You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - How Do You Know What Your Sound Is? - #64

Episode Date: April 4, 2018

Peter and Adam answer a listener question about developing your own sound. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam Manus and I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today we're going to answer a listener question, which is how do you know what your sound is? I like this. And thanks listeners for sending in questions. We're going to go through as many of them as we can. We love your questions. Well, the good ones.

The good ones. Yeah, we're going to ignore all the terrible ones. Right. But this is a great question. And what I think about this is really like how to develop your own sound. I mean, it's hard to know what your sound is in relation to jazz, you know, as a whole. but I think there are ways that we can develop a unique sound. You know, for me, sound is personality.

And I practice so that I can get as close to my actual personality in the music as I can, even if no one likes me. You know what I mean? Even if you have a terrible personality. You still want to get that into the music. At least you're being you. At least you're being you. No, but, you know, that's how I think of a sound.

I mean, the technical things of sounds on instruments are very important, but those are all choices reflecting your personality. Well, that's weird because I think that I love your sound at the piano. I love your sound compositionally. I think you have a horrible personality, actually. So you somehow haven't matched up at all. Total fraud. No, I love this concept of maybe I'll even refine it a little further

as far as the closer we get to our sound of our instrument, of our improvisation, of our compositions, our arrangements, the closer that sound becomes to. to our personality is kind of the better we're getting as jazz players perhaps. That's right. That's right. And that the goal is sort of an intermingling of our personality and our sound and it all becomes kind of one effortless thing.

I think there are physical things, first of all, that every human has that helps them to have their own sound on an instrument. Like if you heard recordings of yourself when you were 18, you probably still sound a little bit like you sound now because you are physically the same person. You know, you have the same size hands relatively, the same game. features, the same muscles that work the same way. So your feel is going to be relatively the same. Your sound might be definitely better now, but that stuff is still going to be there. What's different is you're more comfortable as a person. You know more, you know more how to connect to the audience

who you are through music. And I think that's what developing your sound is all about. Yeah, and I think maybe the development includes a certain amount of removal of some superfluous things. See, that's the most important thing, I think. It's taking things away. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So that core is always there. And maybe with all this extraneous stuff, it kind of obscures what's there. And I've heard some of that in my plane, because sometimes I'll hear stuff, you know, especially, like, when YouTube really started hitting and people were putting up old videos and they were like sending me or tagging, and they're like, oh, man, this is you when you're like 22 with Roy Hard going to a bit. And I listened to it. And I was like, wow, I sounded pretty good then. And a lot of times my thought

is like, I haven't really improved that much. I'm still playing the same stuff. And I used to get a little depressed. I was like, wow, I've wasted all this time. I've just sort of plateaued from 22 to 42. But what I realized was I have improved, but the core of my sound is still the same. And I think that's okay.

I mean, that's my sound. I think I've gotten a little closer to my personality by removing the other stuff, but it was always there. Yeah, I think a great exercise for refining your sound and to getting closer to your actual true sound as a player is to, record yourself or listen to recordings of yourself and really think about things that you like I'll listen to myself and I'll be like I don't really want to play that like why am I playing that or why am I playing that that voicing that's not actually who I am that's not actually what I want to do

someone told me that or showed it to me and I put it in my playing at some point but that's not how I want to sound you know so I'll start removing that stuff and you know consciously like I'm not going to play that anymore or, you know, I'm, I'm beyond that as far as like, that's, that's not who I am, where I want to go. And then you could also, like, get sound inspiration and say, like, I want to have more of this in my playing in three or five years or whatever and work towards that. Like, if it's a, you know, playing more outside or block chords or whatever, you know, whatever it is, choose something that you want to get more of in your sound and add that to your practice routine. Subtract the stuff that is not you. Yeah. And I'm just thinking about it,

about Joey Alexander, the young great pianist from Indonesia, he, it's such an amazing thing because he already has his sound, which is very unusual. It's really ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, not to say that when he looks back in 20 years, I'm sure he'll feel like he's gotten more to his sound. But it's pretty amazing because he's got a lot of specific influences that you can hear. But I think he ran through them so quickly that he's been able to even start to do a little bit of that removal of some of that stuff in a way that's very mature. So it's definitely something that can be done in the age, and everybody's a little bit different. But, you know, somebody else that comes to mind is Nicholas Payton.

Because I was around him. When I first met him, he was about 15 or 16 years old. And we were playing together a fair amount already then in New Orleans. And he had this maturity in his playing. And, I mean, talk about the sound. And, you know, for the trumpet, the actual sound of your tone. It's so physical. It's so physical.

