You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Should You "Plug and Play"? - 152

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

Today, Peter and Adam field a question from a listener about "plug and play". See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Adam S. And I'm Peter Martin. And this is the You'll Hear It podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you, Mondays through Fridays, usually. Sometimes, no, never Saturdays and Sundays. Never anymore. We're out.

We're out. We're a barbecue on the weekend. It's a little disappointing. We didn't get a lot of complaints about that. Yeah, no, no one seems to mind. Didn't we notice? I think we could go down to like two or three days a week and no one really cares. If a podcast is recorded and released on a Saturday and Sunday and nobody listens to it,

did it actually happen? You'll hear it. Anyway, good to be back in the recording booth here. That's right. We're away from the piano today. We are. Yeah, it's probably for the best because we get long-winded when we're sitting at the piano. We do get a little long-winded.

So we're in the lounge here at Open Studio Central. I'm feeling chilling. I got a Mai-Tai. Nice. Nice little tiki cocktail. What are we talking about today? Well, today we're taking a question from you'll hearat.com. This is a gentle reminder that you could always go to you'll hearate.com to ask us,

question. You sure came. And to suggest a lesson or sorry, episode topic. Yeah, we love that. This one is from young Patrick Oakes. I remember Patrick, he had a voice question a few weeks ago. I believe he's in high school or early college. He's young man who is just starting out on his jazz journey here. But he asks a very, I thought, point a question here. He says, hey, guys, I was wondering if you could discuss something that I've been wrestling with a lot lately. Recently, a musician that I really admire told me that jazz is almost exclusively plug and play, quote unquote. And that didn't sit right with me at all.

I struggle, though, to find a balance between reciting vocabulary and being original with pulling out melodies in my head. In other words, I'm trying to figure out what happens inside a proficient jazz musician's head when they improvise. We'd love to hear you talk about this. Yeah, well, this is an instance where somebody, what did he say, a musician that he really admires, is giving out bad information.

Yeah, absolutely. I would say. Either that or it was missing. I mean, plug and play, jazz has got to be the furthest thing from plug and play. If I understand the term plug and play correctly. Yeah, plug and play is everything else. Yeah. It's like pop music, classical music, that's plug and play, right?

I think so. I mean, plug and play meaning that an individual or a piece of the machinery, the individual is a piece of the machinery that can just be swapped out. Right. And everything just continues as is. Well, and the music they're playing is predetermined and they're just plugging it in to the song. That's what I got from it.

learn licks that he's encouraging him to, Patrick's teacher is encouraging him to learn licks and then just plug him into the tune. Right, right, right, right. Well, this isn't a teacher. Well, hopefully he didn't say teacher. Oh, yeah, maybe it was a musician I really admire. Oh, that's bad at someone. So, I mean, maybe from a, what do you call it, like, maybe from a practice standpoint, there's sometimes you could do something kind of plug and play with, but even that's questionable. But I think in terms of playing and performing and expressing ourselves. We want to really move away from that. And I think, you know, we preach a lot about learning solos, transcribing solos. So there's always the danger of taking things that you learn

licks, phrases. Didn't we even have like a seven favorite licks or something like that? Yeah, yeah. You know, so yeah, you, we want to stay away from that mentality as much as possible of taking that and then trying to just plug it into a certain court. Remember, we talked about the voicings. Those definitely are not plug and play. It depends on. where you are. I mean, I think you learn other people's, especially when you're young, like you are, Patrick, you learn other people's, you know, solos and you transcribe a lot, and you learn this vocabulary so that you can be a poet with it, right? Not that you can just copy other people's poetry word for word and transcribe that and present it as your own,

but so that you can be so masterful with the language that you can create your own sounds. Yeah. There's nothing plug and play about that. I mean, you listen to any, minnie master, I mean, you know, is Wayne Shorter plug and play? There's no way. I mean, it's completely out of the ether of stardust or wherever he gets it. You know what I mean? But like this music is based on learning from the past only to create your own sound, in my opinion.

Yeah, and I mean, somebody that's as original and non-plug-and-play as Wayne Shorter is, even if you are a saxophonist and you took some of Wayne's, phrases or harmonic inventions and try to kind of be like him and plug it into your playing. It's still not going to be play. It's not like, oh, you're replacing Wayne Shorter. Because there's so much more there than meets the ears actually that goes into, you know, being the Wayne Shorter style. It's not just the notes.

It's not just his intonation. It's not just his saxophone. It's the whole package. And I think to Young Patrick and really to all musicians at all ages, all jazz musicians at different ages and levels of development, we need to remember that we all have something to say. We all have something important to say. And it's not about only Wayne Shorter has something to say.

Now, he's got a great thing to say, and we want to celebrate his artistry, but so do you. So so to each of us. So the balance, you're asking about the balance between reciting vocabulary and being original, that is something that I think we want to be as organic as possible with how we arrive at that balance. because sure, as you get older, as you get more experienced, you're going to have more confidence to be original and to feel good about that.

