Don't miss tomorrow's thread:

"5 Rules on how to becone a music theory influencer on archaic internet forums quick"

 

I haven't been shy about the fact that I have *rarely met anyone who plays Jazz who wasn't/isn't a pretentious windbag with a bad case of the betcha-don't-know-more-complex-stuff-than-me syndrome (and this comes from everything from meeting people recording, to jam sessions, etc.,) so it's nice to know an actual Jazz school didn't shove that down your throat. It gets old, hearing the subversive snobbery with comments (even in tutorials and books on Jazz,) that Classical is mildly difficult, but no matter how good you are at Classical (or any other genre,) Jazz is the Holy Grail of Understanding. As I said, it's nice to know that isn't everywhere.
It isn't just Jazz though, tolerance in music is rarely a topic touched upon, but I think it's something that has sprung up as a problem nowadays, as everywhere I've been in the United States (though, with our rotten "president," "United," is not the best description for my country, right now, anyway.) It's nothing more than speculation, but I think the lack of respect or recognition of other music as worth paying attention to has to do with a combination of media saturation of what music should be paid attention to and heralded as "good," and the fact that so many more people create music in solitude, sitting in front of their computer 24/7 making music without interacting with other musicians. Not aiming that at anyone in particular, but real-world experience is invaluable, and people seem to be stagnating due to this.
Anyway.....kind of a tangent there; but that's just my less-than-humble opinion...

Concisely put; I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, this is very much the age of showboating (calm down people, again, I'm not aiming that at everyone,) with the application of your skills seemingly taking a back seat to what you know. As I mentioned in my previous comment, music theory has never written a song for me, though it's helped me out of many a rough spot. I think that a lot of people, if they followed your advice of taking it in bite size chunks, instead of making it a king-hell priority, would find that it is, as you mentioned, merely a tool that is at your disposal.
Again, just my two-cents...

 

I can't believe Greta Thunberg got that award and not MMJ2017. The selfless work he puts in here, not to mention how much money he makes for the admin staff.

 

I like this. It's a great overview of the bigger picture. It becomes difficult to see when you find yourself simply responding to a single previous statement which in turn may be perceived as "nasty" then it's like an avalanche and we're all shouting "get out of the way!""No! You get out of the way!"

 

What is it about jazz people that come across that way to you?
I'm just curious what you really mean by it?
Is it them or your perception of them?
I liked the rest of your comment by the way.
( Just wondering because I haven't had that happen once . But I have had it happen to me a bunch by people that did notknow anything about music and didn't want to know anything .but the people that want to learn about music just in general are real positive.
Thanks .
( Not saying your wrong by the way in sure you did experiance it)
My experiAnce was metal players acted liked that to pop or Rock players .
Because metal slightly more complex than 3 chord pop song.

 

Last edited: Dec 17, 2019

A couple of questions for you.
1. Which American Jazz School did you go to and for how long?
2. Did you ask anyone how to translate what you hear in your head into performable music? That is after all the real goal. The theory serves its purpose but without the music aesthetic, it is only mathematics.

Music theory is like calculus. On the surface, calculus appears to be a tool designed to persecute high school leavers, when it is really an important part of electronics and engineering. Music theory can have the same effect if the results of using it are not heard and seen. So if you cannot translate what you hear in your head, why did you not ask someone there|? That does not make sense?

 

eXACT Beats my wife is a trained opera singer (soprano) and her singing teacher used to berate her for listening to any type of popular music in her teacher's opinion anything other than classical music was primitive rubbish and even in the genre of Irish music acknowledged masters the Chieftains were criticised by the purists as inauthentic,snobbery exists everywhere in all genres.I like a vast variety of music from Abba to Zappa yet some music styles just don't rock my boat but like Zappa said to paraphrase"if you like my music great and if you don't then blow it out your ass" The discussion here though was derived from the question"What's your philosophy regarding music theory?"and the majority has voted that it is worthwhile learning I would add to that,it's definitely worth learning but not necessarily from random,unqualified,self appointed experts.

 

So all the vast variety of music you like ,
I guess they were taught by and learned only from
Royalty with the proper certificates?
( Nope no snobbery there lolol)

You cannot have peasants teaching and learning from each other omg ! It'll will upset the whole heirarchy!

 

MMJ I thought you were ignoring me?

