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Re: Not having musical training - the good and the bad (somewhat OT?)
Not to derail or get too silly but from my improvisational guitarist
standpoint...
The Good: It gives you a wide array of tools, clichés, patterns,
theoretical approaches, etc to use at your disposal
The Bad: It gives you a wide array of tools, clichés, patterns, theoretical
approaches, etc to use at your disposal
I haven't played traditional jazz for over 4 years now. When I did, I was
playing a regular house gig and totally immersed into jazz theory, where my
musical training was totally beneficial and necessary. It has taken me
almost that entire 4 years to purge most all of that shit out of my brain
(consciously at least to the point where I can't easily retrieve it on the
fly). Now when I play free improv, I am not recalling all that theoretical
memory, but the main thing I struggle with now is finger memory. For
example, my fingers are just used to playing certain modes, patterns,
voicings, etc. I fight it constantly but can generally be successful at
playing spontaneously.
I am getting ready to play piano. I've been playing the piano more lately.
I can't read music on the piano, nor could I play a mode or chord quickly if
you asked me to. I could figure it out with my knowledge of chord theory,
but it would be useless in a performance setting. Because I have no finger
memory or immediate recall of theory and musical training at play or
intervening when I am on the piano, I am finding that my improvisations are
really, really fun and liberating. They feel totally unrestrained and
expressive in the raw sense. The cool thing is that I have the finger
agility to express myself on the piano, I just couldn't tell you what I am
doing. Consider this an experiment. If someone asked me if I planned on
taking piano lessons, I'd say hell no. I want to keep my relationship withe
instrument pure, raw, and without any skills or knowledge that will
eventually intervene in my playing. But we'll see how long I can maintain
this, because occassionally I will play a freely improvised chord, and my
brain says...hmmm, that sounds suspicously like an Dom7b5b9. I'd rather
not know. I am sure over time will develop my own cliches, but for now I am
going to take advantage of the newness.