Empathy is a little-taught skill that's critical to, among other things, teaching, storytelling, and music. When you're comping, you want to be sure the listener (and the soloist) know where they are in the song, without getting in the way. Doing it right requires listening closely, because you want your dynamics (generally) to mirror the soloist's, you want to anticipate when he'll go slow or take a breath because those are the best times to say something. As an accompanist your rhythm should be simpler than the drummer's or the soloist's, but should also (or rather, it often sounds good if you do) reflect any temporary motifs they introduce. If the bass is playing a pedal tone rather than the root, you might consider including the root more important than it would be otherwise (it's common otherwise to play the third and seventh, since the audience can typically infer the fifth even if it's not in the bassline).
These skills, which are often called "taste", are quite temperament-agnostic. They would apply equally to music with 13 notes per octave.
Taste is often in short supply. In my experience, most people overplay. My favorite musicians would often be referred to as restrained. A great example would be Ed Bickert’s playing on Live at the Garden Party. It’s just him on guitar with a bass accompanying, and nonetheless, he doesn’t really come into the first song for at least two minutes. Instead he just does high range chordal harmony to complement the bass. It’s beautiful playing that you really don’t hear very often.
I recently saw a great discussion of musical restraint and intentional playing on youtube, and it's an excellent illustration of your point. I'm sure that a lot of other people will appreciate it: I finally get Radiohead [0]
I think part of the reason why restraint is so valuable is because of the band context. If you listen to a solo guitar piece or piano piece that you like, it might be really complicated, with a million things going on. If you listen to a guitar or piano accompaniment track from a song you like, you might hear simple triads or intervals, played sparsely or with a simple rhythm.
I find it funny how minimalism is considered a virtue in a band setting. All those New Orleans bands can manage perfectly with everyone just blasting whatever into the air..... :)
That empathy and taste also comes from repeatedly playing with each other. It’s a lot easy to anticipate where the song is going if you know what moves your band mates like to employ.
It's a good point, and cuts at a deep tradeoff in musicianship (or, indeed, the labor market) -- general human capital vs. firm-specific human capital. Something I like about jazz is you can spend a couple decades investing in yourself and basically kick ass from then on. But to really shine, you need to have invested in your band too, which is a much riskier proposition.
Charlie Hunter calls this kind of thing "covert chops." This is the kind of thing pros eventually end up caring about -- groove, feel, taste, dynamics, etc. Real musicianship.
Not much to add, apart from to say that the discussion in this here comments section has been the best thing I've read on HN for a long time. And I generally like the discussions on here, a lot.
Can’t there be a game that plays like Mario bros where it goes super easy, but still have an incentive/fun system to let you progress slowly to high levels? Is there such thing even close to this?
I wanted something like you describe, but as far as I know nothing existed. So I've been hacking at this and the basic idea does work. It's now just a matter of designing the courses and polishing the user experience.
I am just coming up with the structure for how to define what music would depend on each other. Trying to do it based on music theory would be ideal, but probably beyond my capacity. So I think the historical development of the genre you are trying to learn is a good proxy. For jazz, for example, this would be something like learning African music first, then spirituals, then blues songs, then new orleans jazz, then basic standards and so on. Trane works based on a graph, so the progression does not have to be linear.
These "transcription" courses first ask you to loosely sing the song, then loosely improvise over it with your instruments (you can customize your own), then sing in different keys and do it more thoroughly, then improvise more closely to the actual song. The last step is what is normally called transcribing, but the course is meant to progressively lead you to that. The whole process is meant to recreate the apprenticeship process that all the early Jazz masters went through.
Ideally there's a graphic interface that downloads the music and lets you loop, slow down, and change the pitch. But for now, there's only a command-line interface and the user has to do that themselves. Not ideal, but it works.
Practicing is a creative skill. Practice really is a terrible word for it, because it suggests s dumb, inefficient way to learn. Research, investigation, pushing boundaries get at the idea better.
Adults have a hard time learning new things largely because beginner's mind feels so alien and tedious to them. A kid is shocked to discover how great that first E major chord sounds, and experiences like that are motivating.
