[Dixielandjazz] Jazz non reader/composers

Thu Feb 21 22:38:13 PST 2008

I am sure you could draw a graph with two lines on it.  One would be the 
ability to memorize and reproduce sounds heard.  The line would start at 
Zero and go off into infinity (Mozart)  The other line would be music 
reading ability that again would start at zero and  go to exact reproduction 
of the printed page (computer).  I am sure the lines for most musicians 
would head in opposite directions and not parallel each other and I'm pretty 
sure that if a person scored high in reading the memorization quotient 
would be low to in many cases non existent and the opposite would occur for 
the person who could flash memorize.

I know that many of you know people that can do both exceptionally well and 
so do I but they are rare and are almost never in with the general run of 
the mill musicians.  Many musicians hug the printed page like a life jacket 
and jazzers tend to use their ears.  I think that it's more than just a 
matter of training or lack of it but something that goes deeper like left, 
right brain thinking or something like that.

Personally I have always had to fight to be a fair reader and I have to 
practice at it or I lose it and I'm not 100% accurate on the other hand 
playing is a lot like whistling to me.  When I was in school as a kid even 
though I was looking at the music I was actually memorizing it and when I 
saw the same lick in the next tune there wasn't a lot of transfer until I 
had played it a few times and re memorized it.  That still happens today 
when the spots get complicated.  While other guys are playing through a tune 
(and sounding) like little machines I'm having glitches.  It has always 
taken me at least one time through a tune to get it so I don't like reading 
new books and prefer to rehearse a book first.

When I look at a line of music it says something different to me and I go 
into interpretation mode which makes me a really rotten lead alto man in the 
big band. On the other hand Lead tenor is a different animal.  Those two 
books require a different set of skills.

This is why I really believe that there is some fundamental difference 
between people who are basically readers and those who either flash memorize 
or interpret music in their own way.  By the way that can also be divided 
too.  Working at the School for the Blind here in Missouri I had kids that 
could memorize music on first hearing but had very little ability to then 
change it into something else.  They were like tape recorders playing back. 
Typically they were savant type kids that in some cases had amazing 
abilities to memorize.  I had a kid once that had memorized Robinson Crusoe 
completely without error.  He could recite page, paragraph and line but he 
couldn't tell you what it was about.  I had another one that was nuts over 
Herb Alpert music.  He could play all the tunes exactly like the records but 
couldn't play much else and had zero concept about what notes he was playing 
and couldn't remember the notes and fingerings in a simple C scale.  He 
could play it but there was no transfer between the knowledge of music and 
what it is and the sound that he could reproduce.

Personally I would have liked to be a killer reader but if it reduced my 
ability to interpret or memorize I wouldn't like that.  I am happy that I 
can do as well as I do.  Again I know people who can do both very well and I 
admire that but I think there is a difference in the way people process the 
different skills.
Larry
StL
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "ROBERT R. CALDER" <serapion at btinternet.com>
To: "Larry Walton" <larrys.bands at charter.net>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2008 8:42 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Jazz non reader/composers

> Bechet might well have had the sort of memory reported of Mary Lou 
> Williams, able to reproduce quite a lot without notated notes. Donald 
> Lambert the magnificent stride pianist is also reported a non-reader, 
> possibly in fact dyslexic. He did manage quite a lot of the notes of the 
> opening of the Moonlight Sonata no bother.
> Jay McShann was a superlative pianist wrongly taken by some to be mainly a 
> blues and boogie pianist. I remember him delivering an impassioned version 
> of (ach, I forget the name of the Strayhorn number) and he escaped having 
> to learn to read music until it was forced on him.  He got a very long way 
> with faking, and probably thought it was great fun.
> Errol Garner is of course famous as a non-reader, something even more 
> astonishing if you hear those solo and trio performances privately 
> recorded in 1944. He composed a lot, played amazing stride piano and 
> things resembling Ravel (bit his own). By the time he was into the 
> accepted Garner style and on contract with Columbia they hired Nat Pierce 
> to teach him new repertoire. Garner said that he composed by fingering in 
> the air, and that while circling New York in a fog on an airliner he 
> worked out Misty. Since his hands were going, a stewardess started 
> thinking he was having a fit.  The story was certainly taped by BBC Radio.
> Don't underestimate the capacities of memory whether in picking up new 
> material or retaining vast repertoire. I will grant you that Toscanini 
> read music, but when he was getting very old he did cancel the revival of 
> an obscure opera (Meyerbeer or the like) which he hadn't conducted in 
> years, simply because he had forgotten the libretto. The words. If you 
> step outwith a certain range of jazz experience, you'll find all manner of 
> thoroughly documented achievements of listening and mentally recording, 
> and massive memory,  representing abilities  it's not hard to imagine 
> jazzmen possessing.
> Django Reinhardt very possibly composed for someone writing things down. 
> One of the interesting things about the 3CD set of Bechet's Columbia 
> recordings issued by Mosaic is Bob Wilber's note reminiscing about the 
> season of gigs during which Lloyd Phillips (a pianist of vast repertoire) 
> played a game of trying to catch Bechet out with numbers he didn't know. 
> 'Song of Songs' turned out to have been one of Bechet's features touring 
> before 1920. Of course John Chilton did follow up his biography of Bechet 
> by researching Bechet 'compositions'.  A lot of them were tunes Bechet had 
> heard in New Orleans and rather remembered than composed. Maybe Bechet 
> forgot the filing system in his memory, and didn't know the difference. 
> Composing without writing down isn't a difficult musicological  issue.
>
>
>
>
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