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Hmmm. That's not quite how I teach beginners. I never start a piece "disconnected from time". But maybe some self-taught beginners approach their learning like that?

Let's hear some then!

Of course we do. I am referring to the fact that when playing jazz or rock and roll in a live or performance setting you are mostly playing with other people. As well as when rehearsing.

I'd say well over 90% of people who play classical piano don't play chamber music, with a choir, or an orchestra.

Unless you have great talent or are a concert performer, no orchestra's going to be banging at your door offering their services.

How many of the kids learning classical right now are playing with other people? Not a lot I bet.

Why do you have to hear it? Don't you believe LimeFriday?

Well those are your estimates. Mine would be different. I know plenty of young high-school age classical piano students who do a lot of ensemble playing. I hear them often at school concerts. And, as I said, in a performance setting my playing is almost entirely with other people. It's not that unusual.

Why not? Music is meant to be shared. It's not a matter of believe, but edification. I might like and appreciate it.

I know I've asked you before to post some of your songs but you're too chicken. Perhaps all that score reading has numbed your mind to the fact that music is meant to be listened to.

Feel free to post some of yours anytime, I'm all ears.

You really have no idea, have you. Your assumptions are as staggering as your (bad) manners. You know nothing of the music I've written, or my teaching style - yet you pretend to. A word of advice: if you want people to take you seriously, you might try a style which is a little less confrontational.

How can I have any assumptions of your music when you haven't posted anything or said what you play. For all I know you could be into new age elevator music and consider Yanni the greatest musician on earth.

As for bad manners, take a look in the mirror. You seem to pop up unannounced like a gnat at my posts and challenge them, and also interrupt posts which have nothing to do with you.

Why don't you let LimeFriday speak, maybe he/she wants to post an hour long improv. Why do you insist on expressing your opinion when it doesn't concern you or do you do that in real life too?

I may be confrontational when needed but you are condescending and arrogant.

A word of advice: Mind your own business and stay out of posts that don't concern you. If I irritate you so much then don't bother replying to anything I write. For your sanity I'd suggest blocking me so you can't even read it.

It seems I trigger an anger emotion in you that causes you to react badly. If that's the case then just stay away.

If a teacher is teaching a beginner to play in a manner that is 'disconnected from time' then they don't just have it backwards, they have it all twisted up and bent out of shape.

Wizard - I choose not to post an hour long improv - but thanks for asking. My improvisation is for my own enjoyment, for relaxation, my own way of meditating if you like. Those who are around at the time might hear it - but recording it - and posting it somewhere to prove that I can actually do it would take away from the experience. Therefore - you'll just have to take me at my word.

I think what gets me in your posts - is that you assume so much - and if someone challenges those assumption - you ask them to prove themselves - as though what they say can't possibly be true because it goes against your own ideas.

I don't doubt that you play jazz... and that you play well. Why do assume that others, who also happen to enjoy playing and learning classical music, don't and can't play and enjoy jazz? And that learning classically can somehow hinder creativity and the ability to improvise?

I teach counting / rhythm / tempo from the first moments a beginner plays their first notes, unless they are one of the rare ones who does it well automatically.

Why anyone would think that rhythm / tempo etc. are an optional component of music that is tacked on at the end of the learning process is beyond me.

Like, "You want rhythm with those notes"?

"If it ain't got that swing, it don't mean a thing" Duke Ellington

I think there are quite a few assumptions flying around here about how "most piano teachers" teach. Perhaps it's how these posters were taught themselves, but it's drawing a long bow to generalise it to all or even "most" teachers.

I know - how dare someone, express an opinion on a public forum. Wow, what nerve!

By the way, if you don't want random people expressing their oh-so-pesky opinions, perhaps a private message might be more appropropriate. You know, seeing how it's actually "private", as opposed to "public" - like the rest of the forum!



Wow. Really? I mean, really? Because that's not really how it reads to me. Just another unsolicited opinion though.

Oh, and I have to add... Currawong has been one of THE MOST level-headed, calmest, and generally tolerant and understanding of others' positions of anyone here! I've seen her side with and empathize with many adult students here when issues over various "teaching policies" and misunderstandings have blown up. It seems incredibly ironic to me that, of everyone here, you'd pick her to describe as condescending and arrogant!

I have to agree with that. I don't recall seeing anything but positive posts from Currawong.

I do believe that there is a HUGE difference in basic mindset between my friends who are jazz players and those who play more "conventional" music. However, it is not so unusual to meet people who have considerable ability "on both sides", and there you can see them switch gears, according to what they are playing/practicing/performing/teaching.

I've seen that video and enjoyed it. Boy was she meant to be on stage!

She definately has "it", thats for sure!

currawong has had these arguments with me several times, it's old hat. Anytime I say that playing by ear is a better way to learn than from a score, she'll chime in with some snippet comment.

This is like the 3rd or 4th time so it wears thin and I'll say what I need to say. She may be nice to you guys but she's got a bad attitude towards me.

So I told her never to bother replying to anything I say and she'll save herself alot of trouble.

It's funny knowing that with conflicts in the past she'll still try to be confrontational. Just give it up and go bother someone else.

I'm not assuming anything. I'm speaking from my own personal experience and that of my friends, many of whom learned classical piano or violin growing up.