It's easy for beginners to find low hanging fruit, because there's so much of it. But if you periodically step back to map the terrain, there's always something within your reach that will feel satisfying when you get it, no matter how much you already know. How is my rhythm? Can I play to a click? Do I recognize chords as fast as I want? Can I play doublestops? Can I do funk? Counterpoint? Odd time signatures? How are my biomechanics? Bichords (that's two chords at the same time)? Symmetric scales? Microtones (instrument permitting)? Can I convey peace? Excitement? Morose? Military? Exultant? Afraid? Call and response with someone else? Between my two hands? Within one hand?
Also it's helpful to avoid the goal of "dominating" such targets. I will never dominate "rhythm". It's too big. But I'll keep improving.
For those reasons, I'm skeptical any game will be good for very long. It doesn't know what you need. But that said, there is software that can teach you a lot. Practica Musica was a mind-expanding experience for me.
Start by listening to music you like, then pick an instrument. Copy what they did, note by note, but 100x slower. It may not be fun at first, but you will pick up speed slowly, and soon, you're making music, and maybe you'll learn something along the way.
I don't disagree that this type of transcription leads to good results, and in fact, it's what you should eventually do, but I've found a different approach to transcription that to me is easier, more fun, and more powerful.
Take the song, load it up in transcribe (https://www.seventhstring.com/) or similar software, pick a part. Up to here, this method and yours is the same. But rather than worrying about the exact notes being played, study the context by just singing and playing over the song and seeing what works and what does not.
There's a lot more information than just the notes that were played. So this type of transcription gets you to navigate the same context the musicians were playing in. And as you do it, you'll start hitting the actual notes, and eventually you can close in on them. What's great is that it's fun, playful, musical, and you can do it even with songs that are way out of your level when transcribing note by note or learning from a score.
Using a human language analogy, your suggestion would be to mimic conversations and mine would be to babble in other people's conversations until you become fluent. It's clear in human languages that one is much faster than the other. Sure babies are geared for it, but I think the babbling would work for adults too if they became cute as a baby or puppy, got over themselves, and could shamelessly babble onto other's conversations.
The best book on the matter I've read of how to learn by ear is "The Gift of Music" by Victor Wooten. It's kind of weird in that it's written as a fiction book, but there are definitely music lessons. And if some of them feel too out there, just listen to him play. He's a master, not a stoner pretender.
There's also "Thinking in Jazz", but I am only a fourth or third of the way and so far it's mostly about the historical and cultural background of improvisers. It's not gotten too into the weeds musically speaking.
Honestly, this approach makes a lot of sense. The transcription piece was something I have looked for in the past and not found. Thanks for your advice, I think I will check on those books as well.
edit: This Seventh String software has an old school interface, but it's actually brilliant. This completely changes my approach, thank you!!
IMHO - parrot playing is concerned with "what" is being played, and it's OK in the context of non-improvised music.
If you want to learn improvisation it helps to also investigate "why" - why this particular rhythmic figure (e.g as shown in the OP article), why this chord voicing (e.g. block chords? Quartal harmony? Drop-2?), why this melody (e.g. ascending or descending? Arpeggiating the chords or "playing outside"?) etc etc
Edit: One more thing: it's OK to improvise with the help of something like iReal Pro, but nothing replaces improvising with real humans, find a group of like minded people that would like to play with you
I played a lot of Chopin, especially the Nocturnes, although none to perfection, and other classical music. That gave me a solid background in music theory, I do believe you could learn all the basics from playing Chopin and thinking about the music.
As an aside, music skill (and many other skills) can be divided into Reading and Writing. Reading consists of either actually reading sheet music, or Playing by Ear. Writing is executing what is in your mind. In the context of improvisation, it's coming up with those things to execute in the first place.
To be honest, I am a good Reader, but a poor Writer myself, and still in the beginning of this part of my journey. I love listening to jazz, and playing along, but devising my own melodies is almost beyond the current me. But what's great about music is that every day you practice is one that you get better.
Scales are great -- but before or above that, I would say ear train. It's a secret (literally -- shockingly few musicians know about it given how useful it is) weapon. It only takes 15 minutes a day for a few months to be able to hear a melody and know what's being played (at least in relative terms -- perfect pitch is harder but unnecessary). After that you can literally study by simply listening to music, which is both more rewarding and more enjoyable than practicing patterns.
(Okay, technically a song is a pattern. But it's a really nice one.)
Today's software beats the hell out of the audio tapes I used in the 90s but the ideas are the same: Familiarization, recall, and recognition.
First you familiarize yourself with an interval, by just playing it all over your instrument, listening and singing it.
