 'modal interchange' I know, not only that I don't understand, but that I never will (or at least that I'll never be able properly to translate the things said in that theoretical language into the theoretical language I am developing here, and use).
I'm not very into a relativistic picture which says - well whatever way you want to think about it, as long as it works for you....
not because I'm a dogmatic numpty - (though I'm sure I am that) - but because I want to learn to play as well as possible as quickly as possible and with as much scope for on-going improvement as possible....
and I figure a coherent and (at least mostly) true account of what is 'really' going on in American-songbook-harmony is a kind of necessary condition of my achieving that end
so I don't want to give up (at least not yet) on the idea that you've got the musical reality (the songbook - I'm not trying to find the best way to understand e.g. modern classical harmony or Wayne shorter harmony etc. etc.) and then you've got better and worse accounts of it - and the better the account you use in your approach to the reality, the better chance you stand of playing really well. (what makes one account better than another - on a perfectly respectable common-sense realist approach - is just a matter of capturing more of what is there to be captured - what is there whether we understand it well or not....).Last edited by Groyniad; 12-30-2021 at 03:59 PM.
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and - to allay possible misgivings - I take it that someone like Louis Armstrong simply grew into an astonishingly deep appreciation of musical reality by having the right kind of upbringing and being him
like footballers learning to play without ever being able to articulate a rule ('well - I dunno - we have to score more goals than them' - might be as far as they go in the direction of football-theory)
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And….
I think that discovering very simple structures at the heart of song harmony helps make it intelligible how there can be hugely musical people for whom it is always obvious what to do in any musical situation in which they find themselves - but who haven’t got very much at all to say about what they’re doing or how they do it.
I hope that was with a third consecutive post!
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I think it was clear from context that my comment about chord tones not sounding like clams applied to harmony. I've been clear in other posts that I think time feel is the most important element of soloing. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
For what I do, maintaining awareness of consonance and dissonance is helpful. Awareness of chord tones, consonant extensions, tensions and handle-with-cares is particularly useful to me when I have to solo on complex harmony I haven't seen or heard before. Since I didn't make up that nomenclature, apparently, I'm not the only one.
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bill Evans don't play no wrong notes
and neither do Paul chambers or tiny Grimes
for people who have mastered the art of improvisation a 'wrong note' is not like saying something that is false (Homer Simpson is not a cartoon character) it is like saying something ungrammatical (Homer Simpson is Wednesday)
just as competent speakers who have mastered a natural language DO make mistakes about things - they very strongly tend NOT to say ungrammatical or senseless things (Green is or - Wednesday is lighter than Cheshire - will history a yellow?)
it isn't hard not to say such things - in fact it is super hard to say them
I tried to write down the incredible things my little boy has said since he was 18 months old - and you have to repeat them and repeat them and get them written down very quickly because if you don't you simply can't remember that he said:
is it still before now? (asking about whether something has started yet)
what's all that sounding about? (asking about a loud noise outside)
I'm staying here for my ever (after being told that we're just about to leave a friend's house he doesn't want to leave)
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As adults we just can't say such things (I do try sometimes - but it takes a lot of Wednesday to do it)
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So 'clams' - 'wrong notes' are like non-grammatical sentences NOT like false statements - and that is why I haven't got a single one on any of my 'records' (I use Spotify now)
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Yeah I think that’s it Groynaid. I’m not saying I’m a great player, but I am an experienced jazz guitarist who does it for a significant portion of my income and I don’t worry about clams in this way, and neither of any of the musicians I play with.
It’s not because we are super awesome it’s just because we play as you say grammatical lines. The mistakes I make are more like ‘oh shit I forgot what happens in the bridge’ and less like ‘oh this note sounds good on that chord, this one doesn’t.’ You play a phrase that sounds good in that context, you do it from your experience and ingrained knowledge of jazz. It’s just not something we really think about in that way?
I think this ‘good note bad note’ stuff proceeds from the theoretical idea that you hear every note and decide on it as you play. I think that’s a terrible thing to teach anyone, even beginners. You should be teaching them right stuff from day one.
Noone does that any more that we speak word by word. You could have any number of insensible utterances that work grammatically for instance, but we would never say. Same with the jazz. And of course the grammar can also be bent and the sense preserved; jazz is street slang after all.
And sure, a lot of what we mere mortals say is cliche or not particularly interesting, sure, just like with playing, but you get to the point where you can construct a sentence. You learn that from listening.
(there was a good lecture making this exact same point about the way Rachmaninov learned harmony, can’t seem to find it .)Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-30-2021 at 08:30 PM.