I mean, anybody, even with the slightest bit of technique and understanding this music can be original, they can just pick up an instrument and just play random notes on it. That's original. It doesn't really mean you have something good to say. No. But as you progress, that will get better. So you have to go through that hard period of dealing with. maybe you not being that pleased with what you're hearing, but it's still better to speak your own thing

and through what you're learning from the masters. We're always using that, but we're not plugging and playing them. Yeah, and we don't know the conversation Patrick had with this musician. Maybe the musician was trying to encourage Patrick to do more transcribing or understand the language more. You do have to understand a little bit of what people have played before you and learn the cliches of the music, learn the vocabulary of the music, so that you can create something original.

because how would you know if you're doing something original? You know what I mean? If you don't know. And it's fine, again, it's fine to take that stuff and curated in your own way. I mean, I play stuff when I hear back now to my recordings or things that I play that are totally unoriginal. In fact, 90% of what I play is not original. Oh, come on, man. You're being too hard.

No, no, I'm sorry. I mean, maybe more. I mean, look, everything's been played, you know. But it's how, it's the order that you put in. It's the style and the panache that you put on it. It's your thing that you put on it. It's your thing that you put on it. And, you know, if you're a trumpet player or a singer or saxophone,

it's actually really easy to put your own sound into something because you can stylize just your sound. For piano, you can't do it. It's a little bit harder maybe, guitar, drums, but there's always a way to do that. So be confident in your voice and your vision, even if you're playing somebody else's phrases. Yeah, I think that's great advice.

And, you know, you have to sometimes play someone else's phrases, especially when you're younger and you're starting out and learning this music. again, just to reiterate that there's nothing wrong with learning other people's contributions to the language. But, you know, the end goal is that when you're on stage and you're playing, you're free and you're basically just letting whatever comes out come out. So how you spend your time in the practice room, what you're working on will determine that. And then hopefully, you know, you're not thinking at all like time to plug in, lick A34 into 25. Adam is doing the robot.

You know, you're just letting it flow. And if it comes out, you know, with a lick that you've been practicing, then that's what it's going to come out with. And that's totally cool because you've hopefully put it in a spot that is not, quote, unquote, a plug and play situation. You know, it feels organic and it feels like you. I like this. We're a little hot and bothered by this plug and play thing.

I mean, it's like, I am too. I mean, it's, it's just, it's a little, something robs me around the way. Well, this is the thing. I mean, what's the worst case scenario, you? You master, you're a saxophone player, young saxophone is you master Wayne Shorter's style and sound and you plug and play that. That's still going to be good. People might be like, wow, he's the second coming of Wayne Shorter. That's good, too.

Well, I mean, I think what you, again, what the goal that you want is you want to, you want to feel the freedom that Wayne Shorter feels when he plays that. That's the goal. Like, you want to be able to be as open to things as Wayne Shorter is. Now, that is a lifetime of a genius working on it, you know, so good luck with that. But sometimes that. Yeah, but sometimes that, you know, gets a little bit lost. We've talked about this before in that in transcribing and studying somebody's solos or studying somebody's music, arrangement, composition, whatever it is, you're studying of somebody else's,

whereas much trying to learn those things, like, you know, what are the great things about, what are the great things about Wayne Shorters, soloing and its composition? It's that freedom, it's that imagination. I mean, not that other people don't have that, but like he really excels at that. So it's not, and then he's got some cool harmonic things that are a little bit easier to grab on to. Well, and it's his sound and it's his timing of where he puts all this, too. You know, it's what happened before. Like we were talking about the voicings, right? It's not just Wayne has a lick or notes that he likes to play over here. He's going in the

context of where he'd been. And that's what you want to learn as well. And again, you know, it goes back to listening. And this is why you transcribe by ear and not by sight, because you're trying to get that whole package. You know, you're not plugging and playing a lick. You're trying to to figure out how these great players get these sounds. And then when you internalize them enough, it comes through as you, and like you said, with the confidence of knowing that you have something to contribute to music on that day,

then it comes through is genuine and hopefully good, and you connect with people. That's it. That's it. Well, good. Well, thanks, Patrick. This was great, and it always feels good to know young folks

are thinking about them. I mean, you're thinking about all the right stuff. You're questioning the right things. Yeah, yeah. And we appreciate it. And as you can see, Patrick, you know, it's not like cut and dry as far as, it's not plug and play. Yeah, it's cut and dry. It's not plug and play.

Oh, wait, no, it's not cutting dry. You know, everybody kind of has a different way of going about it. But I would never feel like, even if you're learning other people's music, never feel like it's a plug and play situation. There's always you in there. Exactly. So good. So please keep the questions coming. You can go to you'll hear at dot com and give us a voice memo.

Or leave us a written tablature. Written on a tablet. There's a box. Just put your note in the box. You can put your note in the box. And we will see you next time. You won't hear it.