Category: Editions

Let me put it in this way, “I don’t have it, if you don’t have it”.  Because, I have it, only to the extent that I can give it away; “that I can give it up and to, all others.”

But, in order that people may master these disciplines, (and this is the responsibility of the older generations) it must be understood that working on the disciplines, is fun! And this is the task of all good teachers. 

All good, really gifted and great teachers are people who never have to resort in their classes to artificial methods of imposing discipline.  They need no proctors, they need no punishments, they need no bribes, because the good teacher is the person who makes the work of learning the discipline so completely fascinating, that the student is embroiled.  The reason being, that learning a discipline is not a matter of forcing yourself.  

And here the English language leaves a little bit to be desired.  We have a paucity of words for effort, for application, for concentration… that we can talk about when we’re talking with children, “You must apply yourself!”

Now, it’s perfectly true, nothing in the way of a skill will be achieved without practice.  But, if practice is strained, still nothing will be achieved by it, except resentment.  Many a child learns to hate the violin or the piano because it was drummed into him, “This is what you got to do! You got to apply yourself to it!”, …driving it home. 

But, on the other hand, if there is a way of fascinating a child with the discipline of any musical instrument or what have you, then they can apply themselves day after day, after day, after day, and be fascinated with the discipline. 

So, this is the skill of the teacher…through skillful means to get the student to love the art because, (remember this principle), if your student does not learn to love the discipline, he will never be any good at what you’re teaching him.

Now, you may know that certain kinds of scholars do work that most of us would think very tedious.  Let’s suppose I take a field about which I know a few smatterings, which is the study of Chinese.  Chinese scholarship is very difficult.  You have an enormous amount of characters to study and you have to look up things in dictionaries and consult volumes of this, and volumes of that.  But the true scholar is a person who just loves doing that!  He’ll spend a whole afternoon going after one character through all sorts of things, sifting this reference and that reference, and he will be having more fun than someone at a bowling alley, doing just that! 

And from the standpoint of an external observer, who has no particular interest in this, they’ll say, “Oh how hard he’s working!”  

You know, in my private life, I must confess to you, I’ve had a terrible time with this because I love my work and people who had absolutely no comprehension or interest in what I’m doing would wonder, “how do I keep up the pace?”  “how can I possibly do this, that and the other?”  I love it! 

But then there are other people who say, “You never do a lick of work in your life!  You’re playing all the time! Just goofing off!  It’s too easy for you because you love it!”  But that’s the only way to get it done, and done well!  

Because if you have something that is, say a good marriage; a good marriage is not the result of forcing yourself into that marriage.  Are you seriously supposing that if you say to your husband or wife, “Darling do you really love me?” And the partner answers, “I’m trying my best to do so.”…?  This is simply not a satisfactory marriage. We are not going to get beautiful work by mere effort, “against the grain.”

When you could tell, a cook instantly, by tasting one mouthful of a dish whether it was cooked “out of a sense of duty” or cooked “out of love”.

Now, a person who cooks out of true love will of course encounter days on which it is difficult.  But somehow, the overall love of the art will manage to get him through those days when it’s difficult.  And so with marriage, and so with the Mastery of any other art.  

But, it is on the end of the older people.  It is up to the teachers and the parents to present the disciplines of life as something that; not just that, “you ought to know”, but as something that it is beautiful to understand!”

– Alan Watts

An essential aim of Education is to provide the pupil with the freedom and safety to process mistakes and misunderstandings without shame.  

The teacher’s role (in so much as teaching can be practiced) is to give a wholehearted “living experience” (as opposed to inert information) to the pupil so as to guide, encourage, and clarify the process’s of self education, without fear.  

The pupil’s fundamental experience must be rooted in a pure discipline that fosters and emphasizes a robust autonomy exercised through the natural skills of observation, organization, and inference;

all the while, in acceptance and awareness of their own developing thoughts, curiosities, feelings, and manifestations in the making of artifacts with and in cooperation to the Good service of their many Life Relationships.

– JC Heisler

My Answers to…

QUESTIONS FOR JAZZ EDUCATORS (Part 2)

Brad Goode: August 16, 2021 Facebook Post and Thread

Q1. One can improvise by using material applied to chord changes, either written or memorized, OR one can improvise by playing from instinct and ear over song forms that have been internalized. Are these two different art forms?