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yes - we need the distinction between saying stuff that is silly or crazy (obviously wrong) - which we do all the time
and saying stuff which makes no sense - which just doesn't happen ('leopards Wednesday is like' - though there are very many varieties of non-sense, some of which are closer to sense than this type of example - 'I went back in time and killed Hitler')
to generate a wrong note - or a wrong phrase - you need loads of good/right notes/phrases to set the context and then you have to play something that doesn't fit at all into the space you have made for it with all those meaningful phrases and notes. very hard to do.
I played 9 - 1 - 7 over a major chord at a point at which a resolving phrase was required - like - 3 - 2 - 1
even that didn't quite sound wrong because it just sounded like a delayed resolution - or a joke!
one might mis-see the neck in the dark and play a phrase you want to take you back home - but a semi-tone too high - and that could make you make a Homer sound ('duh') - but if you were quick enough on your feet you can try to contextualise it after the fact
- the point of the whole thing - THEORY - is not to establish when notes are the right notes and when they're the wrong ones - the point is this: you have the music of Bill Evans or Lester Young - or Cole Porter - and then you ask 'what is really going on here - what do his various performances/songs have in common?'
and there are better and worse responses to that sort of question - you can capture the common-elements more or less well
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Every wrong/bad note is only a semitone away from a good note. I read that somewhere by Victor Wooten, and it’s true, try it out.
So if you hear it fast enough, you can resolve it, and it will sound ok. I think going up a semitone sounds better than going down, for some reason. I do this in my videos. (I know where the clams are!)
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Yeah so you have your ears to do that, no? Even if we think about single notes and how they sound statically against a chord etc, that’s still true. Originally Posted by Groyniad
And educating your ears is an important part of that, by listening to music most often. Theory gives you a name for a sound - 9, b13,- but it’s just a convenient label.
I just find the whole idea that you have theory to tell you what sounds good so odd. And yet some theory books do sort of lapse into that type of language… it would be like trying to learn to cook by having flavours described to you. I’m pretty sure no one actually learns music this way, however they might teach or talk about it
And if you are using your ears you will find ways to use all the notes, dissonant or not, by learning to resolve and delay resolution.
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I just find the whole idea that you have theory to tell you what sounds good so odd. - C
indeed - it is putting the cart before the horse
we have the music - we want to join in - to the extent that, when we try, it doesn't go as well as we might have liked, we may be motivated to learn how to describe the music (that's a discursive not a musical activity), hoping that our understandings might help us to learn how to join in better
they may not
we might find good descriptions of the music - but have no idea how to 'put them into practice'
and I think this experience is where the frankly crazy idea C says he finds odd - starts to seem normal or even obvious.
you learn by trying to join in (like you learn football - or your mother-tongue)
if you try to speak a second language by applying learned-rules which tell you how you have to speak - you are so far from fluency that you don't yet count as speaking the language (this is hugely familiar to anyone who has tried to put the French they learned at school to work in France).
and of course one can speak fluently - but 'have nothing to say' (I don't want to sound like an elitist knob - though I'm sure I am that - but isn't it the case that not 'having anything to say' is quite common? or at least having only such drivel, such utterly predictable and endlessly re-hashed crap that everyone has heard a million times to say that it can count as yours only in the most minimal sense? most ordinary language-use in a linguistic community is inter-twined with practical activities - driving, digging, cleaning, mending, cooking, watching-tv - answering the phone etc. etc. and so it does not need to be interesting or engaging (this is a big difference between most language-use and musical improvisation)
one learns the language as a child and then either use it more and more positively and fully or not - but we can all speak intelligibly.
it is hard to find the equivalent of competent simple/practical/workable speech in jazz. part of that is that it is an art - so we just want more than mere competency right from the beginning.
but it became very clear to me across endless gigs accompanying very good players that you can blow the simplest major pattern over the vast majority of the A section of rhythm changes - and it sounds perfectly good. boring. but perfectly good.
I have refused - right from the start - to let myself worry too much about being boring - I have to learn to use the language, so I can't start with long poetic sentences - 'the clouds that gather round the setting sun do gain a sober colouring from an eye that hath kept watch o'er mans' mortality' but much simpler ones - 'please get off my toe'.
if I haven't got the language then the question of whether I can say anything distinctive and engaging just can't arise
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The cook book comparison is interesting but ultimately perhaps not apposite. I used to say that if you can read, you can cook. However, you will end up, to a greater or lesser extent, with the dish to which the recipe applies: there is no theory necessary but you won't necessarily learn how to cook up a different dish. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
If the extent of your musicking (sic) was to play a transcription of a guitar solo, for which no theory in the strict sense of the word is necessary, then you end up to a greater or lesser extent, with the solo to which the transcription applies rather than the ability to play a solo over any other song. Some might be satisfied with that, but those who want to improvise would not, albeit they may pick up some insights through the practice of playing the transcription.
