Kinesthetic training

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by hdiddy

Is anybody out there incorporating proprioceptive or kinesthetic training into your teaching methods? Example, playing in thumb position can also benefit by reference to the neck heel. We've all heard of Eb and D necks - so why not use this fact as part of a learning technique? One that that focuses more on training muscle memory and establishing the proprioceptive feel of where the thumb is in relation to the crook of the neck.

The closest thing I've ever seen or heard of some concept that employs this is the Vomit Exercises with arco. But I feel that most teacher approach this as "Hey here's an exercise, just do it". I feel like it mostly focuses on "drill and kill" and not neccessarily developing a kinesthetic or proprioceptive sense for notes on the fingerboard. Comments?

Originally Posted by hillbilly translations for DURRL

proprioceptive |ˌprōprēəˈseptiv|
adjective Physiology
relating to stimuli that are produced and perceived within an organism, esp. those connected with the position and movement of the body.

kinesthesia |ˌkinəsˈθē zh ə| ( Brit. kinaesthesia)
noun
awareness of the position and movement of the parts of the body by means of sensory organs (proprioceptors) in the muscles and joints.
DERIVATIVES
kinesthetic |-ˈθetik| adjective

I do something along these lines when studying pieces that require large "leaps of faith" to high notes - in my case, mostly involving the cello suites, which are a part of my regular practice regimen. Part of the issue with coming up with a methodology for this kind of thing is the fact that all basses and bodies are different, requiring these solutions to be more body/bass specific and therefore also esoteric and personal. My hyper awareness of the implied issues involved in this subject is largely what led me to have a copy of my main bass made to keep in my office for teaching purposes so i wouldn't have to adjust as much.

I may draw ire from other teachers who feel differently than I do about the subject, but this issue is also a large part of why I choose to play seated and with my eyes closed. Given the cello-ish seated position I use (but with my right knee in the bass bout), once the bass is seated properly on my body - touching both legs, my solar plexus, and of course both hands - I find it much easier to kinesthetically know where the notes are without too much searching as long as I'm in practice and my chops are up. When I stand, there are simply too many variables involved for me to zero in with any kind of the same degree of accuracy. I do see something of this sort going on with many of the players I see using the angled endpin, which seems to produce a similar playing angle to sitting in a way I can't quite put in words.

[Violen]

Would you give another example of how you teach this to your students? I'm really interested to hear more!

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Sure, I'll try. I assume that you're speaking more about the "leap of faith" notes rather than the seated stuff, which is harder to explain.

In the left hand, I think of "closed" and "open" positions of the hand as regards the relationship between the thumb on the back on the neck and the index finger on the front. On my bass,when my thumb is laid across the heel, "Closed" position leaves me with an Eb on the G String, a Bb on the D string, F on the A string, etc. When I add the next two ascending half steps to the index finger (use 2-4 or 2-3, whichever suits your hand best), I then have a physical reference to Eb-E-F (G), Bb-B-C (D), F-F#-G (A) etc. I think of shifting the index finger upward a half step as "open" position with the thumb in the same reference position, which gives me the notes E-F-F# (G), B-C-C# (D), F#-G-G# (A) etc. All of this comes from the same reference position of the thumb laying across the heel in a particular way (with my physiology from my playing position on my bass ). Each player will have to discover their own way of "bookmarking" this position or one similar to it, but i believe everyone can do this.

(I define "closed position" in my own terms, meaning what my hand naturally wants to do when I grip a glass or a baseball-sized round object; in my case, the thumb doesn't close directly opposed to the index finger, but rather - if I were to make a fist but keep my thumb extended - one digit aside from or on top of it.*)

*hope that made some kind of sense over the internet; a simple picture would illustrate this better than a thousand words. Try grabbing your right wrist with your left hand, and hopefully the description will make sense if your hands are shaped anything like mine.

From here, I also access one more position that I call "parallel" position, in which the index finger is directly opposed to the thumb, or if you prefer, a half step shift down from "closed" position", which gives me the D on the G string an octave higher than the open D.

Last, if I lay the inside of my forearm directly along the heel of the neck and curve my thumb around it, my 4th finger will lie directly on an Eb, which gives me the D below in the middle finger and the C# under the index finger. In this way, there are physical "kinesthetic" markers for every note in the perfect fourth between the C# and F# on the G string, and the same corresponding (transposed, of course) fourth on the lower strings. This area was very much a "dark zone" for me when I first started playing, as it represents everything out of the basic first positions that we as bassists learn between the open string and the octave harmonic.

