@Lager
Sorry to rain on your parade but rather than think that me, you or anyone may be correct I checked some basic statistics.
It seems based on the figures, that in the USA alone, that at any given month in 2018, between 10.5%-13.5% of Americans listen to some type of jazz (and there several types). I was not going to do every year because it probably changes. 2019 is not available yet understandably because we are barely into 2020.

This means that between 34,356,000 to 44,172,000‬ people listen to jazz in any given month on average if they are correct.

Any amount within that range being in the tens of millions, indicates a substantial proportion of people like jazz. Europeans seem to like jazz even more. In many small countries, their entire population is not even 10 million.

Why do so many people around the world not like incredibly loud thrash metal or undynamic EDM that 12 year-olds can make on a computer, and they do not even need to know how to play an instrument?
The real question should be - Why do people that listen to it like it?

(Seeing you like figures)

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 10, 2020

Also,
In all the movies and TV shows that come out and wildly popular.
In that soundtrack music there is more advanced harmony that people really enjoy and adds a strong presence to the film or TV show series.

 

Music theory helps. It's good for the workflow. I know some music theory, I'm a clarinet player.

 

The number of members on AS:
38,000

An MMJ is able to keep their hapless ears tuned to Jazz. If there's 1000 MMJs in the US, they will be able to keep 38,000,000 pairs of hapless ears tuned to Jazz. Does this mean that they like jazz or MMJs are doing forcefully?

 

I can see why you may see it this way. However, I look at it more objectively.
Simply - It's his thread, his topic. He theoretically has more rights than anyone else posting. I did not make up these rules to piss anyone off, it seems to be consistent with almost any forum guidelines.

I love all styles of music. I spent a lot of time in jazz because of the creative aspects and I freely acknowledge that it is not for everyone. Even the figures I posted say that. However, it is like avocadoes, Artichoke Hearts and speciality foods - it is an acquired taste, meaning people will either love it or the opposite. You can grow to love it or at the least like it, but again, that is a personal choice to be open enough to allow yourself to like it.
I do not begrudge anyone the right to not like it either.

I do wonder though rather than demerit something that you might not like, why have you not started a thread of your own on the music you have spent a lot of time on and really love?
That has to be more fun and more rewarding surely?

 

With the greatest respect to your remarks, please let me characterize the Jazz in reality:

Jazz is an intension-less concoction of notes. IMHO, it's not music and not complicated at all. It's creative but not creative in good ways, creative in bad ways. Its improvisers and composers don't have deep knowledge of music. They try to present it as intentional kind of music but it's not.

I can add more real characteristics to it but the mentioned ones suffice for now.

 

Do you like Quincy Jones? His pop credits are a mile long. Would it surprise you to know he was the 3rd Trumpet in Count Basie's Big Band?
He also did all of the arrangements on Frank Sinatra's 'Live at the Sands' and several other artists in the same genre.
Do you like John Williams? Film Scorer for Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark and many more memorable scores?
It may surprise you that they both had composition and arranging lessons from a man named Russell Garcia who also opened the door for them (Williams and Jones). Russell was also a well known Film Scorer along with Henri Mancini and Nelson Riddle. Russell did the entire Orchestral score for 'Porgy & Bess' with Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald with a jazz rhythm section. Russell was highly jazz-trained as was Mancini, Jones, Riddle and Williams. A lot of the upper extension harmony in their scores, with and without orchestra, is based on jazz harmony, not just classical.

I cannot agree with the statement about jazz musicians that "Its improvisers and composers don't have deep knowledge of music. "

There is way too much evidence to the contrary. That is like saying 'every person that eats peanut butter is a munter'. While I am sure some munters may eat peanut butter, the peanut butter does not make them a munter.
In fact, a well-schooled jazz musician is more adept at complex harmony than most classical musicians. I could even justify that with myself but that would sound arrogant and unnecessary from where I sit.