JCA1.  I would not call them art forms at all.  The art form is performance. They are two different processes of coordinating the body and the mind with the ear; as all performance within the art form is by ear.  The terms “instinct” and “internalization” might be used to describe written and memorization processes; as it may be someone’s instinct to coordinate the ears, body, and mind through writing and study and then in turn, to memorize so as to internalize.   

Both processes are valuable as a means to a beginning.  When practiced thoroughly and genuinely they should  lead to extremely personal internal change, discovery, and wonder, thus serving and developing the artist’s personal talents, skills, considerations ,and relationship with the art form; there is no codifying an absolute or acceptable way to participate in the creation of an artifact within an art form.  

There are the same inescapable laws of physics that we all commit to dancing with through dedicated repetition as we reimagine, through self discovery, new possibilities of self expression to serve the performance of our unique artifacts.  In this way, the deeply personal processes of practice lead to genuine honest innovation and revelation in performance.

Q2. Is the influence of recorded music equal to the influence of live music?

JCA2. They are completely two different artifacts.  Their value is defined from the experience of the audience’s point of view.  Though extremely different modes, they may be as equally impactful within their separate medium of expression and exposition.  It truly is for the listener to acknowledge.

Q3. Is transcribing someone else’s improvisations a form of cheating?

JCA3. How many Bertoldo di Giovanni sculptures did Michelangelo have to replicate in order to sculpt?  How many copies of Rembrandt did Picasso replicate in order to paint?  

Replicating someone else’s work is not creating; I am certain Michelangelo and Picasso have many more personal drafts of their own developing languages and artifacts than copies of other people’s works in their repertoire.  

No Art Academy would charge their students sit and paint replicas for four years.

Q4. It is often said that Jazz is a language, but in speaking it should we be trying to sound more like each other, less like each other, or should we let nature take its course?

JCA4. Seek to hear what self discovery sounds like through disciplined intentionality and personal performance study.  There is no cadre of “we” in this pursuit.

Q5. Should we teach content, or should we allow the student to find or choose their own?

JCA5. The artist must be uninhibited in finding their own voice.  They must stand behind it whole heartedly in the face of inevitable scrutiny.  This is tremendously difficult and vitally important work.  It is THE POINT of THE WORK.  The artist does not need allowance to create and explore in this manner.  

Every scholastic institution selling a degree should prioritize and support the artist’s duty to pursue their own artifact through their own process; not promote or enforce a curriculum.  At its best, the institution should value this process; realized through a beloved apprenticeship where a clear commitment is made to the devoted study of the craft with the fidelity of intense mentorship.

Q6. If rhythm is the primary force in Black American Music, why would we structure our courses, analysis and lessons around harmony?

JCA6. Rhythm is the great conveyor and animator in the relationship of melody and harmony, especially and most fundamentally in Black American Music.  What is most important in my opinion is how melody and rhythm are synthesized to transcend the harmony.  

A problem is a lack of melodic literacy.  Melodic literacy is contingent and enhanced upon rhythmic accuracy through cadencing.  Harmonic literacy is contingent upon melodic literacy.

Q7. Most history courses are taught chronologically. Must they be? Should the performance styles also be taught chronologically?

JCA7. Most jazz history courses do not even give a thought to the importance of addressing the suffering, hardships, atrocities, and balms endured by the people who made and created this music.  It is here, where we learn of what the music truly means and how we might engage in an honest personal relationship with the true history and tradition of Jazz Music.

It is a disgraceful disservice to the students and a tragic neglect of the heroes who sacrificed and triumphantly conceived this music.  It is a National Treasure that should be recognized as a common and cherished living heritage; it is clear the rest of the world does.

Q8. Are chord-scales an effective way to prepare the student for control and freedom of melodic construction?

JCA8. In my experience through the tradition, No. Emphatically, NO.

Q9. Might some of our performance practices just be ruts? For example, why always head – solos – head? Is this necessary? 

JCA9. Yes, absolute ruts. It is not necessary to follow such an unimaginative form.  A complete lack of creativity, uninspired laziness, and uninformed practice.  This is a huge part of the work in creating compelling jazz; inventing and reinventing forms, composing and orchestrating development sections etc…every esteemed and poignant jazz album contains these fundamental elements.  This is what defines the song and the album.  If it is done well, it provides the soloists with interesting puzzles to solve, cajoling inspired moments of supreme creativity as a group.

“Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren’t all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.” – Rilke, ‘Letters to a Young Poet’

“You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you – no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must” then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don’t write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance.

So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty. Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world’s sound – wouldn’t you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance.

And if out of, this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not.

Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.

That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.”

– R. M. Rilke, ‘Letters to a Young Poet‘

“So here I am, in the middle way…trying to use words, and every attempt is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure because one has only learnt to get the better of words for the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which one is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate, with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision of feeling, undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer by strength and submission, has already been discovered once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope to emulate – but there is no competition -There is only the fight to recover what has been lost and found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions that seem unpropitious but perhaps neither gain nor loss. For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

– T.S. Eliot, ‘Four Quartets’

THE ORGANIZATION OF THOUGHT

Educational and Scientific

BY A. N. WHITEHEAD, Sc.D., F.R.S.

There is only one subject-matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations.

The mind is never passive; it is a perpetual activity, delicate, receptive, responsive to stimulus. You cannot ‘postpone its life until you have sharpened it’.

Whatever interest attaches to your subject-matter, must be evoked here and now; whatever powers you are strengthening in the pupil, must be exercised here and now; whatever possibilities of mental life your teaching should impart, must be exhibited here and now. That is the golden rule of education, and a very difficult rule to follow.

All practical teachers know that education is a patient process of the mastery of details, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. There is no royal road to learning through an airy path of brilliant generalizations.

We now return to my previous point, that theoretical ideas should always find important applications within the pupil’s curriculum. This is not an easy doctrine to apply, but a very hard one. It contains within itself the problem of keeping knowledge alive, of preventing it from becoming inert, which is the central problem of all education.

The best procedure will depend on several factors, none of which can be neglected, namely, the genius of the teacher, the intellectual type of the pupils, their prospects in life, the opportunities offered by the immediate surroundings of the school, and allied factors of this sort. It is for this reason that the uniform external examination is so deadly.

Choose some important applications of your theoretical subject; and study them concurrently with the systematic theoretical exposition. Keep the theoretical exposition short and simple, but let it be strict and rigid; so far as it goes. It should not be too long for it easily to be known with thoroughness and accuracy. The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable. Also the theory should not be muddled up with the practice. The child should have no doubt when it is proving and when it is utilizing.  My point is that what is proved should be utilized, and that what is utilized should—so far as is practicable—be proved. I am far from asserting that proof and utilization are the same thing.

I would only remark that the understanding which we want is an understanding of an insistent present. The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present. No more deadly harm can be done to young minds than by depreciation of the present. The present contains all that there is.  It is holy ground; for it is the past, and it is the future. At the same time it must be observed that an age is no less past if it existed two hundred years ago than if it existed two thousand; years ago.

It’s not out there.

It is in you.

– JC Heisler

“(Practice) does not have to be hard labor. Just allow your body and mind to rest, like an animal in the forest. Don’t struggle.

There is no need to attain anything.

I am writing a book, but I am not struggling; I am resting also. Please read in a joyful yet restful way.

Practice in a way that does not tire you out, but gives your body, emotions, and consciousness a chance to rest. Our body and mind have the capacity to heal themselves if we allow them to rest.

Stopping, Calming, and Resting, are preconditions for healing.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

Presence of Attention Objectifies Developing Coordinations.

Impartial Observation is Creative Liberation.

Vivid Aural-Imagination Manifests Performance.

– JC Heisler

Deeper into self, and the art, and the mysterious trials of wonder.

– JC Heisler

Every inception within the performance act by virtue of its very nature, is original.

There is never a moment within the performance act at which any person can re-create anything.  Re-creation is a false premise.

The performance act is pure creation in the moment; no matter ability, intention, execution, or cognition.

Any intention to be… usurps, denies, and blasphemes the purity of the absolute present.

The origin of all performance is submission to the absolute present. 

– JC Heisler

“Can this be taught to the students: to remain with the Fact; the Actual, happening now, whether psychologically or externally?

Freedom is from the beginning, not at the end. It is not to conform, to imitate; (to) accept first and eventually find freedom. That is the spirit of totalitarianism…”

–J. Krishnamurti