Personally I've found that an "only by ear" player can be good in their style of choice but flounder in unknown waters. If they have "perfect pitch" there's no problem but they're usually WEIRD!

It's a common theme in the human experience.  I wonder how many observations have been made throughout time on variants of the 'golem' theme?

"Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality."  ~Nikola Tesla~

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Originally posted by mmuussiiccaall

Personally I've found that an "only by ear" player can be good in their style of choice but flounder in unknown waters. If they have "perfect pitch" there's no problem but they're usually WEIRD!

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Playing by ear can also mean that you hear and understand the chord structure of an unknown song. If I'm in a jam session and there's a chord I'm missing, I'll ask the guitarist. Otherwise, being WEIRD can get you compliments like, "Hey, I really liked what you were trying to do there."

I learned lots of theory as a child and teen while trying to learn the piano. That did help when I started on banjo. However, I didn't understand chord structure and couldn't tell when a chord changed. I could hear melodies but had a hard time finding them on my banjo. It took lots of practice, listening to bluegrass music, trying to figure out chord changes. Jamming helped. Watching the rhythm guitar picker helped. Eventually I began to "feel" a change coming up and got it right most of the time. Finally, I got to the point where I could hear a new song and be able to figure out the chord structure and do at least a simple break by the time I got the nod. So, theory helps, but playing with others is what did it for me!!

I began classical violin at age 10 in 1970, learning how to read those dots. At age 13 I had a guitar playing friend who could play without those dots, wail on the instrument, and I asked him how he did that without music. "I'm improvising!!" Ahhh ... THAT's what I wanted to do so I asked the orchestra teacher at the next class, "When do we learn how to improvise?" I'll never forget the answer: "Oh, you have to play for 30 or 40 years to get that good!" And being a naive 13 year old, I believed that. I just filed it away in my head that classical music must be somehow different than rock and roll when it came to improvising.

Yeah, right. It's truly amazing to me that one can play an instrument all their life and have no idea what a basic chord is. There are plenty of professional musicians that can only play the dots in front of them. The idea of improvising to these folks is terrifying.

Yo Yo Ma, the cellist, credits Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer to helping him open up to improvising. I mean, the world renowned cellist had no clue how to improvise. There are some most excellent quotes from Yo Yo Ma on these collaborations and how they helped him grow as a musician, exploring these frightening things.

I don't view this post I'm making as thread drift, as you bring up spontaneous expression, which is just another way of describing improvisation ... the joy of expression in the moment is hard to describe with words.

A reminder that "music theory" is just "thinking about music," which can take many forms and be applied in virtually limitless ways. It's useful (to a point) to consider how other people think about music, particularly if a lot of people within a given practice tend to think about it in a similar way. That is where "rules of grammar" emerge, although they are not really rules at all, just generalized descriptions of musical practice that are often presented in a prescriptive manner, especially in a pedagogical context. 

The real story is about spontaneous expression, and it is therefore a spiritual and a psychological story rather than a story about the technique of one art form or another.

It's easy for someone to make this kind of statement ("you just express yourself") when they are already a skilled improviser. The reality is:

1. Improvisation is not "a" thing, its a category; being good at improvisation in a bluegrass context doesn't mean you know anything about playing North Indian ragas. 

2. Because improvisation is idiomatic (there are stylistically more and less appropriate ways to improvise within a particular context), it relies on your familiarity with the mostly non-improvisational elements that define a musical practice/style. It's not possible to be a good bebop improviser and not know any bebop tunes, or have any sense (implicitly or explicitly) of how those tunes are structured. 

3. Closely related to #2, even though improvisation is a deeply personal experience, we ultimately learn idiomatically appropriate improvisation through interacting with other improvising musicians (hence Yo Yo Ma's experience)

4. It doesn't matter if you know what you want to play if you can't execute it in real time on your instrument. This ability to "speak" through your instrument, to have that instantaneous mind-body-instrument connection, is absolutely a technique issue. 

Then there's always Arnold Schoenberg and 12 tone Music. I've always wondered what an Atonal jam session with bluegrass instruments would be like. Instead of a chord chart, you'd be improvising over an agreed upon structured dissonance. It would be music theory mathematics and equations over the consonant reality of chord structure. You could start a new band called, "The Dissonant Mountain Boys."

"Arnold, what will you be having for breakfast?"

"Oh, I think I'll have some Tuesday morning Chartreuse Tone Rows and a side of Abstinent Retrograde Intervals. Over medium, please."

Knowing musicians, it's probably already been done.

Monty Python would approve...

banjola wrote: "I've always wondered what an Atonal jam session with bluegrass instruments would be like."

Gimme Some Of That Ol' Atonal Music
 

RB3 Thanks for posting that link. It was hilarious. I really enjoyed it.

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Originally posted by RB3

banjola wrote: "I've always wondered what an Atonal jam session with bluegrass instruments would be like."

Gimme Some Of That Ol' Atonal Music
 

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Great!

This is also a favorite, but it's a fiddle tune so more likely considered old-time than bluegrass

Turkey in a Straw

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Originally posted by RB3

banjola wrote: "I've always wondered what an Atonal jam session with bluegrass instruments would be like."

Gimme Some Of That Ol' Atonal Music
 

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And for some background--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wK2ZBp9_hbE .

Yes! Allison Brown! 

Ok, here’s a tune you all know, but there’s an odd “flavour” to it. Is it atonal or gluebrass trickery ?

youtu.be/OHsWVbo-WsI?si=4dYWa2Jb5i0XSE81

How was I to know? When my cat walks across my piano keys, she's composing in 12 tone?

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Originally posted by banjola1

Yes! Allison Brown! 

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I'm thinking you must have known her back in her SoCal days...?

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Originally posted by Ira Gitlin

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Originally posted by banjola1

Yes! Allison Brown! 

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I'm thinking you must have known her back in her SoCal days...?

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Yes, indeed. She was playing back then with fiddler Stuart Duncan. 

If I remember right Alison was touring back in the late ‘70’s and stopped in to win the Canadian Open Banjo Competition