Originally posted by Ed Fuqua
Gee, nobody got a gig? Lesse where shall we start....
SAMEOLD - I'm not sure why you are trying to seperate the things you say into stuff we should take you seriously on and stuff we shouldn't. I mean, if it's a joke and I don't get it, great. But to say something and then say "oh well I didn't mean that it actually applied to anything" is more than a little disengenuous. Mean what you say and say what you mean. If you are playing with ANY musician that is not putting in serious time in the shed, then you are playing with a dilettante. And that's fine if all you wanna do is kick it around a little with yer buds, you're justr going to run into trouble if you try to push the same philosophy on people who are serious about this sh*t.
POKEHERTUBE - speaking of disengenuous, how can you say that you "won't put (me) in a position where I need to defend my opinion" when you are directly contradicting EVERYTHING i have said in this thread?
As far as the tape, while I understand your reluctance to let me hear how you sound, it's not MY "standards" (or anything so subjective) that you should try to meet. Playing in time is completely objective, you either are or aren't.
OK, you're a bluegrasseteer and may not play jazz standards (even though Vassar Clements does) so how about CRAZY and TENESSEE WALTZ? They both have nice changes and have the harmony moving around enough. And then how about something from the "standard" repertoire like WABASH CANNONBALL or ROLLIN IN MY SWEET BABY'S ARMS or ORANGE BLOSSOM SPECIAL? Just try the following: play it through at your usual tempo and find where that is (approximately) on a metronome. Then move the nome about three or four clicks down (in tempo), turn it off and see (from recording yourselves) how soon you move back up to your "regular" tempo. And vice versa, move it up three or four clicks and see if the tempo comes down. Don't send it out if you don't feel like it, but I think (given your opinion) that you owe it to yourself to at least see how the experiment pans out.
As far as Jeff and his experience, well his experience is his experience and mine is mine. He's more of a fusion player and again, style may go a long way to determining how players approach time/feel concept. But the reason that I posted a question about this in his board was just to clear up the accuracy of a couple of quotes he made (or allegedly made) in a couple of magazine articles. The person who was quoting him didn't know/remember where the articles were and Jeff said he didn't know what I was refering to. One of the articles I'm sure was from his column in BASS PLAYER, the other I don't know. But it was the one that I most wanted to make sure of the accuracy of because it was a "response' from another musician (the cat said he thought it was Gary Burton) who was (as many of us are) saying that Jeff's position was "not accurate". Jeff was quoted as making some equivocation like "well for some musicians, especially at {Gary's} level, a metronome can be used in ways to help improve or focus your playing skills". Like I said, it's all second hand and I would LOVE to find where this actually appears.
As for your statements "not in music to prove how smart I am", "play music because it makes me feel good", "too busy playing music to be bothered with hours and hours of dry study", am I to infer that you feel that I :
1.only play to prove I am smarter than others
2.play music cause it makes me feel bad
3.have not been busy playing music and only spent hours studying?
If so, I can't believe YOU'RE serious. Oh, but believe me, I AM serious. Serious as your life....
But the set of YOUR MONEY should be a subset of WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS at this point.
