Tag Archives: Improving Musical Performance

Melody And Clear Intention

When is a musical idea melodic? What makes it so? These are questions that musicians could debate for an eternity. If you’re an improvising musician these questions are particularly pressing because they not only reflect how you play, but also, what you feel, hear and imagine. They bring your deepest aesthetic impulses into the light for all to know.

There is a conventional wisdom in jazz circles that certain artists were/are more melodic than others. For example, many would say without a doubt that Stan Getz was a far more melodic improviser than John Coltrane. (These very same folks might revere both artists equally, or might even prefer Coltrane over Getz.)

I personally don’t think Stan Getz was any more, nor less, melodic than John Coltrane. I think both of them provided great melodic content in their respective improvisational work. It’s just that their melodic conceptions were different from one another. If Coltrane wasn’t melodic, I don’t think he would have ever touched people as deeply as he did.

But you might say, “What about Coltrane’s ‘sheets of sound’? What about all that harmonic and sonic exploration? What about all those patterns? What about all those notes he played?”

To me, that was the melodious John Coltrane. Why? Because Coltrane improvised with the very quality that makes all great improvisers sound melodious to me: Clear intention. He simply took the materials of music he’d studied and let them come through him in purposeful self expression.

Sure, Coltrane was always pushing the bounds, working things out on the spot as he improvised. He even apologized in an interview once that his music wasn’t “more pretty”. But like human speech, where there is intention, there is meaning (even if it’s not so apparent to everyone listening).

So I guess the question is, How do you hear his music? Do you hear melody?

In a rather remarkable book by musicologist, composer, and advocate of contemporary music, Nicholas Slonimsky, titled The Lexicon Of Musical Invective, you can find evidence that melody doesn’t always sound like melody when people first hear it.

In The Lexicon, Slonimsky presents various reviews by respected critics from different periods in classical music. Here you can find such great composers as Beethoven and Brahms being skewed for their lack of melodious work. “Barbaric” is the way one critic described Beethoven’s conception of melody.

Yet nowadays you’ll be hard pressed to find anybody (even if they don’t like classical music) who would say Beethoven’s work is not melodious. They might call it boring, but they could still easily hum the themes to his symphonies.

When I first started playing jazz in the 1970’s I remember being dumbstruck when meeting several older jazz fans who thought Charlie Parker permanently ruined the music, because he destroyed any semblance of melodic expression. “I only like jazz that’s melodic”, said one of them. (Charlie Parker not melodic!?! Seriously!?!)

All melodic content follows certain laws of nature. There is the building of tension, the sustainment of tension, and the release of tension. Yet there is no order, formula or rule that this necessarily follows. Even the perception of these elements is hightly subjective to the listener. But it rarely is to the great improviser. As time goes by, it’s often a matter of the listener finally being able to hear the melodious intentions of the improviser.

One of my favorite jazz improvisers of all time is the tenor saxophonist, Warne Marsh. I always find it interesting what other musicians say about Warne when they hear him for the first time. If they don’t like him, then of course it’s because “he’s just playing notes, not making any melodic sense”. Or, “his sound is just weird.”

But even some of the folks who respect Warne don’t find him to be a particularly “melodic improviser”.

One of my dear colleagues once told me, “His harmonic and rhythmic explorations were incredible..not particularly melodic, but highly interesting, and clearly demonstrating a high degree of discipline and skill.” I had to chuckle to myself when I heard that, because to me, Warne played nothing but melodies. That’s sort of all he did, letting one beautiful idea influence and flow into the next. Sometimes at lightening speed, but melodies no less.

Maybe the role of the great improviser, of the innovative improviser, is to lead us into new ways of hearing melody, of comprehending meaning in this human endeavor.

So how can you become a more melodic improviser? Simply clarify your intentions so you can broaden your own definition of melody. Here’s two things you can do to help you with this:

First, stay on a continuous quest to explore the elements of music (rhythm, harmony, tonal organization, intervalic shapes, genres, forms,etc.) and to expand your conception and command of them. Always strive to find new ways to organize the musical material…new patterns and new approaches. Build your own language in a way that makes melodic sense to you.

