guitar snobbery?

[Hudman]

I think riovine read babablowfish's post differently than he did:

 

"Years later it was revealed that he couldn't improvise; he meticulously scored all of his riffs and memorized them."

 

All that tells me is that he wrote and memorized countless jazz likes in multiple keys. In other words, he was able to improvise, he just did it with a partial script. He went with material he previously wrote that fit the muisic's key and time signature. Although, I think 99% of people are guilty of doing improvise in a similiar fashion...

 

That's how I read it...

[riovine]

Accusing Johnny Smith of being a fraud? Where does it say that Johnny Smith should be expected to improvise his solos? Why is'nt he free to do as he pleases?

 

 

Whoa, slow down hoss, I'm not sure how we got to this point. I am in NO way acusing Johnny Smith of being a fraud. I'm a huge fan of his, we was a great player, one of the top jazz guitarists of his generation.

 

I only brought up the 'F' word because a previous post had said he heard that he did not improvise ANY of his solos, they were all pre-learned and canned.

 

I said I did not believe it and was wondering what his source was. The reason I didn't believe it, aside from listening to many of his recordings, is that someone at his level in the jazz world, running with the crowd he did, would have not been able to "fake" (another 'F' word) it for that long with reputation intact. If someone tried to do that, they would have been exposed in numerous jam sessions etc.

 

Rightly or wrongly, if you tried to pass of canned, rehearsed solos as improvised ones, you would be thought of as a fraud in the jazz world. You can certainly do whatever you want, but that's just a reality.

 

Canned solos can be wonderful, a lot of those Cootie Williams solos in the Ellington band were written out, and they were fantastic, with great phrasing & feeling etc. but he would never tell you they were improvised. I guess it all comes down to advertising. In a big band you tend to assume more things will be written out. In a small band context, you just assume it's more improvisation bases.

[JasmineTea]

My fault, I think.

 

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled thread...

[bigby]

Mind if I quote your pop? Great saying.

Go for it...I'm sure he got it from someone else as well...

[Cldplytkmn]

as if writing a solo in advance makes it a 'canned' solo...

I doub that it would be possible to tell the difference between an improvised solo vs. a written one just from a recording...

looks like i missed the argument though, seems to have died... shucks.

[knockwood]

as if writing a solo in advance makes it a 'canned' solo... I doub that it would be possible to tell the difference between an improvised solo vs. a written one just from a recording... looks like i missed the argument though, seems to have died... shucks.

 

 

 

 

[Cldplytkmn]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VeIL7juFE0

 

 

yes, yes... i see what you're getting at...

 

wait, huh?

[babablowfish]

Sorry, I just got back from the open-mic nite. The point I was making had nothing to do with Johnny Smith per se. The guy who told me the story, and he had lots of great stories about John D'Angelico, Charlie Christian, Django Reinhart, Andre Segovia, et al, is long dead. I am sure that he believed it and until today I always believed it. But lets stipulate for the sake of argument that it is total bull{censored} and that Johnny Smith was an improvisational genius. The point remains the same and it is that point which riovine is disputing. I was trying to say that there is nothing superior or inferior about taking lessons vs learning on your own. What counts is that you apply yourself. What will be judged by others will be the music however you get there. If I hear some great guitar playing I am not going to think less of him if I learn that it was memorized, that the performer studied for 20 years with Segovia or if it all just flowed out of his head. If it moves me, it moves me.

[netspirit]

I spent a long time playing self taught until I went back to school as a music major. The lessons and classes I took gave me confidence in all my music endeavors and the guitar lessons I took corrected many bad habits. The most important thing I learned from school was how to learn.

[Dan Hall]

I don't get any of this {censored}. And I don't normally even say {censored} around here. {censored}, what in the {censored} is wrong with taking lessons? Loose this dip {censored} moron. Right away. He's an idiot for crying out loud. You really have to find a better class of people to hang around with.

[Queequeg]

I read Miles Davis' autobiography several years ago.

He would chastise his bandmembers which included Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Tony Williams in the mid '60s if they weren't improvising. I am paraphrasing, but it went something like this: "hey, you played it that way last night. Play it different tonight. Don't ever play it the same when you play in my band."

I don't post this to challenge the value of lessons. In fact, I believe in and support the value of formal musical training. I was simply reminded of that passage in the book.

[knockwood]

I don't get any of this {censored}. And I don't normally even say {censored} around here. {censored}, what in the {censored} is wrong with taking lessons? Loose this dip {censored} moron. Right away. He's an idiot for crying out loud. You really have to find a better class of people to hang around with.

{censored}in' A to that {censored}!

[bbarkow]

I spent 30 hard years teaching myself. I am now a good guitarist. I look back and realize that I would have been a much better guitarist if I had some guidance. If I had to pick a perfect way, I would recommend you do both. There is nothing wrong with noodling on your own and trying to figure things out on on your own. But there is a lot you wont discover on your own easily. You don't have to do one or the other.

