Child Prodigy

[Daniel A]

On 2017-12-31 at 6:50 PM, sgcim said:

I can see there's a lot of support here for my brilliant idea!

I've worked quite some time on the construction of the bubble. I consulted with some of the technicians from the old Prisoner TV series and they've agreed to donate some of the protoplasmic gook that they used to chase Patrick McGoohan when he dared to proclaim that he was a man and not a number.

Then we'll get the kid's old man to keep programming the kid's listening choices, and add a few of our own:

McCoy

Tommy Flanagan

Hank Jones

Cedar Walton

Bill Evans

Barry harris

Ahmad Jamal

Steve Kuhn

Eddie Higgins

Eddie Costa

Michael Weiss

Jon Weiss

Kenny Barron

Thelonious

Martial Solal

Don Friedman

Etc...

We will also have to protect him with armed bodyguards to keep corrosive influences from the outside (Wynton, Russell Simmons, etc...) from trying to veer our young prodigy off his guided path.

While I applaud this concept and the suggested execution of the idea, a lot more care must go into controlling the listening choices. Bill Evans was known to rush; how swinging is that? Don Friedman's recordings with Attila Zoller; don't they display a poisonous tendency towards free and markedly un-swinging playing? Early Steve Kuhn is certainly dangerous, but he seems to stay on the right track since he started recording for Venus.

Edited January 1, 2018 by Daniel A

[Guy Berger]

3 hours ago, Daniel A said:

While I applaud this concept and the suggested execution of the idea, a lot more care must go into controlling the listening choices. Bill Evans was known to rush; how swinging is that? Don Friedman's recordings with Attila Zoller; don't they display a poisonous tendency towards free and markedly un-swinging playing? Early Steve Kuhn is certainly dangerous, but he seems to stay on the right track since he started recording for Venus.

There's also the risk of non-swingy playing sneaking into even otherwise-authorized music.  Maybe a patriotic comrade will do a Dean Benedetti on all the classic jazz recordings that young Mr Alexander is exposed to, in order to prevent any dangerous ideas from infiltrating

On 12/31/2017 at 10:23 AM, T.D. said:

Lots of child prodigies in this age of computerized training.

Here's a 2-year-old classical pianist

Here's a young (OK, he's 20) Russian chess grandmaster playing classical piano pieces from memory while simultaneously playing 3 blindfold chess games:

Scroll down to the Daniil Yuffa video; performance starts at 4:30

 

I am ecstatic. I have discovered Google DeepMind, self taught 1 day old prodigy from Mountain View California. Been playing since it was 1 hour old and was accomplished at 18 hours. I'd like to thank Fate & Destiny as well as large paychecks for bringing its programmers together. I've heard of self taught but this is unbelievable. Has the jazz music world ever seen anything like this

Edited January 1, 2018 by Guy Berger

[T.D.]

I posted about DeepMind /AlphaZero back on Dec. 6 (in the chess thread), but nobody noticed.

Seriously, I think the implications are incredible and far-reaching. In jazz, if the goal is to "swing", "play like Monk" or the like, I expect AlphaZero could quickly learn to do it, provided the programmers were motivated to embark on such a project.

 

Edited January 1, 2018 by T.D.

[Guy Berger]

2 hours ago, T.D. said:

I posted about DeepMind /AlphaZero back on Dec. 6 (in the chess thread), but nobody noticed.

Seriously, I think the implications are incredible and far-reaching. In the jazz area, if the goal is to "swing", "play like Monk" or the like, I expect AlphaZero could quickly do it, provided the programmers were motivated to embark on such a project.

I actually think there's a level of preference for (believing) "a human is playing the music" that can't be replicated by these programs.  But as you noted it sits kind of weirdly with the appetite for kids and teenagers who can replicate classic jazz playing.

[JSngry]

[sgcim]

3 hours ago, Daniel A said:

While I applaud this concept and the suggested execution of the idea, a lot more care must go into controlling the listening choices. Bill Evans was known to rush; how swinging is that? Don Friedman's recordings with Attila Zoller; don't they display a poisonous tendency towards free and markedly un-swinging playing? Early Steve Kuhn is certainly dangerous, but he seems to stay on the right track since he started recording for Venus.

All very good points Daniel, but I have my engineers working on this matter at this very moment.

We all have heard the perhaps apocryphal story that when BE was playing with Miles, they told him that he was rushing. BE asked them, "What should I do?"

Philly Joe told BE, "I know how to take care of that", and he led Bill into a backroom where he shot him up with heroin.

It shouldn't be hard to find our young prodigy a junkie drummer who can perform the same service in the event of a similar probably also non-existent time problem.

When I played a concert at a jazz festival with DF, I made sure I didn't bring up the 12-tone tracks on Dreams and Explorations, as one would avoid mentioning some other embarrassing life experience, but I'm sure we can give Joey an edited version of D&E that omits those unfortunate experiments, and only has Darn That Dream, etc...

I haven't heard the 'early Steve Kuhn' you refer to, but I'll have my staff look into it...

[Niko]

Classical music has had this problem that nobody remembers what it used to be all about for 150 years now... on the minus side, that is disturbing, on the plus side, it's quite amazing [and a sure sign of greatness] that it still finds young blood [loads of it, actually].