| LearnJazzPiano.com archives: opinions on jazz in college | |
| mooondancer -- 08/02/2004, 22:10:05 -- #6197 | |
| When jazz is taught academically, do you think its real purpose of entertaining and moving people is compromised? I have heard many college jazz bands that I thought sounded sterile and ... just not hip or entertaining at all. Just an academic exercise, nothing I would pay money to see at a club. It's like when jazz is taught at college, all the life and meaning of the music is dissected and tested out of it. I love studying and talking about music for hours at end, but for me the heart of jazz is communicating your own life and your own feeling, and the corridors of an academic institution take this OUT. What I'm asking is, after learning good music theory, can you learn jazz better in a college or on the streets and clubs of Chicago? | |
| Mike -- 08/03/2004, 06:57:51 -- #6212 | |
| the best is to have both. You will learn more on the streets and in the clubs if you are equiped with the tools and knowledge you can aquire from education. You get tools from School. But in the end its not the Tools that matter, its what you do with them | |
| Jazz+ -- 08/03/2004, 07:44:41 -- #6217 | |
| In my opinion, college bands sound sterle because they are not in agreement on the phrasing. They are not listening closely enough to each other and they lack an undertsanding of jazz phrasing. | |
| Jazz+ -- 08/03/2004, 07:50:13 -- #6218 | |
| In college the frustration level becomes high, personalities involved in jazz are often less than friendly. Then there is that awful competitive thing lurking. And the inability of the teachers to properly coach phrasing coupled with the lack of understanding the jazz language in the students can make the academic setting quiet dismal. | |
| mooondancer -- 08/03/2004, 13:56:25 -- #6221 | |
| Yes, it's what you do with the tools that matters. I think in academia, kids start thinking, if I can just learn ENOUGH technique, and just learn enough chord inversions and substitutions and tricks, then someone will want to pay money to hear me play. If they were out playing clubs they would soon learn this is not so. Jazz+, you're right about the listening. Students probably watch the conductor or their sheet music more than listen to each other, much less interact with each other. There's none of that instant response and flow of ideas going on that can -- should -- happen (ever listen to "My Funny Valentine, Complete Concert 1964" by Miles). Maybe the odds are stacked against a jazz teaching institution in the first place -- Duke Ellington said "jazz can be learned but it can never be taught." | |
| 7 -- 08/04/2004, 00:36:46 -- #6239 | |
| A classroom setting is almost by definition obliged to cater to the lowest common denominator. Too fast for the slowpokes, too slow for the whizzes. The mediocre in the middle benefit the most. | |
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