A couple of caveats aside from "every bass and body is different": one, these markers are for finding the initial pitch only, and can be practiced as such; they give you a better chance of nailing the particular pitch, but also get you somewhat out of playing position, so I like to think of them as positions to go through in order to find a pitch cold, and often before the pitch has even been sounded my hand will already have switched back to the regular more conventional hand position so that the adjacent pitches can be more easily played. Second, while using/practicing this kind of marker for hitting specific pitches is a great way to shed some light on a "dark patch" of the board, there is no substitution for hearing the note you're tying to play in tune before you actually play it. I find that the better I am able to do this, the better my body always is at finding the pitch quickly, even when I don't understand quite how it did it... think of your signature quote from Sturm, only in reverse: "The correct motion is evidence of internal intonation".

[Violen]

How do you deal with thumb position leaps? Are these just Practice?

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Thumb position leaps I deal with by shaping the hand to a comfortable interval away from the thumb, keeping the shape of the hand in most cases, then shifting the thumb up by the interval between the upper note in the original shape and the note I'm going for. Does that makes sense? It's easier to show physically than in words.

[arnoldschnitzer]

Chris, I'm really happy to see this subject addressed. I've been into proprioception since I was first introduced to the concept by an early bass teacher of mine. He made us practice in the dark, and urged us to try and "see" with our fingertips. It was transformational for me as a player.

I wanted to add this tidbit: The reason bowed string instrument necks taper in thickness is because the distance between thumb and playing fingers provides feedback to the player, telling him where he is on the neck. Ever wonder why on certain basses, all the notes feel like they are in the right place? This is largely due to the neck being properly tapered, with no bumps, dips, or ramps. Occasionally I encounter the handiwork of someone who thought it would be a good idea to carve the entire neck to the same thickness. A neck like that is very hard to play in tune. There are differences in neck thickness and taper from bass to bass, and that is one of the main reasons it takes some playing time to get used to a different instrument.

Of course the neck heel, body style and string length are also involved, but in the "bread and butter" positions of the neck, the taper, and the smoothness of the taper are crucial to feeling comfortable playing that bass.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Very interesting stuff, Arnold - I've always wondered about the taper and cut of the neck. Some just feel "right" and others don't, although it might be better to say that some feel like what I'm most used to and others don't.

One more bit relating to proprioception that often gets treated with skepticism is the relation between the vibrating body of the back/sides of the bass where it touches the body and intonation. I feel that from the position I sit, a resonant roundback bass transmits pitch information to the places I'm touching it (both legs and solar plexus) that, while obviously not being as useful as the sense of actually hearing, is extremely useful to me centering pitch when I play. I can't prove this, but my feeling is that if could make myself temporarily deaf, I could still find the center of pitch by the feeling of the vibrations through the bass.

This is certainly easy to do with a double stop, as every interval has a "sweet spot" that is felt as much as heard. But since there's a luthier in the thread, I have to wonder out loud if each bass itself might not also have fixed resonating points against which every note is felt in some way? I know it sounds kind of flakey, but I feel like when getting or playing a new instrument, there's a period of "personal calibration" where I'm getting used to what the notes feel like through the fingers and body as compared to what my ears are telling me. Certainly when I'm playing with a pianist (a real one, as I get no vibrational information from keyboards that I can use) I can tell when a note I'm playing feels "clean" (in tune) or "dirty" (out of tune) in relation to the piano through the body; other times when there's a loud passage and a drummer involved, I feel that I rely more on the tactile feeling of intonation that the aural sense when the drums blot out the pitch information from the other instruments, but especially from the piano if there is one. In other words, intonation becomes more of a feeling through the bass than a sound through the ears at these times.

I know that I use the vibrational aspect of the open strings to tune them to each other, and if it were possible I feel I could tune the other three strings to the one I aligned with an external source by tactile vibration alone; in fact, this is basically the way I tune by instinct. My questions for Arnold:

1) I don't get this same vibrational energy from flatback basses. I bought one once out of expediency, and while it was a great sounding bass, the vibration/tactile aspect was completely out of whack for me, so I sold it and bought a roundback (again, another one of your designs) in its place. Immediately, the vibrations felt like home again on the new bass. Could this phenomenon be due to the bracing on the back of the flatback? The physical information from the edges of the back plate and the back itself felt completely skewed even when the sound was true and strong.