+1

[learn'r]

so here's the story,,, about 30 years ago in my late teens i began learning guitar from a book, a couple of guys i knew back then were also just starting, after about 2 years i realised i was getting nowhere and gave up, back then there were no guitar teachers or any, i got married ,, kids etc, you know, all the stuff that gets in the way, and also lost contact with these guys, so last year (29 years later) i decide to take up guitar again ( maybe midlife crisis, trying to reconnect with my teenage years, i dont know) so i buy a guitar and book lessons, things are going ok , im slowly but surely improving, then out of the blue i reconnect with one of the guys from back then, we meet about once a week in town and go for coffee, this guy started guitar same time as me 30 years ago and never gave up,, though i suspect he's the type of guy who may play 5 hours today and not touch the guitar for a week, so while we're talking i tell him iv' just started again and im taking lessons, and though he has'nt said anything negative i get the vibe from him that taking lessons is not as "legitamate" way to learn guitar, it's like" you gotta spend 20 years in your bedroom struggeling with it on your own or you are not a real guitarist, iv' been taking lessons for 6 months now and i can say 6 more months and i will pass this guy out, just wondering if any of you have encountered this attitude( or harbour this attitude) that lessons are not a legitimate way to learn?

 

 

my grand mother (God bless her soul) paid for lessons - which I religiously took for two years. I still depend on sheet music standard notation ..... tab is something I started looking at in just the past year.

 

that said - I quit lessons because I felt like they were milking Grandma. Within months of dropping out, I started hanging with local talent and learned barre chords. Few months latter I was the rhythm guitar player in a local that had quit a following.

 

then like you - things got in the way of my hobby - for almost the same amount of time. This past year I have used my credit card to go into debt out the wazoo .... middle age crisis .... maybe - but I'm going for it. I suggest you do the same. As an adult you can tell the teach to stay up with ya. I couldn't do that.

 

Try to not use a credit card though. Jeez.

[darksun]

I don't get any of this {censored}. And I don't normally even say {censored} around here. {censored}, what in the {censored} is wrong with taking lessons? Loose this dip {censored} moron. Right away. He's an idiot for crying out loud. You really have to find a better class of people to hang around with.

A BETTER CLASS OF PEOPLE??? you obviously hav'nt seen the {censored}holes i hang out in:D

[kwakatak]

I'd like to present the viewpoint from the other side of the fence. I've been playing for about 30 years now on and off from an early age. While I admit that I'm not the best player out there I've at least come far enough to get some personal satisfaction out of it and feel secure in my abilities. Maybe I spent too much time with my diversions and should have instead focused on my education, establishing a career, getting married and raising a family sooner instead. At age 37 several attempts at establishing a career have not borne fruit. What makes it worse is that I gave up playing religiously in order to get that career thing going - all when it was probably too late. Now I feel that all that happened was that I wasted 10 years of my life and now I'm too old to enter into American Idol or Rockstar Supernova!

Just kidding - even though I passed up on several opportunities to become a "serious musician" at least I figured out who I was and instead music became a passion and not a commitment to use to pay the bills. As a result I feel that it hasn't been "tainted" and is now a good way of recharging my batteries. Hopefully there may be a higher purpose to the path I chose.

That being said, I know a couple of guys who started playing around the same age that I did (though they are older than I am) but unlike me they gave it up to follow the traditional go to school/get a job/get married/raise a family route. Though I envy them for what I like to think of as "having better priorities in life" it seems like in our case that our diverse paths that have lead back to the same point. We're all playing in the church praise band and approach our playing with an attitude that transcends personal satisfaction and using our gifts to sing the praises of a higher power that we all agree on.

Still and all, I see that the other guys are having difficulty with things that I've come to take for granted. I have to admit that at first I couldn't understand but as time has gone on I've begun to realize why my expectations were unreasonable and they've also gotten a bit better. I doubt I'll ever get them to play John Mayer (not that I'd really want to do that myself) but for now I'm taking satisfaction in the mutual growth and have noticed that my attitudes and approach toward playing have changed. For my part I've found that my musical education is far from over as well and am finally learning to play with others. I hope my grade school guidance counselor would be proud!

I still have trouble with the sense of superiority I had at first though. I hope that they did not/do still not or never had have the feelings that you had toward your friend. I know that it was not intentional on my part and pray that it's just one of those "learning experiences" through personal failures that come along every now and then.

I hope that this may be true in the relationship between you and your friend. Given a little effort on all sides I have no doubt that such trials will result in a closer bond and greater overall harmony, both in life and in music.

OT: sorry for rambling. Blame it on the 4 scant and nonconsecutive hours of sleep, 4 cups of coffee, watching a well-rested toddler and the resulting inability to concentrate on any one task for any period of time.

