This morning in a guitar lesson with on of my students, he was having
trouble realizing a musical idea he had. We stopped and worked on four
chords (a root position and three inversion of the same quality). Had he
practiced these chords and inversions ahead of time, as I had suggested
last semester, he would of had little trouble realizing his musical idea. I
advocate practicing many things even before one knows its musical use. I
would never instruct a student to wait until they need a scale before they
practice scales. Often (because of practicing what would appear to be
academic exercises) practicing new things leads to good musical ideas.
I am confused about your aversion to practicing the building blocks of
music. In order to play some really musical ideas, the elements often need
to be broken down. Tennis pros break down the tennis game into tiny
elements which can be drilled so that in a game the moves are all second
nature. It seems to be the same with improvisation. Breaking the game into
smaller elements and building back into larger pieces and then finally the
ability to create long cohesive musical ideas.
_______________________________________
Bert Ligon
Director of Jazz Studies
_______________________________________
School of Music
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
Voice: (803) 777-6565
Fax: (803) 777-6508
bligon@mozart.sc.edu
_______________________________________