 

If someone wants to become a doctor they go to medical school, or a lawyer they go to Harvard, Yale or a myriad of available legally oriented training universities.
No argument.
I used to feel exactly what you are saying. If someone wishes to learn jazz a jazz school or rock a rock school so on and so forth.
There is no harm in sharing knowledge is the stance I now take.
Often I see things that I know do not serve my purpose and possibly others. With age, I decided that the energy necessary to challenge in some cases will come to no end that will not leave me drained.
If people wish to provide a sharing from the goodness of their heart, I try and see it that way.
As for self-professed, there is often truth in that occasionally everywhere, but I no longer let it bother me.

 

I'm sorry , it's just you talked about snobbery then demonstrated snobbery.
My bad .
I was under the impression that information stands or falls on its own merit .
My mistake

 

I agree that it is good to be open to learn from where ever and from whomever you can but I also think it's imperative to use discernment otherwise you can absorb erroneous information that becomes an impediment to real understanding

 

I agree with that .

 

Is it snobbery to decide for oneself what is a valuable source of information or not?I thought you were ignoring me under the delusion that I was Adheesive?Please stick to your guns.

 

No i don't think that's snobbery.
I was ignoring you (because of your behavior) but I'm trying not to make assumptions about you .( What type of person you are )
What is your take on these values ?
Honor
Integrity
Respect
Dignity
( And do you believe because us here are not face to face that we should behave differently than if we were?)
Just wondering about your values .

 

Last edited: Dec 17, 2019

Ad heesive whole point was that people who don't read sheet music don't deserve to have access to music theory. I disagree so I created a way to share information with everyone from my theory threads . That makes him angry because the regular people are not worthy to him.
I think they are worthy .( Especially since sheet music is just symbolic and writing the way I do is also just symbolic. ( Represents the sound waves )
That makes him angry so he calls me stupid face and dumb dumb. That is snobbery.

 

Sorry MMJ but this comment shows you are so naive in music knowledge. Music is more complicated than you think.

I advise you never base your practices on some apps. Their creators never consider all the details. Maybe just 1% of the whole or less.

 

MMJ - Could you please simply retract that blatant lie!

It is just amazing how much deceipt this guy uses to bully people into thinking he's right.

Look at this quote in detail...
MMJ states...
"Ad heesive whole point was that people who don't read sheet music don't deserve to have access to music theory."

And now look at what I actually wrote...
In the example in my post I showed myself adding helpful 'note letters' underneath the author's original music score
and I justified my adding those 'note letters' with these words.
"I labelled the notes because some people don't like reading scores."

Here's an extract from the pdf document where I am comparing MMJ's nonsense with the Jazz sheet...
I make these comments.
"The left hand column is a list of well devised musical fragments, presented in an unambiguous manner, with no errors, using music score (classic music notation). I can't fault the author for using music score but I can also applaud any work that presents ideas without using music score, (because many people do find music score intimidating). Every author must represent the actual ideas correctly somehow, and the score on that jazz sheet does do that. MMJ's scruffy notes do not! - as I will show later."

and here's something I said in another post
Here's some stuff that supports what @rootwits found.
http://www.daveconservatoire.org
Lots of short informative videos.
A major plus point is that it presents music theory without music notation until such time as you choose to also explore music notation.

So, seriously MMJ,
- are you actually incapable of reading what I said?
- or are you just too scared to read what I said?
- or are you just intent on lying your way out of this by grotesquely stating untrue things that you think I said in your delusions

when I clearly have always said only the exact opposite.

This is deranged!

I don't care about your insults, fire away and embarrass yourself - but your grotesque lying has to stop.

 

You think you are so innocent, such a victim, but you are a bully. You think it's not bullying if it's sarcasm or ridicule. You laugh at people who don't agree with you. You give them a "funny" rating. You're quite pitiable in your need for self affirmation.

 

I don't see anywhere in this thread that Adheesive stated that non music readers don't deserve to have access to music theory you are trying to create a straw man argument.I cannot understand how you come to the conclusion that"regular people are not worthy to him"he hasn't said anything like that to my knowledge nor even implied that.He has stated that he has a problem with how you personally and specifically present your information to the forum participants,he has not called you "stupid face" or "dumb dumb" those are your own words not his words.I think it would be more apt to say he feels exasperated than angry but I am not here to defend or speak for him,he is more than able to do that for himself.As for the values that you speak of,my culture is famous throughout the world for displaying those values in abundance but that is neither here nor there this is supposed to be a forum discussion on the value of music theory and has morphed into a discussion on the merits of your contributions to the understanding of it.