Welcome to Jazz Guitar Lessons, where we help guitarists learn jazz faster, express themselves more fluently, and have fun along the way. My name is Marc, and if you're looking to learn jazz, form better practice habits, and especially if you enjoy French accents, make sure to subscribe. Marc here for another micro podcast on JazzGuitarLessons.net So this is one, of course.
Keep it short, people prefer it. And this one on "Jazz is Cerebral", quote unquote. Oh my God, I have to stop saying this to myself. It's going to haunt me. I have had nightmares about jazz as a rule now. Okay, So we're not trying to get people that are saying that jazz is too intellectual and it's just not fun to listen to, to be to be right.
We're not giving them this permission to be right about that. However, here's the thing. We have to consider that in order to get to a level where your jazz becomes emotional, we have to go to go through technical mastery, like something that's it's so easy. It's so easy. It facilitates your emotions to come out, right? So that's where we want to go and that's why I call this podcast Jazz is Cerebral, because once Bill Evans was asked about this and said, Is jazz too intellectual, is too brainy?
Right. Is all you use, your brain is like, Well, my heart is directly connected to the piano. I don't know what he answered, I'm just paraphrasing. But all I'm saying is, well, as you hear Bill Evans play and sometimes you want to cry because it's too good, well, it means that there was this technical proficiency that allowed such such players to have their emotions go through.
So my advice to you. Well, you know, this is not a lessons podcast. Not even an advice podcast is just talk. So I think personally talking, just talking like once you can connect so deep with a piece of music, with your instrument, with chord changes, with other layers, with the audience members, once you can connect and play stuff and connect emotionally, then jazz is not cerebral anymore.
It stays cerebral in the sense that if you want to connect with your instruments, with chord changes, with songs, with other musicians, with audience members, if you want to connect like that in a style that is purely always improvised, then it takes more mileage. See what I mean? If you play three chord rock and it's really deep, it's really good and you connect emotionally, that's fine.
I have personally nothing against it. I still listen to a lot of rock music, pop music, but my point being, it takes a level of expertise to bring jazz to that emotional realm. And it's just an opinion I have is just perspective right now for you to think about that. It means that you're playing the chess of Music is what I often say to my students.
You're playing like, you know, chess is like the highest, purest form of game there is running is the purest form of activity. I mean, track, you know, racing, running against another human being like this, running, you know, 100 meter dash. It's the purest form of athletics, I think. It's not a sport like hockey or football. Let's look at in sciences, you know, mathematics or maybe physics are the purest form of their art.
Well, I think the music, the classical music and the jazz music require such a high level of proficiency to be emotional. That's why people just label that and say, Oh, jazz too cerebral. I can't get into that. I can't listen to that. Yeah, well, guess what? Listen to Miles Davis. Sometimes it's really, really deep. It's heart wrenching. Listen to kind of blue.
Listen to other tracks. Listen to this. My funny Valentine line that was at the Philharmonic, like mid-sixties. It's crazy how much emotion there is. So guess what? We just have to transcend the intellectual part of it. The cerebral part of it. And this is your task. You have to forge your ass off, learn all the skills and arpeggios until you don't have to think of this in terms of scales and arpeggios.
But you just have to think about it in terms of expressing yourself, which is in fact, my challenge to you guys and purely say my challenge to myself at the same time. All right, So that's all I have to say for this podcast. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe or share this with friends. Once again, my name is Marc from Jazz Guitar Lessons Dot Net.
Improve your jazz guitar playing with a real teacher and I'll see you in the next podcast. Take care.
