Board 8 > Musicians: you can play jazz y/n

(+) Yeah! (+)

one weakness in my musical ability since forever is a complete inability to improv or play jazz in any capacity

I play notes on a page, and I play them reasonably well, but that's it

describe your musical background to me please

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Jazz band for four years in high school / junior high, playing written and improvised solos throughout. Mainly played Bari Sax but for a year I played Tenor.

Played saxophone since grade 5.

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I've never actually jammed with a jazz band but I know my way a bit around augmented, diminished and suspended chords etc

Soloing and improvising I would do fine I guess (on guitar and bass). I know a lot of the more common scales by heart and I'm not afraid to color outside the lines a bit.

I love jamming on piano too though my technique is still very poor. I started playing piano about a year and a half ago but there's months I don't play it at all (while I do play guitar every day) and months I play daily so yeah.

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Yeah, definitely when I played Trombone, not so sure about French Horn though

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The box says "Online Gameplay not rated by ESRB", I should be able to trade my phallic named Wobbufetts to a bunch of 8 year olds. - MarvelousGerbil

I can improvise on piano reasonably well

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Ok everyone this is Bartz so just remember.

So you guys who can improvise: do you come from a traditional/classical/whatever background, or something else?

of all the people I play in clarinet groups with, none of them can improvise (or play jazz) worth a darn. I wonder if that's a by-product of how music is taught in public school band and stuff like it. I didn't graduate from college but I did spend a few years in a music program there, and several of my friends did end up graduating. still none of us can improvise. it's like improvisation or playing by ear is a skillset that just isn't covered by the work you do unless you make a real effort to branch into that area on your own.

meanwhile I have people like my dad who is a self taught guitarist. he can play anything after hearing it once, and improvises quite well. he can't read sheet music but throw him into a music group and he just picks it up and plays along pretty quickly.

it's like two entirely different skillsets for playing music. I'm pretty envious of him and people like him.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npHDxSvwCE0

I taught myself, but I assume that it just comes from your mindset. Which may be distorted in public school or music class because that's pretty straight forward. They learn you to play music there, not to be a unique musician. If that makes sense. But really improvising is all about feel, which will come over time if you learn your theory by heart.


I'm not dissing music classes, they are great for learning music. It's just that they're not that great for giving your music personality, so you either have to do that on your own time or get a private teacher.

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yeah I think there's some truth there. in classical teaching you're kind of lead towards an ideal. there's a certain tone you want, and a certain way you want to approach articulation and expression, and you spend a lot of time learning the exactly correct way of reading and performing notation from 100s of years ago.

people think I'm a great bass clarinet player because I sound great and have great technical skills and am able to interpret music reasonably expressively. but throw me on a stage and ask me to entertain people and I'm just going to play a classical piece written on a piece of paper, probably in a similar way to how a lot of other people would. what separates me from lesser clarinet players will be how proficiently I play the piece or how I pull off the expressive ideas I've planned out.

it's not an environment that encourages creativity. I do think sometimes that music is taught entirely the wrong way in public schools, from when you start all the way through college. there's a place for keeping the classical tradition alive and there's a lot you learn from thinking about this stuff and perfecting your craft, but there's also a lot you miss out on. some kind of combination would be better. but really I didn't finish school because I didn't want to be a teacher so it doesn't really matter what I think. I'm not gonna be influential in how public school music is taught anyway. oh well!

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npHDxSvwCE0