Discussing Molly Gebrian (Splinter Discussion of "Molly Gebrian 7 Months Later")

twocats Rudeness???
I think a lot can be learned from "Takes" as well as "Practice". You obviously don't and felt it necessary to dismiss my "take" on "takes" as not being relevant to MG's philosophy, or whatever it is. My comment of "whatever" is me running out of the mental capacity to defend my comment about Coltrane's recording session.

PianoMonk Rudeness???
I think a lot can be learned from "Takes" as well as "Practice". You obviously don't and felt it necessary to dismiss my "take" on "takes" as not being relevant to MG's philosophy, or whatever it is. My comment of "whatever" is me running out of the mental capacity to defend my comment about Coltrane's recording session.

Yes, rudeness (and I'm not the only person who feels this way). If you didn't have mental capacity, you didn't have to respond right then or at all.

MG is a neuroscientist and the 5 hours was referring to practice and the brain's capacity to learn new things. It's also not a philosophy, there are scientific studies that show this or she wouldn't have mentioned it (there are probably some people who are outliers but most people are going to have this limitation).

Repeated takes by professional musicians who already know the music or can improvise it on the fly isn't about training the brain to learn the music, it's more about finding a take that has the right magic. It's about creating art, not developing a new skill. As @navindra said, it's apples and oranges.

@keystring's post said it well.

PianoMonk So... once a musician has a piece "worked up" it's not possible for them to learn anything more about it? Have you ever actually worked with other musicians in a recording session? Improvising over, let's say, a 2 - 5 - 1 section of a song using various scales or modes, and working on which of those is best suited to what one wants to convey, is most certainly, in my humble opinion, a learning exercise.

Wading in here - what I'll write may make sense or no sense.

What I learned predates Molly Gebrian's recently discovered material by 15-20 years from where I began. I am not following what she presents as such. Her ideas mesh with some of the things I learned, but there's less. The goals I've seen so far also seem to differ at times. She seems to be looking at what she needs at this time for what she herself is doing and applied in a manner that suits her needs. (Discussed recently somewhere here - hence her encouragement to tweak for your own needs).

Ok, so when I work on music, I may apply things I know to shape the piece. In a "classical" context where you're not changing notes or find better chords, you might choose to stress or bring out this or that note, put rubato over here in this way, do this or that with the pedal. You may want to coordinate something between your hands and feet. You're using what you have and know, like an internal dictionary that you possess. What you describe seems a non-classical application, and here you must possess a dictionary of chords, progressions, scale types - whatnot. As you develop things you are learning, keeping what works, discovering things. Maybe I see this as a kind of free-flow. I've done my variant of that and the clock stops. Suddenly its an hour later and you don't know how that happened.

There's another kind where I'm forming that dictionary. A lot of it is also like I'm playing "from the surface of my mind" without that deep an awareness. I have had to learn to hear not just when a note starts, but also when it ends and flows into the next note. When I play a melodic line that seems predictable, am I actually hearing it or am I inserting a note that seems right but isn't that note? My way of pedaling was to press way down and lift way up, because of my first poorish instrument. To change that around needed inordinate, moment-by-moment concentration. Any moment I thought I was still doing it, but had gone into freeflow. For THIS kind of learning and focus, that only lasts a short time.

I think we have different kinds of learning, different kinds of practising, different kinds of goals. Might that make sense?

PianoMonk Have you ever actually worked with other musicians in a recording session?

Yes - bands, gigs and latterly 25 years in recording (pop/rock) I’ve never encountered anything in a studio setting that would resemble 'learning'. Pro bands with big budgets (lazy, fun, wasteful of expensive studio time), orchestral sessions with fluent readers (tight, up to 20 minutes of recorded music in a 3-hour session), pop sessions with musicians booked for their particular style - often non-readers but superb players culled from a mix of ‘name’ bands. It’s an expensive affair and everyone is booked for their ability to deliver. No one is learning anything. For my sins and too many 2,5,1s, none were ever dissected.
The penultimate take is often the best. Producer: “…that was great, let’s just try one more!”