[Dixielandjazz] Playing without practicing

[Kent Murdick]

I've known people who almost get away with this (note the word almost).  
The sax player with the New Orleans Jazz Vipers bought a sax about 20 
years and wandered into the streets and started playing with people - 
badly at first and then better and better.  But I'm sure that he worked 
a little bit at home and probably does a lot of prepartation now days.

If you have perfect pitch or very good relative pitch and a lot of 
talent, I don't see why you couldn't play reasonably well almost 
immediately without much practice on, say, an alto sax .  That octave 
and half  on the alto (d' to a'') is pretty easy to get.. I was playing 
"Fly Me To the Moon" on the second day  I picked up a sax.