>Music is the language, jazz is a musical dialect. Please let translate in your language my "Speak jazz" that you can find on the home page of www.jazzitalia.net. Thanks.
Paolo Mannelli

 

Good article. Very academic with a focus primarily on physical sound production, but most interesting was the following comment:
"Although Jazz is largely improvisational, it is important to differentiate improvisation from interpretation. Improvisation incorporates compositional techniques and is not limited to a particular style. In traditional Western European music, for example, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Liszt, were well known for their improvisations. Interestingly, Classical music has nearly lost the art of improvisation in the 20th century and Jazz pedagogy has become almost exclusively theoretical.”

It is more than refreshing to hear an avowed academic recognize the limitation of advanced education trying to teach jazz as though it was just another discipline that can be learned and regurgitated.

Hopefully this message will continue to appear and have some influence on the way young talent have been pushed towards technical rather than auditory learning.

 

...Jazz pedagogy has become almost exclusively theoretical."

...Which is to say that jazz pedagogy has come to exist. All pedagogy is almost exclusively theoretical. If you don't teach the concepts, you wind up merely regurgitating what you've heard. It's funny that you find it limiting to understand how and why things work. I'm glad the engineers who built the servers running SOTW didn't find that a limitation, or we'd be posting via abacus...

 

I don't believe in "undefinable nuance." I believe there's such a thing as a person who has not yet learned what that nuance consists of, who is unable to define it. The limitation is on that person, who needs more study or practice in order to learn how to define the nuance. Education is not something that needs to be overcome. It helps you to overcome the obstacles of ignorance. To say that an "academic" agrees with you because they say that "jazz pedagogy has become... theoretical," is a stretch, man. I already pointed out that pedagogy is theoretical in nature.

The spark that separates a great musician from a good one is a combination of their hardware as dictated by DNA, their time spent in the shed, and their ability to draw from their life's experiences to inspire creation. Education contributes to both of the latter 2 categories.

To single out some of your criticisms ("...nothing to communicate on a melodic, emotional or human level."), if their melodicism is lacking, they need to work on the basic concepts of melody:
-interaction with harmony, i.e. chord tones and tensions.
-melodic contour.
-development of intensity.
-phrasing.
-motivic development.
-contrast.

If they are lacking "emotional" content, they need more study of development of intensity, learning where to double-time, growl, go higher, lower, louder, softer. Most of the things interpreted as good emotional content are phrases that suddenly contrast what's happened before, have a growl or bend, and are accompanied by a scrunching of the eyebrows. Sorry, but it's true.

There IS such a thing as ACTUAL emotional content, but it's much more easily expressed once the tools of the trade are picked up, so to speak. This is an issue which is much more difficult to train or quantify, because everyone has a different idea of what sound conveys what emotion. However, I had a good lab at Berklee where one of the projects consisted of pulling up a card with a feeling or emotion we were supposed to convey, and then trying to blow a solo that did that. Good exercise. In the end, you can learn to fake it enough that it doesn't have to be real all the time, though.

To illustrate my point: I remember going to a "funk" jam in NYC a couple months ago for the first time. The playing was very good, but after the house band finished, it turned into a gospel singers' jam. I played horn lines with the house tenor guy from 9PM until around 1:30, when they gave us both a solo. He played a killin Brecker-type thing, and I didn't even want to try to hang when he finished, because it's really hard to develop a good solo in C# when your main concern is how your *** hurts from sitting on the sharp edge of the stage all night. I completely phoned it in, which I remember because I don't do it often. I started soft, played some pentatonic crap, played a couple loud, accented, high notes that dropped immediately to soft stuff. Played some louder, faster pentatonic **** and called it a night. On my way home, a drummer friend of mine who had brought me to that session for the first time that night called me up and told me I had slayed everyone, especially the quasi-big-time singer who ran the session because of my "mature," "emotional" playing. I "told a story," gush, gush. Man, I was bored out of my mind! I haven't even gone back to that hit. However, I learned how to fake it well enough that the crowd and the pro musicians loved the "emotional" content.

I know what you mean about that "human" level, and there are lots of exercises to help you bring your personal experiences into the music. Learning the lyrics, focusing on their meanings, or a personal experience they remind you of, recording your attempts to characterize those emotions, analyzing what was the first thing you tried to PLAY to convey that emotion, versus what would be a great recording that epitomizes that to you. Taking notes and comparing/contrasting several approaches that you consider visceral. It's all stuff that can be and is done in the classroom.

Unfortunately-- and this is the crux of the only problem I have with you, cuz you seem like a nice guy, and I understand and even agree with what is the ROOT ideal of your argument-- you have NO IDEA WHAT GOES ON IN THE CLASSROOM, not having been privy to a first rate jazz education. All the things you wish could be taught ARE taught. Not all the students learn it, but who among us learns everything we were taught in college? The main reason I haven't gotten seriously interested in grad school is that I'm still VERY BUSY learning what I was taught in college!

