Jazz Education and the Tightrope of Tradition1

Prouty, Ken

doi:10.14325/mississippi/9781617031632.003.0003

Cited by 1 publication

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“…108 The discourse around formal learning of jazz remains contentious. 109 Recent critiques question chord-scales and patterns enough to suggest a need to revise or even replace that model of the soloist-as-such. Ake explicitly critiques the "underlying idea that students should aspire to higher degrees of dissonance as they acquire more technical control over their instrument," which he attributes to the Scale Syllabus.…”

Section: Criticisms Of the Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aebersold’s Mediated Play-A-Long Pedagogy and the Invention of the Beginning Jazz Improvisation Student

Thibeault

2021

Journal of Research in Music Education

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In this historical study, I present the emergence and evolution of Jamey Aebersold’s Play-A-Long volumes and their key role in bringing jazz improvisation to formal music education. Drawing on oral histories and using a framework from sound studies, I present chord-scales and pattern playing as Deweyan conceptual technologies that assist beginners in developing a mature technique. I recount how Aebersold learned these as a student of David Baker at Indiana University, then applied the idea through teaching improvisation with the Dorian mode over Davis’s “So What.” In 1967 Aebersold published volume 1, and the Play-A-Long evolved into a system over a dozen years as subsequent volumes included new scale types, like the blues scale; added idiomatic patterns; incorporated his new Scale Syllabus; and licensed standard repertoire. I then describe how these technologies imply the “soloist as such”: a generic model of learning improvisation as a process of learning tunes and tasks from simple to complex around a core unity of theory and performance. This model in particular addressed beginning improvisation and the slogan “Anyone Can Improvise.” Finally, I consider criticisms of the model, note that the chord-scale approach is Black music theory, and suggest future research.

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Section: Criticisms Of the Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aebersold’s Mediated Play-A-Long Pedagogy and the Invention of the Beginning Jazz Improvisation Student

Thibeault

2021

Journal of Research in Music Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Jazz Education and the Tightrope of Tradition1

Cited by 1 publication

References 0 publications

Aebersold’s Mediated Play-A-Long Pedagogy and the Invention of the Beginning Jazz Improvisation Student

Aebersold’s Mediated Play-A-Long Pedagogy and the Invention of the Beginning Jazz Improvisation Student

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