…to become a better musician!
The proper care and feeding of a musician is important for healthy development. There are many things you can do to improve, while there are some things that disrupt or cause bad habits. It is important to know both of these in order to properly optimize and grow your musical skill set. We’ll get into listing both of these in this post – but before we do, let’s discuss the most important one thing every musician should be doing on a daily basis: effective listening!
No one develops in a vacuum – it is extremely critical to listen, but more importantly what you choose to listen to, how you listen to it, when and how often you listen. In fact, what you play and how well you play it is determined more by your listening habits than by your playing habits.
Your playing is the sum of everything you’ve ever listened to! Yes, your musical tastes and preferences seek out those things that most appeal to you – but like it or not, everything you hear influences your playing in some way (avoid elevators whenever possible:).
Practice things that are musical. Please understand, I am an advocate of practicing – but even more an advocate of proper listening – which in my observation is the more profound influencer over your playing.
Remember, you are listening when you practice – that is, you are listening to your own playing! So, if you tend to practice scales up and down the fingerboard – you are “hearing” scales performed up and down the fingerboard and you are being influenced by it! Many students ask me “how do I improvise and not sound like I’m playing scales?”. In every case, I find out they practice scales up and down the fingerboard – you are what you practice!
Strong melodic statements are balanced in pitch, rhythm, and dynamics. Playing repeating scales varies none of these – they are strings of ascending and descending pitches, absent of any rhythmic variety, and usually absent of dynamic variations. You are literally drilling this into your hands and more importantly your head! So, when it comes time to take a solo or play a fill, that’s what your brain has to work with – and that’s what comes out – you really have very little control over it – you’ve programmed your computer!
How to practice. Approaching your instrument cold, here is what I recommend:
1) Always start by listening to your favorite musicians / CDs – without your instrument. Just relax and listen for about 10 minutes or more. Close your eyes and try to visualize chord patterns and fingerings. You will be amazed how much you can learn without your instrument – my friend Jimmy calls it “brain soak”.
2) Listening with your instrument is next. Enjoy jamming with your favorite musician on CD. Try to emulate something you like, even if it is not note for note. You don’t need to take on the world and learn a 30 minute solo – just grab a few short phrases. Doing this will get you “in the zone”. Relax and have fun.
3) Practice with musical chord sequences. If you want to learn Dorian mode, record a short IImi V7 chord sequence, or IImi V7 I – emphasizing the IImi chord. Try to always practice scales with their related chords. This trains your ear to recognize the chordal tones within the scale, resulting in more musical phrasing in your solos and fills.
4) Rhythmic variation is important. Try playing an entire 12-bar blues solo while limiting yourself to just 2 notes (it’s harder than you think). This will force you to use interesting rhythmic variation. Then do it again with just 3 notes, then 4, etc. This will keep you from sounding too “scaley”. Always start your solos or fills with a thematic rhythm – and try repeating that little “theme” throughout your solo. This is more enjoyable and digestible for the listener. Bombarding audiences with endless machine-gun blasts of notes may be impressive, but at the risk of completely losing them.
5) Dynamics to die for is next. Play loud, soft, and in between – good music has an elastic quality that moves us emotionally. Listen for dynamics in music – hear how composers and improvisers appeal to your senses, and start incorporating dynamics into your performance.
6) Transpose solos for building brain to instrument connections. The only difference between improvising and transposing is the source – i.e. improvising requires hearing something in your head then finding it on your instrument – whereas transposing requires hearing an external source then finding it on your instrument. In both cases, you need to ultimately find it on your instrument.
Therefore, I view transposing as a form of practicing improvising – not to use the transposed material directly in a solo, but for the exercise of building the brain to instrument connections. I’ve transposed hundreds of solos, and probably can’t actually remember or play a single one all the way through. However, the feeling, dynamics, rhythmic balance, and all those nuances outside of the notes themselves are still up in my brain – and eventually randomly appear in my playing. People will say “hey, that solo reminded me of such and such guitar player” – well, I can’t help but have fragments and nuances of favorite players come out in solos from time to time – I really have no choice in the matter.
7) Turn off the radio and listen to CD’s in your car. Especially beneficial just before a concert – just drive around listening to the pieces, or your favorite musicians. Visualize their hands (don’t close your eyes this time!). Many times after a drive I’ll walk in the house, pick up my guitar and play exactly what I just heard. Brain soaking is absolutely a must – but remember to drive responsibly while you’re doing it:)
What goes In is what comes Out. I take this very seriously for my own playing – particularly in trying to avoid things that I feel would compromise my performance. I am especially cognisant of this on the day of a concert – the things I hear and do a few hours before have a profound impact on my performance later on. During those times, I feel good healthful rest and perhaps some light listening to my favorite musicians is more productive than sitting at the music stand drilling scales – the time for serious chop building is past by then.