For the record, in my first lesson with one of the private instructors I took for several semesters at Berklee, I transcribed Cannonball Adderley's performance of "Never Will I Marry," from "Cannonball and the Pollwinners" for my private lesson. Part of the curriculum for the first 7 semesters of the performance major is to play "prepared pieces in contrasting styles," aka a solo transcription and a classical etude. I also took a course in transcription. That pretty much covers the deficiency noted in the article, I think.

It sounds cliche, but I'm living proof that the system works. I'm not the greatest player by a long shot but all the things you criticize about jazz education are my primary strengths as a player. Technical facility, advanced harmonic expression and a large vocabulary are NOT my strengths, especially in my local musical environment. I am a melodic player, and a ballsy player, but I could barely blow a solo before I went to college.

I'll dig around. I'm gonna try and find before and after recordings. You'll see. But not tonight...

 

Dan, I've got no argument with you as I've heard you play, and accept that it's all worked for you. You seem to be the exception, and possibly Berklee is also the most exceptional school of it's type that transcends what happens in other schools. Those other schools train the vast majority of graduates, and yes it's all a generalization, which was not aimed specifically at you, or any other individual. Just a common observation that the author of the article also seems to share.

I somehow doubt that more and more training = best possible player. Somewhere along the line this seems to be in conflict with a reality that few people with PhDs in music or any of the arts are great artists. Coincidence? Did they all not have a creative spark or was there something that happened to it along the way? Yes there may be a handful of exceptions, but as a generalization goes this one seems to have huge statistical backing. How many PhD in arts awarded each year? How many great artists are there among all those PhDs (not including the ones given an honorary PhD in order to bring notoriety to the school)?

Very glad that you have the balance and/or were trained at a school that could give that. Too bad that it seems the exception rather than the rule.

As for faking it... hard to fake something that you couldn't already do or at least conceive of. Acting is an art form devoted to faking. If you're playing every night in a club it's equally hard to be 100% there for every note. Showmanship and musicianship go a long way, but only if you know the sound and feeling of commitment and can put some thread of that forward.

Good wishes and great playing.

 

How many PhD in arts awarded each year? How many great artists are there among all those PhDs?

Surely you can ask this question about any subject, science or art. If the standard you want from any education is constant production of great figures then you will always find it inadequate.

 

 

Not that this isn't a worthwhile discussion, but I was hoping this thread would be more about the differences between playing jazz and classical styles and the challenges of trying to do both.

Jazz to Classical Difficulties:

* Unresponsive articulations
* Accents and changes in the air stream are lethargic
* Reed vibration is constricted
* Extreme softs with clear tone are unresponsive
* Vibrato is lethargic
* Overall pitch is sharp
* Inflexible register changes
* Sub-tone at extreme softs
* Sub-tone in low register
* Too much air in tone at soft dynamics
* No subtle change in dynamics
* Abrupt phrase endings and note endings
* Uneven timbre
* Inappropriate timbre
* Noise between notes
* Pitch sharp in high register
* Air precedes tongued articulations
* Unfocused tone at beginnings of tongued articulations
* Articulation too heavy
* Tone does not with only the breath
* Tone clips out when slurring over the register break
* Breaks in air stream

Classical to Jazz Difficulties:

* Exaggerated swing feel on eighths
* Over-ghosting
* Over-accenting
* No sub-tone
* Too many articulated notes
* Vibrato too fast
* Endings of phrases always taper
* Too many changes in loudness within a phrase

Dr. Stephen Duke, "An Integrated Approach to Playing the Saxophone"

John (the "Thread Nanny")

 

Not that there's any hard feelings twixt the players but for many of the professional orchestral players I've met in the NYC area "Good enough for jazz." was about as damning a comment as one could make on someone's playing. The derisive element of the sentiments seemed to frequently be returned with interest from many of the jazz adherants.

Technical mastery of one's instrument; bending it to one's will with the ability to make it sound "just so" is the key for either genre. After that it's a question of musicianship and all that that entails for any given piece of music/ performance.

Musicality- singing whatever song is at hand through one's instrument or voice- well that's right back to the Coltrane quote on sounding sincere with a shoelace....

There's an emotional element to good music that absolutely transcends technical considerations- and that elusive element is ...

 

Out of the entire article, this phrase really stood out to me. I think there is a lot of truth to it:

"Memorizing Classical repertoire or copying improvised Jazz solos without notating helps keep the "eyes" from interfering with the "ears"."

 

I think a lot of the issues that are laid out as problems for jazz players trying to play legit stuff are actually more issues of people who have cut corners with playing the sax.