Then you test your recall: Play a note N, and try to sing N+I (where I is the interval).
Once you know more than one interval, you can also test recognition: Someone else plays an interval (N,N+I) and you try to identify I.
Once you've got the twelve intervals (you can go past the octave but that's pretty easy so basically there are only 12 to learn) you can do similarly for chords. Chords are also easy compared to intervals, though, because they are built up from intervals, so even before you can recognize them all at once, you'll already have the ability to pick them apart note by note to figure out what they are.
Seriously though, you can think of melody and etc as relative parts of a scale as well as intervals between notes. Ear training using scales is simplest and eventually starts to apply to more complicated patterns. Eventually you recognize the intervals and scales even if you are not consciously thinking about the descriptors like 'oh this is a major third interval'
For me the ability to improvise music emerged slowly after doing a lot of playing other things by ear and embellishing songs either from lead sheets or coming up with premeditated variations on pieces I already knew. But that's just how I did it. If improv is your goal then you could probably benefit from doing it in a semi structured format like 12 bar blues, where it can start very simple and you can build up complexity.
Level 2-- now learn the bass notes in broken thirds
Level 3-- play those bass notes in left hand and root position triads an octave above in right hand
Level 4-- learn to play the melody in the right hand
Level 5-- (big power up needed to continue!) play both l.h. bass notes and r.h. melody
Level 6 Final Boss-- l.h. broken thirds and melody together
Now you go through 2nd Quest and play duets with people. It gets fun when you realize it's the same as the A section to I Got Rhythm so jazzers can jump in and noodle around atop your bass patterns.
You can even hear a few of these levels literally in the ending credits to a Tom Hanks movie:
Good luck and remember to save your game or you'll have to start back at the beginning each time.
Edit: the link is to a neat rendition-- you get a simulation of the game of learning the bass pattern as the musician slowly gains speed; New Orleans style Heart and Soul; and then a modest stride style Heart and Soul with chord substitutions. It even ends with a circle-of-fifths game that rises up to the Neapolitan before collapsing into one of those jazz ending-chords (sharp 11th?).
If you are interested in jazz piano comping on a deep level, the best books are the Jeb Patton books, "An approach to comping" Vol 1 and 2. Nothing else comes close in its thoroughness.
Also, the online course site openstudiojazz.com has first rate courses.
Thanks for that OS jazz link, will investigate. These days i play maybe a couple days a week, Oscar Peterson's Minuets and Etudes and a pile of guitar books by Mimi Fox, Doug Munro and others.
My top-down approach is to work books as best i can, i need to incorporate "bottom up" which is listen (50x if necessary) and transcribe.
(and i have another TODO for Barry Harris' books/vids etc)
Open Studio is one of the best things to happen to jazz piano in a long time. Peter Martin is one of the few “old” jazz piano masters still active.
He is a highly practical player who (self-admittedly) doesn’t doesn’t know theory that well, which is the perfect antidote to the more theoretical Berklee-method educators (e.g. Adam Neely) that dominate the scene.
The theory-heavy approach has seemed stranger to me the older I've gotten. Watching a lot of improvisational players in jazz and jazz-adjacent genres, a lot of their playing seems to be "structural" (based on physically where certain notes are, and the direction they're moving in) rather than theory-based. Think "just hold the octave while walking this triad down chromatically" vs. a reasoned series of extended chord resolutions.
The first link is solo groove-based, and in the 2nd the harpist is playing what sounds like a written out accompaniment to their own melody. (Or even if it's improvised it's a kind of ostinato pattern.)
Ok, that third link is a harpist actually comping. Boy, that's tough! The pianist has to drop their left-hand and even play rather quietly in their right hand so that you can hear the chords the harpist is comping.
It makes me think of Michael McKean as the harpist bandleader in Primetime Glick, where the audience nearly never hears any harp sounds:
This is a very uninformed opinion that I see very often. In bebop, LH can be deceptively simple (but actually rhythmically it's not so simple). However things have dramatically changed, Brad Mehldau who's a foundational modern jazz pianist, probably the most relevant one after the last Big Tree (Hancock, Corea, Tyner), popularized things like LH counterpoint in jazz. Some of his arrangements if you watch them in mute, you could thing he's playing a Bach Fugue almost. The amount of pianists that followed this style after the 90s, is hard to keep track of, probably every single relevant pianist took things from brad, and LH counterpoint was one of them (a big one there too was Fred Hersch, who heavily influenced Brad).
