What About Being A Versatile Musician??
Hey Folks,
I don't remember exactly why I was thinking about this today, but I thought I would jot something down pertaining to it.
I guess maybe it's because I'm working 25 hours a week in a high school right now that I start to think about younger players and what they are in store for over the next 10-20 years of their playing careers (those that decide to continue music after high school). It also made me think of a few casual gigs I did within the last year or two when I've had young players on the gig that are studying jazz at college or university. One thing I noticed was when playing through a jazz standard, the student's approach to harmony was very interesting....weaving through the change relatively well, some strategically placed licks that demonstrated some great examples of melodic and harmonic vocabulary, and some nice lines with some very valid musical statements.
Then the band leader called the 60's R&B tune "Soul Man" and there were no horn charts, so when it came to "faking" the horn line or knowing it from memory, they failed miserably. This made me think of a couple of things.....firstly, if I were the student and playing this gig for the first time, I'd probably try to find out what kind of material we will be playing, and ask if everything is charted. Secondly, would it not be a bad thing to find recordings of that tune and tunes like it??
This got me to thinking.......as a saxophonist pursuing a career as performer, wouldn't you open yourself up to every genre of music that the saxophone is known to be in?? Wouldn't that be a good idea?? Don't get me wrong here, you'll never be able to learn every tune in every genre, but if you're called to do a gig that "isn't" in a jazz club doing exploratory improvisations for a select crowd, shouldn't you have an idea what you're going to be faced with?? If you're playing a wedding, I think it's probably a good bet that the band leader or the bride and groom don't really care about the "tritone and minor 3rd substitutions" you're incorporating into your solo, or how you superimposed the "Coltrane matrix" over a given section of a tune.
This also got me to thinking about something else....jazzers get pissed off at classical players because they feel they are such music "purists" who feel that their music is far superior than any other, and jazz is not "real" music (and what is a common slang term that jazzers call classical music.....remember the term "legit"??). So, does that mean that jazz is NOT "legit"?? I have the same feeling towards the jazz "purists"....the musicians who believe that their narrow-minded belief of what good music and good jazz is, should be the way everybody views it. And why would you listen to something else other that mid-late 1960's "post-bop" anyway?? Geez....don't get me started!!
The musician who is well-rounded in their listening will be well-rounded in their playing as well. Being a "jazz snob" is as bad as being a "classical snob" just a different genre of music. At the risk of sounding "cliché", I think it is very true what Duke Ellington said when he commented - "There are two types of music....good and bad".
One CAN appreciate a style of music even though one may not particularily like it or perform it themselves. Let's celebrate the wide variety of great music that we have at our fingertips.
Let's not just be students of great jazz, let's be students of great music of many kinds.....there's so much to enjoy!!
Peace,
Pat B.
I don't remember exactly why I was thinking about this today, but I thought I would jot something down pertaining to it.
I guess maybe it's because I'm working 25 hours a week in a high school right now that I start to think about younger players and what they are in store for over the next 10-20 years of their playing careers (those that decide to continue music after high school). It also made me think of a few casual gigs I did within the last year or two when I've had young players on the gig that are studying jazz at college or university. One thing I noticed was when playing through a jazz standard, the student's approach to harmony was very interesting....weaving through the change relatively well, some strategically placed licks that demonstrated some great examples of melodic and harmonic vocabulary, and some nice lines with some very valid musical statements.
Then the band leader called the 60's R&B tune "Soul Man" and there were no horn charts, so when it came to "faking" the horn line or knowing it from memory, they failed miserably. This made me think of a couple of things.....firstly, if I were the student and playing this gig for the first time, I'd probably try to find out what kind of material we will be playing, and ask if everything is charted. Secondly, would it not be a bad thing to find recordings of that tune and tunes like it??
This got me to thinking.......as a saxophonist pursuing a career as performer, wouldn't you open yourself up to every genre of music that the saxophone is known to be in?? Wouldn't that be a good idea?? Don't get me wrong here, you'll never be able to learn every tune in every genre, but if you're called to do a gig that "isn't" in a jazz club doing exploratory improvisations for a select crowd, shouldn't you have an idea what you're going to be faced with?? If you're playing a wedding, I think it's probably a good bet that the band leader or the bride and groom don't really care about the "tritone and minor 3rd substitutions" you're incorporating into your solo, or how you superimposed the "Coltrane matrix" over a given section of a tune.
This also got me to thinking about something else....jazzers get pissed off at classical players because they feel they are such music "purists" who feel that their music is far superior than any other, and jazz is not "real" music (and what is a common slang term that jazzers call classical music.....remember the term "legit"??). So, does that mean that jazz is NOT "legit"?? I have the same feeling towards the jazz "purists"....the musicians who believe that their narrow-minded belief of what good music and good jazz is, should be the way everybody views it. And why would you listen to something else other that mid-late 1960's "post-bop" anyway?? Geez....don't get me started!!
The musician who is well-rounded in their listening will be well-rounded in their playing as well. Being a "jazz snob" is as bad as being a "classical snob" just a different genre of music. At the risk of sounding "cliché", I think it is very true what Duke Ellington said when he commented - "There are two types of music....good and bad".
One CAN appreciate a style of music even though one may not particularily like it or perform it themselves. Let's celebrate the wide variety of great music that we have at our fingertips.
Let's not just be students of great jazz, let's be students of great music of many kinds.....there's so much to enjoy!!
Peace,
Pat B.
posted by Pat Belliveau at
10:33 AM
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