В первой части я рассказал своё видение музыкального...

In the first part I told my vision of musical development in general. In the second part, I would like to speculate how similar ideas are applicable to a musician with professional ambitions.

So what is generally required of a "professional"? What does it mean to be him? - It means that it is quite effective to respond to the employer's musical request. In the role of the employer, I note, the public can act, both sophisticated and not sophisticated. However, there are session musicians who are forced to play what they say.

Those. A professional musician should be able to play anything, often without enough time to prepare. I must understand how to play it and how to apply it when it comes to performance.

In what form does he receive a request from the "employer"? - it can be notes, it can be an audio file from which you need to “remove the part”, it may be a request to play some song, and sometimes even improvise.

From this follows a list of skills that you need to possess:
- reading notes
- developed ear for music
- auditory experience
- improvisation

Coincidentally, this is exactly what I advised you to do in the first part, on which instrument you would not play.

How to train your hearing?

There are different approaches. The bottom line is that their effectiveness is up to you. Someone can engage in the development of hearing for 2 hours every day, someone is ready to go to the teacher, and someone is spontaneous and insanely tired of the routine. The good news for the latter category is that you can train your melodic hearing simply by singing the music you listen to (in the initial stages you need a person who controls your accuracy),
You can train harmonious hearing by choosing a song with chords per day (without notes), rhythmic hearing by tapping the rhythms (rhythm of a melody, rhythm of accompaniment) that you are listening to.

Notes.
- just a way to transmit musical information. On the one hand, it does not convey all the nuances, on the other, it is still one of the main ones. A professional needs to know and read music (here I’ll notice that many people flow from the amateur category to the professional category), so you should master this skill the sooner the better.

Faster than we think
Have you ever read a book and noticed that you are reading very quickly, but you can understand what you read after some time? The same phenomenon exists in music, when the skill of "reading from a sheet" is sufficiently developed: a musician plays notes faster than he has time to realize them, "bypassing the analyzer." This has its charms (if there is no audio version of the song, but you need to find out how it sounds at all), but it is obvious that playing music without comprehending notes is the same as reading poetry without understanding the words.

Sheet music vs playing by ear.
On this occasion, I was translating one interesting article about the Brazilian style of Shoro, where improvisation is implied.

The fact is that some people are accustomed to working according to the scheme: visual information is muscles (reading notes), while others according to the scheme, audio information is muscles (playing by ear). Note that the second scheme, from the point of view of the functioning of body systems, is more suitable for music, is not it?

The problem of the first is that their attention is spent on reading information from the outside through a visual channel. There is also a purely practical problem - you need to carry notes, they need to be placed on the stage, and in the end, they can fly away if you play on the street.

The problem for the players is that they might not hear the song they need to play, or they might accidentally hear the wrong version.

The way out of this labyrinth is to develop both possibilities: to read music, and then pick up some song out of notes.

Auditory experience
- It is desirable to have the broadest understanding of various musical traditions and the history of music. This helps to avoid the invention of the bicycle, and perhaps allows you to create something new, makes the musical world richer for you and, therefore, improves your game.
Personally, the course of Mikhail Mikhailovich Mitropolsky, who combined the story of the history of jazz with the actual recordings, really helped me understand jazz.
I note that listening and analyzing is not at all the same as just listening.
The guitarist said well about the hearing at the Tony Chicago Summer School workshops - try to focus on the composition and not lose this concentration for its entire duration. Try it :)

Improvisation
- this is writing on the fly, sometimes with limitations (in the form of harmony or a given rhythm), sometimes without any restrictions. In music, improvisation is often a “reflection” on the main melody (theme), especially jazz, although musicians who are interested in the Brazilian shoro write about this as well. (Improvisation can be learned and played at a concert, then this is a prepared improvisation, the genesis is important here).

To improvise, you need to develop all kinds of musical hearing well enough, establish a good connection between the ears and muscles (be able to choose a melody by ear) and have at least minimal auditory experience. - This is what is necessary in order to state your musical thoughts, but where you get them from is another question.