welp, it has been a while since i've felt like i've had anything to post about. i still don't, yet here i am.
it's been a little over 6 months that i've been studying jazz with Todd. i don know know how it is taught in any school, but his method certainly is the product of his own playing career and that of his time in academia teaching countless students. it's methodical, logical, and sensible. it's also a lot of work.
i've spent nearly every single day of the past 6 month, some days twice a day, working with this material. deceptively simple, it takes a long time to program into the fingers (likely due to having to rewrite 25 years of trash programming) through simple exercises that leave my brain fatigued long before my fingers. the results though, are... slow, but noticeable.
the noticeable results are somewhat abstract, but real all the same. there is no real technique to speak of, after all, it's a walking bassline in its simplest form: 4 quarter notes per measure. the results are the beginnings of music as a language. gaining control of phrases to be able to freely mix and match, to play to the music, to play with the music and not just play a prescripted riff. i'm, of course, talking about improvisation.
i never considered myself someone that would head down this road, but now that i'm on it, it makes all the sense in the world. the thought if improvising in a live setting with other musicians does not excite me. i don't want to say i'll never do it because i also said i'd never improvise. but i am certain that playing in that context is likely not for me. however, the skills that are needed for improvisation apply everywhere.
i certainly did not know it at the time (read: anytime during the past 25 years) but this is what i conceptualized as "knowing how to play". obviously, in my mind it was the output that i was imagining, as in some fancy technique or whatever, but really it was having a fluent control of what to play. some of my favorite bassists live in a world of solid 8th notes but what they do play is spot on. i want to be spot on.
it may take years to get there... hell, i may never get there, but at least i'm on the right path now and it's so, so satisfying.