2) What about the notion of the body of bass itself having fixed resonating points against which all single notes are "felt" when playing? I do not have perfect pitch, and yet, on my main bass (your very first LaScala hybrid), I imagine that I can feel when a note is in tune even when I don't have an external source to check it against. Might I actually be referencing each note against an implied resonance of the bass body itself?

[Marc Piane]

This thread has been a really interesting read. Thanks for starting it DURRLL. It has put into words some stuff I've been thinking about. All well put.

I've been trying to pay closer attention to the tactile and resonance 'feel' of the note as I have been trying to do more gigs without an amp or just mic to FOH. I dislike monitors so when a drummer is really at the peak of dynamics I really have to rely more on cues other than just hearing the pitch of the note. I really like the end result of everyone having to pay closer attention to dynamics and listen harder. It is just a different challenge.

[arnoldschnitzer]

Originally Posted by Chris Fitzgerald

1) I don't get this same vibrational energy from flatback basses. I bought one once out of expediency, and while it was a great sounding bass, the vibration/tactile aspect was completely out of whack for me, so I sold it and bought a roundback (again, another one of your designs) in its place. Immediately, the vibrations felt like home again on the new bass. Could this phenomenon be due to the bracing on the back of the flatback? The physical information from the edges of the back plate and the back itself felt completely skewed even when the sound was true and strong.

2) What about the notion of the body of bass itself having fixed resonating points against which all single notes are "felt" when playing? I do not have perfect pitch, and yet, on my main bass (your very first LaScala hybrid), I imagine that I can feel when a note is in tune even when I don't have an external source to check it against. Might I actually be referencing each note against an implied resonance of the bass body itself?

Flatbacks definitely vibrate differently than roundbacks. I think of a flat bass' back as a secondary soundboard, and if you play with one in a sitting position with your leg against the back you have changed its resonance considerably.

I think that the phenomenon of "feeling" when a note is in tune is a non-aural feedback mechanism that you have become more aware of than most players. I don't think it has to do with the bass itself. Think of Evelyn Glennie, the incredible deaf percussionist, who plays barefoot and senses vibrations through her body.

I have personally felt this myself to a minor extent while playing in an orchestra section where I could not clearly hear my own instrument's pitch, but could feel when it was out of whack (3 out of 4 notes!).

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by arnoldschnitzer

Flatbacks definitely vibrate differently than roundbacks. I think of a flat bass' back as a secondary soundboard, and if you play with one in a sitting position with your leg against the back you have changed its resonance considerably.

I know what you mean. Part of the cello-style seated position came about as a result of not wanting to touch the back directly, but rather only the edges of the back table (and the button, which leans against the gut). What little I have noticed about bass backs as a player can be reduced to the following:

1) Flatbacks vibrate differently than roundbacks, and I far prefer the latter for personal reasons that have nothing to do with either being "better" than the other.

2) Touching the bass back while playing dampens the sound; further, the closer to the center of the back you touch, the more you dampen; inversely, the closer to the edge you touch, the less you dampen. Last, touching the edge of the back or the sides doesn't seem to produce any negative sonic effects that I am aware of enough to bother me.

I think that the phenomenon of "feeling" when a note is in tune is a non-aural feedback mechanism that you have become more aware of than most players. I don't think it has to do with the bass itself. Think of Evelyn Glennie, the incredible deaf percussionist, who plays barefoot and senses vibrations through her body.

I have personally felt this myself to a minor extent while playing in an orchestra section where I could not clearly hear my own instrument's pitch, but could feel when it was out of whack (3 out of 4 notes!).

I think you're probably right. The only reason I asked was that as a person without perfect pitch, the vibrations should only help me feel intonation through the bass when there is a reference pitch for the notes I'm playing to vibrate against. By the same reasoning, when I'm playing alone and sounding only one note at a time, the same vibrational intonation paradigm shouldn't help me at all... and yet somehow I still feel as though it does.

Last - and some may find this a stretch, but since we're on the subject - I find the vibrational aspect of intonation to feel as though the information is transmitted a few (but still noticable) micro-divisions of time quicker than the aural aspect. I freely admit that I cannot imagine what the scientific basis for this phenomenon would be, and it's entirely possible that this is just imagination or fancy on my part. Still, the feeling persists when I bother to think about it.

[arnoldschnitzer]

Perhaps the vibrations affect the "lizard" brain immediately while sound has to be processed and interpreted by the conscious mind? DRURB, where are you?

