10 Questions For Every Aspiring Jazz Musician - Zilber article

[girevik]

Interesting article:

http://www.michaelzilber.com/page/10-questions-every-aspiring-jazz-musician

 

Includes an anecdote about being bitch-slapped by Dave Liebman, one of our greatest masters of outside playing, for playing outside without a solid inside foundation:

 

 

I will tell you an anecdote. I was 23, living in Boston and playing gigs with some very famous people. Heavy into trying to play like Mike Brecker. All my friends from New England and Berklee thought I was the sh-t, and I probably did, too. Got a grant to study with Dave Liebman. Drove five hours from Boston to his house on Long Island. Went to take a five hour lesson. I wanted to learn all his cool, snaky lines - finish off the deal, right? Well, I get in there, he puts on an Aebersold - Yardbird Suite - I start doing my Brecker pentatonics and he stops me - no man, play the changes. I start again, stops me again - man, you can

[Virgman]

Interesting article.

 

It reminds me of another story about a guy visiting Oscar Peterson, who acted in a similar fashion.

 

So let's see, if I want to be a jazz musician I need to learn 1000 songs and practice 5-7 hours a day for 10 years.

 

And also get a heroin habit.

 

Then I can be employed in a very marginal, barely subsistence occupation.

 

Sounds like a plan.

[Cazual]

That was indeed an interesting article. But when I read stuff like that I always feel that I want to add another to the list:

 

11. Music is a communication, not a pissing contest. The main ingredients are Touch, Timing, and something to say - it's not all about knowing 1000 songs or being able to play every scale backwards underwater at 300 bpm...

 

Experience and practice are essential tools, but don't forget that you can still make great music with handful of notes and a modest range of chords.

[GreenAsJade]

^^^

[Virgman]

That was indeed an interesting article. But when I read stuff like that I always feel that I want to add another to the list: 11. Music is a communication, not a pissing contest. The main ingredients are Touch, Timing, and something to say - it's not all about knowing 1000 songs or being able to play every scale backwards underwater at 300 bpm... Experience and practice are essential tools, but don't forget that you can still make great music with handful of notes and a modest range of chords.

 

Yes, but what if Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie or the Jazz Police walk in?

 

Or worse yet...what if Wynton Marsalis walks in?

 

 

Then you will be exposed as a fraud.

 

They'll laugh at you!

 

"Bwahahahaha! This chump thinks he can play jazz! Bwahahahahaha! You suck, man. My Momma can play better than you! Bwahahahaha!"

 

[1001gear]

Funny I'd use that scenario but not that perspective.

 

Unrelated thot.

He's starting to look like Rodney Coleman.

[Philbigtime]

Experience and practice are essential tools, but don't forget that you can still make great music with handful of notes and a modest range of chords.

 

 

... and that music is not jazz.

 

 

(although I do pretty much agree with you).

[jeremy_green]

Good article. Thanks for that.

 

There is a little too much looking down your nose-isms in the jazz community for a lot of folks. It's a drag. This article speaks fairly closely to that. I take it for what it is which is mostly good advice.

[Cazual]

... and that music is not jazz.

 

Do you really believe that?

 

I'd have to disagree with you. I'm not in any way anti-jazz - in fact I used to own a shop that specialised in selling classical music and jazz on CD. I think that the notion that jazz is just about complex chords with long names, and unusual scales, is counterproductive. It gets jazz a bad name as being snobby and exclusive.

 

For my money, jazz is about feel and style not just complexity. At its heart it revolves around the timing and touch of the musician, not just around the size of their chord dictionary.

 

I know that that are numerous style of jazz, and that there's plenty of internal rivalry (sneering at 'trad jazz' seems popular for instance) but I think that elitism in any form of music is rather sad. I believe that jazz started out as loose and joyful, and that it's a shame that certain factions seem to have fallen to the temptations of getting a tad too wanky about it all.

 

Others will disagree of course.

[The Burninator]

I wonder who are some of those frauds and hacks, though it looks like I will

not be able to tell what seperates them from "the real dudes", at least in the

next few years. This article talks about things that are beyond me.

[Virgman]

Jazz isn't everything. It is a certain style of music.

 

Just because improvising is involved doesn't make it jazz.

[girevik]

One thing I got out of the article is this:

 

If you're gonna pay good money for a private lesson with Dave Liebman, what do you want more - for him to tell you "you're awesome!" and not teach you anything, or to tell you what you need to work on to get better? I was pretty disappointed when I had a good jazz musician (he played Warr Guitar) stop by my place to give me a lesson, then tell me "I have nothing to teach you" after we jammed a bit.

 

I think it's natural for a beginner to jazz to want to play the "cool outside {censored}" ASAP and skip the seemingly less glamorous work of learning how to play jazz tunes "inside" first. "Inside" means being able to play through the most common jazz chord changes with good time and some knowledge of jazz vocabulary (eg. the licks that you hear over and over again in many jazz solos - such as this one: http://jazztrumpetlicks.com/2009/04/a-famous-ii-v7-i-lick-you-hear-a-lot-of-jazz-artists-play/). Some of these licks are so famous that they actually have names - such as the Cry Me A River Lick: http://jazztrumpetlicks.com/2009/05/the-all-famous-cry-me-a-river-jazz-lick/

 

I'm not sure Zilber is right on all points in his article, but I'm starting to find that the more I study jazz, the more stuff I hear that I didn't hear when I was a raw beginner - how much more so for those guys that have been playing for decades at the highest level?