[Harp-L] Muscle memory versus conceptual awareness speed kills.

[JON KIP <jon@xxxxxxxxxx>]

When you say 'dedicating myself to memorizing every tune at speed" to conceptualize jazz, that's less helpful than to dedicate yourself to learning the concept behind the playing of the tune, and duplicating the soloing at whatever slow tempo you can manage to play, keeping in mind that some idiosyncratic bits won't be possible on harmonica and if you try you'll tend to sound stilted and decidedly un-jazzy....

 IF you're going in the direction of matching the speed of a sax player, you will fail, and, unless you've been given Unlimited Years To Live (if you have, please let me know where to sign up and what the monthly payments are)  will have misspent a large portion of your allotted  time, albeit having increased your technique a bit.

Speed of execution has nothing to do with getting the concept. You will never match the speed of a competent sax player. Some things are instrument-dependent. Some aren't. You don't have to have speed to enjoy success with the concepts of playing jazz.

One nice way to grow into the jazz feeling is to get some charlie parker TUNES,  which, for a big part, represent some of the melodic patterns that make up jazz. Learn them in all keys, slowly... this puts a part of the language of jazz into your brain and under your fingers. 

or not, of course.

jk

http://jonkip.com

On Jun 17, 2014, at 4:33 AM, harp-l-request@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:

>> In any case,  I seem to spend around two weeks per song.  I learn the
>> entirety of what the sax player does on a song, so some songs are very
>> complex and I spend longer.   What I notice is I tend to be able to play
>> the song at 60% speed and then find it very hard to get faster and I also
>> lose my attention span.
>> 
>> So it would seem to me if I dedicated myself to memorizing every tune at
>> speed,  I would have much more muscle memory, but each song would take much
>> longer and I would get bored.





jon kip
http://jonkip.com

player of music, mostly written by dead people and played on a toy that everybody's Uncle except my nephew's has the good sense to keep safely out of sight in a drawer.