The goal of this website is to share with you concepts that have helped me get better at understanding and playing music. We are going to start from scratch and try to have some fun.
here are:
Before we get started, here are a few thing to always keep in mind.
Look for step number 1 and build from there.
Sometimes you are unable to progress because you have missed the first basic concepts. Make sure you know what they are and that you understand them fully. The next step is going to be pretty shaky if step 1 is not there.
Always come back to step 1.
Make sure you remember to come back to your basics regularly and strengthen them even more.
Make mistakes.
Try things confidently even if that means you are way off at first....it's funnier that way.
the only way to begin to know what’s right is to know with certainty what is wrong.
Commit feelings to memory.
Don’t commit things to memory only based on technical terms and music theory, associate a feeling to it.
Last but not least.
Don't read this whole page at once, if something peeks your interest, take a moment to try it out and come back to the other tips later.
This website is adds free
I want to use it to share knowledge and grow the music community
Seriously consider checking out the artist of the month and give them a Fb like and a Youtube view
Views and likes allow professional musician to find work for themselves and their band members, keeping the young professional community strong and out there gigging for people
Music is a language, when speaking you never think about pitch or time, you just communicate ideas and emotions with your voice.
You also don't change speed mid sentence, you express a whole idea at a speed you pick and stick to confidently.
Count out loud from 1 to 10, notice that your tempo is naturally steady.
You need to get familiar with your voice and connect it to your ears.
Select a pitch from any source. A piano or keyboard, any instruments or look for a drone (cello drone for example) on youtube. Listen to that pitch and try to match it with your voice.
If you are not sure how to match it...well...yell out a random pitch at first and then slide your voice up or down until you match the tone.
When you find the pitch, remember that sensation of stability in the sound. You feel locked in because your ear directs your voice.
Once you are confident with matching the pitch, try pushing your pitch slightly up and then slightly down on purpose and hear the sound waves clash because of the quarter or half steps you create. You should be able to actually hear and feel the different waves bouncing off each other.
(Make sure your pitch source is loud enough to create this acoustic effect).
"Speak on pitch"
Hold a note and say bunch of stuff. Its as easy as doing a robot voice...that’s it...that’s all it is....try going up or down in half steps and repeat the same sentence over and over again to make sure you annoy everyone in the house.
Everyone can sing, it is absolutely crucial for your ear development.
The number of professional musicians out there that are not able to sing a melody or bass line is astonishing. Don’t be one of them.
Like Brandford Marsalis said, in some towns they sing you the melody, in others they give you the chord changes.
When talking to someone you use full words, you don’t spell them out.
Don’t let singing scare you, being able to sing licks and melodies makes you feel like you have magical powers!!!
Mix up different ways of practicing.
Sing along to your absolute favorite recordings, but make sure to pick the simplest things at first like an old pop songs from your childhood or a simple melody.
Don’t start with the melody of Donna Lee because you think you’ve heard it so many times it's not going to work ……. start with twinkle twinkle little star.
Pick a melody, pick a starting note: sing the melody. Change starting note and sing again.
Practice solfege.
Solfege is just singing scales with the name of the notes. You can pick the official ones or you can just sing a bunch of “oohs” and “As”. As long as you are singing a scale.
Singing a major scale from C to C should be easy right? …….then do it.
Go up, go down. Then use that big brain of yours to figure out how to expand the exercises.
Sing bebop scales, which basically adds a chromatic note to a scale. Sing arpeggios(major diminished augmented etc) and modes.
Attack is important, the best way to sing with your speaking voice is simply to put more focus on pronouncing the syllables. A clear “A” or “E” sound will help your ear to sing the right pitch.
Now that you are familiar with some basics, try singing solo lines.
Pick something you are very familiar with but most importantly pick something that you really like.
Pick things that give you the famous “stank face” its so good!!
Slow it down as much as needed ( its never too slow!), match the rhythms first, then start adding pitch and make sure you make all the syllables you are pronouncing feel natural. ( repeating a bunch of E E E E A AAA OOOO doesn’t quite flow naturally). Mix and match syllables that flow out quickly. And pronounce them without using your lips to attack....yes....you are scatting with your mouth open.
Relate this to solfege, try to identify the notes of what you just transcribed, calling your root note C. check out solfege with movable DO. That is excellent practice, again, start with twinkle little star....
Surprise, all of the above advice will lead you nowhere if your sense of rhytm sucks!!!!
Rhythm is hard.
The concept of counting music is simple.
1 2 3 4 and repeat for quarter notes.
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 for eight notes.
1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a for sixteenths notes.
That’s all great, now you know how to talk about rhythm.
Again, your brain is great but it is always much faster when accessing information associated with feelings rather than a piece of text you think you remember.
Try to think like a child and care a bit less.
Set the metronome on at 60 bpm.
all you need is your hand and a surface to make noises on (table, box, your knee…).
Match the metronome, tap on every click.
Then tap in between clicks.
Now, in between clicks but right after it clicks.
In between again but right before it clicks.
Feel how you are manipulating time. Your clap against the click creates a movement.
Do the same with just your hands, one hand beating steadily(being the metronome), the other one tapping:
at the same time.
In between.
Right before or right after.
Have fun with it and create different rhythms you can loop for a while.
The great thing is that you can practice this anywhere anytime, tap on your knees or your table.
Include this in your daily life while you wait for your coffee in the morning.
Can’t fall asleep...do some rhythm exercises lying down in your bed, all you need is to hear the attacks you create by tapping.
