Theory vs. playing by ear

[LankyTunes]

I’ll put it this way. Say I’m teaching functional jazz chord progressions and how standards operate. Do I for example, talk about the common progressions that may be found in the GASB, or I instead advise the student to learn as many GASB tunes as possible?

This is a false dichotomy.

There is absolutely zero reason you cannot explain that [XYZ] is a common chord progression and also give them some tunes that utilize it and show them where and how it does so.

You're not even teaching them functional harmony otherwise. You're simply teaching them songs and hoping that they learn functional harmony accidentally.

The latter is I think, essential, and leads to the same knowledge as the former only more embodied as well a obviously a useful repertoire of tunes. It also takes a long time. The student may not in fact bloody do it.

The former can be discussed in a lesson or two. It can lead to a stamp collector mindset which gives them the impression they know something Terribly Important when in fact they still don’t know any actual tunes to play on gigs, but may be useful in focussing the students attention to useful aspects while doing the second thing.

But the former is obviously not a replacement for the latter.

It's also entirely possible to learn tunes and not have a clue as to what's really going on in them. That's actually the vast majority of musicians in every genre.

[LankyTunes]

How is it that the audience listens to jazz, however, they have no idea about the theory...?
Somehow the music reaches them because they get emotional reactions.

The audience generally cannot even accurately reproduce what they heard vocally. And they've been "playing" that instrument their whole lives.

[LankyTunes]

That isn't true. I work in a majority minority city of Hispanics. My coworker has been here 20 or so years and has no fluency in english. While I'm having conversations with her in spanish because I've been studying for 3 years. It's no different with music.

It's as if people have no idea how children actually learn to speak when they make the "music is a language" comment.

Kids don't learn by sitting around listening to adults speak. Adult show them what words mean what. They correct their pronunciation and grammar. Ect, ect.

Immersion simply gives you more opportunities to learn. You not have hundreds of people teaching you instead of an hour with an language teacher.

Sure you will eventually start making linguistic connections on your own as well, but there is no mythical osmosis via immersion.

Just imagine trying to learn sign language as an adult among a bunch of people that only spoke that. I know a little and I doubt I'd be able to gain any ground without people actively teaching me. Heck, everything outside of "Peace", "Fuck you", and "I need a lift" had to be taught to me and I don't know if i could tell the difference between the little I know and an angry Italian chef in and actual conversation where i was expected to know it.

[LankyTunes]

I do know a lot of students look for validation on what sounds good from theory. I would aim to give them more confidence in their own perceptions.

Are they looking for validation or are they looking for norms?

A lot of theory is a circle jerk and oversteps it's bounds, but why would you not want to know that this bit sounds good/works because it's using secondary dominants of tritone subs or whatever else?

Knowing that is only going to make it easier to reproduce for yourself and to recognize the same things elsewhere.

[Lionelsax]

I knew a girl who was studying English literature in UK, when came the grammar lesson, nobody understood what it was about, she had to explain to the other students what a verb was, she was French and they were British !

[LankyTunes]

The "theory" of a how a car works is the underlying physics, chemistry, and engineering, not a mechanic’s ability to disassemble and reassemble one. There are highly competent mechanics who don’t know that underlying science, but could still explain how a car works very clearly. (probably most). There are also mechanics with engineering degrees who could give you the relevant equations and precise scientific terminology for what each part does. They may or may not be better mechanics for that.

There is theory and there is practice.


They are both theory. They are just addressing different levels of analysis.


The mechanic telling you that power runs through a certain wire to your starter that then engages the flywheel.........absolutely is theory.


Him replacing the wire that does so is practice.


The former is essential to do the doing the latter.

So "music theory” as used by us idiots arguing about it online is really more like a collection of mechanic’s shop manuals or a library of Ikea instructions, or craft-guild lore transmitted by oral tradition and apprenticeship. An improvising jazz musician is someone who can take an Ikea box with a picture of a closet on the front and build a chair, or fix a broken Ford with parts from a Chevy.

