You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Language Or Sound: What's More Important?

Episode Date: May 29, 2023

In this episode, Adam and Peter watch a Branford Marsalis video about the importance of your sound.Check out the video for yourself right here!Have a question for us? Leave us a SpeakPipeCheckout courses from Adam, Peter and more at Open StudioLet us know what you think by leaving a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review, or head over to our YouTube channel.Follow us on Instagram

Hey, Peter. Hey. How's your sound? Oh, my sound. My sound's okay. My vocabulary is better, to be honest. Your vocabulary is better than your sound? Yeah, we're going to enter this episode backwards.

So please stick around so that this starts to make sense. Well, the walls. John Lennon is a walrus. I am Adam Manus. I'm Peter Martin. I am Madame Manus. I am Sado. I'm trying to do my name backwards.

I'm Redup Knitram. What is it? Red up nitram. You've practiced that before. Well, I know, I know it. What is it? Redup knit ram. Redup knit ram.

Redup. Peter. That's redup. Nitram. Martin. Hi, I'm Red up. You never learned that as a child? No, I never have.

Hold on. I started out backwards. Caleb, do you know your, this is producer Caleb with, producer Caleb can. Look at it. I told him, I said, be ready. What's your name backwards? Belak, Yebrick. Everybody knows their name backwards.

Look, Adam's having to go pen to paper on this. So I'm Madisonam. That sounds too close to your actual name. Madison M. It's so close, actually. Madison M. What does that call when the word is the same? Pallendrum. Oh, now that's something you know.

Hannah is a palindrum. I remember that book. Hannah is a palindrome. Say that seven times. Hannah is a palindrome. No, don't actually say it. How you doing, man? Pretty good, man.

How are you? I'm good. We just did this episode. episode. Did we? I don't remember. Okay, for those of our dear listeners that have been around for a minute know that occasionally, and by say, when I say occasion, I mean about 70% of the time, we have to do a redo because, and it's always fun. I wish you guys could see. We should do like an outtakes thing sometime, although the show sometimes feels like one big outtake. The whole show has been a thousand episodes of outtake. Now I have to un, because we're redoing this too. Oh, we got to do all. Awkwardly and unnatural be like, hey, look at my new t-shirts. Oh, yeah, let me see. Look at this.

Check this out. Oh, Hans. That's a Hans-Groiner branded T-shirt. Is that available via Larry Goldings for some reason? For some reason. I don't know why, but Larry sells these. I guess he's a huge Hans-Groiner is the man. Hans-Groarner is.

So I lit up. This came yesterday and I just like, I got to wear this for the podcast. Right. Did it come directly from Austria? They're selling it out of Austria. Was there, you with like the customs thing, you had to pay the tax not at the main post office downtown? Yeah.

And actually you have to apply for one. They demand a picture to make sure it goes on. Big shout out to Larry Goldings. And yeah, so what are we talking about today? First of all, we're brought you by Open Studio. Go to Open StudioJadiojazz.com. We got some exciting things happening. We got some very, can we announce the 30-day?

You know what? I'm not even going to announce it. I'm just going to drip it out there. Just be on the lookout. Be on the lookout for 30 days. Okay, okay. But anyway, today we're talking about, and I think I've actually brought up this video. Can we just watch the video?

Yeah, let's watch this video. So this is a video that I found scrolling through the Graham of the great Brantford Marcellus being interviewed. That's not Bramford Marcellus. That is not Brantford, no. No. But he's being interviewed by this guy. Who I believe is a works for, I think it was St. James Baptist Church or something in Louisville, Kentucky.

Anyway, shout out to the church that produced this because this is a brilliant 30 seconds from Bracler. About the difference between sound and vocabulary and the use of sound. So let me see if I can brilliantly pull this up. I hope so. Here we go. Boom. What would be the difference between sound and vocabulary? Let's say you have an English professor who knows every word in the English dictionary.

And then you put him on a stage to do Shakespeare. Or if you took him and just put him in the pulpit and everybody's staring at him waiting for him to give us during sermon. How's he gone fair? Not very good because it ain't enough to know the words. You have to know how to deliver the words with a sound that's relative to the period. You have preachers who don't have a great vocabulary, and they got people losing their minds because of the delivery. Sound creates the delivery.

The thing that moves people, the thing that makes music, instrumental music, great to me, is that the sound of an instrument can have an emotional effect on the listener. Data is just data. It's really a musician's problem. It's not a people problem. People are not going to go take harmony classes to appreciate you.

Sad songs need to sound sad, happy songs need to sound happy. It's like a real simple premise, but that's the hardest thing to do. It took a decade to learn how to do that to just learn how to create emotion through sound. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Okay, now I think I get it.