Listen to drum solos, African drumming, arabic drumming. if you can hear it, you can eventually replicate it.
Your brain understands rhythm first. The problem is that your body needs to learn the coordination needed to replicate the rhythms so you can hear them again when played by you.
When you add the instrument you add a whole bunch of things your brain has to calculate at the same time.
You need all the help you can get.
Have you ever heard people brag about how you practice by “setting the metronome on the “and” of the 4th beat”…………but then you play a gig with them and their rhythm.... sucks…….
the world is full of these idiots, they have all the best advice, if only they would follow it themselves.
Back to basics!!!!!
Set that metronome to something comfortable, every click is a beat.
Help your brain in the beginning by having a tool (metronome) which spells out every beat and focus on playing your scales like this.
Go all the way up to 200 bpm or more until you feel like you can set it back to slow and play your scales double time.
200 bpm, if every click is a beat is actually not fast when you are running a scale up and down.
When you do it this way, its easier to instinctively hear what speed will work or not, time becomes a "flow" rather then numbers you keep track of.
Your ear will be locked at that speed, and from there you'll have less information to deal with at the same time. It will eventually become second nature and when the metronome is set slower, you will still be able to feel the subdivisions.
Practicing a lick or passage with the click on all four beats makes it easy, which in turn frees some brain space to think about other things.
If you have no doubt regarding the timing, then you can actually focus on hearing what comes next and what it will sound like.
The true meaning of hearing in music is hearing finished bits of music in your mind ahead of time and then execute it on the instrument in time.
Say I want to play a major scale up and down and then half a step up.
Metronome at 90bpm (all four beats, so pretty slow...). I go up first and on way down, I am already hearing what comes next in my head, that half step up to change roots that’s going to create this tension feeling and the sound of every note that comes after in the scale making it sound like a major scale.
At a higher level,
Take a bebop lick and do the same, transpose without stopping at a slow tempo.
If it doesn’t work, pick a slower tempo or a simpler lick. Or just pentatonic scales or chromatic enclosures...whatever you want. Just get used to hearing ahead.
Those concepts are to be used at any stage of your musical adventures. After 16 years of playing professionnaly I keep coming back to this.
Don’t focus on playing fast, speed will come simply because your basics are rock solid and you don’t need to even think about them anymore.
Technique and ear go together, if you have a good ear then your technique will follow because you won’t be ok with playing the same old stuff now that you have all these new hip ideas in your head.
On the other hand, if you feel stuck, focusing on technique can help your ear. You can’t really hear the runs and licks if you are physically unable to play them.
eventually you will be able to play anything!!!!
Listening can be done in different ways. You need to be able to sit down and listen to music with focus.
Loosing focus is so easy, especially if you are not 100% digging someone’s solo or the song you are listening to in general. You need to find ways to "entertain" yourself while listening.
Work on your orchestral hearing.
Listen to a song and try to take your focus away from the soloist and hear the band as a whole. Then try to focus on each instrument.
What is the bass doing? what’s the drummer doing? etc…
Follow the different instruments keeping in mind the concept of time.
For example: if you listen to the bass, you know that the chords will change every bar, or every 2 bars, or every half bar. So try to catch the changes (or at least the feeling of the changes) while listening to the different instruments.
When focusing on the soloist, play little games in you head and ask yourself: Can I match the rhythm that he just played?
Make a mental note every time the pitch changes, without worrying about the actual note.
Focus on the beginning of each note that is being played, feel the sense of attack that the payers uses.
This is my personal favorite.
Look for mistakes, music is supposed to be pretty and entertaining, and for this to happen it needs to be played correctly, yes even free jazz.
Pick a tune and then try to see if everything sounds good from a technical standpoint.
Listen to the bass and drums to see if they groove together, are their attacks synchronised?
Listen to the rhythms of the solo player in relation to the cymbal or the bass, is he on time all the time?
Is he going to make a mistake somewhere…….you hope not…but that keeps you focused on feeling the time flow and listening to two things at once.
Transcribing music on your instrument is a difficult task. It is a great exercise if you approach it in a smart way.
Your are not going to remember the licks you transcribed, and if you do..congrats…are you playing music yet?
All that music will be in your brain somewhere and will pop back out, don’t worry about it.
If you select a bit of music to transcribe, 8 bars, 4 bars, 1 bar….as long as you like the music, you select an already finished bit of music that has : Rhythms, notes, dynamics, texture.
Think of it this way, if you had to copy a drawing, you would have to make sure it looks like the original, if it vaguely resembles it from far away….you have missed the point, have you learned to draw…also no.
Or what makes you able to imitate someone’s accent or way of speaking...everything we mentioned.
Try it out, please, pick a speech or anything from a tv show, select one particular sentence and try to “speak along”, you will instantly hear where you are not in sync and where the person’s pitch goes up or down or loud or quiet.
Take all the time you need, the end result is you playing it exactly the same way.
Same exact rhythms, dynamics, texture.
Don't worry about being a copy cat, if you think people will think you sound like Clark Terry.....you've had too much time to think.
You will get more from this than trying to transcribe 32 bars by struggling through it and having the end result be …..well……record yourself and listen to it to find the word i am looking for.
This month I am delighted to present The Jungle jazz band. Traditional jazz band from berlin, trying to play some hot jazz the way you want to hear it!! Visit their website at Thejunglejazzband.com
In collaboration with Clarient.de