3 ms·

No huge surprises here - classical training focuses on playing a piece exactly as the notation goes + personality on tone, emphasis of notes, tempo. When playin

No huge surprises here - classical training focuses on playing a piece exactly as the notation goes + personality on tone, emphasis of notes, tempo. When playing a classical piece (in typical classical training) you don't generally start dicking around reharmonising it, changing voicings or playing an improvised solo. Jazz charts (and training focus) looks very different - basic chord structure and the main melody is written down, everything else is up to you - chord voicings, on-the-fly reharmonisation, improvised solos. It's a different type of training and thinking. Of course these are the "textbook" or cliche interpretations of classical and jazz music. Classical and jazz are very broad, ultimately meaningless terms, and many musicians have experience playing a wide variety of music.

uf 9y ago
I think you are oversimplifying this. Many classically trained pianists are excellent at improvisation. Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart were respected pianists. Wagner wrote the Hollander by improvising on the piano reciting the lyrics. Beethoven was feared by other pianists for his level of skill at improvisation. Mozart improvised most of his piano sonatas as far as I remember. Gould made a recording of Strauss songs I think. The singer said in an interview, that Gould just started to improvise in Strauss' style and harmonics (Strauss is pretty damn difficult). Contemporary pianists often know both. Anecdotal evidence: A colleague of mine from music university studied classical piano and was a regular at jazz clubs in Dusseldorf. It is very interesting to see differences in brain structure from classical to jazz pianists. Maybe a hint at how (muscle-)memory and motion planning is stored? A hint at how volatile brain structure is? It would be interesting to see, if e.g. a classically trained pianist switching to jazz exclusively also has a significant restructuring of his brain. Edit: Now that I've read the article and the abstract of the paper (the paper is behind Elsevier's paywall), I understand that jazz pianists are quicker at planning new movements (a.k.a. Chord progressions) with the downside of making making more mistakes, while classically trained pianists are slower here, but faster at recognizing and repeating unlearned ("unusual") finger movements. Would be interesting to see a comparison to pianists doing both jazz and classical music.
- uf 9y ago
  And as my top poster dharma noted: Jazz and "classical music" share many similarities. Definitely true. Think of Scriabin piano somata No 5 written in 1907. Or even go back to Beethoven No 32, 2nd movement.
  - ta76567656 9y ago
    When I first heard that Beethoven part you're referring to, I literally got up to check what CD I had in the player: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgwYl-W4ts&t=14m22s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgwYl-W4ts&t=14m22s
- dgsb 9y ago
  > Many classically trained pianists are excellent at improvisation. I would not say that, the example you give are the most reknown composer of all times. I think they are more the exception than the reality of professional musicians. Not every one is able to reach such level of genius. It seems, proficiency in both style seems rather rare. I don't think I could name a single current world class contemporary jazz player which could reach the same level in classical music interpretation. Regarding jazz improvistion, from my little experience of amateur player, jazz musicians mostly improvise together as a band, this is not a solo activity.
ehnto 9y ago
You have made me consider naming a song, "dicking around". It would go over really well here in Australia.
bsder 9y ago
> When playing a classical piece (in typical classical training) you don't generally start dicking around reharmonising it, changing voicings or playing an improvised solo. This is a recent thing concerning "classical" music. Quite a lot of music even at the time of Bach had improvised parts. (Figured bass springs to mind, but I don't know enough detail from this period. I'll let the music nerds handle this.)

uf 9y ago

I think you are oversimplifying this. Many classically trained pianists are excellent at improvisation. Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart were respected pianists. Wagner wrote the Hollander by improvising on the piano reciting the lyrics. Beethoven was feared by other pianists for his level of skill at improvisation. Mozart improvised most of his piano sonatas as far as I remember. Gould made a recording of Strauss songs I think. The singer said in an interview, that Gould just started to improvise in Strauss' style and harmonics (Strauss is pretty damn difficult). Contemporary pianists often know both. Anecdotal evidence: A colleague of mine from music university studied classical piano and was a regular at jazz clubs in Dusseldorf. It is very interesting to see differences in brain structure from classical to jazz pianists. Maybe a hint at how (muscle-)memory and motion planning is stored? A hint at how volatile brain structure is? It would be interesting to see, if e.g. a classically trained pianist switching to jazz exclusively also has a significant restructuring of his brain. Edit: Now that I've read the article and the abstract of the paper (the paper is behind Elsevier's paywall), I understand that jazz pianists are quicker at planning new movements (a.k.a. Chord progressions) with the downside of making making more mistakes, while classically trained pianists are slower here, but faster at recognizing and repeating unlearned ("unusual") finger movements. Would be interesting to see a comparison to pianists doing both jazz and classical music.

uf 9y ago
And as my top poster dharma noted: Jazz and "classical music" share many similarities. Definitely true. Think of Scriabin piano somata No 5 written in 1907. Or even go back to Beethoven No 32, 2nd movement.
- ta76567656 9y ago
  When I first heard that Beethoven part you're referring to, I literally got up to check what CD I had in the player: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgwYl-W4ts&t=14m22s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCgwYl-W4ts&t=14m22s
dgsb 9y ago
> Many classically trained pianists are excellent at improvisation. I would not say that, the example you give are the most reknown composer of all times. I think they are more the exception than the reality of professional musicians. Not every one is able to reach such level of genius. It seems, proficiency in both style seems rather rare. I don't think I could name a single current world class contemporary jazz player which could reach the same level in classical music interpretation. Regarding jazz improvistion, from my little experience of amateur player, jazz musicians mostly improvise together as a band, this is not a solo activity.

ehnto 9y ago

You have made me consider naming a song, "dicking around". It would go over really well here in Australia.

bsder 9y ago

> When playing a classical piece (in typical classical training) you don't generally start dicking around reharmonising it, changing voicings or playing an improvised solo. This is a recent thing concerning "classical" music. Quite a lot of music even at the time of Bach had improvised parts. (Figured bass springs to mind, but I don't know enough detail from this period. I'll let the music nerds handle this.)