No.


Music theory as used by "idiots" like myself would be the knowledge gained by someone going through a bunch of those manuals and finding the common practices so we could build our own chairs and cars from parts.


The collection of manuals is nothing more than sheet music that can be played by rote without any theoretical knowledge at all.

A musician can gain that ability via different paths of formal and informal study, with or without written materials, with or without knowing the underlying basic science. But capable improvising musicians have knowledge of their craft. Which path someone takes to gain that knowledge of craft depends on how they’re acculturated, where they live, their cast of mind, etc.


Playing by ear vs theory is just non sequiter, like a fish without a bicycle. The relevant distinctions are between playing by ear and reading, or between and formal and less formal methods of acquiring knowledge.

It's actually more like a strawman because the theory-less person doesn't exist.


There is no question whatsoever that you need some level of theory, even if the so called ear players cannot articulate what theirs is...or lie about their use of it (probably only happens in other fields though, right?).


The legitimate debate is how much and to what depth.

I always thought some of those amazing musicians were pretending they don't know many things to keep a kind of magic but I can be wrong.

There's good reason to believe this to be true.


If for no other reason than competetiveness of certain players.


And then there is the general laziness and arrogance.


How many time have we all learned something the long slow way and then get mad because someone else doesn't figure it out after we explained it once?

You can have ears but no theory..

Only if we agree to your still vague and self contradicting definition of theory.

I can usually only play stuff that I’ve internalised to a highly intuitive level with conviction and groove. On gigs, less thinking is better. Maybe some high level shaping of what’s gong on.

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with this.


But how does one decide what to internalize?


Without theory of some sort you couldn't be sure that the thing that sounded good over one chord would even sound good over an inversion of that chord or that chord in a different context.


I suppose you could try everything in the practice room and decide how things work, but then you'd have built a theory.

"A beaver don't have to go to engineering school to know how to build a dam.“

Pretty interesting priorities when a fella is more willing to learn Beaver than to read music.


Fun fact: You can learn jazz theory from from friends and family just like beavers learned to build damns.

In fact, theory should make it easier to develop ears by providing an organization for music. For example, it makes it easier to learn harmony by ear if you can first identify chord categories (Dominant, major, minor, diminished or Tonic, subdominant etc).

Bingo!


The theory that is useful is pointing out patterns. It's like a cheat code for things that you might eventually recognize yourself, but I highly doubt even the best ears would not be able to speed up the process by knowing what to look for instead of having to notice it yourself.

In fact, theory should make it easier to develop ears by providing an organization for music. For example, it makes it easier to learn harmony by ear if you can first identify chord categories (Dominant, major, minor, diminished or Tonic, subdominant etc).

Music theory is constantly in flux.)

This is true of of theoretical sciences too.


One could argue that music theory has been subjected to far more experimentation and easier to falsify too.

Yes, the assumption seems to be that people who don’t get spoonfed music theory at school are too thick to notice patterns and categorise information of their own accord.

No.


The assumption is that they are still using theory...or at least did use it to systematize their understanding and options and that they are not simply playing by ear without some theoretical system of thinking about music influencing their ears choices.

It's any guideline that helps in the conscious aid of constructing your music apart than just hearing what you want to play and executing it.

This is important.


Some of us are debating what theory is, but it seems rather obvious you are decsribing what playing by ear is, which is not enough to avoid the stink eye from fellow musicians.


You need to know the norms and idioms to be any good.


Sure you can stretch things, but at some point you're doing something that's outside your genre, which may sound good, but are you really playing good jazz/rock/blues ect any more?


A theory is simply a way to think about how things work.


Everyone used one to get good. Even if they forgot that they did.

[LankyTunes]

That's what I suspect. I am not certain it is the case and by it's nature it's hard to verify,

It's easy to verify by the simple fact that nobody, outside of a possible disorder that I'm not aware of, lives any large amount of their lives making conscious decisions. We live most of our lives by habits we created by accepting common patterns. Many of them become subconscious rather quickly, but that's just like improv....especially so at 220BPM.