What I said is that the method for learning classical is incomplete and lacking for a person to develop the skills needed for jazz and rock/pop music.

Many of the best jazz players had a full classical background, like Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea.

Herbie said when he first learned jazz, he would listen to records, play all the right notes, but the swing and rhythm wasn't there.

Keith Jarrett said there is a total shift in thinking when playing classical vs jazz.

Here is an excerpt of him in an interview talking about the crossover of classical and jazz:

TR: Would you ever be interested in doing a concert where you played Mozart the first half and then played a (jazz) trio (set)?

KJ: No, that's what I think is hilarious. I mean that is true insanity. The insanity I'm talking about is like a chosen practically impossible thing, but you know how weird it is! Then you have to try to figure out how you can go about doing both these things without them ruining each other in a funny way. I think the thing that can get ruined, that would be destroyed first if someone does both these, is the jazz.

TR: Interesting. Why is that?

KJ: Because if a player gets used to not disappearing into the music completely and starts thinking about the kind of details you have to think about in classical performance, that's not what you should be doing when you play the blues. Jazz isn't really as much about the how, as it is the ideas that you're coming up with. I think if someone sat down and looked at (the people) who play jazz and classical music, it's almost 100 percent across the board that they don't really have an individual jazz voice. If you think about who these people are and you take them one by one, they might be curios, but have not really contributed something lasting. You become a musicologist when you become a classical player. You go back to jazz and if you're a musicologist, then you're like a jazz professor. That's OK, but that's going to probably steal from the transcendent nature of that dive, you know?


The 2 genres are so completely different that the mindset needs to be focused on one.

This coming from a true master of both genres, who could rightly be considered one of the best living pianists in the world.

Here's the full interview:

http://www.tedrosenthal.com/tr-kj.htm

Why does one way have to be better than the other? To me it is apples and oranges.

For improvisation, regardless of how you gain the knowledge to do it, nothing written down is going to do the job. I think we all know that. That goes all the way back to Bach. If you give someone a possible short theme and ask him to improvise a fugue, that may sound totally different than a jazz improv, but the idea is really quite close. The brain-power required is high (I would say enormous when done well.) I can't improvise in jazz, and I also can't make up a fugue on the spot. Those I know who can do these things awe me, but I also have a different personality. I am most interested in composing and arranging, and I like to write down my ideas. It's a different process, but I doubt people would say that it is not creative. It's just a different mindset. The jazz I listen to is lean, well-thought out, perhaps more thoughtful and less impressive. That's just my personality.

I remember going to a gig where one of my friends was playing, and he said he was very nervous because of "my knowledge". He thinks that I know more than he does. He does not read music. He's heard me play, and he would like to be able to do what I do. I must have spent a good half hour saying, "But Billy, I can't do what YOU do. You do stuff I don't fully understand, stuff that sounds cool to me, and I wish I could absorb those skills and add it to what I can do."

To me being able to read a score at sight, as well as possible, is something that I value and use. I love it when a student brings in something, something I have never seen, then I nail it and shock the student by saying that I have never heard it. Sometimes that means reading the notes, exactly as they are. This is for something more thoughtful and very well arranged. Other times it means scanning the music and changing things on the spot, sensing the style and what can be added or changed. I also have students play things for me they have made up, asking me, "What am I doing?" In that situation I'm very happy that my hearing allows me to duplicate what they do, but I also love being able to notate it on the spot, if necessary, then talk about what else we might do with it.

Playing be ear, playing from score: to me this is the chicken and the egg thing all over again. In the end, in my opinion a really well-rounded musician can do both, and how he (or she) gets there is of no importance so long as the goal is reached.

You have reading-Nazi's who are ready to comdemn any player who can't read music as musically illiterate, which is how Brubeck came to be told he could not have a degree unless he promised never to teach. Brubeck is a guy who actually likes having a lot of his stuff written out very accurately (see his Nocturnes), but most people do not realize that someone else has to write it out for him. Steve Allen, an amazing improviser who was known for taking a few random notes and composing a tune on the spot, did not read.

Then you have the "reading music is for zombies-Nazies" who warp everything so that anyone who plays effortlessly from music and is just interested in interpreting the music of others is branded a moron.

My own position is that in a perfect world, ALL musicians would read well, have a thorough grounding in composition, be familiar with ALL styles of music from ALL periods, be confident in improvising in at least several styles of music, and so on. The best I've seen reach this lofty goal to a very small degree, though getting anywhere close to that ideal is amzing in my mind.

Now, having explained my own POV, I'll let those who want to tear each other's throats out continue the blood-bath. And I'll go back to lurking...

Maybe this is a bit of a devil's advocate post from me......

Wizard of Oz, I read your comments demanding LimeFriday post an improvisation as being tangental to the discussion. Improvisations aren't *for* other people to listen to, they are about the performer experimenting and exploring. If someone shows no interest in putting their improvisations on YouTube this suggests that their improvisational experiences are more personal than public, and I think that there is very much that is RIGHT about this attitude.

God knows I've been bored to tears listening to solo improvisations many more times than I've been inspired by them.

eweiss talks about playing being for oneself in this sense - and in this sense I completely agree..... posting a improvisation for others to comment goes against the spirit of the thing.....