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Don´t worry about what scales are you using.... let it to critics... They will analyse if your scales are dorian or mixolidian or bebop, or pentatonic, or altered, or chromatic... You are creating your own phrases freely, no thinking in theories... let it to musicologists and teachers.

States the obvious, but once in a little while, isn't is so very reassuring to hear some one else (not yourself) say this?

Found this on a jazz piano site.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2006-10-11 16:56 ]</font>

Modes did that to me when i was seventeen - at jazz college, where i went for a year.

That, along with cycle-of-fifths shenanigans, seemed to turn out an army of middle-class saxophonists who all sounded the same, stripping the humour out of the instrument (which doesn't seem to have recovered).

Anyway, it all seemed a bit cerebral at the time, so instead i opted out for the loud, proud & wrong school

I think what this jazz establishment phrase says is a good advice, I couldn’t agree more.

Now, unfortunately in some circles of jazz I have found the best musicians but also sometimes the coldest of all possible players. In these jazz circles competition is a fact among the velocity-oriented-players, which are rarely musical, machine-like players. What they express is not truly based on inspiration, but rather on pride, the bad pride of feeling superior to other players, silly simple, and still absolutely real.

It is good to go through the old school and pass through the building blocks of scales and harmony of course, learn some standards and play like the ones that have made history in the world of improvisations, but when you start to actually “play” and “improvise” for real, it is probably better to forget completely about methods, theories and scales, and play from your heart. After all, in jazz, what do we play for? Well, to express yourself at “that very moment” and so enjoy the vibrations of sharing music.

I think the point is to study hard and play as many hours as you can afford, for a number of years till you gain control power over your instrument and once you did, play like if you were a baby, without concepts, without restrictions, just expressing what you feel.

This two approaches, the “technical” and the “heart” ones, are what divides jazz in two big sections, the one that impresses much and passes quickly, and the one that gets slowly into your brain and heart because it makes sense. Jazz, due to its nature, it is a difficult music, but once you feel it, the difficulty disappears. There are so many good players out there, and so few that transmit you humanity instate of machine-like sensations...

a great scene from "never on sunday" is when the town is put on halt because the local buzouki player is ashamed that he can't read music and locked himself in the bathroom, ending all the good atmosphere in the place. he's asked, "do the birds read music?". this gets him out of the bathroom and playing again much to the relief of the place because "you make the music and then the next guy writes it down to remember and copy what he liked that you did"(or something approximating those words)...

theory is a system of organizing what we like so it can be repeated easily and talked about. music is the sound we make that we like(or don't like) that way.

amen all the way

isn't that adagium of 'the very personal expression of the 'here-and-now-feelings' a fairytail, today?
I agree with Wayne, who said That, along with cycle-of-fifths shenanigans, seemed to turn out an army of middle-class saxophonists who all sounded the same, stripping the humour out of the instrument (which doesn't seem to have recovered).

jazz is mainly history (tho it has my sympathy), Fusion is a gimmic of great instrumentalists, rock got to be a parody of it's own.

Never the big names of the original geniouses are surpassed, and new geniouses in the respective styles are slowly getting less interesting as history passes by.

BTW., there's nothing wrong with listening to old times favourites, you can awake me for Robert Johnson or the early Wailors

In fact it's what I like of the electronic music movement, it takes implicitely distance from instrumentalism and explicitely from any appeal to expressionism of one's 'feelings' (my girl has left me, now listen...).
In fact, leaving that 'l'art pour l'art' position of the ultimate artist, electronic music starts at the listeners side, those who wanne party...


Wasn't jazz from origine going-out music played in hot dark bars in ordinary-people townships?
Bebob it was, and a lot of those tracks were hits those days.
Our Duch Jules Deelder, jazz specialist and writer, often is performing as a dj in the side areas of big dance parties and local dance bars, playing just hot and fat bebob swing!
(Swing and (typical) 'club' house music fit wonderfull together, you can dance physically the same style ).

Bebob was music for the young and selfconscious downtown youth which wanted it hot.
Nowadays jazz is eighter fusion, or it is experimental-without-a-groove, or it is jazz and boring.

Sometimes, and very rarely, I see something new and special.
I know how to recognize class status, and I'm not talking cynical, I freeze within seconds if it happens to me.
But these are exceptions, if a style is history concerning it's impact, it's attitude, it's sociological-musical and therefor historical background, then there are only left the true but not anymore so relevant geniouses.
The more you have of them, the more the style is alife and not history.
You just have to count...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hubird on 2006-10-11 22:27 ]</font>

Ken, here you have the real thing, at all levels, absolutely great:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y-xwmkFwO0

You NEED to see the film "Lightning in a bottle". 100 years of blues.
Don't think many of the great blues tunes where pre-written.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: arela on 2006-10-11 23:44 ]</font>

I thought they were just passed on or stolen ...... as John Lennon said, "amateurs borrow, professionals STEAL".

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: emzee on 2006-10-12 00:59 ]</font>

he stole that quote...

He stole my coat.

he qualifies as professional...
most overestimated singer/songwriter of all times

On 2006-10-11 23:43, arela wrote:
You NEED to see the film "Lightning in a bottle". 100 years of blues.
Don't think many of the great blues tunes where pre-written.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: arela on 2006-10-11 23:44 ]</font>

I don't know if you are refering to me, but I will for sure look for this film Arela, thank you!

On 2006-10-12 01:58, garyb wrote:
he stole that quote...

Great

in fact i was thinking of you all, as its a great short history of the past 100 years.
I was sceptical it could be a "starshow", but luckely this film has digged deeper, and avoided to be monotonous.