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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Hi, C,
I've never wasted a dime or lost a moment in formal musical education despite the fact that I was gigging for years without that knowledge. And, for the record, my academic degrees(similar to yours) are NOT in music. However, it was that very hard-earned musical knowledge that allowed me to move to higher levels of performance(and writing: arranging). And, the only reason that I've spent this time discussing this issue is that there are, undoubtedly, people on this Forum who may benefit from these types of discussions where an issue is fully fleshed-out with only the bones remaining. Knowledge is power.
Marinero
P.S. I don't know if you saw an earlier question I posed to you about guitar cables, but I purchased the Mogami Gold cables last week and was very impressed with the certifiable difference in sound clarity, drive. Highly recommended for the extreme fetishist.
M
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10-02-2022 10:00 AM
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Originally Posted by Marinero
what we do when we practice is build up the latter, and it’s the latter that gets the gig… whether that gig is a jazz gig, a rhythm guitar gig in a funk band or a high pressure reading date. Doesn’t matter.
players who consciously use theory or come up with ideas, such as chord scales will then practice to convert the former into the latter. But it still has to be the latter to be usable on a gig.
But one of the fastest ways of building one’s implicit knowledge is to learn music by ear. It’s less of a conscious process that way, and very holistic and works on a number of levels.
That’s how they teach music all over the world. Indian music has as much theory as any tradition, but it is still taught aurally, for example. And in jazz, it has a long history.
(Western classical musicians otoh learn to audiate from scores.)
obvious really.
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"Indian music has as much theory as any tradition, but it is still taught aurally, for example." ChristianMiller
Hi, C,
So, for our readers, do you consider Indian Music on par with Western Classical Music?
Marinero
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Originally Posted by Marinero
Well yes, take one example.
rhythms in Western music are hilariously, childishly basic compared to those found in Indian classical music. In fact Carnatic rhythmic theory is so flexible and complete it is used to teach advanced Western classical contemporary musicians and jazz players to cope with the more rhythmically complex music these players are likely to come across, because it’s simply better suited for that purpose and more advanced than anything in the Western tradition.
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A singular asset of Western Classical Music (and therefore jazz) is the development of an equally tempered 12 tone system which opens the possibility to modulate anywhere. No other music does that.
Indian music is very complex melodically as well as it uses a much finer division of the octave than our seven tone scales which is probably a use of higher overtones. But it does not modulate but stays modal.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
However, I do not want to get into a discussion about which is the more complex, and I certainly do not want to get into value judgements about this, a slight hint of which I detected in Marinero's question.
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Wow. I feel like the undergrad who has stumbled into the room where the advanced seminar is being held. Nevertheless, like any bolshy sophomore, I have a couple of thoughts.
To my, um, ear, the crux of this conversation is, "What is the relationship between producing music and being able to describe the product?" Or, from another angle and much more simply, "How does one learn to make music?" And the inevitable "What is the contribution of theoretical knowledge to the generation of music?"
I spent some years writing for music magazines, especially Acoustic Guitar, which allowed me to hang out with a lot of guitarists. I got to know quite a few Hawaiian slack-key players, and in the course of writing a book on the subject (still not quite complete after 21 years), I got stories of how they learned to play. Before, say, 1960, slack key was pretty much entirely an aural tradition, and in Hawaiian culture it tended to be passed along within families. On top of that, it was rarely taught directly and explicitly--kids were allowed to watch and expected to imitate, but few of my informants were sat down and instructed. (There's even a Hawaiian saying that amounts to "be quiet and pay attention.") Keola Beamer has this anecdote: he was working on a tune when his grandfather came along, listened, took the guitar away and played a passage the right way, returned the guitar, and walked out of the room.
The older players I talked to had no conventional musical training and rarely used standard terminology--though there are certainly traditional names for tunings. It's not uncommon for players of Keola's generation to have had conventional musical training--Dennis Kamakahi had a degree (and his father was a horn player in the Royal Hawaiian Band), though his introduction to playing came via his extended family. There's a certain similiarity to the way gypsy players acquired technique and repertory--by observation and absorption--and also to the way the folk model morphed into the conventional formal-training model. (I think of the Ferre brothers' conservatory training, sitting atop the more traditional ways of their uncles.)