Then, I recommend you to check out what Sullivan Fortner is doing. Probably the next really heavy one that has managed to push the jazz lang forward after Brad.
Sullivan, in terms of where he's taking jazz piano is comparable to the greats in terms of impact at his current age/maturity. This is what Brad said about Sulli last May, when he saw him live in Amsterdam (where Brad lives)
> Got to hear the incomparable Sullivan Fortner last night at @bimhuis
in Amsterdam. I’m sure many of you know how unreal his music is … he just blows me away every time I get to hear him. Last night was piano solo.
> Sullivan is deep on all levels—touch, counterpoint, utter relaxation, swing, transparency of ideas, no matter how dense the texture. He takes you through the whole emotional spectrum, unabashed joy included.
> It’s completely rooted and completely original all at once. If you have the chance to hear him, don’t miss it. He is quietly revolutionizing jazz piano playing. Actually piano playing period. (And by the way he can sing like nobody’s business, if that weren’t enough!)
Hard to put it better than Brad... nails the review.
I had the privilege of taking a week long workshop with Sullivan about 6 or 7 years ago, the guy is an absolute beast. I hope we hear more about him, he deserves it.
Well that's not really true in any sense. Almost any jazz piano player today worth their salt will favor two-handed voicings for comping, and comp with left hand while soloing.
Spreading a chord over two hands isn't really using your left hand though.... and playing random shell chords isn't really either. Playing an actual walking bass, stride, four-to-the-bar chords, arpeggios or boogie patterns is more like it.
> Spreading a chord over two hands isn't really using your left hand though
Kind of like how running with both legs isn't really using your left leg? I don't really understand this train of thought.
> playing random shell chords
Not many piano players these days use bebop era shell chords. It's all about rootless, cluster and quartal voicings. And just because they are played without regularity doesn't make them random. A skilled player places them very intentionally.
> Playing an actual walking bass, stride, four-to-the-bar chords, arpeggios or boogie patterns is more like it.
These techniques create a metrical regularity that is antithetical to the spontaneous and forward-pushing rhythym of post-bop era jazz. It's fine for certain styles of music.
The OP article contains a video of a performance by Emmet Cohen (who was born many decades after the 50s) doing a complicated solo based on stride piano techniques.
PS In your other comment you blame bebop for this, but I don't think that contemporary jazz is necessarily all in the shadow of bebop, I think it is actually very diverse, with so many genres that are not necessarily close to bebop such as neo-swing and funk-jazz.
Block chord and barry harris chord style playing is a post 50's thing and is very much two handed. All organ and many piano players can do left hand bass lines while playing if they have no chord playing. The fact that the melody is typically above the chords is an arrangement thing based on acoustics and psychoacoustics (look up masking). You can't just do the same thing anywhere on the piano without getting muddy sounding, so unless you want to cross your arms...
Most pianists put the melody on top because it sounds better and doesn't conflict with the bass.
Basically, since the advent of bebop, the overwhelming majority of pianists use sparse comping. This means that they don't really provide bass, they just provide shell/rootless chords for themselves to play, the main focus is soloing in the right hand, or when others solo, just providing chords in pulses. The actual bass is provided by a double bass player, who plays a bassline.
Before that, the prevalent comping style in the left hand was stride, which provides a rich bass backing. (You know, the oom-pah stuff) Contrary to the common criticism, if coordinated well, this can also work in the presence of a double bass player (just check out Fats Waller recordings, many of his Rhythm recordings had a double bass player!)
This sounds more like the difference between playing solo and playing in a combo. If you're playing solo these days, you pretty much have to switch between a variety of these styles in an artful way (which I find really freaking difficult).
Even pre-bop, like singing Great American Songbook stuff while playing the piano, requires this. Like, for the head while you're singing you can get by on bass and chords while you sing the melody, but when it's time for your piano solo, you're basically trying to fit three responsibilities in two hands. Stride is only one way to do that, and you really only want hints of it.
"and you really only want hints of it." What's wrong with full-on stride? Or using close-voiced four-to-the-bar chords? Or "mini-stride"? (Like stride but not moving the hand, only playing a chord broken up in the middle) Or mashing octaves/6ths in the left hand?
I guess it refers to them playing very fast and elaborate solos (right hand) with minimal accompaniment (left hand + bass player + drums). Minimalistic comping will also mostly leave the low notes (left hand) to the bass player and comp in a fairly high range, with more notes allocated to the right hand than left.
