You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Stop Copying Other Players - #157

Episode Date: July 16, 2018

Today, Adam and Peter list some ways you can play like you and not like someone you don't even know. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I'm Peter Martin. Yeah, I'm at a mess. And this is the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily jazz advice coming at you. See, that's how you do it. Yeah, well, that's why we changed up the order. I wanted to hear how to do it. I know since I've learned about your new interest in leadership,

you're like the Tony Robbins of jazz. Leading from behind the piano. Great. So today, this is one of those fun episodes where the title is not a question or a list, but it's a command. And it is... Stop copying other players. Now, mic drop, bam.

You'll hear it. But I feel like does this title go against what we usually tell people? Well, on the surface, it does. But just like everything on this podcast and just like Adam, you and I, our personalities, when you scratch us, below the surface, you'll tickle us and we'll laugh. Okay. Don't. No, when you scratch below this, do you scratch below the surface?

I've never scratched. Dig below the surface. Okay. Okay. When you go below the surface level, there's a lot there. This is deep, man. This is deep. I mean, we're digging deep.

we're digging deeper into you. No, it does seem like it goes because we say listen, we say emulate, we say learn from, we even say steal from great players. That's how you learn to play this music. But the reason we say this, I just want to reiterate this, because the other day on the episode I forgot to mention this, the reason we say to do this is not because we have some secret scroll that tells us this or because we're dogmatic. It's because we've observed this in a huge number of great players that they did this

in order to learn to play this music. So you can go, and I mean, I'm just thinking about players that I know and have personally been around and heard their testimony. So I'm thinking about like Roy Hargrove. He's pretty good, right? Yeah, he's okay. Is that good enough for you? No, that's good enough. Roy Hargrove listened to a lot of different players, learned a lot of solos at the piano, at the trumpet.

He learned saxophone solos. He can play them. He learned a bunch of things by years. And yeah, that's not the only thing that made him a great player. But it's like a thread that I see running through a number of great. players that I've had the privilege to be around. So it works, you know. So he learns from them. He absorbs what they're doing. But what do you mean by stop copying? Okay. So yeah, don't just take it like you're going to take one person. And I see this with certain great players get copied so much like

Michael Brecker. I don't know why. Like you have these saxophone players that they learn this stuff, but they just want to be them. You can learn somebody's solo, learn their style, even read their biography, even put a poster of them up in your bedroom, I guess. But it doesn't mean you need to copy them. We still need to be original jazz musicians. Roy Hargrove learned Freddie Hubbard. I mean, you can hear it in his playing, Lee Morgan. But I've never heard him copying somebody per se.

I mean, I've heard him kind of joking around at a sound check, like check out this Lee Morgan vibe or whatever. But that's not what he performs like. The influence is there, but he's not copying. He's learning from. I don't know. What's the best kind of vernacular distinction we could make? I don't know if there is one, but emulating might be.

But you know, this actually reminds me of that episode earlier this week where we had that question, that user question, about, you know, plug and play or whatever. Oh, plug and play. The infamous plug and play episode. Now we're getting back to that. No, but it is kind of like this thing of there is a difference, right, between being inspired by, being influenced by, and then straight up like copying and not having your own sound with things. So this kind of goes hand in hand with developing your own sound. I think you're right to bring up Roy Hargrove so much because he's such an original voice, obviously someone who's learned from the masters and is very fluent in the language of the music that came before him.

But with his personal style and with his great writing and just being him has made his own thing. I think there's a lot of excellent musicians you included who have done that as well, who are steeped in it. and it really made their own sound out of it. You know, it's a fine line. It takes a lot of judgment. It takes a lot of listening, and it takes a lot of, like, personal judgment. Yeah, and I think maybe if we could help folks in anything with this,

it would be finding that fine line. Like, you know you're getting close to it and maybe crossing it when you're trying to do things, like, as far as copying players, like, copy the way they talk. Like something that doesn't have something to do with the way they play, copy the way they dress. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're wearing the same shirt, though.

I just want to point that out, right? Right. But I mean, but it's not like Charlie Parker, you know, Charlie Parker shirt. No, I mean, I think that, that, I mean, that's fine. Look, when you're young, we all went through stages of idolizing, and then that leads to lionizing and all the Isings that we can do. The Great Isings. The Great Isling brothers.

But, I mean, I think that what can be interesting is getting that, that nice magic number of influences and people that. let you emulate and that's going to be hard for us to give you because it's that's a that's a changing target a moving target um but it's not a thousand and it's not one and i think when when the copying comes in is what we're talking about is is usually people fixate on one person like a mike brecker right you know michael brecker is amazing but michael brecker played his thing no you're never going to be better than michael brecker playing michael brecker stuff you know herbie Hancock, I think for the piano is probably the equivalent.

Is he the most kind of copied? You're so darn hard to copy, though. I mean, it depends on the generation. Herbie's hard to copy. I feel like a lot of people have copied Chick or Brad Meldow for my generation. A lot of kids when I was growing up were like, really wanted to be Brad Meldow. The great. The great Brad Meldow, which is cool.