[LankyTunes]

I knew a girl who was studying English literature in UK, when came the grammar lesson, nobody understood what it was about, she had to explain to the other students what a verb was, she was French and they were British !

Have you spent much time in the UK?

The English barely speak the language.

Not even kidding.

There are some regional differences that get almost to where Americans can't understand each other (usual due to the influence of other languages, like Cajuns), but you can take and Englishman 50 kilometers from his town and he might as well be in Paris.

[Lionelsax]

Have you spent much time in the UK?

The English barely speak the language.

Not even kidding.

There are some regional differences that get almost to where Americans can't understand each other (usual due to the influence of other languages, like Cajuns), but you can take and Englishman 50 kilometers from his town and he might as well be in Paris.

One day I asked an Australian if the verb "to shit" was regular or irregular, he answered that it depended of what he had eaten.

[pauln]

This topic is frustrating because neither the concepts of playing by theory nor playing by ear are being understood the same way by those discussing them, me included.

Personally, I think I might have some understanding of playing by ear because I have done it exclusively on the guitar for over half a century, have thought much about it, and enjoy discussing it.

I don't know what to think about those saying they use a music theory approach. I have asked questions that go unanswered about the naming of pitches (when in the key of Gb, do you name the pitches of an E major chord based on triad structure or key signature?), which bears directly on the intelligibility of what it means to know the finger board and practice in different keys (do your pitches change names with the keys?), and even touches non-standard tuning (E to Ab is not a major third, not even any quality of third, but a diminished fourth). Perhaps some have forgotten the definitions of note and interval?

[LankyTunes]

Yeah, like Parker would have been able to sit dutifully through 8 semesters at music college. Are you guys for real? It's like saying Arthur Rimbaud had to get his neat little degree from the Sorbonne before he could write poetry. They're quite similar figures. To me it's more like those guys change the face of art, and 100 academics make their careers......Of course Parker absorbed every bit of information from every source he could get and understood what he was doing. But he did it organically by all accounts, it wasn't from "studying theory" like a curriculum, where for some it's become like an end in itself.

I'm not sure anyone here is arguing for going to college for music. I'm not even arguing for curriculum based study of any kind per se.

Hell, I think going to college for most things is entirely over-rated. We are simply drowning in educational resources that do not require the time or money of degree programs. There are certainly a few opportunities where the professor(s) at a particular place are worth it or where networking might be worth it, but most people are getting what ranges from way overcharged to flat out duped....especially regarding music degrees.

That said, I don't think some of the stories I've heard about the practice and study some guys like Coltrane and Davis did required any less discipline than a couple hours of lectures a few times a week...or whatever those damned kids do when they're not on my lawn!

To me it's more like those guys change the face of art, and 100 academics make their careers commenting their work for the next 50 years.

Wouldn't be as bad if they actually got it right.

At the risk of sounding provocative I find understanding theory to be pretty trivial. How many functioning adults, doing complex jobs, do you see complaining about how hard music theory is? It's 1/10th at most in the difficulty of learning jazz. I'm not anti-theory. I just find it's the easiest part, and that there more rewarding approaches to it than the CST cannon. I don't think it's really theory that's confounding learners.

I also don't see what is so hard about just learning the functional stuff. It's far easier to learn what a Tritone sub is and then start messing with it than wait until you accidentally find it on your own.

By the way, Biréli Lagrène doesn't know any theory (or worship the metronome, or tap his foot on two and four - two more heresies). Hardly a noodler from a rock background. It's hard not to mention that how he learned was very much by oral transmission - same or similar process as in the original American jazz community. It's probably not a recommended exclusive approach for those of us who didn't grow up with such a background, but neglect that and you neglect a very large aspect of how jazz came about, IMO.

Biréli Lagrène was taught a tradition though. Doesn't matter if it was written down. I don't buy that he'd just sit around listening and looking their fingers some form of "In this case do this.".

