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Re: Musical snobbery (was Re: Songs for BL)

To: brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Musical snobbery (was Re: Songs for BL)
From: Adrian Drover <saxhorn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 10:25:30 +0100
In-reply-to: <35829DD0.52F9@sympatico.ca>
Priority: low
Reply-to: brass-band@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On 13 Jun, Lloyd_Hiscock <lloyd.sue.hiscock@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> And what about other musicians who have no "training", formal or
> otherwise but create beautiful (subjective, I agree) music? Louis
> Armstrong, for example. And what about self taught composers and
> arrangers? And countless numbers of folk musicians? (I believe Gil Evans
> is in the self taught category, although I'm not sure if he was
> completely self taught). Gil's work, especially with Miles Davis, is the
> stuff of legends IMHO. (If you haven't heard the Concierto de Aranjuez
> (Rodrigo) by Miles and Gil on Sketches of Spain, give it a listen). And
> innovative.

In their day (and mine), there were no colleges for jazz training, either
as a player or a writer, and only one or two not very informative books on
the subject. Jazz was still frowned upon by established colleges, even in
the USA where it was invented. The only option we had was to be self
taught. We did this by listening, scrounging scores from other writers,
trial and error etc., etc. After we had soaked up enough information to
get started we began to develop our own ideas. Even though I have had no
formal training, I now teach big band arranging at the RSAMD in Glasgow
and am probably the only instructor on the staff that does not have a
string of letters after his name. But even if a student is lucky enough to
go through college, once he/she has graduated, should revert to
self-taught mode, otherwise nothing new would ever happen in the world of
music. 

Adrian

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- Re: Musical snobbery (was Re: Songs for BL)
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- Re: Musical snobbery (was Re: Songs for BL)
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