> In the days before jazz theory, people just learned to play the melodies
> to tunes and then embellished them or did little things they could hear
> by ear. Gradually over time they had more ideas that they were familiar
> with and thus could play more notes and at faster tempos.
>
> Of course I'm sure many people developed their own "jazz theory" but the
> final arbitrator was the ear.
Let me begin with stating that I'm usually in agreement with you about
jazz education and such, but there are some things that I don't think
get acknowledged in your assessments about jazz performance NOW. Yes, I
agree that learning the melodies and embellishing is a great tool and
was the way most players of old learned. However, I think it's
instructive to note that these players didn't have much access to formal
theory, and for the most part the tunes they were playing were pretty
harmonically simple. Where I think this approach began to break down was
the advent of modal tunes and tunes with more sophisticated harmonies.
Most "by ear" players I've known have had difficulty when confronting
these type of tunes in performance. What this doesn't take into account
either are all the really lame players who learned (and still do) solely
by the method you are referring to. A method does not a player make.
While I think jazz ed has gone way overboard and offers a lot of stupid
advice, I don't think it's coincidence that the body of jazz theory came
about during the time when jazz players began exploring harmonic and
melodic materials which were not based on the changes to standards. It
was this abstraction from the simpler origins of the music that required
some new ways of conceptualizing improvisation. Take a tune like
"Cantaloupe Island" by Herbie Hancock. This is a simple modal tune, but
the three chords of the tune don't belong to any one key, and the melody
is too simple to provide much in the way of a springboard to exciting
improvisation. When I blow on this tune I think of the individual
chords/modes/key centers- whatever you want to call it, and I play lines
that work and sound good to me in the context of those areas. HOW I
arrived at those was a long process of scale and pattern practice,
learning standard lines in the genre, and a ton of gigs playing in the
modal/funk bag. Embellishing the melody by ear wouldn't have achieved
the same results by a long shot.
Over the past several months I've been coming back to practicing over
rhythm changes with Band-in-a-Box. You mentioned that players didn't
change chord scales with every chord change. Maybe that wasn't done in
the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but I believe some players do it now. I do, but
not as a *rule*, rather as another means. I might just play a blues
scale over the whole thing, or play standard bop lines. The fact that
the changes are of short duration means that using a variety of scale
types over the changes is more of an advanced topic, and not one that
beginner/intermediate players need to concern themselves with. This gets
back to what Bert mentioned a few weeks ago about the metronome on two
and four, in that it is often difficult to assess when an approach is
difficult and requires more time, is useless, or is simply isn't needed
by the individual player. I certainly couldn't play *every* change
chorus after chorus when I was beginning, but I thought it important
enough to stay with it a while, like 20 years. I also would hesitate to
say all the scale and arpeggio practice I did was completely useless; it
shows up in ways that are difficult to recognize unless I were to stop
and analyze what I was playing.
Sorry for such a long post, but I get uncomfortable when approaches get
too exclusionary. It reminds me of country, rock, and blues players I
know who wear their musical ignorance like a badge, who think that
studying music will hurt their playing. The key is not to get trapped by
an approach, to where it blinds you from being able to see things in a
creative way.
-- Clay MooreWe are told that talent creates its own opportunities. Yet, it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but its own talents as well. -Bruce Lee