In the context of the example I'll grant that it's a bit silly to think of it as an E7. In the context of a band scenario, it might make perfect sense. If you're playing a jazz tune from a lead sheet, it might be very reasonable to mark that chord as an E7, and the bass might be playing the root, in which case thinking about it as a viio7 would miss some context.
The problem with music theory is that it's _extremely_ contextual, and I think you have to at least get a sense for some of the "rules" of chord construction to be able to make sense of the notation. Music theory is just a language for talking about sounds and harmonies, and while there are cases where "just focus on the intervals" would make sense, there are just as many times that it's useful to say "it's a ii-V-I in Ab major." Having the language be based on the diatonic chords of the key you're in can make it easier to express a lot of different concepts in a shorthand, instead of having to spell out the intervals of every chord you come across.
My advice to folks learning music theory would be to check out the Signals Music Studio channel - that dude has helped me make sense of theory concepts that I never grokked in years of playing music. I think it's really one of those cases where you have to get a good sense for the language before you start to get frustrated by the limitations and blemishes of the whole system.
In my mind the point of calling it a "rootless voicing" is that even if the bass player does play the root, not everyone has to. Playing a rootless voicing is a choice to be made on the fly given the knowledge of the root, melody and key, rather than something you'd typically want to prescribe. It's a matter of interpretation. The listener will often have the root in their ear (the mode really) even if nobody is currently playing it explicitly. Or maybe someone just played the root and nobody is now but the rootless voicing still rings. Or maybe the last chord had the same root and the sense of it is lingering. Or maybe the root is in the melody.
If I couldn't have any information about the key, I'd still want the root and the melody.
Where are you getting diminished 7th from? If you play the 3, the 5, the 7, and the 9 of E7 it's G# B D F#. At least in jazz we call that shape a "half-diminished" chord or "minor 7 flat 5", and it will stay that way no matter how you invert it or move the voices around between the hands. You'd only get a diminished seven if you flat the 9th to F natural (which actually often happens in jazz though not in the context presented).
The point I think you're missing is that the blog post isn't a music-theoretical presentation of what E7 is 'ontologically', it's a guide for what jazz pianists should play on that chord in an ensemble context. And in that context what's written here is very standard advice, since it's assumed the bassist will be playing the E. If there was no bassist, say if they were playing solo piano, a pianist will often play the E in the bass.
It's also clear from the way the article is written that they're already assuming some basic theoretical knowledge. It's never explained what notes are in an E7. If you don't know that, yes it will be confusing, but only because the article is not for you.
Overall I think the post would be very helpful for someone who knows the basics and is just getting starting playing with others.
As a jazz player, I have to say it's not imprecise at all. It's more precise in fact. The root is important, and it is (often) played, just not by those voices.
To expand on this a bit, you very rarely see specific voicings written out in charts, at least outside of big band arrangements and such.
The player chooses what voicings to use, often on the fly. Voicings like 7-9-3-5 for a ii chord are only the most basic one-hand voicings that can give some minimal voice leading in common progressions.
Once a player learns a lot of different voicings, and more voicing concepts, they will add other notes like the 11, 13, and yes the root. Two-handed spread voicings on piano might often have a root on top, or pass through a root via voice leading in a progression.
The simpler voicings are there for beginners to teach the theory, enough practice to play a bit, and to emphasize getting the root out of the low register where it muddies things with the bass.
So the important piece of information is the key and chord quality. For an E7 as a V7 chord, it really matters that the root is E (and that you're in the key of, and maybe resolving to D) even if you don't, right at some particular moment, play the E.
> We have a "rootless" chord that's named after the unsounded root
From my reading of the article there wasn't a suggestion the root was unsounded, just that it wasn't provided by the piano or guitar voicings, i.e. left to the bassist (or potentially even the soloist).
Having said that I'd say there clearly are times even playing solo it makes sense to think of a particular chord as rootless, given what it's leading to or what it's substituting for, or what you might reasonably expect a bass player to do if they were present.
Honestly, I have to say I do not understand the obsession on Hacker News and more broadly on music theory. Music theory is interesting, but as an amateur jazz/blues/rock pianist for the past twenty years or something, it's not going to make you a better player. The best thing to do to learn these styles is to simply play. I do agree you need to know some things (like if you see an E7 in a jazz book you shouldn't play the E), but really there's not that much complexity to it. Music is a language, someone shows you how to play some licks and you take and expand on that by practice practice practice. I honestly couldn't tell you any of the theory behind half the stuff I play.
