![]() Learning the lyrics, focusing on their meanings, or a personal experience they remind you of, recording your attempts to characterize those emotions, analyzing what was the first thing you tried to PLAY to convey that emotion, versus what would be a great recording that epitomizes that to you. I know what you mean about that "human" level, and there are lots of exercises to help you bring your personal experiences into the music. However, I learned how to fake it well enough that the crowd and the pro musicians loved the "emotional" content. Man, I was bored out of my mind! I haven't even gone back to that hit. On my way home, a drummer friend of mine who had brought me to that session for the first time that night called me up and told me I had slayed everyone, especially the quasi-big-time singer who ran the session because of my "mature," "emotional" playing. Played some louder, faster pentatonic **** and called it a night. I started soft, played some pentatonic crap, played a couple loud, accented, high notes that dropped immediately to soft stuff. I completely phoned it in, which I remember because I don't do it often. He played a killin Brecker-type thing, and I didn't even want to try to hang when he finished, because it's really hard to develop a good solo in C# when your main concern is how your *** hurts from sitting on the sharp edge of the stage all night. I played horn lines with the house tenor guy from 9PM until around 1:30, when they gave us both a solo. The playing was very good, but after the house band finished, it turned into a gospel singers' jam. To illustrate my point: I remember going to a "funk" jam in NYC a couple months ago for the first time. In the end, you can learn to fake it enough that it doesn't have to be real all the time, though. However, I had a good lab at Berklee where one of the projects consisted of pulling up a card with a feeling or emotion we were supposed to convey, and then trying to blow a solo that did that. This is an issue which is much more difficult to train or quantify, because everyone has a different idea of what sound conveys what emotion. There IS such a thing as ACTUAL emotional content, but it's much more easily expressed once the tools of the trade are picked up, so to speak. Most of the things interpreted as good emotional content are phrases that suddenly contrast what's happened before, have a growl or bend, and are accompanied by a scrunching of the eyebrows. ![]() If they are lacking "emotional" content, they need more study of development of intensity, learning where to double-time, growl, go higher, lower, louder, softer. To single out some of your criticisms (".nothing to communicate on a melodic, emotional or human level."), if their melodicism is lacking, they need to work on the basic concepts of melody: Education contributes to both of the latter 2 categories. The spark that separates a great musician from a good one is a combination of their hardware as dictated by DNA, their time spent in the shed, and their ability to draw from their life's experiences to inspire creation. I already pointed out that pedagogy is theoretical in nature. To say that an "academic" agrees with you because they say that "jazz pedagogy has become. It helps you to overcome the obstacles of ignorance. Education is not something that needs to be overcome. The limitation is on that person, who needs more study or practice in order to learn how to define the nuance. I don't believe in "undefinable nuance." I believe there's such a thing as a person who has not yet learned what that nuance consists of, who is unable to define it.
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