Bilbo

[quote name='dlloyd' post='157227' date='Mar 14 2008, 09:37 AM']Apart from the fact that there are truly tone-deaf people who cannot understand music past a vague, superficial aesthetic, I'd agree.[/quote] I was once told that someone who is genuinely tone deaf cannot hear the difference in frequency between a dog bark and bird song. I think real tone deafness is actually very rare. The rest is learned helplessness - people who are repeatedly told they are tone deaf to the point where they believe it and proceed accordingly. The concept of excellence in singing, for instance, is a Western phenomenon. Asking someone is Africa if they can sing is like asking them if they can chew. Its not an issue.

Nice one, Paul C. Now there is NO reason for people not to understand this stuff.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='156834' date='Mar 13 2008, 04:47 PM']I don't see how knowing theory will make you more able to play a teapot, a shirt, or a piglet.[/quote] That's the point. Pascoal knows all the theory you need. He is a great player and composer in the conventional sense but is also one of the most creative musician on the planet - his swimming pool, vocal, underwater tube trio is a must! Harmonic and melodic theory in the sense it has been discussed here is ethnocentric - a thumb piano is an African invention so has no use for the tempered scale. Nor has a piglet.

[quote name='2wheeler' post='156634' date='Mar 13 2008, 12:06 PM']I stuck to a walking bass line through "Straight, No Chaser", got lost a few times but got through it and had a very good time most of the time.[/quote] I still get lost after 28 years of playing it. Its kind of part of the deal. At the stage you are at you just need to get out there and make a noise - remember; there is no such thing as a wrong note, just a poor choice. If you are lost, just keep goign until you find it again. There are 12 notes in an octave and eight in any given key. That's a 66% chance of hitting a 'right' note even if you try it randomly. Noone is listening to you anyway, you're the bass player! BE LOUD, CONFIDENT and WRONG! Just play, play, play and have a ball!

Let's put this in perspective. Look up Hermeto Pascoal on YouTube (but don't stop at one video as you won't get where he is coming from unless you look at several) - now tell me whether theory stifles your creativity!! Saxophonist Iain Ballamy once told me that he saw Pascoal play music on a shirt. Other instruments include piano, melodica, teapot and piglet - yes, piglet. Hey BBC! - you're gonna LOVE it!!

They're juss makin' it up as they go along....

[quote name='jakesbass' post='156110' date='Mar 12 2008, 03:57 PM']We live in an age where we have to pussy foot around for fear of upsetting the sensibilities of one person or another.[/quote] Do we? I must be missing something, snot box!!!

The problem with finding your true path as a musician is recognising the fact that you are already on it. If you practise every lick, trick and song of your favorite musician, and nothing else, you will still not sound like him/her. You can' t help it - so being an individual is not the issue. But, using the drum analogy, you can get quite credible without 'learning' anything but I bet you any money your playing will fill up with cliches very quickly whether you like it or not because the music you LISTEN to will be cliche-ridden. We are the sum total of our experiences and those experiences aren't only our practice schedule; it is also our listening. So unless you listen to original (i.e. not genre specific) music, you will inevitably fall into the boom chuck boom chuck school of drumming and sound very unispired. You may have a whale of a time but the listeners won't hear anything worth talking abou! I also agree that technical players are not always the best - I think, for instance, that Jeff Berlin, despite his astonishing technique, lacks the genre specific skills to play anything other than what he does. Despite his endless efforts to the contrary, he has not got a massive list of sessions to his name because can't nail grooves idiomatically correctly like someone like Lee Sklar, who is a lesser player in terms of superficial dexterity but grooves like a mofo. Technique is not everything but it helps.

'This Must Be Love' Alphonso Johnson's line on Phil Collins 'Face Value' LP/CD Yum Yum Pigs Bum!

I guess the worst thing is technique without knowledge of theory - Yngwie J Malmsteen!

I have to agree that I think the not learning theory to maintain creativity argument is moribund. It is nothing more that a justification that allows individuals to watching more tv without feeling guilty. Of course uneducated polayers are capable of being creative - its part of the human condition. But, if you give 1,000 monkies typewriters.... Sorry, that was facetious but I accept that many uneducated players have done some great things but relying on pure inspiration without perspiration is like relying on a lottery win to feed yourself - you may be lucky but I wouldn't want to rely on it. In simple terms, to suggest that not doing something improves your playing is, in my view, anathema.

[quote name='cheddatom' post='155854' date='Mar 12 2008, 11:17 AM']Ok - If learning theory is all about internalising knowledge to the effect that you can play without thinking surely this can be attainable without actually learning the theory in the first place. If theory teaches you where the right notes are, but you can hear where the right notes are anyway, couldn't you just use your ears to accomplish the same thing that theory teaches?[/quote] Yes, of course yout can but its a much slower route and an uneducated musician is inevitable limted by his own internal constraints. The study of theory can help you to 'hear' things you might not otherwise have heard. I have a simple rule - Knowledge is power. Ignorance is bliss. Your choice.

