> Clay,
>
> I agree that it makes sense to become musically literate and certainly
> as a practical matter, you need to be able to read charts, play tunes
> that you can't really play by ear like "Giant Steps" or say Wayne
> SHorter tunes, etc...
>
> However, let me ask you this.
>
> What jazz textbook or course that you've taken explains that for
> bepop style playing (say Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Wes Montgomery,
> Jim Hall, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, CAnnonball Adderly, Clifford
> Btown, etc.....) that these players essentially see tunes as the smallest
> possible number of major key centers??
Frankly I have few books that I recommend to students these days, mostly
because the authors obfuscate the simple concepts by forcing you to
learn some ridiculous terms for things, and go overboard with untested
and seemingly unlimited excersises. I don't think we are in disagreement
that most of the jazz theory books are filled with a lot of useless
information. As a guitarist and guitar teacher I don't hesitate to
recommend "The Joe Pass Guitar Style" book to anyone wanting to learn
bop-style jazz, because he was a self-taught ear player who later
learned more about *practical* theory. He does emphasize learning
chord-scales, he just calls them by their simple names, major and minor
scales, and diminished and whole tone. Other ear players went on to
study theory and write books, such as Howard Roberts and Joe Diorio. I
can only postulate that the reason these players emphasized learning the
nuts and bolts of chords and chord/scales is these things were not
directly taught when they were coming up, they had to be inferred, and
they thought they were doing students a favor by spelling these things
out. The problem that I see is that too many players now START with
learning the chord/scale stuff before they've developed their ears
naturally by listening, transcribing, and playing. I don't see a problem
with deriving the chord/scale relationships FROM the music that you
learn to play, on the contrary, I think it's important.
>
> When you transcribe and do analysis it's obvious that this is going on.
> You can't explain the choice of notes, tensions etc, in any other way.
> And in this way everything in the solo is so simple and obvious.
I'm not sure I can agree here. Take a tune like Wes's "West Coast
Blues". I can't analyze his playing on that tune as "the smallest
possible number of major key centers." The changes move around quite a
bit, and Wes adapts his lines to fit those changes, few of which are
major chords. This is "chord/scale" thinking in my book. Same with his
"Twisted Blues", especially the later version he recorded with a big
band. Too many of the chords are unrelated dominants and II V's for it
to make sense to reduce them to major key centers.
> When you tell an ear player that you are playing a tune in Bb, if he
> thinks about anything it will be Bb major. Maybe the tune modulates
> in the bridge so he knows that.
>
> It's so simple! That's how people can play by ear.
>
> This is my beef with teaching people jazz theory.
My beef with not teaching people jazz theory is that these same ear
players don't really have a handle on the intricacies of changes unless
they know the tune well. On an unfamiliar tune they will float in the
key of Bb without really knowing that the bridge is in G or whatever. I
started playing jam sessions in the mid 70's, and it was very
aggravating to me to hear an endless stream of unstudied horn players
blow chorus after chorus trying to find pitches that worked when the
tune moved out of the basic key. I tend to be a hard-ass about this,
because if you are planning to be a pro jazz player I think it's part of
your job to learn changes and understand the relationship between melody
and harmony on a theoretical and aural level. I say this not because I
think you are advocating ignorance, but it would be easy to infer from
what you are saying that it isn't necessary to study this, like the 16
year old who wrote the letter I responded to.
>
> What is taught is the same watered down inaccurate theory that has been
> taught for the last 40 years.
>
I don't think the intricacies of any serious endeavor can be explained
away in a few glib phrases about theory. Every student will have to
evaluate what they need and discard the rest, and this is not a quick
process. With the exception of a few pure ear players every jazz player
I know has *some* explanation for the tools they use, even if they only
make sense to them. The little I've read about Walter Bishop's teaching
seems as though his method is cumbersome, but he's respected as a player
and teacher. I've heard very hip arrangements from George Russell, but I
think his "Lydian Chromatic Concept" is worthless. Pat Martino's system
seems pretty idiosyncratic, but it apparently works for him, and so on.
-- 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