What I can say in fairness to any musician is to never judge a book by its cover, that old cliche. Until someone has spent a lot of time studying and working at something and this is any discipline, they cannot call themselves an expert or say something so generalized like you have with complete authority. Without that level of study, it is only an opinion not a statement generated from decades of study.
The most humbling facet of jazz, is that if you ever get to meet some of the masters, they actually do not consider themselves masters at all, only journeymen.

There is a difference between free-jazz and composed jazz. The latter can have elements of both too. There are many styles now courtesy of fusing different ethnic styles, polyrhythms, varied harmonic structures and too much to list. There are contemporary jazz orchestral pieces, Latin-jazz, Indian-jazz etc etc etc ....way too much to list and that only scratches the surface.

I cannot put something so diverse into a single box. It makes no sense to me.

So with that, perhaps the best thing we both can do, is to agree to disagree.

 

It takes courage to admit the that your ears are currently at this place I give you that.
A lot of people wouldn't admit that they are unable to hear the patterns that are there.
That you ears cannot make sense of the information component in jazz.
That's fine we all start somewhere .
I just encourage you to develop your ears and do ear training .
( Right now you don't hear what's currently there , the signal your ears sends to your brain is just random notes and sounds changing .)
It be like looking a a picture of a person but Describing it as

A big circle peach color.
Two small circles white with another circle inside that's blue.
Then a rectangle underneath the main circle.

You see although there are millions of lines shapes colors and patterns
Most people shrink that down to

" Oh, it's a human being 1 object "

You just have to work on developing your ear training such that you can do same thing with what you hear for music that's all .

It's like listening people speak
Japanese when you don't know the language.
You just paying attention each separate sound not the meaning and value that's tramitted through the language
Music same way.

Imagine someone that had a visual preference for
1 shape 1 color at time
It be crazy if they looked at a dog
And listed millions shapes and colors that were random

Do you visually see this image as millions of shapes lines and colors ?
Or do you combine them to see 1 object a human being a specific human?

 

Last edited: Jan 10, 2020

Thank you Lager for sharing your thoughts. But in the interest of keeping the conversation of the philosophy of music alive.....

Let's turn our focus away from jazz for a while and allow our minds to consider music and musicianship itself instead of a single genre.

I assume we all consider ourselves to be musicians to a greater or lesser degree. Personally I have decided that I am not a musician. This is an honest appraisal of my skills, not false modesty. I once thought I was a keyboard player but that was simply an overestimation of my abilities at a time when I knew no better.

I have accumulated musical skills and abilities, but I possess only a meagre innate talent despite having absorbed a certain amount of musical theory understanding.

We began this topic asking whether a knowledge of theory was worth learning. But I would like to take a step back from that question and ask if simply possessing knowledge is sufficient to propel an individual into higher realms of musical performance. Surely one must also be driven by a love of what you are pursuing. If you are pushed into learning an instrument as a child, good teaching can give you the mechanical and mental skills you need to read and play, but is that the performance of a simple automaton? Surely any person must be emotionally connected to music to truly embrace the craft that they have adopted. Can knowledge of theory push the average player to be a good player or a good player to be a great player if the emotional connection to music is absent? Does the individual need to be born with a love of music? Indeed, are people born with a love of music? And if not, are such people, like me with tennis, doomed to failure no matter what?

So we find that nature produces an estimated one in 10,000 people born with absolute, or perfect pitch. Statistically this is a relatively high number, yet few people possessing this ability become musicians.

I myself have only met one musician, who has become a close friend of mine, in forty years and he is a virtuoso piano player with an ability to hear any song and play it note perfect within minutes. He had this ability at age four. He is equally skilled on guitar, playing as a session musician for globally renowned artists. Yet, I know he cannot sight read, nor has he ever had lessons. He is a gifted composer and note perfect singer as well. As an interesting footnote, he is on the Aspbergers spectrum.

I ponder what makes a true musician go beyond music and into genuine artistry.