Second, learn to clearly hear everything that you practice. Make singing a big part of your daily practice. Every time you start to study a new pattern of any sort, make sure you spend enough time learning to sing it easily, readily and clearly. Strive to hear the patterns you create as melody, as something you draw upon with intention. As I get older, I find myself singing more and playing less when it comes to exploring new material.

So let’s keep those questions about “what makes a musical idea melodic?” open to exploration and interpretation. And maybe, ultimately something sounds melodic because it sounds familiar enough to seem so. No matter the reason, aim for learning to play whatever you play like you mean it.

Be Wary Of Good Advice

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One of the biggest challenges that arise when I teach the Alexander Technique to musicians is to get them to consider ideas about playing their instrument that seem to be contrary to what they believe to be absolutely true. Some of these ideas were imparted to them by well-meaning teachers.

Unfortunately, a certain amount of those ideas are adding to (or causing!) the problem that motivated the student to seek my help in the first place.

I try never to directly contradict the advice that they’ve taken from their teachers. Rather, I aim at helping them have a different kinesthetic experience by not following that advice. (I of course am using my hands and words to direct them into a more efficient, natural use of themselves. This helps significantly.)

After they’ve experience this different, seemingly new way to play, I usually tell them something something like this: “So now you have a chance to go home and experiment. You can do it the way you’ve been doing it, or try it this other way. Then you can choose which you prefer, which way seems to help you the most.”

And that’s pretty much it. Far more often than not, the student chooses this newer, clearly less strenuous way to play. But it’s the student’s choice, not my insistent command.

For us as musicians, it’s natural to seek out advice from someone who has already solved the problems of playing our instrument that we still struggle with. And to be clear, most of the advice that master musicians give their students regarding pedagogy is immensely helpful, often saving the student years of misunderstanding and frustration.

But you always have to come back to this one question when taking advice from a great instrumentalist: Is this musician playing well because of what he or she is doing, or despite what he or she is doing? (I ask my regular visitors here to forgive me for raising this question so often, but it really is fundamental.)

For example, you can play saxophone quite well if you curl your toes and grip the floor with vise-like effort. But this doesn’t help you play well. It doesn’t help you produce your sound. It’s not necessary at all to playing the saxophone. (In fact it actually interferes with your ability to play your best.) It’s a simple matter of the principle of cause and effect. Curling your toes is an effect of your habit, not a cause of your good sound.

But if you believe that you need to do that to play well, it’s likely you’ll pass that advice on to one of your students as gospel truth. And this is often how bad advice is passed on from teacher to student.

Here are three guidelines you can follow when given advice about playing your instrument (from me or anyone else) to help you make better decisions for yourself:

1. Does it make sense with the laws of nature? Part of my job when I teach is to help my student better understand the music making process with respect to their bodily structures, and basic principles of physical science (mechanics, gravity, acoustics). I want them to have a clearer and more accurate body map, and want them to understand how their overall general coordination affects the specific coordination of playing music. I also want them to understand what it takes to produce sound on their instrument from an acoustic point of view, then always ask themselves if, or how, their habits might be affecting the production of sound. Again, the “because of/despite of” question. So many myths of pedagogy can be dispelled by simply cracking a book on human anatomy, or reading up on the acoustical princples of your instrument.