So full disclosure, we record the whole episode, almost the whole episode, watch this, and then we started getting into a violent disagreement. Right? Well, it didn't get too violent, but it was heading there. Yeah. Because I think I have a, like,

there's a lot of layers to, even though this is like 30 seconds. I know, that's what I'm saying, man, it's very deep. What are you saying here? So I think that, like, the part that's about the style of the sense, sound. So like he starts out saying, you know, somebody who knows has a big vocabulary in the

English language that can get up and do Shakespeare. Apparently successfully. They're not going to be necessarily successful at getting up to the pulpit where you, he doesn't say the word improvised, but I think that's what he's implying, right, where you have to have some improvisational flair, not just the data, as he says. I love that data is just data. Data is just data. So to me, it's more the difference of like if you talk about a joke writer versus a stand-up comedian. So it's not even improvisation, but more performing. So if you actually want to connect material to people, there's a tip of the spear that actually is connecting to people or the conduit that actually reaches out to them. So there are comedians that are great joke writers. Their

musicians who are great composers, but not necessarily impactful performers or impactful stand-up comedians because their delivery is not, they don't have the thing of delivery. And I think what Brantford is really saying here is for musicians, that skill is the skill of sound, of sound production. And your sound is that delivery. And it's interesting. Yeah. So, and he says, I think, specifically instrumental music. Right. So maybe that means that there is, when you're a vocalist and you have words, you're an instrumentalist and a vocalist at the same time, potentially, especially in the jazz world, right? Yeah. So that is kind of another thing. This is very specific to, like, what is your sound when you're not relying on words as a saxophone player?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, text can kind of do a lot of the work for you, right? So if you're a vocalist and you're singing lyrics, that can do some heavy lifting on the emotion. But I think what he was saying there is what's so cool about instrumental music is even though there is no lyrics, you can still make something sound sad with an instrument, with a saxophone. You can still make something sound joyous with a saxophone. You can make it sound frustrating with a saxophone. You can transmit emotion to other people. That becomes the story. that connects with those unique human emotion. And I love how he breaks it down and it can seem simplistic to some people and maybe a little bit jarring, but I think it's just spot on where he's just saying, you know, learn how to play something sad,

learn how to play something happy, you know, like took him 10 years, this kind of thing. It's like, that can seem simplistic. And it's like, well, no, great music has a myriad of emotions and everything. It's like, well, really, can you represent as an instrumentalist improvising

or otherwise these basic human emotions. Of course, there's a myriad of different ones and ways to play them. And I know I got in a little trouble using the word musical creation. You bristled earlier today. Musical creation. Not musical creation,

musical curation. That's when you're picking notes for... Well, no, no, no. Well, you're picking notes, but how to play... Like, what makes the same notes that Brantford plays them different than somebody else playing the same notes? I think that's what he's talking about.

The sound... Exactly. Like, but what does that actually mean? mean when people talk about you've got to develop your own sound i remember hearing this from great musicians when i was coming up and i was like yeah yeah yeah i just want to play like win kelly i want to play like herbie hancock the sound will come later because i couldn't i didn't know what that meant right you know and plus especially for the piano i'm like look it's just a button i'm pressing it right right i can come up with some hip voicings maybe does that give me a sound yeah well that's a color palette

for sure but again that's still just data those are just notes that you're playing right so the sound is how you play it so if you took the same data right So the same... Data in, data out. Exactly. So the same six-note melody or whatever. Could you play that same six-note melody? Yeah.

And the same tempo, even, you know, with different emotions based on how you play it, how you deliver it. Yeah. You know? I think that's what he's talking about. That's developing a sound. Yeah, yeah. It's how you deliver the data. The data doesn't matter.

Data is just data, it's always changing because we're always taking in new data, but how you play as a skill that it's not often talked about it as far as, like, growth of like, it is talked about in the fact that especially with classical musicians, they don't have anything to do with data. Right. You know, like a classical pianist has nothing to do with the data that they're playing. You know what's interesting about this? I'm just, I just realized this, like, because I've been following Brand for Marcellus for a long time. And, I mean, I actually met him when I was 15 years old, and he was very, very generous

and kind. He actually came back to St. Louis the next year with Sting and, like, gave me and my friends free tickets to see him up at the meet. uni here and like invited us backstage. I was just like little punk kids there excited to, you know, meet Kenny Kirkland and stuff. But I was, but I'm just to say that beyond

just, you know, and I played with him before he's, I've had him come and play some of my music and just but I've been a big fan of Brantford for a long time. Like I love his playing. Like he's one of my favorite saxophones of this, of any generation. He's greatest, man. He's greatest. But it's like, I've heard him talk about like how hard it is to develop a

sound for a long time and I was always kind of like, it was always a little incongruent to me because I've always been able to identify his sound. I've always felt like he had a very strong sense of sound. Super distinct. From a very young age, actually. Agreed, actually. And so I always thought he was kind of being a little bit disingenuous or something,

but I think what it is is he has always had such a heightened awareness and understanding, such a nuanced understanding of what it takes to develop a sound, that his, like, level and barometer was so much higher, the threshold for him, that he was like, oh, I don't really have a great sound. even though everybody else, and you know saxophone is geek out over him with just playing one note. Dan, that's Brantford. That's Bramford. You know, and, I mean, pianist can tell.

