Lets start with my brief college career. I did go to college for about 2 years. One year was all requisite basic courses and the second year I took a few music courses, but only for a short while and then I dropped out. The actual music theory courses were a nightmare for me but when it came to actually playing guitar in the jazz band I was pretty great. In fact, the teacher liked my playing a lot. Back then I had a really developed ear. I could playback anything I heard and within moments play the exact same phrases and licks. I learned a lot of licks from the other students this way but I also had my own vocabulary when it came to improvising and chord voicings.
I could've learned a lot more about jazz and music if I stayed but it just didn't work out that way. Flash forward to today and I'm learning the stuff I should've learned in college but on my own. I work much more on actual playing and learning songs more so than musical theory but I still read and work on that stuff as well. There were benefits to learning in college that I missed out on to this day. What I didn't miss was that expensive schooling fee that would've put my bank account out of commission for a long time.
The main thing that I find difficult about playing jazz and being unschooled is that its harder to find other jazz musicians. I live in the Valley, about 45 minutes from Los Angeles and not too many people out here play jazz music. In fact, most of them play pop, metal, or rap. LA is a pop town and I don't think me playing straight ahead jazz will make me a lot of money. But I still want to do it because its my dream.
I spend most of time when I'm busking playing jazz standards. I don't bother playing rock and roll because it sounds cooler on electric and I busk on an acoustic but also because I think jazz is the future for me musically. I'm still down to play in a rock or metal context but I've been training extensively on the guitar to become a jazz musician.
If I stayed in college I would've found other like-minded musicians who would probably have developed bands that could have gone on to work together in and outside of school. Learning would have been easier but it would have been more difficult to find my own voice. What does that mean? Well, it means that the teachers in schools teach all the students the same stuff even if they play and think differently. Consequently this creates more jazz musicians but they all end up sounding like university studio jazz band musicians. This is the problem with jazz today. All the new cats sound the same because they're all coming from the same universities and learning the same stuff. I like to think that because I bailed out of school I learned how to develop my own voice on the instrument faster than I would have if I stayed in school.
These are just rambling ideas but the fact of the matter is that the old jazz masters didn't learn from university and just because I can doesn't mean I should. School is a great place to meet people but that sort of disciplined study isn't for everybody. I still think about going back to school for music but in the end I already know most of what I need to know in order to play well. I know that's quite a bold statement to make but its sort of true. I do know that I need more training and more songs under my belt but I'm good enough and smart enough to cover the basics and then some, in terms of uniqueness and style.
Just some thoughts I had when I talked about the university trained jazz musicians with my pops.
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