Whether they need a theoretical grounding to improvise, may depend on the individual. Some don't and having played through a number of transcriptions will find they can improvise over any number of songs. (Wes started by copying Charlie Christian solos but i suspect none of us are Wes). Others may very well gain helpful insights from understanding the theory underlying the likes of e.g Emily Remler's two types of dominants, resolving and non-resolving and what may be played over them. I certainly feel that it helped me.
Grasping the ideas presented by Groyniad does seem to require an understanding of the theory behind those ideas as well as the practical application of the ideas. (Now that I think of it, I do tend to think of modes as flavours
).
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Yeah that’s possibly true. It’s the way I cook atm, it’s all in an app and I cook something almost every night; it’s always delicious because we’ve chosen good recipes that work partly through trial and error. Originally Posted by Irishmuso
Come to think of it maybe it is like that; you have stuff that works but you only later start to understand why.
I’m trying to get at the sensory aspect of music though and music is often talked about as if it is a branch of quantum mechanics or something, divorced from human experience especially in jazz.
Having a strong emotional reaction to this or that flavour and knowing how flavours can be combined is an important aspect of being someone who can really cook. So, for instance, I can’t find this ingredient - can I think of a substitute? Later it might develop into a true appreciation of how to balance different spices etc in a dish.
Musicking is not a (sic) according to Christopher Small haha. Good music education buzzword there.If the extent of your musicking (sic)
Ok so there’s a lot I agree with there.was to play a transcription of a guitar solo, for which no theory in the strict sense of the word is necessary, then you end up to a greater or lesser extent, with the solo to which the transcription applies rather than the ability to play a solo over any other song. Some might be satisfied with that, but those who want to improvise would not, albeit they may pick up some insights through the practice of playing the transcription.
Whether they need a theoretical grounding to improvise, may depend on the individual. Some don't and having played through a number of transcriptions will find they can improvise over any number of songs. (Wes started by copying Charlie Christian solos but i suspect none of us are Wes). Others may very well gain helpful insights from understanding the theory underlying the likes of e.g Emily Remler's two types of dominants, resolving and non-resolving and what may be played over them. I certainly feel that it helped me.
Grasping the ideas presented by Groyniad does seem to require an understanding of the theory behind those ideas as well as the practical application of the ideas. (Now that I think of it, I do tend to think of modes as flavours).
I do think that people are putting the cart before the horse; ‘oh I want to be original and not play cliches’ before actually acquiring fluency and competence, so they sometimes don’t learn licks. Licks are possibly more useful than transcribing whole solos; licks also come with a context (‘it’s on a Dm turnaround’.)
Licks are a great way into jazz; you can learn how to apply material (‘this D minor lick sounds great on G7’) while sounding legitimate. You can then develop an understanding of the language at a deeper level once you are functional and sounding good. A lot of it is to do with learning the feel; if you can feel it you can turn anything into a line, even a chord scale lol…. But you have to go through this sort of process so you know how to swing it basically, how to hear what you are playing.
I very much did this for Gypsy Jazz for instance. Now when I feel i am creative within the idiom now, I just play what I hear and feel and it sounds appropriate but I’m not not playing GJ licks that much. But when I started the years I was just chaining Django and Charlie C licks together from solos I learned, and playing 200 gigs a year or whatever off the back of it. So it was what you could term ‘legitimate commercial activity.’
Bear in mind I was already a modern style player, with a good command of theory, but I needed to understand the older style on a gut and ears level first. (This may have come quicker than I thought too…)
Licks work. Like a cook book.
But it’s also a phase.
Not everyone learns the same way, but I think you can’t be worried about individual notes and this common question of ‘what do I play on the chords’ suggests often that people haven’t mastered playing the chords, which is a first stage for learning to solo on any tune.
All chord scales tell you is what the chord is, in a scale form; in a sense it isn’t a theory at all, just opaque nomenclature. Lydian Dominant is a convoluted way of telling you how to extend a dominant chord in a cool sounding way. There’s a lot of ways you can construct or teach that information. The most common way of teaching - the scales with chords - was apparently designed for horn players which means IMO it’s actually more confusing on the guitar; we don’t need to have chords explained as scales (people throw practice time at something that is second nature on piano), we can build scales around chords. Chords ARE laid out a bit funny on guitar, but you work on your intervals (by ear and/or theory.)
Lage Lund for instance points out that thinking of lines and chords separately leads to a lot of problems, and I agree. Certainly Django and Charlie C too! For instance you might think of voicings and soloing ideas as separate fingerings or thought systems as I did for years (it was GJ that freed me a little). That’s unhelpful.
