Re: Joe Pass as teacher

One thing I don't buy into in any form is the old saying that "Those that can Do, and those that can't teach."
I am a teacher by trade ( but not music but theology) and I really take offense when someone says this, Ted Greene was primarily committed to teaching and he could play................


--
Mark Cleary makes music on the finest Jazz guitars.
http://members.cox.net/ruthster/hollenbeck/


"Paul" <paul@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:C2949B60.46B18%paul@xxxxxxxxxxx
Fran

A nice essay, with lots of things to think about, like Clay's post. I'll
take you on a bit, since I don't see things quite the way you do.

I'm also someone who teaches from elementary college level to postgraduate
level, and my conclusions about education are quite different from yours,
*at least as applies to students whose goal is to go very deeply into a
substantial area*. For students with talent willing to work hard, I believe
"the better you can do it, the better you can teach it." I know this is
contrary to conventional wisdom, but you don't send the most talented math
students to a small liberal arts college (known for its committed and
inspired teachers, but not necessarily for their research skills), you send
them to Harvard/Princeton/Oxford/Cambridge, where they learn from the
absolute masters of the discipline. Why? Because those with the greatest
talent/skill/knowledge see the subject much more broadly and deeply, can
assess their students strengths/weaknesses much more accurately and quickly,
are in touch with the important developments, can help them avoid subtle
pitfalls that may escape the attention of those of lesser talent, etc.

So from my perspective Joe Pass' "failings" as a teacher are really only the
failure of his students. In any case, someone of his stature has no
obligation to try to reach students not of the appropriate level of
commitment/talent. When I heard that pat metheny lesson that's floated
around the internets my thought was "why is that guy taking lessons from
Metheny, it's a waste of both of their time: he cant appreciate 90% of what
Metheny is telling him, and metheny knows it". (I suppose if Joe P or Pat M
need the cash, I can see them teaching any student. Too bad guys like that
aren't offered tenure and salaries at universities like many accomplished
Classical musicians are)


Now there are guys who make a serious attempt to bring their craft to "the
masses". I think Jimmy B's approach is an example. But if you are like me,
you've taught a lot of earnest students with an interest but insufficient
commitment or talent, and you begin to realize over time that the results of
devising and trying out new pedagogical approaches, etc, typically end up
being a lot of work with at best marginally better results, if at all. Here
in the US every university has education faculty whose research is
dedicated to coming up with new "paradigms" for teaching, and much wheel
spinning is done, but students in the US are hardly getting better
educations (have you heard about the creationism museum that opened last
week 100 miles from here?).

Its great that JB is willing to put this much effort into it, but I'm
guessing that he gets at most one or two students every year who actually
become good players, and for those students his teaching approach is
different: tailored to the student and drawing on the more substantial parts
of his expertise.


On your other point: on learning on the bandstand (or more properly with
other musicians) You don't learn to interact in the practice room. Laying
down lines over a harmonic or rhythmic background is only a very small part
of playing jazz, and what makes jazz art most typically has to do with how
the musicians relate. You say you are uninterested in the technical aspects
patterns/scales, etc and want to make 'art". But in fact art is what is made
on the bandstand, and practice time is mostly for developing and keeping up
technical skills. (unless maybe your thing happens to be playing solo
guitar). So if you feel constrained, its likely to be *because* you don't
play out enough. This also goes to my opinion stated upstream that a teacher
isn;t that necessary: there are now millions of instruction books that give
you information you can practice with. Neither the books nor lessons will
give you playing time.

Finally, and I'm out of my depth here, but your last paragraph about what
kind of musician you want to be, to transcend the guitar, etc, In my view,
if a teacher has any role to play in this it will definitely not come from a
"teacher who can teach", but an "artist who has done it" and whose vision of
art is one you agree with. It is true that there are good players known for
their commitment to education (in addition to JB, other names include
Liebman, Crook, barry harris, bergonzi, etc) but I question whether the hard
work they do has had an impact on the number of good players.

Art is mysterious (to me), and what makes a great artist is hard to pin
down. I doubt many jazz musicians tell themselves at some point: "hey
I've just transcended my instrument and technique and I'm now making art" it
just happens that as they grow more and more people respond to what they are
doing and consider them to be artists, not the other way around. Your
"16th/32nds" comment is a case in point. You might be implying you don't
dig Martino, (for example, I'm not saying this was what you intended), whose
playing has a large component of rapid 16ths, so for you perhaps Martino's
vision of the art doesn't jive with yours. In my experience, when I've
heard good jazz musicians answer "what do you practice", more often than not
the asnwer is some technical classical exercises (especially from horn
players) and so it seems like after a certain point *playing* (i.e. The
bandstand) is where the art is furthered.