Thus, when I hear things like "Of course, a rootless 3-7-9-5 so-called I7 (E7) chord is actually a diminished seventh chord (minor third, diminished fifth, diminished seventh (major sixth)) viio7 (D diminished 7th chord)" it makes sense in my mind what you're saying, but I'm also thinking... if someone showed you how to play it, rather than attempted to 'teach' you by showering you in theory, there wouldn't be a whole lot of confusion.
At the end of the day, the American styles of music are ultimately all aural traditions, whereas 'classical' has -- unfortunately, in my opinion -- become transformed into a written one.
But going back to the E7. Only the piano pays Gsharp, B, D, F#/F. The Bass player will play E, so while it's rootless on piano, it's not rootless in a band. Which is probably another reason you're confused. Jazz comping should not be played without a band. If you're just playing jazz piano then you should certainly play the root at some point (unless you want to sound cerebral, in which case don't do that).
> My advise to people who are learning music theory is to ignore terminology as much as they can and focus on intervals. Intervals are the true source of truth of harmony and everything else is someone's opinion as to how a particular structure should be named, perceived or modeled.
I always tell people attempting to learn improv and piano to 'play what sounds good and don't play what doesn't.
HN has a slightly nerdy preoccupation with theory for its own sake, but a solid understanding of theory is immensely useful, particularly in jazz. You don't need it per se, but in an awful lot of situations it's the difference between desperately faking it in the hopes that no-one will notice and confidently choosing from a broad palette of options that you know will sound good.
When taught properly, modern jazz theory is a clear and pragmatic aid to improvisational fluency. The time investment needed to get to grips with theory is really quite modest in the overall scheme of learning to be a jazz musician.
I think some basic understanding helps, but the problem is to think that you need to master theory, especially esoteric scales, to be able to play. Jazz is more experimentation than anything else, you play what sounds good. Practicing scales and chords per se will not take you anywhere.
You can experiment all you want, but to reproduce those results consistently in any situation that might arise you need to contextualize your experimentation within the framework of theory so your mind has something to grasp onto other than 'moving this muscle makes this sound'. Let's say you are on the gig with a singer who wants to do a standard piece in Eflat and you only practiced it in G. Someone who knows theory well will be able to transpose on the spot. Someone who relies on muscle memory and ear will likely be pretty useless in that situation.
Transposition has little to do with theory. Any player who has musical practice but no knowledge of theory understands the notion of changing keys. If you think this is something acquired by learning music theory you should revisit this idea.
> Any player who has musical practice but no knowledge of theory understands the notion of changing keys.
If they understand the notion of changing keys, then they don't have no knowledge of music theory. Transposition is basic theory, but music theory nonetheless. What do you reckon theory is? It starts with understanding how scales and chords are built.
You are conflating music theory with musical understanding. These two things are separate. For example, many singers know nothing about musical theory, but if you ask them to sing a song in a different key they will do it flawlessly (if they know how to sing in tune). A guitar player can do the same, even because of the shape of the instrument allows this. Maybe this is harder for an instrument like the piano, but it is not a limitation of the player, it is the instrument that requires you to learn about flats and sharps.
Being able to transpose != understanding how transposition works.
I mean sure you can handpick scenarios where some musicians on certain instruments may be able to transpose without knowing any theory. But knowing a bit of theory would unlock the requisite knowledge to do it reliably on any instrument. There is really no reason not to learn some music theory is what I am getting it - it will only make you a more versatile musician.
I'm not saying that learning theory is bad. I love to learn it and I understand that traditional learning is a solid path for most people. What I'm saying is that it is not a prerequisite to play popular music, even in a complex instrument as the piano. Many people have now and in the past learned to play really well without knowing much more that the note names and the basic chord shapes. When it comes to jazz and improvisation, too much music theory will not necessarily make you a good player, and in fact it may hinder you ability to discover by yourself. Improvisation is about feeling the music and interacting with it, it is not about finding the best scale and writing the notes on paper.
I would agree that it is not a prerequisite to play popular music, and music theory will not necessarily make you a good player (theres so much more to it, including feeling as you say, as well as fine motor control).