2. Does it mostly involve adding, or subtracting strain? This is an important question to ask, especially if you feel pain or fatigue after carrying out the advice you’ve been given. I’ve never yet taught a student who wasn’t creating enough muscular effort to play. In fact, it’s usually a matter of getting them to stop working in such a strenuous, misdirected way. So when advice has lots “doing” words, as in, “pull your shoulders down”, “grip the floor with your feet to ground yourself”, “push from your diaphragm”, “tuck your chin in”, etc., go back to asking if, and how, these kinds of things work with respect to the laws of nature. Many times, well-meaning teachers are describing the perceived effect of what good playing looks like, as opposed to the bigger picture of what the cause of that visible bodily change is. For example, as a saxophonist, if I let my neck release my head into an upward balance off the top of my spine, my chin will appear to move inward toward my throat. But here’s the thing: muscular release is what is causing the change. That’s something entirely different than me trying to tuck my chin in toward my throat (muscular tension). Generally speaking in my experience, the more the pedagogical advice has to do with release and expansion (as opposed to added effort and contraction) the more effective the result.

3. Do you clearly understand the advice in the same way the advice giver does? This is quite often where things start to go wrong. I’ve many times encountered students who are not understanding and carrying out the advice the way the teacher understands it and carries it out. This has to do with the limits of language. I often find myself saying to my students as I teach, “You’ve just done what I’ve asked you to do, but it’s not what I want you to do. So, let’s see if I can ask again in a different way.” There’s no such thing as one ideal way of expressing your own movement experiences so that another person will experience them in the same way you do. This is where the art of teaching becomes fundamental. If you get advice and it seems to defy the laws of nature, and/or mostly involves more muscular effort, make really sure (in the most respectful way) that you ask your teacher to help you better understand.

And on that note…of course, any time you take a lesson or seek advice from someone, proceed with the utmost respect. Never argue. Simply ask genuine questions until you understand. But ultimately, you have to decide for yourself if the advice given is helpful or not to you, no matter what anyone says. It’s your choice.

The Problem With Studying The “Jazz Language”

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The other morning I was giving a first lesson to a jazz guitarist ( a university student) and was struck by something I notice quite often: Young jazz students spending a seemingly disproportionate amount of practice time learning and memorizing jazz lines and improvised solos.

When I asked this musician what he practices, he said that most of his practice time is spent learning new tunes, heads (like Donna Lee, Milestones, etc) and transcribing and playing improvised jazz solos by the “masters”.

This is all good stuff to do if you’re studying jazz. It lets you go deeply into the heart of the jazz tradition, giving you perspective and context. It gives you insights about how the musicians formed their ideas. It helps you develop technical skill that you can use as an improviser. It improves your ear. All good stuff.

But then when I asked my student what else he practices, his face went blank. He said, “That’s pretty much it. I want to really absorb the jazz language. All my teachers tell me this is the best way to do that.”

Then I listened to him play. He was very competent, very fluent, had a nice time feel, clearly showing how much, and to whom he had listened.

He was also stunningly unoriginal, and rather disconnected from the improvisational process. Everything he played sounded like an excerpt from one of the lines or solos he’d memorized. I don’t mean he was copying things note for note. It was…well, as if he weren’t really feeling at all what he was playing. It was as if it came from some external source, foreign to him.

As I pressed on in my questioning, he said that he already knew his scales and chords thoroughly. As I sort of tested him on this, he showed great competence with his scaler and harmonic knowledge. So why the disconnect?

Well, as we went further into the lesson, it became clear: He wanted everything he improvised to sound as if it came squarely from the jazz language, the jazz tradition as it were (or at least his conception of those things).

That got me to thinking about what exactly that might mean. Especially, the jazz language. Is there a jazz language? If there is I don’t know how to define it.

Is it certain harmonies used in modern jazz? Nope. All those extended harmonies are found in many different pieces of 20th century classical music.

Is it the chromaticism? No. There’s plenty of chromaticism from other forms of music. Beethoven used it to great effect.

Is it the types of rhythms that are predominantly used in jazz? Not that either. There’s no such thing as a “jazz” rhythmic figure. Even syncopation has been around forever.

Is it the time feel? Now at least were getting close. Jazz musicians have a certain way of feeling time and expressing it rhythmically that is immediately palpable.