But I could be full of ***. I listened to the recording of my trio gig from
last night today and it was painful. Not much art there....

Paul K




On 6/12/07 4:42 PM, in article 466f0522_2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
"Fran" <fplannie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Clay,

I'll take this one on. I haven't really contributed here for a long time
because I feel the group has become more about gear reviews etc. There's
nothing wrong with this because things evolve over time, it's just that
my interests lie elsewhere, but I still drop in to lurk every now and
then. Anyway, you've touched on an area that I have been thinking about
for quite some time now. My views are based on my experiences as someone
who works in education, but not music education, and who has taught from
elementary college level up to postgraduate level.

First off, I am a great believer in the adage "just because you can do
it doesn't mean you can teach it". Why so? If we look at the guitar
context, being a great player is about assimilating a great deal of
knowledge and developing a technical facility. Teaching is about
communicating the process of how you achieved that to someone else in
terms that they can understand. That is a completely different skillset.
I think tuition videos are much like undertaking a university education.
Here in the UK studying at university used to be referred to as 'reading
for a degree'. You attended lectures which introduced topics, suggested
arguments and theories, and then it was your responsibility as a student
to go and undertake further reading and to come up with your own
researched views which you could argue in a convincing manner. If I
watch a tuition video then I am looking to pick up some pointers,
alternative approaches etc, I am not looking for an ABC guide to...
Tuition videos are therefore more akin to seminars. Personally, I would
refer to people who interact with students in this manner as more like
facilitators, coaches or facilitators. They are certainly helping the
individual to develop, certainly transferring knowledge and experience
but not necessarily teaching in the traditional sense.

Why not the traditional sense? Well, teaching involves a lot more than
just knowledge/skill transfer. It is about establishing the student's
goals, planning out how this is going to be achieved, delivering the
material in a way that is effective for the student - and this is a
category that I think is often neglected in guitar tuition, in my
experience. Over the years of reading rmmgj (since about '98) I have
read various views such as you can only learn this stuff by playing, I
note that you feel the skill can only be honed by years of practice and
time on the bandstand. I agree with the former, practice is the only way
to acquire a degree of competence with any skill, but I am not sure why
time on the bandstand is essential? I'd be interested to hear why you
think the bandstand setting is so essential. To me the only effect a
setting has is if it enables/prevents you from achieving the required
level of concentration to enable you to develop. It can help you to
develop confidence playing for an audience to therefore enable you to
perform to the best of your ability but the presence of an audience has
no bearing per se on your skill development. At least not in my house
where the audience just wants me to stop... NOW!! :-)

I am very interested to hear opinions on how people get on with JBs
Guitar Institute, only because I don't think it would work for me.
Before I continue, this is not a critique of JB or his material given
that I haven't subscribed for the reason just stated. At essence, the
approach is an electronic substitute for a traditional book. BUT, and
it's a big 'but', where this idea has been taken further is that people
can submit videos to receive feedback, actual individual feedback, which
can only be of benefit. I also believe there are discussion forums which
give people the opportunity to ask questions... presumably of JB.
Nevertheless, I assume that there is only one version of each lesson.
This is where I think the online approach, in any context is limited. I
notice that JB says that "This method is all you need". I am sure that
this will work for some people, equally, I am sure that there are others
that it won't work for. But, work for what? What are the individuals'
goals? If your goals are to develop a solid technique regarding physical
playing of the instrument, and the ability to read music and therefore
play any jazz standard from *** music you may not be successful, but,
if you want to be able to draw on Jimmy's experience to improve
improvisation skills then I think you're chances of success are much
higher, but again, I would suggest these are more dependent on the
support aspects available eg opportunities for individual feedback,
facility to ask questions directly, because I am sure Jimmy's initial
lessons and materials are of a high standard.

As I said at the beginning, these thoughts are informed by my experience
teaching and also a lot of issues regarding my own aspirations as a
guitarist. I have always struggled with the aspect of learning
particular patterns/scales for particular chords. I find it very
constraining. I also find it a very uninspiring and unimaginative
approach to playing music and jazz. It suddenly occurred to me to state
that I am now talking generically, I am not now discussing JB's Gtr
Inst. If people always took this approach then music would never develop
or evolve. I think that people should learn scales, arpeggios etc and
then practice them sufficiently so that they can develop an aural memory
if you like. When I improvise I often find myself thinking that I'd like
to play a particular sound at this moment, but I do not know how to play
it. I would like to develop the facility whereby I can almost instantly
play a pattern/chord associated with a sound I hear in my head. In this
way, I think it is more likely that improvisation will sound more
natural rather than like a succession of scales/arps. It's also because
I find the 'endless stream of 16th/32nd notes' approach, the machine gun
approach if you will, to be unbelievably dull. This is not an olympic event.