And one of the things I got out of reading "Thinking In Jazz" was that none of the old school greats really started trying to play bebop. They didn't even start playing jazz. They already were quite good at their instruments in other traditions/genres when they started with more basic versions of jazz and they just kept adding complexity upon skills and theory they already had. Dudes kinda took 40 years to learn how to play bebop.

I don't say that as a slight, except towards modern jazz education that ties to skip the prerequisite knowledge and skill these guys already had before the started playing two chords to the bar at 220BPM. But none of that was developed by just playing what sounded good on the spot. They were deliberately examining what they were playing and deliberately adding to and modifying it through deliberate changes in the norms of playing.

Shame nobody stopped them before fusion happened.

[LankyTunes]

the intelligibility of..... different keys (do your pitches change names with the keys?).....non-standard tuning (E to Ab is not a major third, not even any quality of third, but a diminished fourth)......definitions of note and interval?

You do realize that these are all theoretical concepts that you didn't stumble across using just your ears and the fretboard, right?

Everyone uses theory whether they can articulate or even realize it or not.

Just a question of how much and whether it's any good.

[Bobby Timmons]

It's as if people have no idea how children actually learn to speak when they make the "music is a language" comment.

Kids don't learn by sitting around listening to adults speak. Adult show them what words mean what. They correct their pronunciation and grammar. Ect, ect.

Immersion simply gives you more opportunities to learn. You not have hundreds of people teaching you instead of an hour with an language teacher.

Sure you will eventually start making linguistic connections on your own as well, but there is no mythical osmosis via immersion.

Just imagine trying to learn sign language as an adult among a bunch of people that only spoke that. I know a little and I doubt I'd be able to gain any ground without people actively teaching me. Heck, everything outside of "Peace", "Fuck you", and "I need a lift" had to be taught to me and I don't know if i could tell the difference between the little I know and an angry Italian chef in and actual conversation where i was expected to know it.

They like to make stuff up.

[Lionelsax]

Have you spent much time in the UK?

The English barely speak the language.

Not even kidding.

There are some regional differences that get almost to where Americans can't understand each other (usual due to the influence of other languages, like Cajuns), but you can take and Englishman 50 kilometers from his town and he might as well be in Paris.

10 days in the UK, that was 30 years ago, they spoke Welsh.
If someone can't speak French in France, you can be sure is from the UK sometimes from the USA even if this someone has lived in France for decades.
Everyone speaks French in France.

[Litterick]

Have you spent much time in the UK?

The English barely speak the language.

Not even kidding.

There are some regional differences that get almost to where Americans can't understand each other (usual due to the influence of other languages, like Cajuns), but you can take and Englishman 50 kilometers from his town and he might as well be in Paris.

You really are talking utter rot.

[Christian Miller]

It's easy to verify by the simple fact that nobody, outside of a possible disorder that I'm not aware of, lives any large amount of their lives making conscious decisions. We live most of our lives by habits we created by accepting common patterns. Many of them become subconscious rather quickly, but that's just like improv....especially so at 220BPM.

I’m inclined to agree with you, but that doesn’t constitute clinching proof

when we talk about theory in this context we are talking about classifying musical objects really. This chord progression is like this other one, this voicing is part of this other voicing, that type of thing. This seems a basic function of human intelligence - pattern recognition.

it is however also possible that the ‘naturals’ of this world (ie those who learned orally early in childhood like Birelli) might not classify things in this way. That’s where the analogy with a mother tongue kicks in, in the sense that I have no real idea about the grammar I use until I think about it, I just use it without thinking about the patterns of language.

You point out most of us don’t learn music at the same stage as we are acquiring language. This might be true for most of us as players, but it is also possible may not be true in terms of our inner ears. (Edwin Gordon would make this argument.) I’m not sure I agree with this, but I’m not sure I disagree with it either. Furthermore players like Bireli start guitar very early compared to the rest of us.

I have no real concrete idea myself - I’m not a psychologist, linguist or neuroscientist on one hand and not an intuitive musical prodigy on the other!