I think the key with this, man, this is the thing is you have to be, as you're sort of learning this language and learning from the masters that you love and paying attention to that, you've got to pay attention to your own. sound and develop that. I like that. You know what I mean? Like, what is it about your playing that makes it unique? What is it about you that you are adding that's not what Michael Brecker's adding? Even if you love Michael Brecker and you're emulating him, what is it that's still in your sound that is not his? And then developing that, you know, that's its own thing too. Find yourself within the, those that you are lionizing. Maybe that's taking to the lion's jaws.

Pick out some gazelle flesh. for yourself. No, but maybe it's taking some of his concepts, whether that's like the pentatonic patterns or whatever he's, you know, has that you love. But, you know, making, really internalizing them and making your own thing out of them, practicing them your own way,

doing it in the way that, you know, works on your hands physically. It works on your instrument, you know. And getting back to, I know we've been referencing a lot, but Jeffrey Kieser talked about this a little bit too about, he talked about, you know, study my concepts, but turn them into your own exercise, make your own sound out of them.

I think that's really wise advice. It is, you know? It is. Because this music is not plug and play. It is not plug and play. And then it's fun. I love this idea, this concept that you're bringing in of finding yourself and developing your own originality through studying others, but also, you know, as like parallel tracks

as you're going, not looking them as separate projects like, okay, once I learn some other stuff, then I'll find myself. That can be something that you're always working on. And I think the way we talk about it and teach it often is just with this concept of practice performing every day. Every day that you practice, which should be every day, should be time spent maybe transcribing, learning a solo, working on repertoire, working on some technique, you know, all the things we talk about. But then there should always be performing. And that if you have a gig, you can just do it at the gig.

If you don't have a gig that day, it could be. say the tune you're working on for repertoire or the tune you're working on for the soul, just play the tune like you're playing it on a gig. But this is a great time to get in touch with, this is not the time to be like, oh, now I'm going to practice all the Michael Brecker stuff that I learned. No, you're putting that out of your mind. You're just playing. You're just playing.

You're being you. You know what? You know what's some things, something you could do that would help this is at the end of your practice session, just open up your phone, press record on your voice memo, perform to that voice memo. That's great. You know what I mean? Act like you're making a recording session.

Don't try to fit in what you just practice. Then listen back and be super judgy. Well, yeah. Actually, you should be hypercritical at that point. Well, that's something that we haven't been talking enough about. I'm glad you brought that up. It's just recording and listening. I used to always preach this.

I don't know why I kind of fell off it. I don't know. Feeling less dogmatic with that, but that's great. It's painful. It sucks. It's painful until you get good. Even when you're good, it's still painful. The key to it is to take your ego out of it.

Yeah. Is to not feel, and I mean on both ends of the, spectrum like don't pat yourself too much on the on the back when you play something you like note it and be like i like that i want to do more of that yeah and then don't beat yourself up over sounds that you don't like that's right you know because the stuff that sounds good is not as good as you think it is and the stuff that sounds bad is not as bad as you think most likely all you're doing is tweaking things that you want to bring up and things that you want to highlight like it a solo optimization a little bit of a solo optimization so just be as as neutral as you can possibly be

when you listen back to recordings of yourself like this. Perform to that, to that, you know, recording, and then listen back with a neutral ego of, almost like you're listening to someone else, like, I didn't really like that part of it. But, you know, now you have control to change that. Yep. Take those out of your plane.

Ooh, I like it. You got a little dogmatic there, and I like, take them out of your plane. Yeah, no, no. Yeah, I like it. All right, great stuff. So what do we got, what do we have house cleaning, housekeeping? Well, my kitchen's kind of a mess.

Oh, for the podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we have our You'll Hear It.com. That's where you can go and leave us a voice message on our answering machine. You can write us a question or come in and just pop it and say hi. Let us know what you're practicing. Let us know what you want to hear on future episodes of You'll Hear It.

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I didn't even notice. We have a little bit from north of the border. Canada. Oh, yeah. Also known as Canada. I thought you're going to maybe say Iowa, but okay. Yeah. Not north of the Missouri border.

Got it. Missouri. And this is from Dr. Heater. But when I first looked at this, you laugh at all these names. I hope he's a pitcher. I thought it was Dr. Hayter at first. I was like, what? Five stars from Dr.

Hater. That's going to be the name of my funk band. Yeah, Dr. Heater. I like it from Canada on iTunes. You Gotta Hear It is the title to this review. That's good. Five stars. Love this podcast.

I look forward to listen to it each day. Peter and Adam are so knowledgeable, enthusiastic about all things, music, and jazz. They make learning fun and possible for anyone. I give it five stars. You can't give anything less. Apparently eight, smiley face. Oh, he's going all the way to eight. Yeah.

I mean, that's unnecessary. Seven will do. That's right. Well, he's Dr. Heater, man. He's bringing the heat. He's bringing the heat with that review. So thank you, sir. Or ma'am.

Yeah, it could be sir or man. Sir or man. Yeah, buddy. This is 2018. Hey, I'm usually the politically correct one around here. All right. Well, I mean, Heter, Dr. Heater, that didn't sound kind of masculine. Well, maybe.

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