I think this is where the real value of a teacher is realised. A teacher
will be able to suggest different ways to understand the material,
alternatives for remembering the material, for developing playing skills
that utilise them, for suggesting appropriate material to aid
development. Just because somebody reads and remembers an article/lesson
about what scales/arps are appropriate to play over 'Giant Steps' does
not mean they should try and play it unless they possess the underlying
knowledge to support this. There's no reason why they shouldn't try and
play it as a technical exercise, but from a developmental point of view
there is a lot to be said for not walking before you can run. This is
where the process of setting objectives/goals is particularly valuable.
A good teacher will help to set goals that are challenging but
achievable, that will stretch the student but not leave them frustrated
and disillusioned. Furthermore, these goals/objectives will differ for
every student.

Whew!...

What can I say, there is a lot more to teaching than just knowing how to
play. At the end of the day, the individual has to decide what it is
they want to achieve. I have recently started to try and define exactly
this for myself and have come to the following conclusions - I want to
be a musician, not a guitarist. I'm not saying guitarists are not
musicians, but a complete musician to me has arranging skills, sound
knowledge of theory as it relates to all music (not just guitar),
reading skills, improv skills etc. Up until now I think I have been more
of a guitarist than a musician. To achieve this I think I need a
teacher. Not a jazz guitar teacher, or even a non-denominational one,
but a teacher who can give a sound grounding in theory and harmony. My
job will be to implement this on the guitar. I have enough technical
facility having played for 20 years (oh god... has it been that long?),
but lack the real musical substance.

Anyway, not sure if this is what you anticipated when you asked for a
'spirited rant'. It's not a rant at all, just some things I have been
thinking about lately that seemed relevant to your post. I'm glad I
checked in today. I'd be very interested in the views of others about
this. What's a shame is that I have noticed that a lot of the names that
I remember having views in issues like this don't seem to post here anymore.

cheers,

fpl



clay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hi all,

I wrote about this on the "finding a taecher" (sic) thread and have
written about it in the past, but thought it was worthy of its own
post. Whenever the topic of teaching comes up inevitably someone will
bring up the idea that some great players can't teach, and inevitably
Joe Pass will be mentioned in that context. I thought it might be
helpful to share my take.

I think Joe gets a bad rap as a teacher because of the vids he did
many years ago, but IMO this has more to do with the production of the
videos than Joe as teacher. I've seen a few vids from that company
over the years and they seemed to just stick someone in front of a
camera and ask them to teach. Improvising a lesson to a crowd is hard
enough, but with a camera it can be quite daunting. When I did my
instructional vid @ 1990 I watched every music instructional vid I
could get my hands on, took notes, figured out what was working and
what wasn't, and carefully charted my own course. I was ready, and it
was still intimidating. A guy over at Amazon panned it, saying I was
dull and monotonous - something to that effect - and truth be known I
had had no sleep the night before (I played an out-of-town gig and
didn't get in until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, then spent some time
polishing up my presentation). But I did have a plan and the material
was organized - not so with some other players' - like Joe's. Does
that make him a bad teacher? Hardly.

The difference is that when someone is in a one-on-one situation their
teaching is going to be a lot different than the frozen-in-time world
of video. In the seminar Joe got guys up to play with him and he
critiqued us one at a time. In the context he explained a lot of
things about playing jazz that were just as important (if not more so)
than music theory examples. A couple of people didn't like that, but
the fact was they weren't listening to what he had to offer; they came
in with pre-conceived notions of how he was "supposed" to teach. And
those guys didn't get up to play with him. Hmm.....

So that's a big part of what anyone who is considering taking lessons
with a supposedly "great player, bad teacher" should consider. This is
a performance art. Observing a great artist up close has all kinds of
benefits that won't be obvious if you're on the sidelines expecting
everything to be explained to you. Unless the player/teacher is a mean
jerk I don't see a problem. Watch, listen, take your own notes. Ask
them to play something over again, slowly. If you have trouble with
that you're going to have trouble playing with other players until you
develop it. Every skill can be improved, and observation is critical.

I know someone is going to say "yeah, but even a less competent player
who can explain things will be a better teacher." Not necessarily.
Jazz performance skill is only honed over years of practice and time
on the bandstand. Sorry, but it's true. I've known a lot of pro "jazz"
teachers who I would not recommend for a gig to my peers. Why would I
recommend them to students? They don't know what's needed to play a
gig, so what can they tell a student who might actually want to gig?
Practice these scales? Lots of jazz books can do that.

I'd like to hear some spirited ranting now!

Clay Moore
http://www.claymoore.com



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