I've done a couple of memorable jams that turned into something much akin to jazz, in which I was singing without words and playing off the other instrumentalists' riffs. Got completely lost, all of us, dancing around each other, but then found our ways back home again. Simply scrumptious stuff.

And 30 years ago I studied all this music theory back when I was a music major. But it has receded into some dark shelf in the basement of my cerebelum, gathering dust and ossifying. Perhaps this thread will pull it out into the light again and I'll have that knowledge up where I can use it.

I've been thinking of what Gargoyle said some time back about the role of culture in the music we're able to tolerate and/or love. My mother, who was a music teacher for years and just loves regular ol' classical music (of the European tradition) simply cannot abide blues or jazz or anything that "bends" the notes. They don't sound like music to her, and it offends her ear. On the other hand, as soon as I heard someone singing blues or a blue note here and there, I instantly responded to it -- and that's always sounded like music to me. Same with sitar music and Middle Eastern music. I have my preferences, of course, but I have no requirement that music fit in the definitions I was born into, i.e., my mother's idea of music (not to dis' my mother, by the way. She's the reason I know much of anything about singing and about reading music, etc.)

But it makes me wonder: Why is it that some of us instantly bypass our family's sense of music and embrace other musical forms and genres, in a sense becoming part of a meta-culture, that of "musicians" -- way back before we're old enough or experienced enough even to articulate those feelings?

Did that make any sense?

WW