[Dixielandjazz] Beginner sit-ins

Mon Jul 9 09:02:51 PDT 2007

I would agree with the Practice x3 and does give you the basic skills you 
need but sitting in a practice room will never teach you how to play off of 
another person or to pick up ideas as they flow during a tune.

There is another factor that playing with a band can provide and that's the 
stress factor.  That is you get to do it once not a dozen times and it's 
live and flowing.  No re-runs no "practicing"  Also it's playing in front of 
people to say nothing of in front of other musicians.  There are many good 
musicians out there who just can't stand up there and let it all hang out.

Practice gives you the tools but standing up in front of a crowd and with 
other musicians that are hopefully better than you gives you something that 
you just can't get playing in a practice room.  However having said that the 
new materials for practice such as the Jamey Abersold and computerized 
practice aids are a great thing to use and are much better than I had.

It's my observation that musicians are overly kind to the newbie.  We had a 
young girl of about 15 who was a pretty good player come to a series of 
rehearsals.  While she had technical chops she had very little ability to 
swing.  It became somewhat painful after awhile.  I was the one being nice 
and letting her sit in as a favor to her dad but finally one of the other 
musicians came to me and said she just doesn't get it and asked me to not 
invite her back.  I had to agree with him so I didn't have her back.  I'm 
sure that it upset her dad who is a competent musician himself and is 
pushing his daughter to excel in jazz and other ways.  Sticky, sticky, 
sticky.

Treating new players overly nice is a reversal of what seemed to be the norm 
50 years ago.  It's probably our insane drive to be politically correct.  No 
one fails, everyone excels and to prove it we give them a trophy for showing 
up.  Many musicians, at that time, had no such restraint and some were 
pretty vicious but almost all were not very encouraging to the new person.

I don't think it's helpful to bring a new person on the stand and then not 
have an honest face to face later.  Being vicious or nice is counter 
productive.  A few words of encouragement and guidance would be worth a lot. 
This is where jazz camps would be much more valuable to the beginner where 
the person would get a chance to play in a group with constructive 
instruction.

This last year the Julliard Jazz group came to my school and had a playing 
seminar and got the kids up doing things.  It was a great hit and everyone 
including myself went away with a lot of good feelings.  It was more than 
just good feelings, the kids who participated got some valuable tips and 
pointers.  I think they went away from it feeling that I can do that too.
Larry
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert S. Ringwald" <robert at ringwald.com>
To: "Larry Walton" <larrys.bands at charter.net>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Monday, July 09, 2007 2:48 AM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Beginner sit-ins

> Been looking for the e-mail and finally found it.
>
> Under the subject line of "
> " Steve Barbone's entire last paragraph (Not snipped, not taken out of 
> context)
> reads"
>
> """""
> Bottom line? The only way to become a competent jazz musician is to 
> perform
> live with a professional band and ANY young person who wants to explore 
> that
> avenue should get the chance as I see it.
> """""
>
> What ever happened to "practice, practice, practice?"
>
> Steve, are you sure that:
>
> "The only way to become a competent jazz musician is to perform live with 
> a
> professional band...?"
>
> Perhaps you meant
>
> "Getting a chance to perform live with professional musicians is a big 
> help to young musicians on their way to becoming competent professionals 
> themselves.  However, there is no substitute for Practice, practice, 
> practice."?
>
> --Bob Ringwald K6YBV
> 916/806-9551
> www.ringwald.com
> --
> Leader, The Fulton Street Jazz Band
> www.fultonstreetjazz.com
> --
> The Boondockers (jazz and Comedy)
> www.theboondockers.com
>
> "The bottom line of any country is, what did we contribute to the world?
> We contributed Louis Armstrong." Tony Bennett  -- 
>
>
>
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