Musical knowledge in Julian’s lessons tended to remain uncomplicated, perhaps not unexpectedly given the inexperience of the students. It also tended to be atomistic in that concepts did not generally build in complexity as the lessons progressed but were introduced more as a series of separate activities loosely-related, such as repertoire for the concert, or by a general theme. For instance, improvisation was one of the main activities in each lesson, but it was used pragmatically to facilitate the performance of each tune, rather than the tunes, for example, being used as practical illustrations of general principles. The students were given techniques specific to each tune and, often, specific to a single exercise.
Typically, each time the class played a tune, Julian would tell the students which notes to draw on during their solos. For example, Lesson 1 introduced improvisation in a very simple form as part of rehearsing ‘Chitlins’:
we’re gonna take it back to the very beginning element in improvisation. We’re just gonna pick one note … Whatever note comes to mind. It could be one of the notes out of the melody, alright? ‘Cause we know the melody note will work … just gently play that note … And you’re just gonna toodle around on that note. (Julian, Lesson 1)
rest of the lesson, a highly context-dependent exercise. The understandings here were
uncomplicated. A little extra meaning was condensed by going from ‘one note’ to ‘gently play that note’, but it remained very simple. This was subsequently expanded to encompass a range of three notes later in the rehearsal, and then ‘many notes’ when the class revisited ‘Chitlins’ in Lesson 2. but that marked the last exercise using that technique. This ‘pick a note’ exercise was for the specific purpose of playing the solos expected as part of performing ‘Chitlins’ first in the rehearsal and then at the concert. It was not generalised as a principle to help the students improvise in other contexts and the activity, and it remained simple in that minimal additional technicality or meaning was condensed into the practice. The sequence could be summarised as: ‘now what we’re gonna do, is we’re doing three notes’ → ‘add a note on top of what you’re doing, or on bottom, and just explore the other notes’ → ‘try some different notes’ → ‘you can try flatting or sharpening a note … just try and find some notes that work’ → ‘No rules right now. No rules, we’re just having a play’. At the culmination of this sequence, ‘no rules’, Julian actually removed epistemic-semantic density from the technique and locked it securely into the context by denying epistemic principles were involved. There were, however, axiological principles and complexity condensed that I shall examine when I revisit this example and show its contribution to knower-building (Section 6.3.2). This example is illustrative of how Julian taught improvisation throughout the lessons: always pragmatically, to facilitate an exercise or performance and not as transferable principles and staying predominantly with simple
understandings.
Contrasting Julian’s teaching of improvisation, when activities or lesson phases emphasised musical notation or procedures for playing tunes, the knowledge involved, while simple, reached out from the contextual to encompass principles too. For instance, in Lesson 2, Julian taught about 12-bar blues form and a default principle for playing tunes with short forms. Points for analysis are indicated by bracketed numbers and will be discussed and coded below. In the analysis for epistemic semantic gravity and epistemic semantic density that follows, I shall make an important distinction between complexity (semantic density) and condensation of additional meaning (epistemic condensation) to highlight that, although Julian added to understanding of the tune, the knowledge involved remained very simple:
[1] you got one, two, three, four, five, [2] you got 12 bars that repeat, so that’s our [3] 12- bar song. [4] Typically, what we do in jazz is we play a short song, and we repeat the form, [5] in this case, it’s [6] a 12-bar blues form, [7] we repeat the form for solos … [8] if it’s a short song, we play the song twice, [9] which we have been doing, we play the song twice. We play the song twice, we do solos, we play the song twice at the end. (Julian, Lesson 2)
The excerpt begins very contextually and simply, with the teacher counting the bars on the score with his finger [1] and remains contextual when he observes that the total number of bars is twelve but condenses slight complexity by characterising the bars as repeating [2]. The twelve bars are then imbued with the additional attribute of being a ‘12-bar song’, weakening SG by reaching out to a category of other songs beyond this specific tune and increasing semantic density by locating it in a constellation of similar tunes [3]. Next, Julian moves out to a general principle for playing jazz by introducing the procedure of repeating the form of short songs, weakening SG [4] before bringing it back to the present example, ‘Chitlins’ [5], and condensing some additional meaning by classifying it as ‘a 12-bar blues’ and further defining that as a type of ‘form’—the most complex the concepts in this example become [6]. Explicitly emphasising that the principle of repetition applies in this instant [7] is more contextual—stronger SG and simple—weaker SD. Next, when Julian paraphrases the repetition principle, he adds the detail that the ‘song’ (aka melody or ‘head’) is played twice if the form is brief, moving back out to principles so weakening SG [8]. Julian concludes this teaching sequence by bringing it all back together, with this tune in the you-and-me and here-and-now, ending with stronger SG, weaker SD. This example shows a semantic gravity wave, with repeated oscillations between theory and contextual practice and exhibits epistemic condensation with additional, but primarily simple, meanings packed into the understandings of ‘Chitlins’, form and repetition, and 12-bar blues made available to the students. Figure 6.1 illustrates this semantic gravity wave, and a ‘low flatline’ semantic density profile indicative of the constrained complexity in the example.
Figure 6.1. Epistemic-semantic profile of the blues procedure lesson.
This example is illustrative of knowledge-building in the parts of the lessons where Julian taught about notation and procedures for playing tunes: waving between contextual and general but limited to simple understandings. However, this manner of teaching was very context-dependent. Notation, playing music verbatim from lead sheets, and song structures are not specific to jazz, and as the earlier discussion of improvisation teaching showed, this was not what Julian’s pedagogy was like when taught about things that he believed are most important to jazz. Where Julian’s teaching of knowledge relating to jazz-specific practices it tended to stay contextual and simple, and was atomistic, his teaching of jazz ‘knowing’ was very different. Looking at context- dependence and complexity in Julian’s teaching of values, emotions, dispositions, and other specialised ways of knowing, gives insight into his pedagogy for knower-building.