[Tony Burns]

There are alot of phenominal guitarists out their who have never taken a lesson or that can read music - they play with their heart and soul and can play something practically perfect after hearing it a few times -- I also know alot of these so called lessons give you bits and pieces for years , kinda dragging it out - a note here and their , possibly with the teachers not being decent players themselves - So in my opinion its the passion that you play your guitar with , it you dont have that - all the lessons in the world dont mean a thing .
( this does not mean i think most or all Guitar instruction is poorly done or unskilled )

[STEELSTRINGS]

Some people I've met seem to have a problem with the fact that I took lessons. They've even given me the million+ reasons speech as to why they should be better than me:bor: . The facts seem to really speak for themselves, (I play circles around these guys). A few of them admit that,some others won't even acknowledge that I play. There are some turkeys you just can't listen to.

[Hamhand]

I'm 52, taking lessons from a really nice guy that won't let me say 'can't'. I can say I 'haven't' done something yet, so... I'm feeling good about lessons. I have no cares whether anyone thinks I'm gonna be a guitar player or not. I'm even learning off some 'e'method CD (I think that's what it's called. I'm so jazzed I learned La Bamba and some boogie pattern left hand fingering, I can't stop going back to my guitar.
Anyway, so much for digression. I respect a guy with a good enough ear he can listen to a tune and reproduce it, but a lesson taught player with clean play and some emotional involvement can get me to tap my foot just as easy.

[Terry Allan Hall]

I think riovine read babablowfish's post differently than he did: "Years later it was revealed that he couldn't improvise; he meticulously scored all of his riffs and memorized them." All that tells me is that he wrote and memorized countless jazz likes in multiple keys. In other words, he was able to improvise, he just did it with a partial script. He went with material he previously wrote that fit the muisic's key and time signature. Although, I think 99% of people are guilty of doing improvise in a similiar fashion... That's how I read it...

Music is a series of "languages" and chords, scales, "hot licks", and "riffs" are the vocabulary thereof...we all use them, whether we think we are or not.

I'm "self-taught", but in all honesty, I've watched every good guitarist I ever met and tried to learn what they were doing, and I've read through a ton of music books, so it's equally valid to say I've had thousands of teachers over nearly 40 years of playing.

As for Johnny Smith, if he memorized everything he played, he had a heckofa memory!

[MartinC]

I started playing guitar at 17, and from the start took lessons. I learned how to read, chord construction, scales, theory, jazz harmony, improvisation, ear training, etc. Four years later I managed to beat out fifty jazz guitarists for a spot in a university big band by playing Joy Spring(a mother of a tune), improvising a solo, and comping. No way on this earth that could have happened without lessons. I became a professional guitarist, but became frustrated with the direction of rock music in the 80's, so at 27, I took up flamenco. I took lessons for five years, and before those lessons ended, I was playing solo doing the biggest gigs of my life. No way, again, would any of that been possible without lessons. You can waste hours, days, months, years fiddling around and make little progress. Guitar is hard to play well, and if that is your goal, you couldn't be better served than to be guided by a good teacher. He will identify your weaknesses and show you how to overcome them. You will feel pressure to learn what you have been taught or have to face the teacher at the next lesson konwing you wasted your time and money.

[Phlat Phive]

I only have one string on my guitar, but I taught myself to hit it multiple times really really fast so it sounds like I'm playing chords and I sometimes "cheat" by screaming out fifths. The down side is that I get exhausted playing fairly simple songs. If I'd had a teacher, I could have avoided all that crap.

The mental image of this cracked me up. Especially the screaming fifths part.






On topic: Taking lessons from a good teacher, combined with constructive and serious self-study, is the best way I can think to become a good guitarist.

[JasmineTea]

You really have to find a better class of people to hang around with.

What he said.

[guitarist21]

I, for one, really don't care whether you learn by yourself or with a teacher or whether you make up solos on the spot or plan them out. If you are progressing as a player to your taste and sound good, that's pretty adequate.

Taking lessons is great (I took lessons forever) but sometimes lessons don't work anymore (you move to a place where there's no teachers, or you surpass your teacher in skill or whatever) and I think its healthy to teach yourself for a while. You can learn a lot by listening. That's what I do nowl I'm not taking lessons but I still improve because I try new things (lately jazz) and attempt to emulate new techniques (lately fingerpicking).

That said, I can't wait to go to Berklee next fall and start taking lessons again and I hope to see myself progress a lot as a player.

Ellen

[Cripes]

9 years after high school I went to college. That was well after I had learned to be pretty skilled with fingerstyle. At the university I took guitar 101 as an elective and the instructor tried to undo me in a few ways. His style was text-book-correct classical and he required everyone in the class to "assume the position". Screw that. I exchanged the course for a fine art class and that instructor didn't give a crap about how I held my paint brush.