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Re: How Much Classical Music...

Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2018-08-30 08:18

That's absolutely the best advice.

Benny Goodman had attributed some of his success to his classical training but you have to ask yourself just how much that was given that he was playing professionally with Ben Pollack at the age of thirteen.

As a classical music lover I was curious enough about the discipline of improvisation to ask a friend of mine (who learned his craft at Berklee alongside Brandford Marsalis) for some help. He said that besides knowing the "head" to hundreds of charts, you need to understand how to create a melodic line over a given chord progression. He gave me bass line and told me to write a melody over it. I was to come back with this melodic line and he'd evaluate it; tell me what was good; tell be what could be improved; and then give me the next chord progression to work on. After twenty-seven years he's still waiting to see my first submission.......but I'm ok with that.

Then there is my nephew. He began guitar lessons about the age of ten. I was appalled that his instructor gave him some chords and started him doing some rock tunes right off the bat. I could not understand how any teacher could have someone working on tunes before even knowing the basic scales. Within a year my nephew was playing pay gigs and it was not long after his professional and monetary life surpassed mine exponentially (no hard feelings).

As Karl said, do what you love.

...............Paul Aviles

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