Theory knowledge -- I don't know how much I don't know, but I think it's a lot. Yet, I'd rather play improvised bass lines than do about anything else. I'm not earning any money at it, but let's suppose I do an adequate job. By the way, I see that as not just playing notes that are consonant with the harmonic structure, but also providing cues to the harmonic movement, so to speak - notes that set up the changes. (It would be interesting to work with another player who's doing that, e.g., trombone, but never been there.) Anyway, supposing I'm managing all right with quite minimal theory, what am I missing?tubaphillips wrote:Jazz and reading chord changes is something anyone can learn. Most tuba players struggle with it because it requires strong musicianship skills and theory knowledge.
Well, one missing thing is that I need to know the music before I can play it. I mean, I can puzzle something out from a chart, play the roots anyway, but that isn't how I do it, it's pure black box stuff that goes on somewhere outside of my understanding. Likewise it's a lot easier to play a kind of music I know. I mean, duh, "the blues", but a lot of music is like that.
And from where I'm sitting, it seems to me the "newer" popular music that's used for be bop etc. (only 1/2 century old, as opposed to whole century), might actually be a little harder to learn, in that sense of categorical familiarity. I don't think that's because the popular music as a whole became less predictable, rather it's because be bop improvisers preferred the more unpredictable tunes. Unpredictable means not only that it's harder to know what's coming next, it's also harder to put together a bass line that makes sense of it ... and maybe the theory comes in handy here.