But what is it exactly? The so called “swing” eighth note feel isn’t even close to being codified. Some musicians (I’m thinking of Clifford Brown here) play jazz eighth notes virtually “straight”. Yet when you hear them play, you can easily tell it’s jazz.

And that’s usually the case. You might not be able to define what the jazz language is, but you can sure recognize it when you hear it. But the bottom line is that for every rule or principle of the jazz language there are countless exceptions. So why all the “learning the jazz language” emphasis?

If you examine the work of the great innovators in jazz they all had one thing in common: They redefined, edified and expanded the so called jazz language. Sure they might have spent quite a bit of time copying other players and learning tunes and heads and so forth.

But they also did one other very important thing. They spent the vast majority of their time improvising (truly improvising) to find what they had to say as artists. In fact, many had to actually ignore the jazz language of their time. They needed to free themselves from it in order to find a more personal expression.

Miles Davis was famous for this. As was John Coltrane. So was Lester Young for that matter. They were constantly pushing back against the established jazz language of their day. And they were consistently finding newer, more innovative ways to express themselves through what we still call the jazz tradition.

How did they do this? Well, if we take Coltrane as an example, he spent a huge amount of time re-mastering and exploring the materials of music: new ways of stacking chords; new ways of thinking about scales and modes; new ways to imagine rhythm and its relationship to harmonic tension. He in essence stopped looking at jazz and started looking at music in the much broader sense.

It’s important to keep in mind that, if you’re an improviser, your also a composer. You compose spontaneously, but you compose nevertheless. So follow the path of great composers. Study the tradition. Absorb and understand what has been created before you. But get down to the business of finding out who you are.

In my experience both as teacher and performer, I’d say you’re best off giving this top priority, even when you’re at the stage of development where you’re mimicking and studying others. Don’t wait for some magic moment of creative maturity. You’re ready right now. Cultivate those moments every single day, no matter what level of proficiency you’re at. Make the music yours.

For you this might mean spending a great deal more time creating and learning your own distinctive scalar, intervalic and harmonic patterns, building your own language. It could mean spending the next few years of your practice life devoted nearly exclusively to broadening your rhythmic conception (polymeter, odd meters, time feel, etc.). Explore the materials of music deeply.

Use your imagination, intellect, musical knowledge and ear to find (as the great jazz pianist and teacher Lennie Tristano would say) “your own melody.” Don’t let an over-emphasis on language limit your self expression.

Exploring Being Wrong To Find Improvement

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The errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one

– William Stanley Jevons, Economist

If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying hard enough.

– John Coltrane, Jazz Saxophonist

There is no musician in this world who has flawless technique, because there is no such thing as flawless technique. For an artist, technique is the means toward self expression. As the artist continues to grow, the technique must evolve to serve this expression.

The pursuit of perfection is more a direction to move toward rather than a destination. (It’s not about perfection so much as it is about improvement.) To paraphrase the great cellist Janos Starker describing his continued growth:

“All of the sudden, everything I worked so hard for is wrong, because I’ve found an even better way. A new level. But when I work hard and finally reach that new level, it too will become wrong.”

The fact that even very accomplished musicians still practice, still study, still strive, is, in a sense, an admission that they’re not completely right about their approach to playing music. There is always more. There is always a different way other than the way they already know.

The only way you can possibly reach your potential as a musician is to explore the possibility of being wrong. (But keep in mind that wrong might be nothing more than your immediate reaction, your perception, of something that is unfamiliar.)

The sound I currently have on tenor saxophone is a result of lots of physical changes and equipment choices that were wrong at one point in my development. And as right as they are now, they (thinking of what Janos Starker said above) may possibly become wrong at another point in the future.

Much of your sense of what is right is based upon belief and habit. F. M. Alexander (the founder of the Alexander Technique) said:

Everyone wants to be right, but nobody stops to consider whether their idea of right is right.

In regard to postural and movement habits, Alexander found that most people’s sense of right was based upon something he called a “faulty sensory awareness.” In essence, an inaccurate sense of what’s really going on in your body as opposed to what you think is going on.

