Jazz Lessons

I started on Clarinet in 5th grade and played up until my 2nd year of college. I'm actually pretty good. Not phenomenal, but pretty good. I never took music theory or paid much attention to scales and chords and the like. I'm good at playing what's written on the page, not thinking about it so much.

I've always wanted to be able to play jazz. It just looks like so much fun. And I know I can improvise, I'm a dancer. I've done tap improv in front of audiences before no sweat. So I started taking jazz lessons, assuming it would come naturally to me without too much effort on my part. Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

I don't understand 1/2 of what my teacher says. He assumes I know a lot more music theory than I do, seeing as I've been playing music so long. He says "B minor 7 chord" and slaps four fingers down on the piano, and I think "uuhhhhhhhhnngggggh" as my fingers randomly flutter around. I don't know the chord, I can barely remember how to play B-major. My fingers know how to do it, but I don't know what notes I'm playing. Or how to make it minor. And extracting the chord from that makes my head explode. I freeze up, try a couple wrong notes, freeze up again. I try to start slowly.

"Ok, B... B... ok, this is B. Do notes go up or down? Up, so the next one is A. No, C. How many flats in B? No wait, sharps. How many sharps? Like 5, or 6? C has gotta be one of them, ok, so C#. B, C#, A, no D. D#? Aha! D# is the 3rd. OK, if I can just remember that long enough to calculate the 5th and 7th, I'll have a chord. Oh shit... minor?"

All of that takes my teacher about 0.1 seconds to figure out. He just knows it. And while he's rattling on about how to go up the chord on a pivot to the 3rd of the next chord, play chromatically down to the root, then scale tones down and enclose the 7th, I'm still going "uhhhhhnnnnggghhh... is F# the 5th?" It's frustrating, for both of us. I can tell he feels like I am wasting both of our time, and I totally agree with him. The only way I'll get this stuff is to practice. But I don't. Ever. Not sometimes, or rarely, but never. I just can't seem to find time. I have a couple free hours during the week, and all I want to do with them is sit on the couch with a beer and a movie and try not to think about what time I have to get up in the morning. I feel like I am so far behind where he expects me to be, there's no way to catch up. It's like I'm trying to surf, but the wave is already past me so there's nothing to ride, and I'm just drowning in it's wake.

I've tried several times to work up the courage to quit. But every week I go I feel miserable and guilty, and then I think "OK, this week I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna practice every day, and I'm gonna get this stuff" but I never do. I want to. I want to be good at this, I want to be able to jam with a swing band at a dance and just have fun with it. I miss playing. But I hate feeling like a beginner again. I'd forgotten how hard it is to be a beginner at anything. It's easier when you're in school because everyone's a beginner together, but now it's just me, and I feel pathetic.

I'm going to practice tonight.