[This text is machine generated and may contain errors.]

Speaker 1 [0:00]
A brain specialist about the this problem of this this question about where jazz comes from, and if it could be a physical--

Alec Wilder [0:11]
Well I was concerned with was the, I guess they call it the synapse, the immediate I don't know quite what I mean. But I think it has to do with the immediate response from the brain, let's say in this case to the fingers. The reflexes, the nerve reflexes, the, the idea forming in the brain, and immediately going through the fingers, he said is too fast. The playing of jazz is too fast for it to be a cerebral process. That there conceivably could be laid into the brain, certain patterns of harmonic patterns, melodic seeds, little ideas, little techniques, little rhythmic devices, which could be so implanted in the mind that when the jazz ideas started to run out the the interstices between one idea and another could could could be virtually cerebral, because they'd be so implanted, but the actual creative process, continuation of jazz chorus after chorus, was produced too fast by the fingers for the brain to produce. So where does jazz come from? So I've talked to Whitney Balliet about it. He's been writing about jazz 30 years. He doesn't talk to jazz players, doesn't they? They don't even want to talk about, but they don't know if you play it yourself. I ask you, why did you do that? Where did it come from? You don't know. You don't sometimes even remember, I've asked Marian McPartland, how she makes modulations from one key to another, which one as me as a half baked composer take me hours to arrive at an equivalent piece of brilliance. And I will ask her about it after she's gotten to play. She won't even know what I'm talking about. So I, I just wonder if we as we're supposed to be so bright about everything with science, all the new discoveries and all the new techniques, great tools that we should know. Everything we don't, one of the things we don't know, is the source of a great many of our of what, why we do it we do it and how we do it. And one of those things is is to play with jazz. If it just turns out to be a series of little cliche judgment [inaudible] that's been planted in your mind, somehow, just simply on real these patterns.

Speaker 1 [3:24]
How would it how would you relate this to let's say speech pattern? In other words, when we talk about something sometimes you don't know what you're going to say, two sentences ahead what's the are you saying that jazz is too fast that the actual sometimes, you know, [] phrase is faster than the speech habit.

Alec Wilder [3:47]
My you know, often people stumble, speech and often they mess up sentences and use the wrong word and hesitate to go back. And it's only rarely that you find a speaker who can continue to speak without hesitation, without and also not only do that, but build whatever he has to say as one would build a story or a for example lecturers who worked without notes. And yet that lecture once it's done if it's been taped and printed in both readers have written, edited, sharpened, pointed

Speaker 1 [4:31]
But it has been but

Alec Wilder [4:34]
Not memorized. He knows what he wants to say. Overall, but he has no idea how he's going to say it and yet he says it as if he had written it. Well, I don't know what kind of may be true intense of intellectual training our or habit of speaking extemporaneously may be I like this more likely than not. But I think that's frankly, less extraordinary than the plain. I mean, those words don't come out with 1/10 the speed of have a great movie, supposing you take a player like that phase, and that still exists among certain jazz players of how many notes you can play per second. Well, Sam Baron, who was a phenomenal flutist, and a jazz player and intellectual, he was fascinated by Parker, the saxophone player and so he's he, I don't know how he did it slowed down the record of what he took choruses off of these very fast 100 and 32nd note choruses. And he thought out to his actual astonishment that these arpeggiation of work absolutely and harmonically correct. There were no funny notes of them. They weren't just showing off and flashing a bunch of notes around that all of that faster arpeggiation was all correct harmonically. Well, this is this is freaky. That's too fast you see, speech is much slower. You've doubled talkers, make some words up deliberately, which is a technique and a device. But even they don't nothing, nothing happens as fast. Or let's take the slow ballad that I can say, might come out of the mind but the fast swinging tune where everybody's on fire. And that's something to do with it, the passion, fire the the adrenaline rush, but the adrenaline doesn't create ideas, it may facilitate them, so far as it gives you energy but it doesn't create ideas. And nobody will talk about it.