And it comes across in a way that as pianist, we have to really, you know, it's a more personal instrument, your sound. I mean, the piano is buttons that you push. We have to try to make it, you know, into a lyrical thing. But, I mean, he had the same sound he has now. And I'm sure, you know, if you asked him, he would be like, oh, I wasn't playing anything. But he was.

I mean, not only was he playing great stuff already, but he had his sound. And it certainly has been refined. But that's also like a very, he's a very strong and confident player, and has always been. And not everyone has to be like that. It's okay if you're not.

Somewhere a little bit later blooming. But I think confidence, is key with developing a sound. At least having an idea of who you are or who you want to be or sound like, I think that's a key to knowing how to get there. You know what I mean? Like, if you're able to hear your sound in your head, even if you can't play it right now, that's important.

You know, I've always kind of had an idea of how I want to sound in my head. And I think every day is work towards adding things or taking things away that are, you know, getting me closer to that sound. Yeah. And I think that, you know, the concept of always striving to improve, which is part of this question, and if you should change particular aspects of your playing or your sound, I think, you know, beyond just the, like what we talk about removing things that are extraneous or just not needed, is the more experience we have is playing if you're paying attention and improving and letting your ears get better and working on your harmony and all these specific things within music that will help you're playing. If we're paying attention to those things, as you get experience, you should be able to know what you can and can't do it

at any particular time better than when you're younger, better than yesterday or whatever. That's part of the experiential thing that'll help you. So maybe at a certain point you realize I'm never going to be able to play that Art Tatum around the way he does. You pretty much should figure that out now because no one's going to be able to do it like him.

But you start to realize what you can do and that becomes your sound. Like, I like doing this. I know how to do it. I know to play it at the right. time, all those things become a part of your sound. So it's not so much of like, you wake up one day and you're like, oh, I envision I'm going to have this sound and it's going to be like I'm frolicking in a Swedish meadow and this, you know, no, it's not about that. It's a bunch of little

micro things that add up, experiences, ideas, taste, you know, in music and stuff. And then you curate all that into your sound. That's right. I mean, I like to think about monk. Philonious monk as a pianist and his sound. Wait, as a pianist or frolicking in a meadow in Sweden. I like to think about both those things. It's hilarious and adorable. think about Monk frolicing in a meadow. But, no, so, you know, his sound was his embracing of that style, of his, you know, very unique style of playing. That takes a certain amount of confidence that I am envious of.

And you know what I mean? We all should have of that, like, I know what I can do and I'm going to own it. That's a huge part of your sound. Yes. Yeah. But I don't think everyone, I think it can be, the confidence level can be at different levels and still be very successful. I mean, Monk was, you know, imminently confident from a pretty young age.

It sounded like from what I've heard as far as his playing. But then you get somebody like John Coltrane, which people would think, oh, he was very confident. But you hear a lot less confidence in his playing. I mean, there might be more just brute mastery, you know, because his, I mean, he was like kind of another plane. But he had some very, you know, unsure moments that are very tender and I think a big part of his playing. It's wonderful and that has made his music so beloved. But, you know, all these elements, that's what's great about this music. It gives, if you get out of the way, the music will help you to let your sound come out, whatever it is.

But you have to be willing to accept, and we go back to your playing and your personality of those things coming together. You have to be comfortable with yourself and your own personality. You know, I mean, for me, I used to always, you know, I would get down on myself because I'm like, man, my sound is so scattered. and like I'm going so many different places in my playing. But I started to come to realize that's a part of my personality. I needed to organize it a little bit more. And so I've worked to do that, and I've kind of naturally done that in my curation with my playing. But I just became more comfortable with like that.

I'm like, well, you know what? Actually, I can keep a bunch of things going on at the same time and multitask within my solo. Now, is every tunes do that? No, because it doesn't make sense musically. But if it goes there, reserve it for that correct time, and then that's kind of become a part of my sound. It's really interesting, man. This is a great topic.

Thank you for the question. I think, you know, to break it down, it's like, it seems like what we were kind of saying here is that your sound is really a series of decisions that you have to make about, you know, about it, about your sound. So, you know, if you can kind of come at it from there and realize that the decisions you make for, against things is really going to determine, you know, how you sound. And if you're having trouble, you'll hear it. Mm. Good night, folks. Thanks for listening to this episode of the You'll Hear It podcast. You can go to you'll hearat.com to get more information, submit a question, or just say hello.

Wait, you can do that. Absolutely. All right. And if you like what you heard, please leave a review and a rating below. Thanks.