[78-L] Everyone Their Own Picasso ^, (was Marsalis makes the world safe for pure jazz^)

[Michael Biel]

From: Julian Vein <julianvein at blueyonder.co.uk>
> I doubt if anyone who picked up a sax for the first time
> would be able to get any sound out of it.

eugene hayhoe wrote:
> Although I'm a drummer, not a saxist, based on the couple of times
> I've had a sax in my mouth, I'd guess that the number of untutored
> folks, children or otherwise, who could randomly pick up a sax and
> make the sounds that Ayler, Coltrane, Shepp, and so forth did is
> pretty minimal. Just in the areas of instrumental tone and pitch
> range of notes produced alone the minimum chops required are going
> to beat the 'kid,' let alone playing melody lines, etc.

While others here might have, I never even hinted that it would be
someone "who could randomly pick up a sax".  I specifically mentioned a
kid who would have had at least three months of lessons.  At that point
they know how to make sounds, play scales, pick out some simple
melodies, and sometimes, just sometimes, a kid might be pretty good even
then.  NOW they want to EXPERIMENT!  And it is here that they work on
seeing what sounds they can make, notes they can play, etc.  And when
two or three of them get together, look out!   

> Anyone who thinks they (Trane, Ayler, Shepp, Coleman) are incompetent
> should check out the records all of these folks made playing 'standards'
> and the like - they played the way they did by choice, not inability to
> do anything else. 

I also specifically mentioned that Picasso started out as a talented
regular painter -- and that since talented regular painters are a dime a
dozen, he branched out in unique styles.  Much is the same with these
musicians.  But once an artist -- visual, musical, literary -- go out
into uncharted waters into places where there are no prescribed
standards for ordinary people to judge or compare them with, they risk
entering an area that 95% of people do not understand or appreciate, and
cannot discern the good from the bad from the parody.  

Here's a question.  Did Jackson Pollock ever discard a splash canvas
because it was not good?

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com