Theory & Impro Do we really need theory?

[Jeanette]

I answered the question precisely as asked.
Astrophysics.

True 🙂

Jx

 

[Caz]

Wont a bit of theory help being able to communicate more effciently and chunk information together a bit faster?

 

[kevgermany]

There's Brian Cox as well. But I wouldn't call either of them great musicians. Successful, yes.

But what about Zappa?

 

[richardr]

We have two strands of opinion, @jbtsax who says the way to learn to play jazz is study what’s gone before, transcribe, and add one’s own creativity, and @Wade Cornell who thinks jazzers spend so much effort on trying to impress each other with their cleverness that they’re neglecting the wider audience that music needs to survive.

I think that both are right. Everyone, no matter how creative, needs to copy some of what’s been done before and a casual appreciation of a piece of music probably isn’t good enough to pick out the really good stuff that it contains. That’s where guided study comes in. Some musicians may go down this route and end up merely imitating the stuff they’ve studied. That will please some audiences but the musicians who will make a mark are those who learn their stuff then take it somewhere else. That’s how we have classics such as Procol Harem’s “Whiter Shade of Pale”.

An innovative musician doesn’t necessarily have to undertake academic study, but he’ll always build on what he has heard. Perhaps the greatest game-changer in the musical boom of the 50s and 60s was Chuck Berry, but he built on the blues format that had been invented by musicians such as Robert Johnson and refined by 50s rockers such as Bill Haley.

 

[Alice]

Bill Haley really didn’t “cut it” over here in England though, he was big in America and I think a lot of that was hype. He quickly passed his “sell by date” anyway. I would have thought Elvis was a better example?

 

[Nick Wyver]

You can get PhDs in the academic study of music but I doubt you can get one in playing.

I agree with Wade that music should move on but it's difficult to see how that can happen when an awful lot has already been tried. Studying 70 year old Charlie Parker solos at university probably isn't the way to go though.

As always, you come back to the function of music. What do you want it to do? If you want to appeal to the masses the basics never change. Simple tunes with simple harmonies. If you can come up with new sounds to catch peoples' ears, such as the electric guitar in the '50s, then so much the better - but it's getting ever harder to do that. Once you get into the business of trying to please the ears of folk who are really into music then you have a much wider range of styles, degrees of complication and cleverness that you can draw on.

Anyway what affects me most is the lack of interest in live music at a local level. 20 years ago, playing to a packed pub was commonplace. Now I can't remember the last time I did it. The lack of interest is felt most keenly with bands who dare to play anything that isn't mainstream pop, rock or folk. Virtually all the bands round here are covers bands all playing the same stuff.

I'd go and cry into my beer now but it's a bit early in the day.

 

[richardr]

Bill Haley really didn’t “cut it” over here in England though, he was big in America and I think a lot of that was hype. He quickly passed his “sell by date” anyway. I would have thought Elvis was a better example?

I was trying to illustrate that Bill Haley popularised the 12-bar blues format then Berry built on it. Ai that time the music was happening in America. It wasn't until the 60s that the Brits became prominent

.

 

[Pete Thomas]

I was trying to illustrate that Bill Haley popularised the 12-bar blues format then Berry built on it

That kind of seems a bit ironic but it all makes sense if you think of it as white man bringing a blues format to white folk, popularising it, and so opening the doors to black artists in that market. Must have been quite a cultural slap around the face for Americans at the time. Although I'd argue that there was very little blues feel about Bill's music. Just because something is a 12 bar doesn't make it a blues.

(Yes it's "International Revive a Good old Thread Day")

 

[cappers]

As @Pete Thomas has revised this interesting thread I had a read and wondered about the question
posted by @Wade Cornell all those years ago....

Dec 5, 2017

Can anyone name a great artist, musician, or composer who has a PhD?

I had a look on Wiki and several musicians have PhDs (May and Cox included) but not in music or music-related study/research.

Some do have music Doctorates including Billy Taylor, Bill Bruford (King Crimson, Yes etc), and Alejandro Toledo. There are few others I don't know e.g. Robert Allan (Glasvegas), Michael Bishop (Gwar), C N Lester (songwriter), Annbjørg Lien (Hardanger fiddle). List of artists and entertainers with advanced degrees - WikipediaHardanger fiddle
I understand that Bill Bruford's PhD in music was after he retired from performing.

Probably not relevant or of interest nearly 8 years after the question was asked!

 

[Pete Thomas]

Can anyone name a great artist, musician, or composer who has a PhD?

Yes, my wife.

 

[Jimmymack]

Bill Haley was really playing rockabilly, they may have been 12 bars but they were a long way from being blues. The blues form was still alive and well and it was repeatedly reworked and extended in jazz.

Someone once said to me that the basic blues form took a pared down approach to western classical tradition and then the jazzers took the simple form and re-introduced the western tradition and made it complex.

 

[Pete Thomas]

and then the jazzers took the simple form and re-introduced the western tradition and made it complex.

And just like rock and roll, it didn't always keep much blues feel.In this case maybe due to the harmonic complexity.