For example:
* Unresponsive articulations
* Accents and changes in the air stream are lethargic
* Reed vibration is constricted
* Extreme softs with clear tone are unresponsive
* Overall pitch is sharp
* Inflexible register changes
* Sub-tone at extreme softs
* Sub-tone in low register
* Too much air in tone at soft dynamics
* No subtle change in dynamics
* Uneven timbre
* Noise between notes
* Pitch sharp in high register
* Air precedes tongued articulations
* Unfocused tone at beginnings of tongued articulations
* Articulation too heavy
* Tone clips out when slurring over the register break
* Breaks in air stream

All those points, to me, are the mark of someone who's not much of a sax player, not hallmarks of a jazzer. As a matter of fact, all the things I left OUT of this list are the things I have trouble with in classical playing. I haven't studied it as extensively, so the stylistic aspects are what mess me up.

I bet you the guy who wrote the article is a classical guy, first and foremost...

 

I think a lot of the issues that are laid out as problems for jazz players trying to play legit stuff are actually more issues of people who have cut corners with playing the sax.

All those points, to me, are the mark of someone who's not much of a sax player, not hallmarks of a jazzer.

I bet you the guy who wrote the article is a classical guy, first and foremost...

Man do I agree with you on this. That list of deficiencies applied to jazz players seems a bit extreme. I don't think you could play jazz or any type of music well with all the problems listed and ascribed to jazz players. I don't buy it.

 

Not to quibble, but the terminal performance degree is Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), not a PhD. PhD's are awarded in the field of musicology most of the time in music.

Some MD's get a PhD in addition to their MD, but not a large number. Their are also EdD (Doctor of Education), and PsyD (Doctor of psychology), neither of which are PhD's.

 

John, nice thread.

I think the writer of the article has left out a category of difficulty in going from legit to jazz, which is how to deal with the freedom to improvise. That freedom does not exist in most classical/legit music (no, I am not particularly interested in a list of exceptions which prove me wrong here - I am sure they exist). But with this freedom comes a burden, which I will unscientifically call "omg, what the heck do I do now?" What notes do I play? When do I start and stop them? Which notes are right, and which are wrong? What - I can play wrong notes, but only if I do it a certain way?

A similar challenge exists for players who first go into the pop/rock field - the notes they need to play are not all written for them. "What do I do now??"

 

John, nice thread.

I think the writer of the article has left out a category of difficulty in going from legit to jazz, which is how to deal with the freedom to improvise. That freedom does not exist in most classical/legit music (no, I am not particularly interested in a list of exceptions which prove me wrong here - I am sure they exist). But with this freedom comes a burden, which I will unscientifically call "omg, what the heck do I do now?" What notes do I play? When do I start and stop them? Which notes are right, and which are wrong? What - I can play wrong notes, but only if I do it a certain way?

The same challenge exists for players who first go into the pop/rock field.

There's a similar problem when one reaches the heights (or depths) of classical playing and interpretation also, and that is the inflections and nuances, which can be quite a big choice to make. I have a friend who is a Tchaikovsky Competition prize winner (Moscow) who is a brilliant player. Sometimes you can look at the music he's playing and hardly know where he is, he adds so much to the printed page. It's not improvisation, but I can see a parallel in the demand for interpretation and choices.

 

There's also the real issue of musical sensibility. Fabulous technical skills do not mean an ability to play every genre.

For a painfully graphic example of this in the vocal music world check out the West Side Story recording with Bernstein conducting and Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carrerras as Maria and Tony. Wonderful instrumentals.

But the sounds from the spectacularly well trained vocal leads, both superb musicians in their own musical worlds, were simply aural torment. There was a tape of the rehearsals I watched perhaps twenty years ago. Bernstein just gave HELL to the leads. They were simply unable to "get" the rhythms.

Good enough for jazz/ good enough for classical. There's a lot more out there than just the university curricula checklist of how it's to be done.

"Never use the bis key" my father's moustache....

 

...then you get someone like Theresa Stratos singing Weill, and absolutely nailing the style--like Lotte Lenya with a really Great Voice.

 

(an aside - have you ever heard Milva doing Weill?)

 

Thanks for starting this thread!

I have been in the position of being a "jazz saxophonist" that had been playing for about 25 years before I started working on a Masters in Classical Performance. I could have used this article to good effect and perhaps had a short cut to classical sax performance success.
I remember struggling with my private tuition teacher in trying to take the Jazz out of my playing. The article is good at pointing out what to focus on when coming from the jazz performance side, the differences in tonguing, articulations, etc.

One important thing he seems to miss in his article is regarding mouthpiece/reed setup and sonic goals. As we know the Jazz guy is usually using a much more open mouthpiece to get a powerful projecting thing going on. By contrast the classical approach is more contained and controlled. One of my big struggles was going from a nice big open piece on tenor to playing classical alto with a small size 4 tip opening. The back pressure was nasty !

