Originally Posted by rharv
To be fair
Comparing Sting or McCartney to jazz is like comparing KennyG to Michael Brecker
Totally different animals.

There is a lot to be learned from each though.
It doesn't have to be free form at first, start with something easier, like Brecker Bros. "Straphangin", but that's how they get you hooked.
Next thing you know you're free-forming in Harlem <grin>

/geez I hope *somebody laughed
HaHa free-forming in Harlem? I’d say quite unlikely.
But I’m not comparing Sting or McCartney to jazz at all. I’m saying time on this rock is limited and so priorities and time management is a must if I want to achieve my goals. Plus personal taste is huge.

I don’t know Brecker Bros but I do like, learn and play smooth jazz and jazz-rock artists like Steely Dan, and George Benson. One goal is to learn and interpret an easy Snarkey Puppy song (if there is such a thing) for my Bass Overlay project.

I’m about halfway thru the book and it’s getting better and better. At the end of chapter 6 he says:

The story of your brain on music is the story of an exquisite orchestration of brain regions, involving both the oldest and newest parts of the human brain, and regions as far apart as the cerebellum in the back of the head and the frontal lobes just behind your eyes. It involves a precision choreography of neurochemical release and uptake between logical prediction systems and emotional reward systems. When we love a piece of music, it reminds us of other music we have heard, and it activates memory traces of emotional times in our lives. Your brain on music is all about, as Francis Crick repeated as we left the lunchroom, connections.

How we process music is indeed a BIG and fascinating story, a story that I don’t think we yet know everything about, but pieces are falling together. And this is the same Francis Crick who played a role in deciphering the helical structure of the of DNA molecule. Crick was also interested in music from a neuroscience perspective.

https://soundcloud.com/user-646279677
BiaB 2026 Windows
For me there’s no better place in the band than to have one leg in the harmony world and the other in the percussive. Thank you Paul Tutmarc and Leo Fender.