Alexander found that because people are creatures of habit, they’ll typically cling to the feeling of their habit, whether or not that habit is counterproductive to their desired intention. They’ll do so because their habits always feel familiar. They feel right.

To change, Alexander said, you need to go from the known, to the unknown. (From the habitual and familiar, to the new and unfamiliar.) This can only happen by exploring the possibility of being wrong. By allowing yourself to explore wrong, you set the stage for change.

According to the principles of the Alexander Technique, the only time you’re ever actually “wrong” is when you interfere with the natural poise and coordination that you already possess to function well.

If you make something more complicated by excessively straining muscles, rather than using a more efficient coordination based upon your bodily design and its relationship to gravity, you’re probably wrong, whether or not it feels right.

Your wrong because ultimately, it doesn’t help you play any better. It in fact makes good playing even less likely. You’re wrong only because your reaction is in conflict with your desire (and with your design).

For many, it’s not always easy to notice habits in this way. (This is where a good teacher can help immensely.)

But if you can learn to avoid a few of the truly wrong things (according to this Alexander principle) you’re left with a vast field of possibilities of things that might be right, might be better.

And of course being different isn’t necessarily wrong.

In fact that’s part of the point I’m trying to make here. Paul Desmond had a sound on alto saxophone that was as different as could be from David Sanborn’s alto sound. But that doesn’t mean that one sound is right and the other wrong. They’re just different (and both highly unique and beautiful).

You can apply this same kind of open-mindedness to your own exploration of right and wrong as you practice.

Here are a few other things to keep in mind to help you explore your musical practice in this way:

Notice how you respond-What do you do when you play something that didn’t come out they way you intended? Did your body become tense? Did you stop breathing? Did you make a scowling face? Learning how to accept the unintentional with grace and balance is a great skill to cultivate. Besides making you a better performer, it will keep you much more open-minded in your practice. If you find yourself getting tense after trying something in a different way, stop and do it again with a less tense, less reactive response. You might be surprised to notice that it doesn’t seem so wrong after all, and is perhaps even better than what you had before.

Don’t rely exclusively on what feels right-Like Alexander said, what often feels right is your habit. Sometimes to really find what’s “right” (or at least better) you have to allow yourself to feel wrong (out of your habit). In exploring new techniques, approaches and equipment, try to base your assessments on discernible, objective criteria. “Am I able to control the pitch more accurately?” “Am I able to play with less strain on my entire body?” “Can I more consistently produce my altissimo?”, etc. Make a list of your objectives with of anything new that you try. Keep track of the pros and cons. Take your time and use your reasoning.

Understand why you do things the way you do-If you hold your posture, position your instrument, form your embouchure, practice in a certain sequence, etc., because some well-respected expert told you to do so, I encourage you to ask the deeper question of “Why?” The better you understand the physics of your instrument, your bodily structure and design (and your thinking), the better you’ll be able to discern the best choices for you. This is where honest self-inqury and basic scientific reasoning come into play. If you’ve been doing something the same way for years because of your deferment to a respected source, explore the possibility of not doing it that way. See what happens. Measure the results.

Let yourself sound bad-Sometimes to find a better way to play, you have to let go of your desire to sound good . If you start with discernment instead of judgement, you might find that sounding “bad” doesn’t really sound bad at all, just different. And even if you do sound bad (bad intonation, articulation, etc.) understand that it might just be a matter of you getting used to a less seemingly familiar coordination. It could be that as you get to know this new coordination, you play better than ever. (The current mouthpiece I play on tenor saxophone is a prime example of this. The only way I could make this mouthpiece work for me was to play in a more efficient, less strenous way than I was used to habitually.)

So as always, let yourself explore, have fun, be different, be wrong. Aim for a right direction (growth and improvement) instead of a right destination (perfection, which, as Janos Starker might say, doesn’t exist). Being wrong might just be the right thing for you. Let me know what you think!