Re: Piano: jazz education needs classical training??

Date: 3 Jul 2003 09:33:30 -0700
Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.piano
Size: 1,874 bytes

"Tom Shaw" <email-address-deleted> wrote in message news:<bdv216$email-address-deleted>...
> Maybe if you studied classical guitar (which as I recall you saying is no
> help in jazz) you would find many more chord voicings available than you
> think. Also some which are not particularly realizable on the
> piano...believe it or not.
I think that it´s hard that classical guitars explores voicings deeper
that the jazz guitar itself has already do it, because, first at all,
the physical restrictions of classical instruments (wider neck, lack
of cutaway and more string action)respect jazz guitars. Second, the
natural complex jazz harmonies forces to the young lion to deal with
voicing early in his/her formation.
In my experience, it is not as usual that a classical guitarist has
the same level of harmony understanding as a 'comparable' jazz
guitarist in average (with 'comparable' I want to say that they both
has the same level approx, what ever that this means). I was studying
some classical and I feel that the development of harmonic
understanding it is much slower than in the jazz guitar studies. I
feel that classical guitar is much more rigorous, with a lot of
attention to technique, form and structure. These is the natural
skills that legit guys needs to approach the, -'contrapuntual'-,
counterpoint and structured things that they usual handles. I am not
saying that -eventually- the classical guy can't reachs the highlight
in theory knowloged (as they do), but in the first/intermediate stages
the jazz education exceeds classical in matter of direct harmonic
concepts manipulations. Ok, advanced guitarists can play all that
wonderful Leo Brower´s voicings (i.e. 'Elogio a la Danza', etc.) but
they must to sweat and work very hard technically in order to play
this song. Just my opinion.
Any resources about the voicings of Bill Evnas??
p.e.