<< In my opinion pursuing jazz study in a serious way mandates that you
learn about all the aspects, including things like harmony and
chord-scale relationships. You would be very hard pressed in this day
and age to name a contemporary jazz musician who hadn't studied these
things. I've seen a lot of talented but unstudied players, particularly
horn players, fall flat on their asses when they got out of the realm of
tunes and keys that they know well. This is not the '50s, and I think it
is naive to assume your ear alone is going to get you by, especially
when you are going to find players with extremely well developed ears
who also know everything there is to know about theory and such. Don't
carry a chip. Learn harmony and theory. Be humble. You probably still
have a long way to go >>
This is an interesting thread. Several years ago I had the opportunity to
play in a quintet with the late Charlie Ventura. I asked him what he was
thinking about when he was improvising.
His answer really suprised me at first. He said "Do you know what key you're
in? That's all you have to know."
I pondered that statement for quite a long time. However, as the weeks
passed, I finally realized that this man really knew his theory inside and
out. It had become so ingrained in his subconscious that he didn't even
think about it anymore and it became second nature.
The moral of the story is learn your theory!
Rich Szabo
rwszabo@aol.com
http://members.aol.com/rwszabo/web/