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IMPROVISATIONLearn how to listen/hear:
How often have you been listening, but not hearing what was going on around you? We don’t really listen to what others have to say and most of all we don’t listen to ourselves. There’s a little voice in our heads that is constantly talking to us and evaluating the things that are going on and making decisions about what we see and hear. That little voice is what makes us human so it is always going to be there, but we have to control and quite that little voice so that we as musicians can hear the rest of what’s happening outside our heads. Learn to listen to yourself talk because the way you talk is the way that you formulate your ideas and present them to the world so pay attention to what and how you say things. Eventually the way you “solo” is the same as the way you talk, so I’m going to give you an assignment on listening. Next time you’re in the grocery store – stand in front of the cereal and see if you can hear what is going on at the check-out register, then the produce department, then the meat department, then the next isle over, etc. You’ll find that you have to block out other things that are getting in the way in order to hear the things that you are concentrating on. I had an instructor in my music history class in college say that she had two friends who went to hear a symphonic concert, one played flute and the other played bass. They came away hearing two totally different concerts because they heard from there particular instruments– the flute player heard the melodies, i.e. from the top down and the bassist heard the harmonies and countermelodies, i.e. from the bottom up. That stopped me cold, because I had to think about what I had been hearing when I listened to music. Being a trumpet player my ears went naturally to that instrument, but had I heard everything there was to hear on the recording or at the concert? I went home, put on a recording and started listening in a different way. I listened to the drummer all the way thru the composition as many times as it took for me to understand what he was doing. I did the same thing with the bass, piano, trumpet and saxophone (or what ever instruments were on the recording). I then listened in combinations, i.e. the drums and the bass, the drums and the piano the drums and the trumpet, the drums and the saxophone. Then the drums and bass with the other instruments then include the piano and the others, etc. until I felt that I comprehended what was going on there. Then I would move onto the next piece on the recording. If it was a big band or symphony orchestra, I went thru the same process until I was hearing what was there in the different sections of the ensemble. It’s time consuming, but it pays off when you realize how much you had missed. The transfer for me is that I can hear what’s going on the bandstand as we are performing and I therefore can be affected by what’s going on in a way that I never could have before. That allows me to react to something that I didn’t know was coming and can incorporate it into my “solo”. I put “solo” in parenthesis because I don’t play solos and hope that I never do play a solo unless I am the only one there. If there is another person then, it’s a duet, three is a trio, etc. because I am constantly incorporating the sounds that the others are making and making them part of my “solo” even if it’s a shuffling of feet or a grunt or groan from the audience. I learned many years ago (to my dismay) that I am not the most creative person on the planet so I need help at every stage of performance. I decided to be creative in my listening and by using the sounds around me. Sometimes it comes from something the drummer, bassist or pianist plays and sometimes from the audience, but because I am always seeking new information it comes to me from any and all places. If the information isn’t coming from others in the group then I will offer up an idea and we can carry on a musical conversation about that. The imagination is limitless. You can imagine that you are at the beach, on the moon, or any place else – some call it day dreaming, but none the less it is your imagination at work. Because the imagination has no limitations, we can put it to work in our improvisations to draw up new possibilities that were never there before. Good listening!
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