Figure out how you want to eventually sound – and spend time listening to players who have that “sound”. Usually it is the little things players do that give them their signature “sound”. Most of those “little things” cannot be put into words, or into music notation – making “listening” even that much more important.
Don’t worry about sounding too much like other players – you won’t. If you focus on listening to a variety of musicians who have the “sound” you like, you will eventually develop into your own entity. You are unique – God’s variety and creativity is mind boggling – look at the millions of plants, bugs, animals – it is endless from the microscopic smallest, to the largest of solar systems. God has a plan for your musical gift – it is unique to you and no one else. Find it, enjoy it, and share it!
Until next time, keep listening!
Musically yours,
Al
by Al Dinardi
22 Apr 2015 at 09:35
Very interesting. I think it is great that you are “thinking outside the box”.
Throughout the centuries, there have been other languages or protocols proposed for describing tones – and many are adopted – such as we see in eastern and Asian cultures. Some of these are even based on 1/4 tone intervals (middle east and Asia) which makes for fascinating music. I also ran into a proposed method for guitarist reading piano music called Actual Notation.
All of these are well and good, except for one problem: if you intend to make music your profession, you will be faced with understanding and reading music in the “accepted” form – so everyone is “on the same page” so to speak. Traditional music is a common language – so we can all speak, study, and perform together. Adopting words or methods outside of the protocol is like inventing a new language. Nothing wrong with that – just bear in mind it will impair your ability to communicate with others in a group setting – such as performing in bands, studio work, etc.
by Jacques Marcille
18 Feb 2014 at 22:48
To Al Dinardi,
(not meant as a public comment, but as a message to the author)
I have studied your blogs with great care.
The circle of fifths produces a formula that links all 12 half-scales. Each half-scale, paired with the preceding and following half-scale, forms 2 whole scales. There are therefore 2 series of 6 scales that interlink. C D E F# G# A#, and G A B C# D# F. This reveals the bi-polar nature of music.
C major should be described in the following way: … [(c_d_e¦f_)(g_a_b¦c)] … . The polar view is: … [(0_0_0¦1_)(1_1_1¦0_)] … .
This formula shows that each of the 12 notes is equivalent to every other note. This means that the black notes should also receive a fixed name. And that the use of sharps and flats to ‘name’ the black notes is both unnecessary and wrong, and complicates matters very much.
We give the 5 black notes the following names: H I J K L. As in a_bc_d_ef_g_ => a H b c I d J e f K g L => c I d J e f K g L a H b.
This formula also reveals that the basic building block is the semitone, and not the degree. Describing chords using degrees is also wrong and also complicates matters very much. Cma7, C E G B, 1 3 5 7, 1___3__5___7, should be described in terms of the numbers of ‘steps’ or ‘semitones’ from the starting position, being 0. Cma7 becomes 0 4 7 11, 0___4__7____11, or (0___4__)(0___4__) in terms of /2scales. In polar terms, we obtain: (0___0__)(1___1__).
The study of music using the semitone as the basic interval reveals that each interval provides us with a formula. These formulae, especially i7 and i2, reveal the hidden structure of music.
All twelve scales are thus shown to have a path that is nearly as easy to ‘see’ and follow as the 8 white notes of C major. Plus the scales do not become more and more difficult as black notes are added, as is the case the more sharps and flats there are in a scale. All twelve scales become nearly as easy to play as C major on the piano.
For singing, the black notes receive the following names, derived from using the consonant to the left and the vowel to the right. We get: do De re Ri mi fa Fo so Sa la Li ti. These syllables can be shortened to 7 consonants, the 7 white keys, and 5 vowels, the 5 black keys. As in: d E r I m f O s A l U t.
Children will be able to sing any song, including those that contain more than 7 pitches, using the correct notes, and ‘in tune’.
I am presently rewriting musical theory using these principles. I am also learning to play ‘by sight’, which is the step that precedes playing ‘by ear’. I am 67 years old, and am making terrific progress.
Is this method of any interest to you? Would you care to collaborate with me? I live in Montreal, Quebec.
by Michael Lee
08 Oct 2010 at 00:15
This is great stuff! I’ll be directing my students here to read this. I wish they all took listening this seriously.
by Joel
07 Oct 2010 at 19:52
Love this post Al. So true.