Music Is A Language Like Any Other.....

....and jazz is a dialect of that, don't you think?? Aren't musical phrases like sentences?? Aren't chords and scales etc. like nouns,verbs, and adjectives etc?? How do we learn how to say our first words?? It doesn't matter whether we actually know and understand what it is we're saying, we just hear it and then repeat it, don't we?? After the "goo goo gah gah" stage is over, don't we start repeating what we hear our parents say?? Ahhhh......ya. So, why would learning jazz be any different?? Why would you try to learn a language that you've never heard or never listen to?? Talk about taking the long way around!!

I work 25 hours a week in a high school music program.....because I wanted to, and the students at this school (for the most part) are very smart kids. The jazz band is not bad, but there are some things that need to be addressed. We have some great drummers at this school.......IF we were looking for a Neil Pert or John Bonham kind of thing. I'm not convinced that Buddy Rich, Mel Lewis, Louis Bellson, or even Art Blakey, Elvin Jones, Philly Joe Jones etc. are on their radar. We are trying to instill this in them, but it seems much more important to them to be rock drummers. So, guess how it sounds when it gets going......like the John Bonham big band (if there was such a thing).

Don't think that the drummers are the only ones that have this issue......it's in every section to some degree.

What if one of my regular gigs was a rock band horn section, but all I listened to and practiced was Bebop?? How would the rest of the rock band feel if all I did was swing every note and play bebop solos over rock grooves all the time?? I think you can see where I'm going with this.

There HAS to be a listening component to jazz education......it WILL NOT work without it. The notes are just black dots on a page until the player brings them to life, and if the player has no clue stylistically, they will be rather lifeless.

I'm likely not telling you something you don't already know, but we often forget, and I know that's true because I can tell when I hear a lot of these high school groups play. Learn the style accurately, after that the notes will come.

Notes without style are just........NOTES!!

And.....Keep Looking For The Nice Notes Too,

Pat B.