5 ms·

This might be tangentially related - I'm not sure. I've recently started playing jazz piano, after years of classical piano. Now, I'm supposed to be a reasona

This might be tangentially related - I'm not sure. I've recently started playing jazz piano, after years of classical piano. Now, I'm supposed to be a reasonably good sight reader, or at least that's what I thought. The improv part of jazz I'm not good at but I get, but I've also tried playing from transcriptions (Bill Evans in particular), and have found I'm extremely slow at reading the music. After thinking about it, I suspect it's because the music makes no sense to me so I can't guess what's coming ( which is what I do with classical music). So while I anticipate with classical music and just confirm after the fact/right when the note actually shows up, with Bill Evans I have to think hard and actually confirm everything. My ears help but not much, since 'confirming' the sound is much harder with jazz than with classical music (it's unexpected , so again, there's some kind of delay between 'I hear the note' and 'ok that's right' while there's essentially no delay with classical music where my brain is kind of 'primed for acceptance'

mjburgess 4y ago
A little illustration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObPaCloY8E#t=1m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObPaCloY8E#t=1m
eru 4y ago
Over time with more exposure and practice, Jazz should make more 'sense' to your fingers and ears?
- canadianfella 4y ago
  [dead]
- Agingcoder 4y ago
  Yes, you're right and it's slowly happening. But it's a very slow process, and very surprising to me : I expected to be able to read fully written jazz easily, and, well, I can't, because reading fluently seems to be as much about predicting what's next as about knowing the alphabet and syllables!
ghosty141 4y ago
I can relate to this so much. Especially Bill Evans is really hard to play for me too!
IIAOPSW 4y ago
Once, to gloss over many details, I had a signal lamp on my fire escape and started quietly yelling morse messages into the void. At first I used a reference sheet looking up each character as I needed it. Then something clicked in my head and I no longer needed the reference. I accidentally learned morse code. I've seen the same thing happen in real time with other people. There's something like a phase change above some fraction of learned information which makes the rest fall into place just after some threshold.
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Kaijo 4y ago
I get this. With anything from the core classical repertoire, the obvious major composers, to a good listener, you almost already know the piece before you learn it. With jazz standards too, but there is much more flexibility required in actually rendering them. Part of the article seems to be confirming a neurobiological basis for something quite common-sensical to me. From how you describe your issue I suspect there are things from the more recent classical repertoire that would stump you beyond the level of Bill Evans transcriptions. Bill Evans is still at least in a relatively "accessible/listenable" harmonic idiom. Have you tried reading through any atonal/serial works of the Second Viennese School? Or 20th century classical composers like Ligeti, Elliott Carter, or contemporary pieces like Unsuk Chin's piano etudes, or Birtwistle's "Clocks"? I'm a good sight reader too but that's where I really hit a wall. This is music that provokes a strong negative reaction in many people. In the language of the article, their sensory expectations are defied. I think to really love this music (as I really do), you will have had to grapple with and deeply internalize things about compositional structure, so that what is a theme, a countersubject, a commentary, a development, an ornamentation, a point of rhythmic or textural elaboration, etc. are all still readily evident to the ear, and thus satisfy the ear, even if it's all occuring in an alien harmonic context.
- Agingcoder 4y ago
  Thanks a lot for the suggestions, I'll definitely listen to them /try to play them. I'm fine with 'difficult' music, and I agree with you that Bill Evans is accessible/listenable - what bothers me I think is that I can't predict the actual notes (quartal, 11th, etc everywhere). Edit: I really like ligeti.
  - Kaijo 4y ago
    Hope it leads to somewhere interesting for you! Unsuk Chin is in the school of Ligeti, perhaps try this magical little thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP31oUljA_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP31oUljA_g Yeah jazz is definitely it's own language, not just an extension of classical harmony as some would have it. Classical provides a model that makes jazz highly unlikely. I'm still figuring out what I can say in words about the difference. Something about freedom vs. structure in relation to the scope of expression. But you have to get used to hearing those non-triad notes as fundamental, not just as "passing", and a feeling for what idiomatic progressions are implicated by that.
chaps 4y ago
I'm a drummer with loads of improv, including a fair amount of jazz. What's interesting is that over time what's sounded like (mostly) random noise with no pattern has progressively turned into sensicle flows from moment to moment -- it's definitely a predictive process (both brain-wize and nervous system!). It's manifested in surprising ways, like having a forward predictive understanding of which hand should be where depending what I want to play. Shifting between large shifts during improv can be mentally taxing, very much the same feeling of trying to remember the name of something or someone. But just like with names, once you get that first mental hint (like a vowel), predicting what comes next just falls into place.
- SuoDuanDao 4y ago
  I'd love to get your feedback on a project I've been working on to 'sonify' DNA sequences. When played fairly quickly it sounds a lot like jazz to me, but I don't have a high musical intelligence so I'm not confident in how apt that description is. If you feel like having a listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSG9006YAeA&t=34s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSG9006YAeA&t=34s And sharing your opinion on whether it bears similarities to the 'logic' of jazz, that would be very interesting to me!
  - odyssey7 4y ago
    Interesting project - you might be intrigued by algorithmic music composition. The link you shared sounds atonal to me. So, you could be thinking about free jazz. Here's a YouTube video that discusses it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WhXtkMyPHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WhXtkMyPHU
    - suoduandao2 4y ago
      Thanks! I'll check that out and see if it gives any insights.
  - akomtu 4y ago
    A few ideas. DNA uses 20 codons, that could be 20 chords on piano. A sliding window of N codons can count the distinct codons and use that count as a pitch for the codon's chord.
afry1 4y ago
The 2:00 timestamp in this Veritassium video on expertise goes into exactly that phenomenon. We acquire expertise by recognizing the patterns in what we do. But once you take the patterns away, a lot of that "expertise" disappears too: https://youtu.be/5eW6Eagr9XA https://youtu.be/5eW6Eagr9XA Jazz piano vs classical is a perfect example of this: same instrument, two paradigms with totally different idioms.
hyperthesis 4y ago
Jazz is deliberately anti-conformist: knowing what's expected to come next and not doing that. This requires a setup of expectations, in order to dash them.