 

[cappers]

Yes, my wife.

A PhD in music or in her artistic field or another subject?
Apologies for the intrusion.

 

[Targa]

As @Pete Thomas has revised this interesting thread I had a read and wondered about the question
posted by @Wade Cornell all those years ago....

Dec 5, 2017


I had a look on Wiki and several musicians have PhDs (May and Cox included) but not in music or music-related study/research.

Some do have music Doctorates including Billy Taylor, Bill Bruford (King Crimson, Yes etc), and Alejandro Toledo. There are few others I don't know e.g. Robert Allan (Glasvegas), Michael Bishop (Gwar), C N Lester (songwriter), Annbjørg Lien (Hardanger fiddle). List of artists and entertainers with advanced degrees - WikipediaHardanger fiddle
I understand that Bill Bruford's PhD in music was after he retired from performing.

Probably not relevant or of interest nearly 18 years after the question was asked!

I know time passes quicker as you get older but 2017 is only 8 years ago.

 

[Pete Thomas]

A PhD in music or in her artistic field or another subject?
Apologies for the intrusion.

A doctorate in musicology. Followed by a professorship.

Laurie Stras | University of Southampton

Emeritus Professor Laurie Stras is a at the University of Southampton

www.southampton.ac.uk

New prof makes case for girl power in Italy’s 16th century music - University of Huddersfield

Professor Laurie Stras explores the impact of nuns and the convent in shaping music of the Italian Renaissance. Her book, Women and Music in Sixteenth Century Ferrara, examines the music-making of four generations of princesses, noblewomen and nuns in Ferrara, as performers, creators and patrons.

www.hud.ac.uk

Artist biographies - Musica Secreta

The director Laurie Stras joined Deborah Roberts as co-director of Musica Secreta in 2000. With a background in performance, including a spell as a musical director and keyboard player with the Royal National Theatre, she is now a leading authority on Renaissance female musicians. Known as the...

musicasecreta.org

 

[mizmar]

Can anyone name a great artist, musician, or composer who has a PhD?

Probably not relevant

One thing I learned over the decades - particularly regarding the arts and humanities - never answer an polemical rant with facts.

 

[Wade Cornell]

As @Pete Thomas has revised this interesting thread I had a read and wondered about the question
posted by @Wade Cornell all those years ago....

Dec 5, 2017


I had a look on Wiki and several musicians have PhDs (May and Cox included) but not in music or music-related study/research.

Some do have music Doctorates including Billy Taylor, Bill Bruford (King Crimson, Yes etc), and Alejandro Toledo. There are few others I don't know e.g. Robert Allan (Glasvegas), Michael Bishop (Gwar), C N Lester (songwriter), Annbjørg Lien (Hardanger fiddle). List of artists and entertainers with advanced degrees - WikipediaHardanger fiddle
I understand that Bill Bruford's PhD in music was after he retired from performing.

Probably not relevant or of interest nearly 18 years after the question was asked!

I think most will get the point. If you have a PhD in physics, engineering, history, psychology, etc. You're at the top of your game and probably making contributions to your field of endeavor. If you are in the arts you're judged by what you contribute that communicates, entertains, and is creative. None of the "greats" in the arts got to where they are by FIRST having a PhD. It doesn't mean that they didn't go to University or a conservatory, or study and apply themselves.

There is a point where creativity needs to come from the individual. Institutions don't seem to be able to impart that and conversely by offering advanced degrees based on conforming to a strict syllabus can potentially stifle creativity. Having a PhD in Music performance certainly doesn't open any doors for a recording contract!

I love the references to Hardanger fiddle as I have a soft spot for that instrument. However (as you may know) it's a folk instrument and studied in the same way one would study and play Viola da Gamba (which I also love the sound of!). One could ask ten thousand people on the street to name a famous/great Hardanger fiddle or Viola da Gamba player and not get an answer.

Bring it home by naming any of the great jazz musicians who first got a PhD in music performance? How about composers? Painters? Did those none of the talented young people who got scholarships which allowed them to get a PhD actually have talent? Or did the ordeal of conforming to what the institution demanded possibly stifle that spark?

It's a question to ponder based on what academic love... statistics!

 

[Pete Thomas]

Bring it home by naming any of the great jazz musicians who first got a PhD in music performance?

But it would be quite different I think to classical musicians.

 

[mizmar]

If you have a PhD in physics, engineering,..You're at the top of your game

Not if you're a footballer or tennis player or skier etc. all of whom do extraordinary physics and engineering...

Your point is a false equivalence.

I think most will get the point

Classic polemic opening line
QED

 

[lydian]

Not if you're a footballer or tennis player or skier etc. all of whom do extraordinary physics and engineering...

Your point is a false equivalence.

Tell me more about this athletic engineering. Throwing a ball precisely at a target is purely the result of trial and error and muscle memory. There's no "engineering". I have yet to see a single golfer pull out a slide rule and do any calculations before a putt. Lucky guesses aren't engineering.