The difficulty in applying theory to improvised music rest in the head and not the hands. The performance of jazz requires you to listen to what is happening around you as you play and using the information you hear and the things you know about the music to inform your own decisions about where you take the music. If the soloist goes up a scale, you may chose to go up with him or to go in the opposite direction. You may choose to play a pedal tone a fourth below the root of the key centre of the changes being used (eg the first eight bars of a bebop rhythm changes tune in Bb can be accompanied by a pedal F to great effect) or you may choose to hold a note and suspend the forward motion of your line as another tension creating device. You could change a funk tune into a jazz tune, or a rock tune into Latin. You may think, a Latin groove woudl sound nice now but, becasue you knwo your drummer can't play a Latin groove, you may abort the idea. The options are infinte and are only bounded by your imagination, your knowledge of what works and the circusmtances around you at a given moment. The use of youre favourite Nuno licks will not even begin to meet the demands of improvised music. Classical musicians are trained very differently. They are capable of some very sophisticated and complex playing but they do it mostly by rote and not spontaneously. Also. their 'creative' choices, in terms of their performance, whilst potentially informed by the conducters 'interpretation' of the ensemble delivery, are not defined by it in the way that a jazz players is. More to the point, the ensembles note choices are predetermined and not informed by anything other than the 'script'/chart. I guess the difference between jazz and classical performance is like the difference between a debate and a speech. The skills sets are very different. There are some classical musicians that can improvise but they are rare and generally not a the top of the game - Wynton Marsalis is respected in the jazz field but he is strictly B-list in the classical world. Nigel Kennedy's 'jazz' is excruciating! Whatever his strengths as a player, I suspect Gwilym Simcock is not a contender in the classical field (I have not yet heard him). A knowledge of music theory will NEVER undermine your ability to perform creatively. What will, however, is the ability to apply that theory. If you have to process the information yoiu hear before you make choices about what you play, the concious application of theory to your given improvisation will inevitably delay your decision making and disable your creative choices completely. The secret is to learn the thoery, knowl how to apply it and then forget about it. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to write if you had to think about every muscle movement, spelling, sentence contstruction, tense etc? Music theory is no different.

[quote name='FJ1200' post='155311' date='Mar 11 2008, 02:27 PM']I've just bought a £2.99 4-CD set for the car to try to get my head round it[/quote] It's no wonder jazz has such a bad name - these £2.99 compilations do so much harm for jazz its unreal. 4 cds for 3 quid? Let me guess: Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, Dave Brubeck, Peggy Lee - all on wax cylinders - am I right? Not necessarily bad artists but these reciordings are almost always obscure outtakes, early left overs, dodgy live cuts. - Its like judging all Sci-Fi on the basis of 'The Mouse On The Moon'. DESTROY IT!! DESTROY IT!! Buy a copy of 'Jazzwise' and look for something that takes your fancy!

Almost any Motown compilation will give you some insights. Enjoy.

I found this website many moons ago and just found it again on my favourites. Have a look; it's a really useful resource for getting some new ideas or insights that can contribute to your progress. Good luck. Rob [url="http://www.melmartin.com/index.html"]http://www.melmartin.com/index.html[/url]

Oh, if it's only UP TO 10 hours a day, I practise up to 12.

Even creativity in music is of limited merchantable value. Most people LIKE predictable and unoriginal (have you seen the size of those Irish/Country music stalls at markets. Charlie Landsborough sings Danny Boy (again)). That's why the X Factor has more viewers than Later with Jools Holland. People don't like to be challenged. In all actuality, creativity is probably one of if not [i]the[/i] least marketable musical skill. Most players nowadays, professional or amateur, earn most of their money from just regurgitating someone elses cliches. Sad but true.

I think it is important to acknowledge that music is, whether we like it or not, a package and that technical ability is not the only ingredient on which it is judged. There are a lot of purists out there who like to think that they only listen to music as a pure expression of the individual artist but I suspect they are deluding themselves. The package of which I speak includes things such as inspiration, communication, immediacy, dancability, image, originality, spontaneity, virtuosity, excellence... this list is pretty long. Janek's aspiration for virtuosity is perfectly credible and, as I have already said, commendable. But it is not the only way. 'Madness', for instance, would appeal to people who look for immediacy, dancability, communication etc. People who want those aspects of the music in their individual 'mix' will inevitably struggle with some of the more cerebral musics where inspiration, originality, spontaneity, virtuosity etc are to the fore. The greatest selling artist of all time will be the one who manages get the full range of pertinent factors into one product. Who has come near? Stevie Wonder? Prince? Pat Metheny? The Beatles? Genesis? These guys have all had massive success with a significant part of the public but no-one has got everyone on board. Also, as their mix changes, they lose part of their audience (eg when Genesis started doing 4 minute singles instead of CD length epics, they lost a lot of fans as well as gained some). So, an original, spontaneous, danceable, image conscious virtuoso who communicates and inspires.... when one of those appears, we will all be happy. Until then, we'll just have to agree to disagree. But, then again, you can disagree without being disagreeable

I always say that, if you haven't got that knot of frustration in your stomach, you probably aren't practising anything you need to practice. Feel the fear but do it anyway!

10 hours or not, Janek's commitment to his profession is a credit to him and I only wish I could dedicate as much time to it. I think I would have to sacrifice too much to do that at this point in my life. But that doesn't mean I can't recognise the investment he has and continues to make to his playing, his audience, the bass fraternity as a whole. He is a credit to his profession. Talent isn't enough. We need the Janek's of this world to remind us of the benefits of deicated hard work. Personally, I would love to look after his Wal 5-string while he was on tour with his Fodera

God - I love jazz!!

Don't know what that was about but please don't asume that it had any more to do with jazz than it did rock or funk. It was improvised, I agree, but that was where the parallel ends. I have said it before -just because it is complicated and has a lot of notes doesn't make it jazz. I heard some Industrial stuff, some funk, some prog rock and a bit of wickity woo but not much jazz!

Corporate do pay the best (someone else's money), followed by weddings (there is something about weddings that makes people forget what money is worth - a four piece that can get £160 in a pub can get a £800 at a wedding). People arranging parties can be similarly irrational. Pub gigs are generally the worst paid. Clubs tend to be a little bit better but are choosier. Madness.

"chin stroking music" was invented for people who can't dance......