[Dixielandjazz] Improvise redux

[Charlie Hooks]

on 6/25/03 10:45 PM, Dan Augustine at ds.augustine at mail.utexas.edu wrote:

 I'm starting to think that i ought to just play along with
the main melody of every song i can play on my CD-player (almost said
turntable, irreparably dating myself), just for practice in playing
melodies.

   A good enough idea, but why do you need to hear somebody else playing the
tune along with you?  Don't you know the tune?  Can you sing it or at least
hum it out loud?  Sure, just practice playing the melody until you can do
that with no trouble.  Then you can start fooling around with the melody if
you hear a line in your head that you think would sound nice.

   I don't understand Miles' advice at all; but then I don't understand
Miles himself.  Me, I can play anything I can hear--provided I really do
hear it cleanly, not just sort of hearing AT it.  But all this is a complex
business, and my hearing a sequence of notes seems to depend greatly on the
feeling in my mind at the time--happy, boisterous, sad, combinations of
moods that the music "says" out loud to other people.   Talking this way,
though, is trying to describe linearly a process that's anything but linear.
The music itself works back on my feelings and all gets tangled--hopefully
in a musical way.  Other times, I'm just playing cliches, musically
worthless stuff that bores me even more than the audience, like a guy who's
paid to keep talking even though he's got nothing to say.  We all have
nights like that, and we all hate 'em.

   True, the tuba is not really a solo instrument, but it sure can be made
into one by a player who knows what he's about.  I think that if you can get
comfortable playing the melody, you can come to be comfortable playing
around the melody, inventing your own melody.  When you learn to "know your
horn" well enough to play anything you can hear, it is wonderfully freeing.
On a good night you can really surprise yourself at what comes out of that
horn. 

good luck,
Charlie