This reminds me of a story a teacher once told me.
He was practicing the "Thesauras of Scales" by Nicholos Slonimnsky
all day long for weeks or months on end (as did many others at the time
because it was rumored Coltrane practiced from that book). (For those that
don't know the book it would be some pretty strange stuff to listen
to all day.)
One dead he heard a knock on the door and a neighbor shouting as
he went by: "Hey, how about a Bossa Nova?"
<<snip>>
>
>In my humble opinion, learning to sing a passage enhances one's appreciation
>of it and deepens one's emotion for it. To raise this simple, elementary
>experience to an exalted method by which we should all learn jazz, and
>without which we cannot be true believers is nonsense. To think we should all
>follow it as the one true path because a famous musician did this and
>advocated it (perhaps because it fit his own special needs very well) might
>be just misguided hero worship.
>
At the risk of creating further discussion , I would just like to mention
something that I failed to mention which I assumed that people know
but found out through private discussions that it is not common knowledge.
That is that Lennie Tristano was blind.
<<snip>>
In conclusion, let's get back to discussing some tunes or something.
reed
Reed Kotler
reed@justjazz.com
http://www.justjazz.com