Obviously the differences in mouthpiece setups would also be a huge factor in the embouchure, jaw and body control.
You can be more subtle and controlled with a smaller tip opening, you can play softer dynamics, but you miss out on the raw power. It's a trade off and really just comes down to different goals.

I was, and still am much more of a "Jazz player" than a Classical one, despite earning a Masters in Performance. I go through some etudes and such from time to time but actually do them more on my Flute or Clarinet. I know it is really challenging to be very good in both realms but it can be done. Add doubling to the mix and wow! you have to practice 4-5 hours a day just to maintain all areas.

thanks again for pointing out this article!

 

Good points DanPerezSax,

He probably is first and foremost a classical player...there're usually much more organized and willing to back up their own agenda!:TGNCHK:

I think he may have gone over board as well with his list about the challenges when coming over from the "jazz -side" but a lot of the points are good. Just starting your first note in classical is brutally important, the note must be made as if appearing from out of nowhere instead of "fuwooo" (bending/scooping into the note). I was much more used to doing a slower broader vibrato...say about 3 pulses to about quarter note equals 60. To me the classical vibrato can still sound much to anal and forced.

There are certainly some killer classical players out there though...Londiex, Rousseau, etc.

As an aside thought, To me improvising is one of my greatest joys. I can't believe there are people out there who study music yet don't improvise....to me improvising is making true music. Composing on the spot as it were...this is one bia's/feeling I don't think I'll ever lose.

I did find in my journey from being a jazz player to also studying the Classical approach that there was a lot of bias and stereo typing from both sides of the fence. I was not innocent of this, but had decided that the point is to be a better musician and get things from both camps.

 

Another thing: in jazz, you don't have to act like you're better than everybody else and you don't have to talk down to all other musicians who choose not to regurgitate Bach or Beethoven note-for-note and play like robots, making the saxophone sound like something it's not. But most of all, like I said, if you're a jazz player, you're not required to develop a pompous, arrogant attitude! You can be a nice, normal person who doesn't constantly have his nose up in the air. It's unbelievable; even here on this very forum, you can easily discern a classical guy just by observing the arrogant attitude of his written post. I spent so much time around those kinds of people in conservatories when I was younger, those people just make me want to vomit.

 

I find that only true of classical and jazz saxophonists that have yet to discover that they not only aren't the best saxos in the world, let alone the best musos.

Chips upon shoulders know no 'style', in my experience.

 

I don't understand your response....? I'm sick of condescending, arrogant classical players because I realized I'm not the best saxophone player in the history of the world? Does this even make sense?

 

I almost hesitate to get involved in this because Eye, you seem to be pretty set and biased in your opinion of jazzers vs classical musicians. But surely in your experience, you've also known classical musicians who have musicality just oozing out of every pore and who put so much more into the music that's on the printed page - and also who aren't arrogant? And FWIW, I've surely hung with some pretty arrogant jazzers as well. In my experiences, there have been friendly, warm folks as well as raging ***holes in all sorts of musical genres.

 

I've got to agree to this. Arrogant attitudes and such are not only in the realm of the Classical musician.

Live and let live I say....get what you can from your environment, take in the good, ignore the bad...or something like that.

 

Gary, I agree with you, it does occur on both sides. However, it's obviously heavily weighted towards the classical side....jazz guys and basically ANY genre of improvising musicians always seem more laid back and less pretentious. This doesn't mean I don't enjoy listening to some classical music, I just haven't enjoyed my experiences with many of the players themselves. Not all; I have several professor friends that are strictly classical musicians and are some of my favorite people. That being said, I stand by my first two statements in this post. And the vast majority of classical SAXOPHONE players I've known and been around do fit my description exactly.

 

But of course, I respect everyone's opinion and always enjoy the conversation. I sure wish I had discovered message boards years ago!

 

Now, this post is not meant to "prove" the ***hole theory OK? You can always find singular things to support your position. But just as a "public service" for those who have never seen this, this is Keith Jarrett's opening greeting to the crowd of thousands of fans who had come from near and far to hear him play at the Umbria Jazz Festival. BTW, he continued to show his disdain by walking off the stage at the end of his program and refusing to play an encore.

 

You're right on Gary. Saw KJ several times. Once in LA he gave a 10 minute lecture to the audience on how they shouldn’t come to his concert if they were going to cough at any time. This was before he started playing. He also walked out and slammed the lid down on the keyboard when he did so. Misanthrope is I think the right term.

Doesn't take away from the guy being wonderful to hear, but not much fun to watch or be around.

 

So speaking of Jazz and Classical personalities, uh, I mean playing techniques---is it easier to learn to play classical style first and then branch out to jazz, or is it easier the other way around? Or is it best to try to work on both simultaneously (and never become great on either one)?

John

 

Yes. . .