mjburgess 4y ago

A little illustration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObPaCloY8E#t=1m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LObPaCloY8E#t=1m

eru 4y ago

Over time with more exposure and practice, Jazz should make more 'sense' to your fingers and ears?

canadianfella 4y ago
[dead]
Agingcoder 4y ago
Yes, you're right and it's slowly happening. But it's a very slow process, and very surprising to me : I expected to be able to read fully written jazz easily, and, well, I can't, because reading fluently seems to be as much about predicting what's next as about knowing the alphabet and syllables!

ghosty141 4y ago

I can relate to this so much. Especially Bill Evans is really hard to play for me too!

IIAOPSW 4y ago

Once, to gloss over many details, I had a signal lamp on my fire escape and started quietly yelling morse messages into the void. At first I used a reference sheet looking up each character as I needed it. Then something clicked in my head and I no longer needed the reference. I accidentally learned morse code. I've seen the same thing happen in real time with other people. There's something like a phase change above some fraction of learned information which makes the rest fall into place just after some threshold.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Kaijo 4y ago

I get this. With anything from the core classical repertoire, the obvious major composers, to a good listener, you almost already know the piece before you learn it. With jazz standards too, but there is much more flexibility required in actually rendering them. Part of the article seems to be confirming a neurobiological basis for something quite common-sensical to me. From how you describe your issue I suspect there are things from the more recent classical repertoire that would stump you beyond the level of Bill Evans transcriptions. Bill Evans is still at least in a relatively "accessible/listenable" harmonic idiom. Have you tried reading through any atonal/serial works of the Second Viennese School? Or 20th century classical composers like Ligeti, Elliott Carter, or contemporary pieces like Unsuk Chin's piano etudes, or Birtwistle's "Clocks"? I'm a good sight reader too but that's where I really hit a wall. This is music that provokes a strong negative reaction in many people. In the language of the article, their sensory expectations are defied. I think to really love this music (as I really do), you will have had to grapple with and deeply internalize things about compositional structure, so that what is a theme, a countersubject, a commentary, a development, an ornamentation, a point of rhythmic or textural elaboration, etc. are all still readily evident to the ear, and thus satisfy the ear, even if it's all occuring in an alien harmonic context.

Agingcoder 4y ago
Thanks a lot for the suggestions, I'll definitely listen to them /try to play them. I'm fine with 'difficult' music, and I agree with you that Bill Evans is accessible/listenable - what bothers me I think is that I can't predict the actual notes (quartal, 11th, etc everywhere). Edit: I really like ligeti.
- Kaijo 4y ago
  Hope it leads to somewhere interesting for you! Unsuk Chin is in the school of Ligeti, perhaps try this magical little thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP31oUljA_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP31oUljA_g Yeah jazz is definitely it's own language, not just an extension of classical harmony as some would have it. Classical provides a model that makes jazz highly unlikely. I'm still figuring out what I can say in words about the difference. Something about freedom vs. structure in relation to the scope of expression. But you have to get used to hearing those non-triad notes as fundamental, not just as "passing", and a feeling for what idiomatic progressions are implicated by that.

chaps 4y ago

I'm a drummer with loads of improv, including a fair amount of jazz. What's interesting is that over time what's sounded like (mostly) random noise with no pattern has progressively turned into sensicle flows from moment to moment -- it's definitely a predictive process (both brain-wize and nervous system!). It's manifested in surprising ways, like having a forward predictive understanding of which hand should be where depending what I want to play. Shifting between large shifts during improv can be mentally taxing, very much the same feeling of trying to remember the name of something or someone. But just like with names, once you get that first mental hint (like a vowel), predicting what comes next just falls into place.

SuoDuanDao 4y ago
I'd love to get your feedback on a project I've been working on to 'sonify' DNA sequences. When played fairly quickly it sounds a lot like jazz to me, but I don't have a high musical intelligence so I'm not confident in how apt that description is. If you feel like having a listen to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSG9006YAeA&t=34s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSG9006YAeA&t=34s And sharing your opinion on whether it bears similarities to the 'logic' of jazz, that would be very interesting to me!
- odyssey7 4y ago
  Interesting project - you might be intrigued by algorithmic music composition. The link you shared sounds atonal to me. So, you could be thinking about free jazz. Here's a YouTube video that discusses it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WhXtkMyPHU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WhXtkMyPHU
  - suoduandao2 4y ago
    Thanks! I'll check that out and see if it gives any insights.
- akomtu 4y ago
  A few ideas. DNA uses 20 codons, that could be 20 chords on piano. A sliding window of N codons can count the distinct codons and use that count as a pitch for the codon's chord.

afry1 4y ago

The 2:00 timestamp in this Veritassium video on expertise goes into exactly that phenomenon. We acquire expertise by recognizing the patterns in what we do. But once you take the patterns away, a lot of that "expertise" disappears too: https://youtu.be/5eW6Eagr9XA https://youtu.be/5eW6Eagr9XA Jazz piano vs classical is a perfect example of this: same instrument, two paradigms with totally different idioms.

hyperthesis 4y ago

Jazz is deliberately anti-conformist: knowing what's expected to come next and not doing that. This requires a setup of expectations, in order to dash them.