Been thinking a lot about heuristics. A heuristic is something that doesnt work unless a bunch of underlying conditions are satisfied. Vertical Jump is a great example. You could invent an elaborate weight routine and track reps and nutrition, or you could just track your vertical jump, which wont improve unless your physical condition does. Beats or tunes can be heuristics too. You could work on fast swing, linear playing, orchestration, etc in the Abstract, or you could just try to learn to play along with Eric Harland on his tune I-10 on the James Farm record, and record yourself. Yes, youd go back and work on the underlying concepts, but youd always have this measuring stick to check your progress against - to see if the exercises you were doing were helping or not. Do you have a heuristic? Whats a fixed meter stick you measure yourself against that tells you whether what youve been doing to make progress has been working?
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 23:10:56 +0000