So I’m cautious about making these sorts of grand statements. Life is complicated.

[Christian Miller]

I would say that I feel that most adult students underestimate the value of tacit, intuitive learning compared to children to whom it’s second nature.

the cultural side of it obvious- we are taught how to learn at school and uni. But that learning approach suits some things better than others.

The advantage of a more quantifiable approach is that it becomes easier to measure progress (which is why academic institutions need this stuff) but on the other hand much of the actual learning about music, the sense of phrase, swing etc is at best imperfectly communicated through these conventional pedagogical channels and usually acquired outside them.

(In the trades, progress is measured by the community rather than a standardised rubric. Jazz used to be a trade.)

Transcription is a really good example of this sort of ‘multi channel learning’. You may be aware of things like, learning to play a solo, analysing the harmony, copping licks, writing it down and submitting it for course credits etc, but a lot of the real work goes on ‘under the hood’ so to speak and the student may not even be aware. Transcription and close listening feeds the inner ear, which i believe is the most important element of the musican.

Furthermore the involvement of open improvisation too early in the learning process has a tendency to push the discussion towards theory, while a musician who has developed a feel for the music will be in a better position to make up idiomatic music from simple resources such as scales.

in other words, for someone getting started in jazz, I would prioritise ‘sounding good’ over ‘really improvising’ which is opposite to the way I was taught.

See also Tristano, where you don’t work on improvisation until you can sing a solo with perfect phrasing etc. in Bireli’s culture, child guitarists start by learning Django’s solos note for note.

tbh I think culturally we are way too hung up on the idea of improvisation as something special and difficult that therefore needs to be taught rather than something natural and ubiquitous to almost all world musics that emerges as the musician learns and internalises music. Classical pedagogy and its weird hang ups has a lot to answer for and has even infected jazz’s perception of itself imo.

(But I’m not in the mood to discuss David ‘praxis’ Elliott and his gang of twits.)

it is of course entirely possible I’m over correcting to what I feel are the problems in my education much as Elliot seems to be ;-)

Quite a lot of my work as I see it is getting students to trust this side of things. It’s why one of the classic bits of advice you give to students who don’t swing (usually by overdoing it) is telling them not to worry about swinging, because they are trying to consciously force swing to happen according to some (inaccurate) theory rather than allowing to emerge from the ‘inner ear’.

[Marinero]

Yes, the assumption seems to be that people who don’t get spoonfed music theory at school are too thick to notice patterns and categorise information of their own accord.

Hi, C,
For the savant or biologically musically-gifted, it's provably not the case. But for the lion share of "guitarists" who reach a level of "competency" and never move from that level unless they are exposed to advanced training/music theory is disproportionate to other musical instruments/players. However, this is almost exclusively the case with "guitarists"--one of the most accessible and abused instruments on the planet for pretenders to the musical throne. And, I hope you're not referring to yourself in regards to music theory, C, since your posts ,by most viewers, could be conceived as written by a theoretically-obsessed musician. And, please . . . my remarks are not meant to be critical or mean-spirited but rather observational and I want that to be clear. You have devoted much time and energy to the subject.
Marinero

[Christian Miller]

Hi, C,
For the savant or biologically musically-gifted, it's provably not the case. But for the lion share of "guitarists" who reach a level of "competency" and never move from that level unless they are exposed to advanced training/music theory is disproportionate to other musical instruments/players. However, this is almost exclusively the case with "guitarists"--one of the most accessible and abused instruments on the planet for pretenders to the musical throne. And, I hope you're not referring to yourself in regards to music theory, C, since your posts ,by most viewers, could be conceived as written by a theoretically-obsessed musician. And, please . . . my remarks are not meant to be critical or mean-spirited but rather observational and I want that to be clear. You have devoted much time and energy to the subject.
Marinero

Oh I’m totally obsessed with theory. I enjoy it as a thing in itself. But that has no bearing on anything in particular.

i also try not to let it affect my teaching or playing too much.

