Phrasing or Timing or Something?

Lango-Django

I too love Debussy as well as Stravinsky, Ravel, Rimsky-Korsakov and pretty much all those 19th century impressionist and romantic composers.

A cool album if you like that sort of thing is Branford Marsalis 1986 "Romances for Saxophone"

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=1238060

Branford is a nice jazz soprano player, too, but on this album he plays all light classics very tastefully arranged.

I used to use it for "sexytime" background music until the missus got sick and tired of it.

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I don't know, Jay, at this stage of my life I find more satisfaction in playing the tunes I like best and trying to sound like "me" and make up my own shit rather than aping Django or trying to sound like a real gypsy player.

Mind you, I'd be thrilled as hell if I truly had the talent to do both of those things! But, alas, I don't!

Will

Spalo

I think it's right and good that we end up sounding like ourselves. It can't be any other way - we all have different life experiences that influence the way we make music as we take the journey from the cradle to the grave.

I'd say even Django didn't sound like Django. Is that really the same person playing 'Deccaphonie' AND 'Dinah'? We all move on....



Sp (in a philisophical mood )

Passacaglia

Interesting thread, guys, an interesting query; hope it's now too far a stretch, but I think there's a couple of different worlds here, both, it seems to me, equally useful.

Played Constantin Stanislavki, once. Prepping for the role, read everything I could by and about him. I think it can all be summed by the title of one of his books, "Building a Character."

Another, it's a Japanese view of training - three stages. The first is basically ego-destruction, its analogue in the cleansing provided by Kali - in order to master (anything), one's ego needs must get out of the way. The approach is what we in the West would consider almost slavish adherence to every possible nuance provided by one's master -and one can't do this, holding on to one's notion of oneself.

The second is to literally own what was given, "steal the mind," the kind of thing Jay would call, like breath, as automatic and easy as one uses a fork.

The third stage is to destroy the master's teaching; to not only make what one has been given, but to forge one's own voice.

It all comes to the same. One approach sees things as a building of skills, an accretion of techniques, maybe; the other, the perfection of the polished bowl, obtainable only once one gets out of the way, and only then is it considered possible to truly learn. It's a gross disservice to either means to see them as unique to themselves. Still, I do think there's a somewhat different view on how one learns.

Long loved Amadeus, granting the Hollywood fictionalizing - I think Milos Forman has a fine vision. Love Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham (even his wonderfully over the top performance in The Name of the Rose). Beethoven's 9th stands at the zenith, for me - I have to play it alone, because I play it loud and become an emotional freak every time I play it. Also love late Mozart, Rimsky-Korsakov (Russian Easter is a fave), and Berlioz (Symphonie fantastique/marche au supplice), Dvorak (New World Symphony), Smetana and other "nationalist" composers.

Lango-Django

Hmmm... well as regards the Givone method, I think I've actually done two of Passacaglia's three stages...

The first is basically ego-destruction

Well, okay, truth be told: I never actually did destroy my ego. All I did was to really work on those major and dominant seventh Givone forms A LOT, all over the fingerboard. I started working on the minor forms and their dominants, too, but eventually decided that I really wanted to nail the major ones first because they fit better with the kind of stuff I like to play, ie jazz standards more than gypsy jazz. So that's what I've been working on for about six months now, and I'm glad I did because it has helped, and is helping me a lot.

The second is to literally own what was given, "steal the mind," the kind of thing Jay would call, like breath, as automatic and easy as one uses a fork.

Yeah, that's what's starting to happen for me. Those major and dominant seventh shapes all come really naturally and I use them all the time without really having to think about them very much. I find I almost never get lost and I can connect the shapes pretty much without thinking. One way I like to check myself is to play without any accompaniment and see how long I can keep it going all by myself. And I find I can do that at slow or medium tempos... but not yet at fast tempos!

The third stage is to destroy the master's teaching; to not only make what one has been given, but to forge one's own voice.

Well, the good news is, I actually do feel like I have found my own voice. I use the Givone shapes, but I don't use his phrasing, I just make up my own little phrases.

The bad news is, I somehow doubt that my own phrases will ever measure up to the master's!

But then again, my tennis playing will never measure up to Andy Murray's... so what should I do? Quit playing tennis?