Hacker News Reader

> whether a note is ahead of the beat, on the beat, or behind the beat; and by how much. Especially in Black American music (jazz, blues, soul, R&B, and a bunch of pop that's been influenced by those styles), there is a lot of crucial information there beyond what is conveyed in the "gridded" rhythms that are conveyed in Western musical notation.

I agree wholeheartedly, but I actually lump this in my head under "rhythm" rather than "feel". One of the reasons that black musicians tend to have on-average better <"feel" for you, "rhythm" for me> is that they often have spent a lot of time physically dancing or playing live gigs at church/with their adult friends, and had to learn how to place notes just by hearing other people do it. This is a more effective method for training feel/rhythm than showing someone note durations on a sheet of music and telling them to figure it out themselves.

I think the way to correct the bad "feel" habits you're talking about is to play a lot with talented, on-beat musicians who will correct your playing in rehearsal. They will also assign you parts that you can handle that serve the sound of the band, rather than serving the intentions of the composer per the sheet music. Another issue that young western musicians have is that they most often play with other players at about their skill level, which stops them from being able to quickly learn good habits from better musicians.

There's a video up of Barry Harris giving a class around feeling the and that this reminded me of. Not sure why you're being down-voted, because feel is super important to practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uMNrujMdJU

words of wisdom, no idea who is downvoting this