Speaker 1 [7:06]
Well now you meant, you mentioned adrenaline earlier you were talking about acting in a state of emergency, when it's not part of your normal pattern to do something. Now that's probably adrenaline that that is. But what is the relationship that, is there an analogy there that you were making?

Alec Wilder [7:28]
Well, I don't know about that. Because I think that helping in a crisis, for example, which might not normally be given, mustering up a fight or something, when you're young and strong. I consider that a moral moral, sort of having a moral source. Rather than source you. You do sense right and wrong. And you see that wrong has been done and something built into your nature. And I think morality is an acquired taste. I think they're genetically, I swear to God, I think the goodness and evil are genetic, rather than behavioristic. You know those fellas that claim everything that you are is a result of behaviorism that has been acquired, as you grow. I don't I think the geneticists someday will I think they already are proving great points about being born good and being born bad.

Speaker 1 [8:32]
One of the studies about being made about among jazz musicians as to IQ.

Alec Wilder [8:39]
There again, see I I have to admit to something doubles [inaudible]. There's some brilliant jazz players, highly sophisticated. And you would assume they were named that word off. I mean, they don't know language. They've never read contemporaries, miniscule stuff. That's, that's nice, though. That's what we can mention names would be fair. But there are players right now who are hair raising, who are totally inarticulate. They never read, they never offered [inaudible] to prove their mind. And yet, in that one area of playing happy they are, they are scholars, they're jazz scholars, and yet its source somehow leaks must leak down through but it can't at the time. I don't know. I don't know and a lot of production one of the reasons [Ms. Marilyn Hartline] writing an autobiography thinking that in the course of doing so she might herself discover how, what she did and how it happened. She also tried to minimize herself [inaudible]. But it's not true because very often there were things that astounded me. Like I've watched her I watched her astound herself. I mean she'll have a wild smile on her face because she did something that she had no idea what she was going to do a 10th of a second before she did it and I don't know anybody who will want the players even feel it it's coaching to talk about we do it I do it that's all they do. How did you do that? I did it. How? I I don't want I want to talk about obviously feeling physically intrusion not that they know.

Speaker 1 [10:47]
No, I think it's it's really ignorance that brings that.

Alec Wilder [10:51]
It's not just thinking about the birthdays is the latest or maybe people just gathered one of those homes and somebody would suggest a few subject and they would to seem to sing a few improvising there are strict rules now they have to make that an executive election source because they have to know that first and second next step is to subdominant and then they go through a series of keys, minor, so they cover I don't know how many before they return the final statement that part has to build it and they have to build on that you have to make those voices fully [inaudible] improvising and blocking some time in church, improvising a musical offer which was a six part which is random bits of money was was was never [inaudible]. But the story goes that he had been improvising putting that out of polishing in church as you've played operatory whatever, recessional whatever, repolishing the [inaudible] but I don't mean to kind of [inaudible] to Jazz, Jazz per se. [inaudible]. He said wow

Speaker 2 [12:54]
it's just very pleasant [inaudible].

Alec Wilder [12:58]
Well I don't know. I don't know.

Speaker 1 [13:02]
This is also something about the environment in which you're at at the time the level of opposition, the quality of opposition that we're having to deal with I think those are working with it's gonna be

Alec Wilder [13:19]
Well I think that [inaudible]. I said, ideas, ideas is just a break up. They are ideas but they might get a little. I think I'm in a position because I've been doing it 45 years, because I don't know what I'm doing [inaudible] literally [inaudible]. I have no idea [inaudible] with everything pertaining to traditional forms, I am most average. So a lot of colleges or intellectuals will analyze the system. Specific traditional shapes are more balanced. Relationships are useful logically. They provide a counterpoint right this time. And I can write out a block from player what's the source? lecWhy do I say I want this one and I want this to go here and here. That's important while you're out there simply writing long processual choices. The choice why do you want the choice without planning [inaudible].

Speaker 1 [15:43]
Because it's almost like a test, process or integration well I've heard you say I heard you say many times before [inaudible].

Alec Wilder [15:58]
[inaudible] decisions [inaudible]. All of my decisions [inaudible] without [inaudible]

[inaudible]