[Marinero]

"Similarly, rhetoric and prosody and linguistics and semiotics can explain much of what goes on in, say, a Shakespeare sonnet. And despite my decent grasp those fields, I can't produce much more than a mediocre sonnet--though I'm quite good at technical analyses of great poems. (And fifty years along, I have a handful of mediocre-plus non-sonnets.)" RLetson

Hi, R
So, as Willie says through Hamlet: "Ay, there's the rub . . . " The point after countless pages should be clear: unless one is a Savant as Gauguin, formal knowledge and competency(mechanics) are essential to creativity. Whether it was DaVinci's apprenticeship under Verrocchio or Rubenstein's study at the Warsaw Conservatory and under Heinrich Barth, Art requires both Form and Inspiration. Simple. Any other take is wishful thinking for the ill-informed.
Marinero

[rpjazzguitar]

One view seems to be that every player knows and uses theory whether the player is aware of that fact or not.

So, what about an absolute musical novice, scat singing?

And, what about the player who plays that way -- scat sings mentally and can play those notes on the instrument in real time?

[Christian Miller]

One view seems to be that every player knows and uses theory whether the player is aware of that fact or not.

So, what about an absolute musical novice, scat singing?

And, what about the player who plays that way -- scat sings mentally and can play those notes on the instrument in real time?

well I think while that’s something that’s good to practice in performance it’s less clear cut. On the subject of whether his voice lead the guitar or the guitar lead the voice, George Benson opined that it was perhaps a little of both.

But yes, if you can hear fully formed jazz lines in your head, it’s ‘simply’ a matter of mastering the instrument well enough to give voice to these ideas. Once you know what you are hearing this is a simpler task than it might seem and certainly easier than doing it without hearing a clear image of what your playing… it starts with trial and error perhaps but this is a muscle that can be practiced.

Which is kind of how Tristano seems to have operated as an educator (singing solos) and Edwin Gordon (learning sequences in music) is even more hardcore about this idea of pre audiating all improvisation.

In practice I don’t quite subscribe to this hardcore idea of improv, but it certainly is a great thing to practice, and learning solos by ear is one of the most popular ways to develop it.

[Bobby Timmons]

One view seems to be that every player knows and uses theory whether the player is aware of that fact or not.

So, what about an absolute musical novice, scat singing?

And, what about the player who plays that way -- scat sings mentally and can play those notes on the instrument in real time?

1st you'd have to find someone who can intuitively scat actual lines which is rare. Then you'd have to get that person to realize those lines in time on their instrument without theory. Not going to happen with regularity. That's not even considering harmony. That's not a practical viewpoint. Nice and romantic, but not practical. I don't see why this perspective is deemed advantageous by so many above learning actual mechanics in tandem with musicianship.

[pauln]

1st you'd have to find someone who can intuitively scat actual lines which is rare. Then you'd have to get that person to realize those lines in time on their instrument without theory. Not going to happen with regularity. That's not even considering harmony. That's not a practical viewpoint. Nice and romantic, but not practical. I don't see why this perspective is deemed advantageous by so many above learning actual mechanics in tandem with musicianship.

You don't see why this perspective is deemed advantageous because you don't understand playing by ear; you are thinking learning "actual mechanics" is missing, but learning to play by ear (finding the pitches and harmonies through internal processes by oneself) IS the actual mechanics, and it is deemed advantageous because it is "more actual" than passive presentation of external second hand instruction, method books, lesson plans, etc.

[Bobby Timmons]

That isn't true. I work on my ear constantly. I pick up licks or tunes by ear, I do ear training, I listen to good playing and then try to play like that, I check ideas that I might construct theoretically and make sure they sound good, not to mention the perpetual pursuit of improving my intuition of just playing. How is that not using my ear. Just because I'm not lying about my process and not trying to mislead others about the best way to approach music doesn't mean I never play with my ear and only make music using theory. That's a straw man.

Also, you can have 'actual' intuition of playing music along with mechanics, they aren't exclusive of each other. Most of the musicians that make great music use mechanics.