(And then there’s the more melodic/diatonic soloing approach from Lester, Getz etc that I mentioned above, which works great over a standard but perhaps less well on Inner Urge)
In terms of non standard modern harmony - if you can comp it, you can play a melody on it. and then the idea of clams is kind of irrelevant. Play the chord, decorate. It’s not the be all but it’s a bloody good start and you can go crazy far and modern with it as Lage shows.Last edited by Christian Miller; 01-01-2022 at 06:54 AM.
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My approach to cooking is to nip up Waitrose and grab a chinese ready-meal.
Not sure where that fits into the analogy.
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herb told me in my first and only real lesson that 'you have to sing what you play/play what you sing' - I always thought it was very significant that he just didn't care which way round he put this....
echoing a thought of Christian's above I have always thought that if you really hear it then of course it (at least) works - you can't hear lines that perform no function (taking you home - taking you away from home) just like you can't 'hear' senseless sentences ('get me the Wednesday' - which has no use in 'the language' - is not a sentence that could occur to one in the heat of ordinary linguistic interaction (except as a bit of lovely silliness perhaps. 'but will yes official nevertheless sausage' takes real time and effort to make-up because one can't 'hear' it).
if you actually hear the super simple major pattern over the A section of rhythm changes - then all the chord tones will fall in the right part of the bar - and what you play will 'have a use in the language' even if a rather hum-drum one
one tolerates sounding predictable and boring because one hopes that - after a while - one will learn how to say more surprising and engaging things
I think its crucial to allow oneself to play very simply and even boringly - because you have to get used to hearing what you're playing and to start with one hears quite simple things
the other thing is just to copy cool things that other people have said and get used to how it feels saying something appropriate at the appropriate time
I've done more of the former than the latter - one day soon I'm going to get seriously into what Bill Evans says - I think I'm nearly ready after more than thirty years and 2000 odd gigs
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Look... there are very wrong notes and also very right notes. We can be easy and keep everyone happy, don't get on anyone for.... playing lots of wrong notes. We are all musicians, and should be respectful of each other and understand some players are just better and have bigger ears etc... There are all kinds of sounding bad... not just wrong and bad sounding notes.
Where I'm going is you can take a life time and try and get your musical shit together, and generally you won't get there. That's just the way it is. You'll develop a level of understanding and performance... that works for you. Nothing bad or wrong with that.... actually I think it's great and can be fun etc... I've been saying for 10 or 15 years on this forum.... if you get your technical playing skills together... you can skip all the theory BS. It will come. Your not going to compose and arrange and many of the other musical skill, but who cares. If you can play... you can play. But there are levels of being able to play... and there are levels of ears and what we're able to hear.
Theory and other musical understands.... can and will help anyone get better at playing, hearing, understanding, interacting, (help us get out of our bubble and be able to here what other musicians are playing and hearing and be able to interact with them etc...), which can help us understand what are better choices of what to play.
I got my technical shit together as a kid....and learned theory from players that I gigged with. Some not so good, but back then.... you didn't preach to the choir unless you could cover and many of the older plays did share with kids, (me).
The more you understand... the better your ears will be. (you can't sing what you can't hear).
You can hear theory... it's not that hard.
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Bloody hell if it’s good enough for Trane… Originally Posted by Groyniad
You know it’s all became a bit me-generation. I want to play something original, individual. Sure, but as Jimmy Raney said ‘you can’t play yet.’
So I feel the emphasis at the early stages should be more like ‘play things that sound good’ with the proviso being ‘i don’t care where you got them.’
And then after a bit you tell them off for not being original and to find their own thing haha. But only when they can sound good.
Good god tell me about it.one tolerates sounding predictable and boring because one hopes that - after a while - one will learn how to say more surprising and engaging things
I think its crucial to allow oneself to play very simply and even boringly - because you have to get used to hearing what you're playing and to start with one hears quite simple things
the other thing is just to copy cool things that other people have said and get used to how it feels saying something appropriate at the appropriate time
I've done more of the former than the latter - one day soon I'm going to get seriously into what Bill Evans says - I think I'm nearly ready after more than thirty years and 2000 odd gigs
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I personally go along with "theory minimization". I think it allows for more "spontaneity". However, reducing it all down to two scales might be a bit limiting, as is adding dozens of scales. For a lot of players, getting to grips with scales and theory seems to be a right of passage. For others, it's something they want to discard at the first opportunity preferring instead to scratch the itchy finger tips.
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Reducing things to m6 / m7 , or V /I, Tonic/Dominant etc is obviously not necessarily simplifying things. You still need to apply and repurpose these things to cover every situation. That's a lifetime's work, unless you're GB or Pat M (both self confessed exponents of this kind of reductionism)...
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