jazz jam

["Keith Freeman" <keith.freeman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Robert,

> (sigh) I feel like those
> students who come to me and say, "just show me the hot licks" and are
> reluctant to do the homework on the skill-drills.
Right. And don't underestimate the amount of homework required for jazz: it's bloody 
complicated! I sometimes think to myself 'Would I have started learning jazz if I had 
realized how difficult and complicated it was?'. In my case the answer would still be yes, 
but only because I love the sound, and because for me it's the most satisfying kind of 
music to play. If a guitar player proficient in other styles but with little or no knowledge 
of jazz came to me and asked my advice on learning jazz, my first question to him 
would be 'Do you really love jazz? Do you love it enough to put all your learning 
energies into it?'. Because unless you're some kind of musical genius it's a lot of hard 
work.

There's no shame, though, in restricting yourself to a particular style or genre. With 
such a vast unexplored field in front of you I think it makes sense to focus on a limited 
area first. Loving ballads, and realizing my technical skills were limited but that I had a 
lot of feelings I wanted to express, I decided early on to concentrate on being a ballad 
player. So the first goal I set myself was to be able to play the head of a ballad 
beautifully and to comp sensitively behind a soloist. Then I moved on to improvising 
melodically, still on ballads. After a while I realized that if I wanted to play with other 
good players I would need to find ways of handling faster tunes, if only for variety's 
sake. So for me it's been a gradual process.

It doesn't have to be ballads, of course, just a genre or style you can commit yourself to. 
Lester Young, Ben Webster and Miles Davis spring to mind as players who knew how to 
squeeze the maximum emotion out of the minimum notes.

- -Keith