We could tell. Yes. But I think level one of anything is awareness. It sounds like he's been aware of this for decades. Yeah. You know, and so even just having awareness is a step above a lot of people. So you're saying something that you care about actually will start to be manifested if you care about it? You don't even have to care about it.

You can just be aware of it or put your attention to it. Attention. And then that alone changes the game. but then if you're as smart and as dedicated as Brantford is and you spend years with your you know really high musical intellect putting energy towards this obviously you become Brantford coming to think of it now this is what's great to have this perspective of a little bit longer you know been able to hear him since you know 1984 basically on recordings and live and even occasionally on the bandstand with him like he's been playing the long game for a long time on sound

yeah which is like you know that's maybe easy easier when you're 40 or 50 or 60 years old, but when you're like in your mid-20s and you're like, it's going to take a long time to develop a sound. And even people around you, you're like, oh, no, you've got a great sound. Like, it's very easy to be like, oh, yeah, thank you very much. You've got it. Yeah. It's so hard to see as a young musician for some reason because you feel like it's just all about the data. Yeah. And then it's not until you get older that you realize like, wait, I've got all this data. What's going on? And that's why, why don't I sound like I want the sound, even though I have all this data. It's because you haven't worked on your sound.

Right. You've worked on the delivery of the data. That includes things like actually thinking about delivery. Yes. Putting your attention to how you're playing things. It includes actually some nuts and bolts things, Peter, too, like, you know, technique things. Well, I was just going to say that's, yeah. I mean, all that stuff is almost like a prerequisite. Like a lot of this won't really, I mean, that can force you into getting that stuff together because once you're prioritizing sound, whatever deficiencies you're able to start to identify in your playing. If you care, you're going to have to go get that stuff back together, not because, oh, I want to be able to do this like somebody else.

It's like, I'm having trouble expressing my sound. What do I need to do developing my technique to better get to that? Well, it includes something too that I bristled that before. But in this context is true, which is taste, which is musical taste, right? Which is artistic taste. Not in the way of, like, I'm going to use this camera lens or I'm going to choose this chord voicing, but more in the way of like, what are the 12 different ways to play this one four-note voicing?

Like, just how are the different textures that I can get from, you know, dynamics to rolling to, you know, whatever. Like, that's where the artist's part comes in is like, I have these four notes to work with. How many different ways can I express it? And what does each one of those evoke in my audience? Like, what does it mean in the context of what happened before and after it? What does it mean in the context of what happens is what's happening around me?

Culturally right now, in the zeitgeist that we're in. Yeah. All that thing, all that stuff is important, I think, as artists as you get to a higher level to put our attention to. Absolutely. And I'll just, just to put a button on this and as kind of a corollary to our endless dribble or drivel about this subject. Both. Really? I would just, I would direct everybody to Brand for Marcellus and Ellis Marcellus duo. Oh, that's a great record. on yeah and the specific track

Stella by Starlight because I think that's would be a very interesting younger-ish certainly much young I couldn't tell you exactly how old Bramford is at that time but but

so 90 I mean I'm six maybe yeah maybe maybe something like that so certainly not 40 years old maybe 30 it doesn't even really matter it's just to say that like

to kind of I think prove the point of like Bramford's deep and nuanced understanding of what it takes to develop a sound but also kind of what I'm putting forth in that he's a master of sound beyond just like

an incredible, you know, sound of the saxophone, obviously. But check that track out. It's a very, it's a brilliant record, but that's a very, it's one of my favorite tracks on them. I mean, the sound that they get together and I think that it, as often does with this, it can kind of better sort of manifest what it is.

We're trying to add to the dialogue here. And then as pianists, you know, there are little things that you can do to actually work on this, like, right away. Just take a melody. Just take Stella by Starlight. And, like, practice varying your things like articulation dynamics and even, like, rhythmic, things like that. It's the same melody. What if I mess with all kinds of sounds? Some aren't going to work. And why am I doing it?

You know, what am I? I'm thinking about the lyrics, obviously. little things, dynamics, touch, articulation, how much you slur your eighth notes. I mean, just doing a constant eighth note line and practicing how connected are they, how disconnected are they, how your accents, how heavy are your accents? Like these are little boring technical things, but you put it all together and ask, well, what does that feel like? Does that feel like joy or anger or disappointment? Like, how does that sound? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Cool. Well, until next time. You'll hear it.