For years now I have followed the career of Rachel Flowers; blind at birth she displayed musical gifts at a very young age. She astonished Ray Charles at age ten with a rendition of Dave Brubeck's Take Five and an equally stunning performance of Debussy. With equally amazing skills on vocals, flute, sax, guitar (her youtube performance of Frank Zappa is a revelation) bass and drums she composes in a combination of classical and jazz styles which I find interesting for the following reason. When one has the techniques at their fingertips to employ any styles from any era and compose and play within a contemporary context, she finds that she can communicate her ideas fully utilising a fusion of orchestral arrangements combined with the loose counterpoint of free form jazz. Yet, she does not try and shoehorn the two together. She gives both the respect they deserve and room for full expression. In other words she is not attempting to reinvent the wheel.

As I watch her on YouTube I feel humbled and small. The realisation that regardless of my years of learning, my years of growth, that there are people born with musical greatness and while many strive to learn greatness through theory and practice, I believe there is a stark difference between those lucky enough to be born to be great (I won't presume to make a list) and those that study all their lives to master their instrument and may indeed be good enough to play with a world class Symphony Orchestra. But do they change or influence the world around them? How do we evaluate the achievements of the (relatively) technically infantile Lennon and McCartney with those of Yo-Yo Ma who despite being a vastly more talented instrumentalist has never composed a song let alone countless number one hits that have become interwoven in not only our musical, but our social history. Please note: this is an incidental side note and I do not think it is the focal point of what I am seeking to engage our minds.

Which I hope brings us back to the question of the importance of music theory from a different perspective. Not jazz theory, not classical theory... simply how some seem to be born to achieve musical greatness already embedded in their brains.

What is your philosophy on this?

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 11, 2020

This is really a great observation.

The love of music is really everything. From that stems the desire to learn more and become better at it because it is exciting.
Die-hard theorists want to object when I say being able to read music is only a road map, it does not necessarily tell you how to play. It can aid and help in development.
For example, you are at an outdoor gig and the wind blows the chart so far away, you would have to put your instrument down and stop long enough to get the chart, put it back and commence from wherever the ensemble or band is. By the time that happens much of it is over. The only thing that can save you from getting up and chasing that chart is your ears.
Theory is a tool and it is only valuable like any tool is, if it is used.

 

Well imagine if you met two twins .
2 female twins about 13.
1 of them learned English and learned to understand the deeper level of what sentences mean.
The other twin learned from the first twin.
But only learned how to make the sounds and speak perfect English could speak 1 thousand sentences and they sounded just like the first twin.
But she didn't learn anything to do with the deeper level of what it all means.
Yes it is impressive that she leaned those patterns by ear and can reproduce perfectly and even combine parts from bunch to make new configuration of new original ones.
But for me the whole entire point and purpose is the deeper level of meaning what it means.
( Semantics )
It's identical with music .
The music theory teaches you what it means .
The surface level is the sounds you hear or play over time .
However just like when I watch a film motion picture it's the deeper level I care about.
The meaning the characters plots the storytelling.
It's identical with music .

For example say a motion picture film
Was 8k resolution in detail super expensive cameras hd lighting
But what happened was a guy sitting in the park on bench reading newspaper for 2.5 hours long

The hd resolution and shadowng and great color
Cannot makeup for a bad storytelling which has no plot serves no purpose and accomplishes nothing for no reason or purpose.
It's the deeper level of meaning that matters most to me . +( Music is indentical

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2020

Like imagine that some parents taught their
6 year old to recite a PhD Harvard speech , however they didn't know what any of it meant .
I would think it was cute that would be it .
But it's do much different when speak speak a language where they know what it means and in fact the only reason they are speaking at all I'd they chose those words and phrases out of all other possibilities in order to express that exact idea of theirs
Music is not just similar like in a analogy type way .
Music is identical in everyway .( Except the one tiny way it's different)
Which is the way the information 8s encoded us different and what the information is cannot be expressed in some other way
Also
Identical to our sight .
How an image on surface is millions shape lines colors but through that information is transmitted deeper level.
Music is a whole other category of this phenomenon
Just as impactful say those that blind cannot see.
Is same as those who do not know music theory.
( Or another those that watch a movie film
But only ever see lines and colors)

 

3 major categories in this thread:

1. People who believe in natural talent and theories are just supplementary information for them not essential.
2. People who believe that Jazz is the most complete version of music and its theories are the finest.
3. People who don't believe in talent at all and also state that Jazz is just false pretenses for the musicianship. They also believe that Jazz showmen can never understand the best kind of music.