[hdiddy]

I put this question in the Pedagogy forum and have been avoiding posting. Since there aren't that many responses, maybe this should be moved to another forum for more discussion?

[Chris Fitzgerald]

You don't need to avoid posting, Huy. The intent of this forum is to have bass teachers weigh in on various subjects, but certainly the person who asked the question can always weigh in. I think we should leave this here, as if we're going to try to make this forum work, it'll have to catch on. Hopefully, we'll get some other replies as well.

[hdiddy]

I guess this may be breaking new ground for most folks. Sometimes I wish I had gone the music teaching route for my professional career so I could explore this more...

Anyways, I starting thinking seriously about the concept of Proprioception when my skiing instructor used the term to help show me new concept. Skiing in a way is similar to music performance - you have to make decisions about how and when you have to turn, and most of the time it works much better if you're not thinking about it and just having an intention of where you want to go. Not to mention that you have very little time, so the decisions need to be made instantly and often times spontaneously - esp with jazz. In telemark skiing, he has a little saying that "if it's uncomfortable, you're doing it right" because anything he offers is usually moving the body in some other weird and unnatural series of movements. Skiing itself is pretty unnatural for the human body, as playing bass is AFAIC. Gains I make in learning new things while skiing, I will eventually try to replicate on bass and translate the same ideas (or at least techniques to learn said ideas).

Yeah, what Arnold is talking about in playing in the dark is starting to scratch the surface of the idea. There's always more to it. There's also the concept of neuroplasticity, where the brain is able to rewire itself at any age and make new synapse connections. There's a good PBS special on that particular topic a while back that basically says that you go senile if you stop rewiring your brain. That's why they keep telling you to read and play puzzles into old age. I think most of the time, I've heard people only use "proprioception" when talking about rehabilitation and teaching of physical movements - like after an injury and people have to re-learn how to walk again with different nerves & muscles.

Here's a relevant article I just found after searching on plasticity and proprioception:
Brain Training to Enhance Motor Skills

However, it is not just our genes that make us who we are; this is also determined by how we or others stimulate and nurture them (7). Therefore good coaching, particularly for sports’ requiring high levels of motor skill acquisition is probably essential if excellence is your goal.

So what I'm supposing here is if there is a way to utilize the bodys sense for learning (proprioception) and sense for memory (plasticity) to learn new techniques. I don't have any students, so I just experiment on myself to see what works. When I practice, I'm not trying to do drill and kill, I just move slowly, paying attention to my body position and everything else going on through physical sensation. The angle and position of my elbows, hands, hips, shoulders, et. etc. I'm cobbling together a bunch of my own ideas that work for me - seems to be somewhat of a success. Recently it took me just two days to mostly memorize and play two choruses of Ron Carter solo without having to resort to writing it down and re-reading the transcription while playing. My goal is to try to make the feel of playing bass really no different that moving my vocal chords - sometimes almost literally. Other things I've discovered for myself is that I often perform better if I practice less at times. That long breaks (1-2 days) often help accelerate the learning and material and identify areas that need more attention. What Rabbath espouses in his art of the bow book on how to become a virtuoso. IIRC, he said no more than 3 hours practice a day, in 2-3 day blocks with a day of rest in between. I would think it wouldn't work without mentioning that you have to take his approach toward learning - which seems to be very much in line with physical learning considering how his bass technique works.

In a way Chris, I think you're someone apt to explore this as you have been (and are going back to?) Aikido. Aikido was my gateway into grasping how the body has it's own intelligence. That the body can learn on it's own if I can stop intellectualizing the learning and give it a chance to absorb it in it's own way.

Does that also possiblity mean that virtuosity at an early age is a mere product of high sense of proprioception and advanced neuroplasticity combined with a good dose of imagination?!? I dunno. Food for thought tho.

EDIT: Oh one more thing... One of the best tools in my learning bag I discovered while learning Korean. Korean grammar and sentence structure is obtuse an non-intuitive coming from other languages. Japanese is like that too I think. Anyways, someone introduced me to the Pimsleur technique of learning a language and as the marketing said... I did say several phrases pretty easily (with decent retention) after only an hour of working with it. It has a specific way of learning a phrase, and if you take a step back, it involves repeating a phrase backward in chunks. I tested the idea on my cousin who is just starting to learn piano and seems to work for music too. Pimsleur is avaialble for purchase as audio only. I highly recommend trying it, not so much for learning a language, but to take a look at the technique they use.

Sorry for the long post.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by hdiddy

In a way Chris, I think you're someone apt to explore this as you have been (and are going back to?) Aikido. Aikido was my gateway into grasping how the body has it's own intelligence. That the body can learn on it's own if I can stop intellectualizing the learning and give it a chance to absorb it in it's own way.

Spot on. The Aikido was almost 20 years ago when i was playing piano, but it completely changed the way I thought about music as it relates to the body. For the past few years, my MA training has been in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Shaolin Kempo, but I find the exact same paradigms and relationships exist. In a nutshell, you become aware of what your body needs to do to make a certain thing happen, and train it to do that not from the "outside in" (i.e. - by moving the small muscle groups which will actually make contact with the other entity in question to produce the desired effect; in the case of the bass, moving the fingers, hands, wrists, etc.), but rather from the "inside out" (i.e. - by controlling the core of the body or large muscle groups, which in effect control the smaller groups from a position of strength rather than inertia). In BJJ, everything is "from the hips", so that a proficient smaller person can defeat a lesser trained larger person because the trained person's core is stronger than the larger person's limbs. This also breeds relaxation, as it is rare for the large core muscles to need to be pushed to extremes, and once you learn to stay connected to your partner (bass or person), the natural weight of the connection does a large percentage of the work. In Kempo, the connectedness can be exemplified by "sticky hands" training, in which you avoid being struck by the partner by staying connected with them loosely and deflecting/redirecting rather than forcefully blocking. I'm still a relative beginner at both, but love both a lot both for the arts that they are in and of themselves and for how they help me relate to and learn more about music.

When I practice, I'm not trying to do drill and kill, I just move slowly, paying attention to my body position and everything else going on through physical sensation. The angle and position of my elbows, hands, hips, shoulders, et. etc. I'm cobbling together a bunch of my own ideas that work for me - seems to be somewhat of a success. ... My goal is to try to make the feel of playing bass really no different that moving my vocal chords - sometimes almost literally. Other things I've discovered for myself is that I often perform better if I practice less at times.

Totally agree, and it sounds like you're completely on the right track.

Does that also possiblity mean that virtuosity at an early age is a mere product of high sense of proprioception and advanced neuroplasticity combined with a good dose of imagination?!? I dunno. Food for thought tho.

Possibly. Lack of proficiency in some areas could also lead to an overcompensation in others, which could also contribute. In my case, being a low grade functional dyslexic led me to rely almost completely on my ears as regard music for the first 20 or so years of my life, which I feel helped develop them further than they would have developed otherwise. Interesting sidebar topic, no doubt!

[arnoldschnitzer]

It sounds like a discussion of muscle memory could not hurt at this point. Once in a golf lesson the pro told me "It takes two weeks of daily practice to achieve muscle memory; to be able to produce a certain movement without conscious thought". (I found a similar thing was true when I briefly studied T'ai Chi many years ago. ) Unfortunately, I never had the time or inclination to practice my golf skills daily, and remain hopelessly mediocre...

I think muscle memory plays a huge role in playing the bass (or any stringed instrument) in tune. Along with the vibrational feedback Chris talked about earlier in this thread, having your body "know" where the notes lay is incredibly important. And as an instrument maker, it behooves me to make instruments which naturally convey to the player that the notes are all in the "right" spots.

I'm curious if bass teachers out there give students daily practice regimens designed to build proper muscle memory. I know trombone players work diligently on their slide shifts, and I remember my early teachers drilling me on shifting. But I wonder if there is a way of improving intonation through a combining of proprioceptive awareness and muscle memory.

I realize I am not a bass teacher at this point in my life--I hope my perspective is useful in this forum, as this is one of the more interesting threads I've seen recently here.

[hdiddy]

Originally Posted by Chris Fitzgerald

For the past few years, my MA training has been in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Shaolin Kempo, but I find the exact same paradigms and relationships exist. In a nutshell, you become aware of what your body needs to do to make a certain thing happen, and train it to do that not from the "outside in"

I've never done Kenpo but BJJ is a blast - did a seminar at my Aikido back in the day and it shows what amazing things you can do. Having done a little Capoeira later on, it reminded me of some of the efficient and non-intuitive moves you see in BJJ. Reflecting back on those experiences, I remember having to trust yourself mentally and your innate sense to execute the moves physically, as trying to just visualize the moves wasn't going to be enough. You just had to trust yourself to move safely in a completely new way.

Dyslexic? I wouldn't be surprised if I was one too.

Originally Posted by Ahhhnuld

It sounds like a discussion of muscle memory could not hurt at this point. Once in a golf lesson the pro told me "It takes two weeks of daily practice to achieve muscle memory; to be able to produce a certain movement without conscious thought".
...
And as an instrument maker, it behooves me to make instruments which naturally convey to the player that the notes are all in the "right" spots.

I'm curious if bass teachers out there give students daily practice regimens designed to build proper muscle memory. I know trombone players work diligently on their slide shifts, and I remember my early teachers drilling me on shifting. But I wonder if there is a way of improving intonation through a combining of proprioceptive awareness and muscle memory.

Arnold, yes physical memory in a way is the goal, but in my own subjective experience, it alone isn't enough. I have horrible retention when trying to recall thoughts or facts at times. But I think what I'm trying to point here is that there's a large mental or cognition component that goes on that I assume is often neglected by music teachers. I have never seen any music teacher speak in these terms. When I ask the pros in clinics (John Clayton, Charnett Moffett, Ron Carter, etc.) they're not able to give me an answer I'm satisfied with. They can't describe what's going on and how they got there. I'm the type that I can shed for hours on end and get very little. It was encouraging to hear that Chris Potter als can only practice a few hours a day and not like a Coltrane type.

I think the goal is train the body to work with the mind hand in hand. Use muscle memory to facilitate what the mind wants to do, not the other way around. The other way around can be done by memorizing licks and regurgitating them without any recognition or relevants to the structure you're playing over.

Of my own experiments on myself, one day I just played whatever came to head without any regard to tune structure. Sing a phrase and play it til I hit the exact set of tones I heard. If I didn't get it the first time, I would keep trying to repeat the phrase until I nailed it and then moved on. My attempt was exactly trying to turn the fingers and bass into my vocal chords. Thoughts going directly from mental sounds into physical sounds. Making the instrument "disappear" as Hal Galper suggests. It's more like voice training than lick training. Wonder if someone else will give it a whirl after reading this.

Complete crap? I dunno - I'm not a teacher either but it seems to work for me tho.

[MR PC]

Originally Posted by hdiddy

When I ask the pros in clinics (John Clayton, Charnett Moffett, Ron Carter, etc.) they're not able to give me an answer I'm satisfied with.

It's very private, I believe. Maybe a part of these musicians talent is to tap into the core of their being, without the need to verbalize.

[Don Higdon]

The Alexander Technique is applied neuroplasticity.
I began saying late in my training that Alexander didn't know what he was doing, but he got it right, about 60 years before Bach y Rita's earliest experiments.
I make my living breaking people's neural connections, so that the body's sef-righting system can resurrect natural behaviors. As Alexander said, "The right thing does itself."

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by hdiddy

My attempt was exactly trying to turn the fingers and bass into my vocal chords. Thoughts going directly from mental sounds into physical sounds. Making the instrument "disappear" as Hal Galper suggests. It's more like voice training than lick training. Wonder if someone else will give it a whirl after reading this.

Complete crap? I dunno - I'm not a teacher either but it seems to work for me tho.

It's late and I've got to get to bed, but... the part about the fingers and vocal cords is an important aspect. There's a bit of transcendence involved in this: in order to get to that place, the chord structures and melodies of the tunes you're playing have to be internalized as sound rather than as concepts or names. Pure sound. I'm in an interesting position at the U in that I am free to say what I believe in theory and improv classes because I've been there so long and played with everybody for so many years that the other faculty trust me not only as a player, but also as a teacher who really wants the students to succeed. So it's OK for me to tell them that I don't believe in chord scale relationships even when everybody else there does, and it's OK for me to teach them some of the baby steps toward what I believe is actually going on in improvised melodic construction once they've already been exposed to the "conventional" way of approaching playing changes.

As one student put it last year, "but if I analyzed that solo you just played, I don't think I'd find any wrong notes according to the chord scale relationships, so what's the difference, really"? I have to admit that he had a point. But the solo he was referring to wasn't constructed that way at all even though it was very "inside". The point is that in improvisation as in technique, there is an intuitive way to get somewhere, and a conceptual/technical way to get there. My goal is *always* to get to the point where it is pure intuition. Sometimes, though, I have to apply a concept or technique as just that and wash/rinse/repeat until it becomes intuitive and instinctual. Other times, I find that the instinct is more true than the concept. The irony, of course, is that you could never know that to be true if you didn't understand both on some level.

This is getting too convoluted for my tired brain. More later if anyone's still talking about this...