{"id":116314573,"date":"2023-04-22T03:28:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-22T03:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/method-style-and-hard-work\/"},"modified":"2023-04-22T03:28:24","modified_gmt":"2023-04-22T03:28:24","slug":"method-style-and-hard-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dheerajchand.com\/wordpress\/method-style-and-hard-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Method, style and hard work."},"content":{"rendered":"

Learning to speak is hard work.<\/h2>

As we used to say in the old days, there are a few housekeeping notes at the top of this post.<\/p>

  1. Now that we\u2019re establishing a bit of a rhythm, posts are going to be longer and more in depth. <\/p><\/li>

  2. I\u2019ll still try for two or three posts a week.<\/p><\/li>

  3. Posts are also going to be a bit more serious in tone and contain fewer silly jokes.<\/p><\/li>

  4. Since this is still a hobby for me and a way to keep accountable to my own practice, I\u2019m not charging anything. I think that it\u2019s important to be free.<\/p><\/li><\/ol>

    To all those who thought my dad jokes were amazing and why you showed up at all, sorry to disappoint.<\/p>

    Now that that\u2019s out of the way, let\u2019s talk about what we\u2019re doing. In the last post<\/a>, we talked about method, which is a complete model of a problem and a route from beginning to end for solution, in this case, acquisition of knowledge.<\/p>

    How does this relate to what we all want to do, which is to play jazz music? And even if we have the the route in front of us, how do we walk it?<\/p>

    Thanks for reading Learning Jazz From The Masters! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<\/p><\/div>

    <\/div><\/form><\/div><\/div>

    Hard Work<\/h3>

    Let\u2019s answer the last question, first, because it\u2019s the first filtration point. If you don\u2019t like the answer to this question, nothing else I write here will be of much use to you. Everything else assumes that you are willing to do this. <\/p>

    How do we walk the road? Through hard work. One of the formative and defining experiences and practices of my life has been the study of Ving Tsun Kung Fu<\/a>. Not only did it open up new ideas to me, but it helped me sharpen ideas I\u2019d already had and gave me a lot of words to talk about things that I\u2019d already known and believed. Studying Ving Tsun helped make explicit and visible what was implicit and invisible.<\/p>

    One idea is that what we call Kung Fu is not a party trick, it\u2019s not a gimmick to impress people and it\u2019s certainly not the absence of work. Kung Fu is a term used to mean, \u201cknowledge acquired through hard work<\/a>.\u201d Everyone can have Kung Fu. A chef can have Kung Fu. A computer programmer can have Kung Fu. A watchmaker can have Kung Fu. A jazz guitarist can have Kung Fu. Let\u2019s behave this way.<\/p>

    So, this is knowledge earned through hard work. Hard work doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not fun. If you\u2019ve ever tried to get good at doing something for sport, like, say, playing soccer or running track, you\u2019ll know exactly what I mean when I say that hard work is often quite a bit of fun. And there are many ways to do hard work. You can come in with full focus, really pushing yourself to the limits, or you can come in with a more general, atmospheric awareness and go through the workout to see what comes to you when you are not actively seeking it. You can also take a lighter day. Enjoyment takes a lot of forms, there are as many ways to find joy as there are to be in the world. <\/p>

    One way that I like to think about Kung Fu is that it\u2019s like a savings account of thinking. You do some work while you can to earn some knowledge and then bank it, wiring your brain so that when you need it, knowledge of what to do is right there, and it happens without you having to take the time to think about it. This, by the way, is what martial artists mean when we say things like, \u201cFeel, don\u2019t think.\u201d It doesn\u2019t mean something idiotic like, \u201cYour emotions are hella truer than your brain, lol.”, but that you must train your total awareness and perception so that it is faster than your conscious mind and your body reacts without you having to direct it<\/em>. <\/p>

    This is a very powerful idea. Imagine how hard it would be if you had to consciously think about every muscle and movement while you were running, as well as being aware of every piece of feedback that your body was giving you. It would be overwhelming, and, often, it is, when you first start. Those first few days of workout can be terrible, not just because your body gets exhausted from the exertion, but because your brain gets overwhelmed. Over time, your total awareness learns to handle the information all at once, you learn how to feel when to alter your gait, change your pace, handle the incline and decline, when your body is just tired or in serious pain, etc. The capacity of your total awareness expands to handle it all and you don\u2019t suffer as much, you are reacting faster than you are thinking, leaving your conscious mind to do something else, like meditate.<\/p>

    Is this is what we\u2019re doing when we\u2019re learning to play jazz, hard work in pursuit of a pre-trained, living total consciousness that can adapt to circumstances and transform them? I think that this is a perfect model for what we are doing. In the same way that every martial artist has a fingerprint, every jazz musician will have a fingerprint, which we can call his style or his voice. <\/p>

    Method <\/h3>

    Our goal is to transform our consciousness, and the method is how we do it<\/em>. The method is the model of the problem, it\u2019s the definitions and prescriptions. The method will tell us what we are going to do, why\u2019re going to do it, how we\u2019re going to do it and in what proportions we\u2019re going to do it. <\/p>

    Now, here\u2019s what\u2019s going to be crazy. Learning to play jazz guitar is not exactly like learning a martial art, but it\u2019s more like it than anything else. If you\u2019ll notice, the title of this newsletter is not, \u201cLearning Jazz From The Master\u201d, but \u201cLearning Jazz From The Masters.\u201d It\u2019s because jazz is bigger than any one person\u2019s conception of it. Ever heard the story of the six blind men and the elephant<\/a>?<\/p>

    <\/figure>

    Nobody I would describe as a master of jazz is as closed minded as one of the blind men in the story. Each, however, would disagree on method. And, so, we are going to be compositing our own method by listening to a few masters at once.<\/p>

    I’ve mentioned Jody Fisher. Add to that Ted Greene and Jerry Coker. There will probably be more. Those are big guys. Then there are lessons from my friends.<\/p>

    Style<\/h3>

    All of this is in service of developing our own voice, our way of doing things, our own style. In linguistics, the way a specific person speaks is called an idiolect<\/em>, the rules and patterns that make someone\u2019s speech his own. Learning to play jazz is in large part about developing our own idiolect. In the same way that learning how to speak comes from listening to other people speak, reading the writing of others, yes, consumption, it is also developed and acquired through speaking and writing, both privately and with others. You just have to do it and keep doing it. This is the hard work I mentioned earlier. Doing it over and over again in both controlled and uncontrolled contexts will make it come alive for you.<\/p>

    Developing a style is in many ways about knowing one\u2019s self well enough to make decisions between different goods. Do we choose to use the word \u201cblue\u201d or \u201ccerulean\u201d? Do we make something one sentence with two independent clauses or two sentences with one clause, each? Do we harmonise a note with a Major 7 Chord or with a Major Ninth chord? Do we play melodies with double stop octaves or do we play them faster, single stopped?<\/p>

    All of these are good things, and the choices we make reflect our own understanding of jazz.<\/p>

    Conclusion<\/h3>

    We\u2019ll be applying hard work to a method to develop our voice, with our method consisting of learning from several masters and developing our own opinions.<\/p>

    Next up, we\u2019ll be talking about structuring a practice and a schedule.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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