> Improvisation is about feeling the music and interacting with it, it is not about finding the best scale and writing the notes on paper.
Knowing music theory is not about finding the best scale. It is about being able to talk and write about the building blocks that give rise to musical expressivity in a common language that is communicable to others. In other words, it is descriptive, not prescriptive.
> in fact it may hinder you ability to discover by yourself
As someone who has taken 6 semesters of music theory, and still stumbles upon things that surprise me musically, I would disagree. The difference is when I stumble upon a new sound, I can remember it not only by feeling and how it sounds but also by it's harmonic, rhythmic, melodic, structural characteristics. Which would allow me to use it in greater contexts.
> I do not understand the obsession on Hacker News and more broadly on music theory
Agreed, jazz teachers have the tendency to overcomplicate things. Jazz is not that difficult (on the theory side), because most of what players do is to decide on the fly what sounds good or not. All the complex analysis of scales is just something that is introduced afterwards to try to understand what is going on, not something you need to learn. The only concepts that I believe you need to master to play jazz is basic chords sequences (II/V/I style) and voice leading. Everything else follows from that.
>>> Honestly, I have to say I do not understand the obsession on Hacker News and more broadly on music theory.
I'm an amateur jazz bassist. I've also learned relatively little theory, but have a reasonably active gig schedule with 3 bands plus whoever calls me. I handle my role well enough, including extensive soloing.
But I offer some caveats to younger players when they're given a chance to learn theory:
1. What I've learned by ear and intuition has taken me 45 years. And there were more opportunities to learn by immersion when I started out. A young player who studies theory can get there an awful lot quicker. And there are a lot more college trained jazz players competing for gigs.
2. I compensate with some other strengths, including knowledge of the standards (rarely bring fake books to "standards" gigs), and fluent sight-reading. Even pro's who don't maintain their reading chops will have a hard time subbing for me on my big-band gigs. Some jazz follows the written tradition.
3. Players who go beyond just playing standards and canned arrangements, by writing their own compositions and arrangements, are almost exclusively trained in theory. And unlike the rock scene, playing high quality "originals" seems to enhance the audience appeal of a jazz band. Two of my bands have fairly prolific composers. Unfortunately, neither band records, or I'd share.
4. There's a fair amount of modern stuff that's over my head, and I'm forced to find ways of soloing and harmonizing that are work-arounds.
> if you see an E7 in a jazz book you shouldn't play the E
"Shouldn't" seems a strange way of putting it - if you're fortunate enough to be playing in an ensemble with a dedicated bassist then sure, it's their job to provide the root (for any chord!) but I've never heard it suggested as a pianist that you should avoid doubling it...
It is common in jazz for other players to avoid the root note in its lower position, the idea is to give more freedom to comp, and to avoid repeating the low note in the bass. Remember that unlike classical music where the composer can decide where each instrument will support the music, jazz players have to do this on the fly, so they need to follow some common rules like this.
I'd agree you'd normally not use the root position if you're playing with a bassist (unless they're soloing), but whether or not I avoided including the root at all would depend entirely on what fit well under the fingers and "felt right" at the time. I never imagined there was any sort of "rule" around it...
There are no rules, which was exactly the point of my comment. There's no studying of systems to be had, because there is no system. I said "I always tell people attempting to learn improv and piano to 'play what sounds good and don't play what doesn't."
The particular sentence you quoted sounds rigid on its own, but when put into the context of my entire comment, it's clear that I'm not trying to give a hard rule, but a general convention. Like I said... you should play what sounds good; and don't play what doesn't
typically pianists do avoid doubling the bassist though. Playing jazz piano solo you do a whole different set of things than if you're playing together.
> but as an amateur jazz/blues/rock pianist for the past twenty years or something, it's not going to make you a better player.
Knowing theory won't necessarily make you better at playing music in a certain style on a certain instrument. But it will make you a much more adaptable musician who can pick up styles and instruments faster, communicate musical ideas more efficiently, and form a mental conceptual model of a piece much more effectively.
Particularly in music as harmonically complex jazz, if you can't speak the language of theory other musicians frankly won't be able to communicate with you on paper and thus won't take you very seriously.
Now if you want to play for example punk or Appalachian folk music and nothing else, I would agree with you. But a working musician these days needs to be adaptable.
These skills, which are often called "taste", are quite temperament-agnostic. They would apply equally to music with 13 notes per octave.