My long-winded point is that even for the schooled players, minimally-theorized practice (listening and imitating) came first. And I have found this pattern in other traditions, including some of the ancestors of modern jazz. Some players in dance bands were schooled, some were not--though I suspect the pressure to produce and perform increasingly sophisticated arrangements made it tougher for non-sight-readers to keep a job. And bebop was largely devised by players who combined big ears, bandstand experience, and some understanding of the "theoretical" machinery of harmony and such.
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Originally Posted by James W
This makes it a very powerful musical technology and it has been widely adopted by music schools the world over.
As far as Karnatic music itself it has a specific and dizzying complexity. It’s a language like any other.
(i do enjoy the fact that in Carnatic music audiences apparently Konnakol performances are considered a bit nerdy.)
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
For example quarter tones in Middle Eastern msuic. I work with musicians who can instantly tell the difference between Egyptian pitching of quarter tones (very weird apparently) compared to that in other ME music.
I was thrilled when I started hearing the quarter tones in Maquamat like Rast and Bayyati not as out of tune tempered notes but notes in their own right. And that’s baby steps. but it was a real ‘watcher of the skies’ moment for me if you know what I mean.
It made me really realise the levels of complexity that my ears maybe completely deaf to. I could also say the same about jazz rhythm, for years….
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Originally Posted by Bop Head
If you’ve ever spent a week playing a Lute in a historic temperament and gone back to the modern guitar… owww!!!
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Some day I will get my hands on John McLaughlin's DVD on konnokol.
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Originally Posted by James W
I need to get back into Konnakol. It’s been a while since I’ve worked on it earnest.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
The beauty of individual harmonies IMO is restored in pieces like this:
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Originally Posted by James W
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Incidentally, I'm going to a gig of his on Thursday in Birmingham.
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Vampyr! reminded me of this, which is also pretty cool IMO:
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
Is that all there is? What about expressing oneself fully and uniquely, or being a player others will remember? As Philip Larkin wrote of Pee Wee Russell: "No one familiar with the characteristic excitement of his solos, their lurid, snuffling, asthmatic voicelessness, notes leant on till they split, and sudden passionate intensities, could deny the uniqueness of his contribution to jazz."
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Originally Posted by Litterick
Last edited by Christian Miller; 10-02-2022 at 04:34 PM.
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Originally Posted by RLetson
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Consider truly great, propulsive comping ... is there theory that will help you develop that?
And I'm not talking about which chords/notes, rather I'm talking about when you play them and with what attack.
A quick story. I attended a master class with a Brazilian great, Marcus Tardelli, some years back. Incredible player with deep knowledge and enormous ears.
The other students played these terrific chord melodies and Marcus listened and made suggestions.
When it was my turn, I played a ii V I in Cmaj in a basic samba rhythm. The other students were sort of snickering. Then I asked, "why don't I sound like a Brazilian". The snickering stopped -- everybody wanted to know that. His answer, condensed and paraphrased, was to play along with recordings. Apologies to Marcus if I have not remembered this correctly. But, on second thought, what else could it have been?
However you employ theory (or not) for note and chord choice, eventually, you're going to have to play that stuff in good rhythm. Anybody have ideas on that? And I'm not talking about wild subdivisions of the beat. This is going to come down to eighths, maybe sixteenths, and triplets. Or so it seems to me.
My impression is that the great comping guitarists have tremendous vocabularies of rhythmic ideas and the harmonic choices that allow them.
The only way I can imagine developing this ability is to listen, transcribe (or lift) comping and get to some transcendent point where you can feel it.
What have I missed?
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Peter Bernstein once pointed out to a masterclass I attended that perhaps it’s a good idea to spend as much time practicing comping as soloing. It’s an obvious thing, but until it’s pointed out….
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Originally Posted by Marinero
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. 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. Hal Galper does say "all music is played by ear".
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I just have to slide this in before we hear the "But..but...Bireli is a savant!" excuse.
I think Bireli is someone who came into this world with a proclivity towards sound (musical talent), landed a very fortunate birth for a musician, and most importantly, did a ton of work starting at an early age. Like Mozart. Or Julian Lage.
These guys aren't Rain-Men who can look at a pile of matchsticks and pull the correct count out of the air. They earned their abilities and honed them in countless hours of playing with others in basements and performing on stage.
I think the savant thing is a put-down and a cop-out. Like it's magic or something. We're looking at talent, hard work, and a huge amount of experience that very few are able to achieve.
(actually... I wouldn't be surprised if these guys can do the matchstick trick... :-)
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Originally Posted by m_d
Now if only it had built in reverb...
Today, 10:32 AM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos