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Limits of Jazz, Self Expression in Jazz, Practising, Transcribing

Limits of Jazz

What are the limits to playing jazz? Jazz has the problems of any performance art. It must be done in real time to exist (although this real time may be recorded ). Jazz instrumentalists use a medium that does not use language to express itself. In this sense jazz has no 'ideational content'. So while writers, play-writes, painters, singers, mcs, and the like, can comment on ideas they think are important through the medium of their work, jazz musicians seemingly cannot.

A jazz training takes years, but if its medium cannot express ideas, is it a worthwhile art form? Music has sometimes been referred to as the ‘highest’ form of art, because of the very fact that it is emotional, abstract and logical, and not about the representation of ideas. Perhaps this is an acceptable position to be in. But what if you want more from jazz. Can it go deeper?

Jazz is a form of action. It requires other musicians to make it happen. Even a solo performance relies on material from the techniques and traditions of communal performance. Jazz performance has an extra burden on its act of creation: it is a non-repeatable form of art. This means that the situations that have been cultivated, inherited, or encountered can have a great effect of the type of music performed, and its meaning.

The political economy of jazz is oozing out into new models of social interaction: Web 2.0 , collectives, the academy. As empowering as these possibilities for interaction are for some, they remain alienating for others, maintaining and creating structures of power and influence that form the hegemonies of tomorrow.

The positive aspect of socially produced art lies in its empowering, educative and nurturing qualities. On the downside, it excludes the possibility of the creative act in isolation. Where is the writer’s garret or the artist’s studio for the jazz musician? Can they create, grow, and revolutionize their art form on their own?

An answer in part, is that this is the role of composition and practice. That is where musical ideas can be developed, ready to burst out into the world. But, unlike fine art or writing, there has to be an event that is made public. Jazz-making is an intimately social activity. And this is why it can do more than reflect life, as, in general, the representational arts do. It is connected with the world in an immediate way, perhaps more so that the more contemplative arts. The balance for the jazz musician has to be between the revolutionary work in their practice sessions, and linking this back to an audience.

Self Expression

It is understandable that jazz musicians are interested in self expression. Searching for self-expression may have a limiting effect - in terms of dissemination and quality of the content of the music - or it may broaden the musician's creative horizon. In this paper I suggest that the result depends on an attitude towards "the canon".

In limits of jazz, I suggested the social basis for jazz music making, and the resultant dependencies, made, inherited, or earned. Here I shall start off suggesting that for a musician to call themselves a 'jazz' musician (whatever they may think of that loaded term), is to accept certain tacit rules or understandings about a tradition. To my mind, at its simplest, this is about swing. Something in the rhythmic conception of swing has been, if not understood by the musician, then partially understood. Although on the extreme positions of swing - on what and how and who does it - there is contestation, there is a core of performance practice that is agreed upon by musicians who can be thought of as jazz musicians.

That then is the context in which a jazz musician exists. They must take a position on the contested values, either in what and how they play, and more generally how they engage in wider forms of dissemination and discussion. A jazz musician's conception of self expression is necessarily situated. Self expression is a political act. However, since jazz performance practices exist all over the world, the political meaning of certain actions, rhythmic conceptions, or aesthetic concerns are not necessarily understandable by all musicians. The internal wranglings of the New York scene may not be understood by a European audience. In general, political-aesthetic groups read their own meanings into international acts, often enlarging or diminishing the significance of certain performance decisions.

The problem for the creative jazz musician is to find some sort of truth or meaning that is understandable outside of his or her standpoint. In my opinion, this is where the strength of the canon comes. It can provide a core of understandable performance practice - swing. Anyone anywhere can study the swing or rhythmic feel of great musicians from recordings of thier classic tracks, by playing along with and internalizing the phraseology in all its nuance. This is, of course, key in aural traditions of modernity. But as well as this basic aspect of engagement with the tradition, there is a second, dialogical aspect to this relationship. That is the way in which the musicians' perceptions of both their own playing (and their communities), and of the great musicians, changes as they internalize the core tradition. The limits of their previous knowledge are expanded by something that has some 'truth' about it. Continual engagement can hopefully lead to a continual expansion of horizons for the musician. The 'self' that musicians seem so intent on expressing, is in fact a mediated, expanded self, that has been changed by experience with something definite outside of it.

Central to this argument is the notion of the quality of what is encountered in this changing moment. This is because the musician will effectively put themselves somewhere on the political map as a result. They may go so far outside of the jazz tradition in their encounters, that the jazz community will see its values being introduced into another form of music, rather than the other way around. In this case, the musician may be championed as 'new' and 'original', but in reality they are assuming an uncontestable playing position: no-one else will know their way of playing, and no culture or community will grow up that will critically support it. This case is the creation of the jazz eccentric, and some cultures seem to produce more of these than others. At the other end of the quality debate, is when the musician takes something outside of themselves, but its values and performance practices inform the jazz tradition. This is when other musicians also come together and establish a critically supportive environment that establishes its own values. In this case, these values are in dialogical relationship with the jazz canon such that it many in fact change.

Self expression becomes a dialogical process: the cannon influences the self, and perhaps, the musician's self expression will influence the cannon, depending on how they choose the quality of their influences. They may become a jazz eccentric, vilified or feted, or they may introduce something new or re-interpreted back to the tradition.

Practising

Mechanical practicing.

In my own experience, I have found it useful to be very specific in some areas of practicing. One of those areas is ‘mechanical’ practice, that is, training your fingers (and the rest of your body) to do what you want them to do. My understanding is that in this area of practice, the idea is to create good habits of movement, or to replace bad ones with good ones.

The intention to move.

According to Alexander technique, before you make a voluntary movement in your body, there is an intention to move. If you move your fingers quickly but find that you have tense shoulders, it is difficult to perform the action while trying to release the tension during playing. A more efficient way is to intend to play, and observe the patterns of tension your body develops in anticipation of playing. In other words, if you catch yourself just as you are about to play, and stop at this point, you can observe the patterns of physical tension that you create in your body. Observing a tension mechanism and establishing a habit of movement with less tension is difficult to do! I have found it invaluable to have an Alexander teacher to help me, since to a greater or lesser degree, one's awareness of what one does physically (kinaesthetic sense) is often wrong - that is, prone to observer error. An important aspect of using this method is to overcome as much as possible this observer error.

Playing equilibrium.

Practicing is about either replacing bad habits with good ones, or learning new ones from scratch. Forming habits does not happen quickly. It takes time, and is often mistaken for hard work. Playing a passage many times does not mean that you are establishing useful habits of playing. You may be practicing mistakes in, instead of getting them out. Mechanical practice should be about changing your 'playing equilibrium' so that good habits of playing are always replacing bad ones, or being established as new aspects of your playing. The more you work on re-enforcing good habits of playing, the more the equilibrium shifts to a good technique. For example, to play a difficult passage, it is better to spend 10 minutes a day, observing the many obstructive aspects to playing that occur during the 'intention to play' moment and correcting those, than spending an hour working hard, but re-enforcing as many bad habits as making good ones. Of course, as with the intention to move, developing a fine sense of what sounds correct and what doesn't usually requires an objective ear from a teacher. Work with a teacher also involves establishing your own aural objectivity.

Playing at speed.

Using your observations in the 'intention to play' can help in many areas. One area that is often prone to establishing bad habits, is playing at speed. In the same way that running is physically different to walking, so playing at speed is different to playing slowly. It requires different thought processes and types of muscle memory. In fact, practicing playing at speed is efficiently done by playing at speed!. Of course many people play a passage slowly and then speed it up, and the results are fine. However, my reading of the slow-to-fast method is that the learning load is increased: there is more work to be done in learning notes, then learning to do them fast, than learning to play the same notes fast from the offset. The technique of working on the latter is to make the aim of the practice session to maintain the final speed of a passage from the beginning, but to simplify it by missing out notes. In this way the speed of fingers and mind are not sacrificed, but the level of complexity is. If the aim is to play one bar of 16th notes quickly, but there are many jumps and so on, miss out most of the jumps, but practice the rest in their correct place and at the correct speed. Then replace notes a few at a time so that they are established correctly, that is so that in playing them they are positively re-enforced. When you are at a stage when you have put back all of the notes, the phrase will be playable at the correct speed, and you will have covered many different aspects of playing at speed during the time when you where putting the notes back into the phrase.

Practicing single variables

The example above demonstrates the usefulness of working on a single variable at a time. Once each variable is established using principles of 1) intention to play - i.e. with minimal physical tension, and 2) so that the playing equilibrium tends toward minimal effort - that is, play to establish good habits, not bad ones, then habits can be formed efficiently during practice sessions.

In summary, making practice sessions effecient relies on the establishment of good habits. This is done most effeciently by only letting the body experience the correct movements. Through repetition in a way that positively re-inforces good movement (as described in playing at speed), this can be achieved quickly without establishing bad habits. However, certainly at the beginning, it is useful to have some objective help to overcome the various forms of observer error that can misguide judgement during practice.

Transcription

Somehow, in learning to be a jazz musician, you have to learn the language. There are great musicians who have never transcribed anything, and others who do it throughout their career. I see it as a means to an end, and for that reason I have presented it as a process, with targets and goals that can be achieved, and then left.

I take transcription to be similar to learning a spoken language. The more you are immersed in it, the more fluent you will be in it. Imagine if you do nothing else for two years but listen to five or six great solos over and over again. You will have a strongly internalized repertoire of licks, approaches to phrasing, rhythm, swing, inside playing, outside playing, and the general narrative of a solo. If all you do is listen, you will be sharpening up your ears and getting the music in your head. So the first, and most important aspect of the transcription process is:

1) get the music in your head.

There is a huge amount of information you need to internalize when you learn a solo. Repetitive listening is the key. The more you listen, the more you will hear. Your aim in listening is to know a solo so well that you can replicate every nuance of it. That means you need to engage in active listening. There are lots of techniques you can use to do this. You can loop sections, change the speed, try to play the rhythm of a looped section on a drum. Sing a phrase from memory, record it and compare it with the original, and so on. In general, the more you address your learning needs, the more successful you will be. Being imaginative in how you develop techniques of listening will repay you greatly. However the principle remains the same: do everything you can to permanently etch the solo into your mind. The next step is to:

2) get the music onto your instrument so that there is no way you can play it wrong.

You have already done all the hard work of learning the music of the solo in step 1). The second step is simply a mechanical process - play it on your instrument. Writing the solo down at this stage is not required, but do it if it helps. Many people think that transcribing starts at the point where they start to play someone else's solo. To my mind this misses the point of the whole process. If it is not clearly in your head, then you will not learn it in any meaningful way by learning how to play it as the first step.

3) write it down so that you can analyse it.

The first two stages should take a long time – a couple of months is about average. The analysis section is the intellectual aspect of jazz. The needs and requirements you have will change depending on your level, and what you want to do with the language.

Intellectual work in transcribing.

What ever is it that you do while you solo, you have the opportunity to slow the cognitive and intellectual aspects down in time when you analyse and write lines. If you are interested in working efficiently, then the following techniques may be useful to you.

1) work on the cognitive aspects of developing material.

2) Find out what sort of learner you are

3) Organise transcribed material that fits with points 1) and 2).

Of course, every jazz musician that plays well has done all of the above in some form. What I am outlining is a method for working that is efficient because it treats each part analytically. This is useful if you do not want to waste time while you practice, but it is only one method out of many.

Explanation of the points above.

Points 1) and 2) are in essence the same point: how do you learn? As a musician you should have some idea of how you work best. It is useful to examine this process so that you can use your time well.

1) cognitive work. This is a way of thinking about practice that says,

Put 'A' into your brain. Brain does something. 'B' comes out of your brian.

This is a simplification, but useful. As a student of playing jazz, you should start to ask yourself questions about this process in order to figure out how your playing output is affected by your practicing input. This involves understanding what type of learner you are. The end result of any work you do should be to give you some clarity our of something that was not clear. Perhaps you are a kinesthetic learner, meaning that you have a feel for the physical process. Perhaps you are an aural learner, meaning that you retain information that is given to you aurally. Or maybe you are a visual learner, meaning that you need to see some sort of representation of the object of learning in order to understand or remember it. You are probably a mixture of all t

hree, but the more you know about how how pick up information, the more you will be able to target this in your practice. 3) organizing transcription material given what you know about how you learn.

You have already internalized the transcription aurally so that you know it extremely well. You can play it on your instrument. Now you have to find techniques that you can use to internalize processes of development of the material.

This is why using the cognative model above is useful. It suggests that you do not try to understand the artistic or creative aspect of what you do (you just do it). But you do understand how to put material into your mind, and you understand what comes out of it.

Your aim is to be able to develop the material from your transcription so that it becomes a second nature - it becomes your language. There are 4 types of development you need to explore.

1) Rhythmic: augmentation or diminution.

2) Melodic: augmentation or diminution.

3) Motivic: augmentation or diminution.

4) Harmonic: playing inside or outside the harmonic area.

The question you have to answer now is, how do I work on these aspects of my transcribed work, given the way I learn?

Take a lick you like from the transcription.

This lick must have certain qualities about it. If you are at a beginning stage, you need to use a language that clearly defines a chord and stays inside it. Check for phrases that outline basic 7 - 3 or 5 - 9 voicings, and look how these basic voicings are elaborated. If you don't know about voice-leading or harmonic elaboration, you can go the intellectual route of doing the whole classical tradition of learning (fux, fugue, harmony and counterpoint, Bach, and so on), or you can just input a lot of great lines into your head so that you development aural models for what is a great line. The former will give you a deeper understanding and give you ideas for how to do what you can't hear, the latter will short-cut that and limit you to what others have done.

You have chosen your lick. Now play it in every key, and many different speeds. If it starts on the 3rd, try to play it diatonically transposed so that it starts on the 5th, 7th, 9th, and so on. Here your aim should be to internalize the mechanical aspect of playing the lick. Use your knowledge of what type of learning you are to make this more efficient. If you are a kinesthetic learner, write everything out and get it into your fingers (see my paper on practicing efficiently for how). If you are an aural learner, move the lick around by ear. If you are a visual learner, give yourself visual stimuli such as, play the lick so that it starts on the 3rd of every chord from any lead sheet. In this way, you are using your best form or forms of learning to get the stuff in your head. Going back to the cognative model, you are efficiently inputting material into your mind.

Let you mind do the work.

An important part of practicing is know what you can do and what you can't do. Although some cognitive scientists may argue otherwise, I think that creating a great line in jazz is still a mysterious act. So once you are engaged in the process of putting information into your mind, and have done so efficiently, you have to let your mind work on it. It will probably take about 3 months before a certain lick comes out in your playing in a way that is not self-conscious. So relax! Carry on inputting the information into your mind, and when you play creatively, see if you can observe what happens to the material. Perhaps you will find during your observations that the more creatively you process the lick-material in your input stage - that is, the more games (kinesthetic, aural, or visual) you play while learning the licks - the easier it is to make links with other material in your creative playing.

I have not given any examples of exercises above, but have concentrated on principles. In this way, you should be able to create your own exercises that target your problem areas, and access your more efficient form(s) of learning.

Summary

The transcription process is the most important educative lesson you can do in your practicing. It puts you directly in contact with the greats of the tradition so that you can learn to play what they did. This will give you many types of models that can be internalized. Doing it thoroughly is like learning a new language. It can follow these stages:

1) Listen to the solo so that you have internalized every aspect of it, consciously and un-consciously. Don't be surprised if this take thousands of repetitions - it will do! This is the actual internalizing part of the process, and is the most important.

2) Learn the mechanical aspects of playing the solo. Use my paper on efficiency in practice for ideas on how to do this.

3) Use the model of cognition to analyze how you should input the licks you need into your mind. Your aim is to learn how to work and transform the material so that it becomes second-nature to do so. Understand what type of learner you are, and be patient and efficient.

You should see that this is a long process, and it is important to choose your solos wisely. A teacher or colleague with experience of the process will be able to guide you: perhaps you need to learn about playing behind the beat - transcribe Dexter Gordon. Perhaps you can't play the changes accurately - transcribe Hank Mobley, Sonny Stitt, and so on. The more you know about your weaknesses, the more specific you can be in your choice of material. Often, everyone else knows what you weaknesses are, so if you can bear it, ask them!