Performers vs Teachers

Bones

Van, don't ask me how I know. :-)

Score, dang it, so that's your secret!!!

Russell Letson

The thing about teaching and learning is that there is a horizon beyond which the teacher cannot reach--at least, not by any means that can themselves be taught. I am very reluctant to make hard distinctions between "art" and "craft" or "technique," but there really are things that can be learned but not taught, at least not directly taught.

When was teaching writing, I could make all kinds of suggestions about structuring an essay or framing sentences or choosing the right words, but I could not show a student how to have interesting "ideas," nor could I do more than make suggestions about how to spot for themselves a line of thought that might lead to a good argument or set of observations. My wife has had similar experiences with creative-writing students.

I've watched very good teachers try to lead students to that place that produces musically satisfying solos. (I don't do guitar solos, myself--I just lack the chops, even after 60 years of playing. My improvisatory gifts lie elsewhere.) But there's only so much a teacher can do, much of it "negative" in the sense that Bones' post points to: "bad habits/technique that I could not seem to fix by myself. . . . [and] a good teacher can listen/watch what the student is doing and make corrections and/or suggestions."

That is, technique and craft are eminently teachable, but I would say that "creativity" (a slippery term) finally comes from inside that horizon I mentioned above. I know, I know--there are volumes and volumes of books and systems that try to give access to the "creative" machinery, and insofar as there are psychological barriers to overcome or states of mind that might help, they're OK. But the "creative" people I know (I'm married to one and am well acquainted with many others) can't reduce the process to anything transferrable to others.

As much as I value craft and technique*, I suspect that we feel our way to and through art--and that while we can analyze much of what moves us after the fact, it's much harder to reverse that analytical process into a generator of good or satisfying expression.

* Technique is the means by which the material expression is produced, but it is not itself the expression--we've all heard great-chops playing that doesn't say much, and been moved by playing that is not technically demanding. I give you John Hurt and Elizabeth Cotten and Raymond Kane. Not that Rev. Gary Davis and Blind Blake are to be ignored because their techniques are really demanding.

TheHotClubofLickMyAxe

@Russell Letson

Thank you for this excellent contribution to this conversation.

Jazzaferri

I think that two very important things in teaching the "art" that no one ever talked to me about are:

1; Listening a lot and putting a lot of focussed effort into the phrases that speak most loudly to the individual.

2. The concepts that are discussed in Kenny Werner's effortless mastery. Relaxed playing from within one's level of unconscious competence.

I think one of the worst pieces of advice I ever got is learning and transcribing complete solo's. This will likely be contentious but to me its like learning a lot of poetry by heart. In the end I think it tends to overwhelm ones creative ideas. We dont write good prose or poetry by taking paragraphs or stanzas that others have written and put a bunch of them together to make a "new" poem or story.

Russell Letson

On the other hand, a solid understanding of how a piece operates requires paying close attention to what it actually is, note by note or word by word--which is one reason transcribing solos is so often advised. (There's also a component of ear training in there--listen really hard.) I know quite a bit of Shakespeare by heart--not because I wanted to recite it, but because I've read and heard it so much that it's engraved in my memory, and as a result some Shakespearean language shows up in my own writing. (Not here so much. . . .) Similarly, my performance of any given song (that's where my improvisitory/performing side works) will be informed by all the performances I've already heard--not only of that song but of all the others in its tradition and in adjacent traditions. Louis and Ray and Ella and Frank and Tony and Keely showed me the various ways to get around a lyric.

There's a persistent regimen for acquiring technique that's built on imitation and repetition--it goes back to the beginnings of the teaching of rhetoric and, I suspect, of music as well. That's certainly how the non-school traditions I'm familiar with are passed along: copy grandpa or uncle or whoever and eventually adapt that received material to your own taste and ability. (Never underestimate the role of technical limitation to the formation of a style.)

ChrisMartin

Russell Letson wrote: »

.......... (Never underestimate the role of technical limitation to the formation of a style.)

Which is the message I was trying to get across in another thread. While it is all very well us analysing Django's technique 65 years after he left us, it was his own physical limitations that defined his technique in the first place. If he had limited use of two fingers of his left hand and could not read or write music he developed his style within those constraints and most importantly (put simply) made his hands and his guitar do what was in his head.
This forum so often gets bogged down in the minutiae of the ''Correct Technique For Gypsy Jazz" debate. Yes, we know we need some perceived technique to be able to help us play what we want, but surely writing rules and advising what is the right and wrong way to play something goes against everything Django represented.
There are more structured ways to play, some chord melody jazz arrangements, and certainly scored classical music for example, but teaching someone to play Django, (or Hendrix, or Robert Johnson etc) where that new, and at the time unique, individual style came from unique sets of circumstances seems rather pointless.
I know some just enjoy the challenge of learning Django note for note, and then there are others that do that so well they decide to make a living out of 'teaching' others to do the same.
But unless one could go back in time and relive Django's own background, upbringing, injuries, influences, geographic and historic time and place, and even miss a few gigs because you preferred playing billiards that night, one is never going to be anything other than a copyist.
So, armed with all the technique in the world, the one thing that can't be taught is the one thing that made Django a legend, his own soul.
Yes, we all can learn some tricks and be influenced by soaking up the music but ultimately do you want to be admired for your ability to imitate or achieve some personal satisfaction as the player who comes out the other end with his own style?

Jazzaferri

@Russell Letson I really appreciate your insight as to shakespeare.

The question I have are you using it in "creative writing" I beleive the term is, as poorly worded as that is or are you writing essays books and papers on a related topic.

I beleive it important to learn a few complete solo's that really speak to one in order to help learn how to structure one.

Bones

Heck, I'm no original thinker that's for sure. I'd love to be able to imitate Django :-)

That said, it's good to strive for one's own ideas to the extent possible.

Of course, Django had no one to copy and also was limited by his left hand but still managed to do what he did and basically influence all that came after. But he was a genius.

Russell Letson

Jazzaferri: My writing is journalism, or it was, when I was still getting gigs. My wife is the writer-of-fiction--I have no stories in me, at least no interesting ones. But all the poetry and much of the prose I absorbed over the decades lurks in much of my copy, even the most routine, prosey stuff. I also studied rhetoric and linguistics, which is a bit like learning "theory" in music.

Jazzaferri

Thanks @Russell Letson Another question comes up bawsed on another thread. i learned that transcribing means taking a piece of music and translating it onto paper.

I wonder sometimes if others have a different understanding. I have learned lots of tunes and solos that I could sing/hum but never worked them out on guitar or put onto paper.