Unfortunately these believes are not compatible with each other.

 

A music Jesus is needed to coordinate these beliefs or abrogate 2 of them.

 

People they believe
When they look at a photograph all there is is lines and shapes .
Vs people that believe there is a deeper level which the lines and shapes represent something with meaning .

You may as well said that instead.

I mean you don't think Japanese and french
Are just a bunch of clicking noises right?

You haven't learned C++ or physics languages
But you think they more than random shapes right ?
( Just because you don't learn the language yet )

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2020

Maybe youll belive a guy with a British accent?

 

You remain locked onto this target at all costs. I made an alternative path of thought for us all to discuss, but you will not let go of the words you repeat that all are blind to music unless they know music theory.
I'm disappointed that you didn't have more to say on the idea of having the gift of musical ability from birth.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 11, 2020

I did say a lot about that.
That is what the twins example is about .
If you have 1 learn how to speak all those sentences , but not know the level deeper what the sentences mean .the level of semantics .
For myself.
The point of speaking a language is the deeper level of meaning .
That you are expressing an exact specific thing a specific way on purpose because of what that configuration itself means .
Now this whole aspect of the deeper level of the meaning I'm talking about music itself .
There is another human aspect of just them doing something like more abstract .
Like abstract art
Anything that is a positive human activity that they enjoy is a positive thing .
But from the aspect of music.
For me the whole point of it is the meaning.
Just identical to watching a film movie because of the characters and plot and story
( As oppossed to that being invisible to you and only the surface level of lines shapes colors changing over time is all that you'd notice)
Those lines shapes and colors are equivilent to playing a song and only hearing the sounds that change over time and what they sound like .
Or looking at a imagine of jesus Christ day a painting .but if you only say lined curves shapes circles triangles peach colors oranges.
But didn't know the deeper level of what those shapes mean.

This is important point to stress.
It's the whole reason I exist here , to help people.

The thing about musical ability.
Is complex issue.
When you look around at the world with your eyes and instead only seeing the details but you actually compartmentalize the patterns in order to understand that it's 1 object s(a human being.)
This pattern recongition with the visual sense .
Is exactly same thing with your ears to be a music genius and whatever place you are at starting out you can always develop it and improve it .
So every human being has already everything they need and they use it every day with their other senses .spoken languages and all other pattern recongition they use to get to the deeper level meaning.
They just have to learn how to apply it to their ears .
( Music theory )
Now about physically playing instruments that thats into many areas from fine motor skills to conceptual framework memory etc. ( Ability to metaphor abstract)
I believe everyone alive has potential to be what we normally call " music genius"
And everything it requires is only the application of every day senses and brain functioning .
They just need a framework
( Music theory )
Combined with other things they already use
( Abstract sense of metaphor and categorization naming things organising things prioritizing things )
And of course time dedication and creativity .
There's also a byproduct in the other direction.
It improves every other thing you do .
( Developing a thought framework of organization and prioritization of abstract metaphor symbolic representations symbols)
Because the short term memory restricts number of objects at one time, however through the use of compartmentalization you can abstract symbols and compress information into symbols and metaphor then categorize them and prioritize them .)
Information compression encryption and decryption.

This is what religion is the compression of complex societal moral practices values and encrypted into metaphor symbol.
( Also movies film tv shows )
If you use 10% of these processes you already do just narrow focused on sound you can be Bach Beethoven or Charlie Parker.

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2020

Your twins story would have been more appropriate to the question I posed in the following context:
Two twins learn English at the same school with the same teacher. By the age of ten one is writing with the skills of Charles Dickens while the other writes about her "pritty pink pony" yet both have had the same education. Why is one a brilliant novelist and the other a B grade student?