You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - What Is "Your Sound" And How Do You Get It? - #134

Episode Date: June 13, 2018

In this episode, Peter and Adam discuss what it means to have your own sound and some techniques to help you develop your 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. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. That's right. Yeah. Now we're back in there. That's right. So this is a very exciting day. Well, first of all, we're going to talk about what is your sound and how do you get it?

Yeah, we've had a lot of requests for this topic. Right. And you see, I'm being very accusatory and pointing at you. You're being more visual than normal. Why is that? Well, we got Facebook live happening for the first time. Oh, nice. So if you're listening to this podcast, just know that this was live on Facebook probably about a week ago.

Right. You missed it, but now you're getting it. But we might leave it up, so maybe go check it out. Yeah, good stuff. So what is your sound and how do you get it? This is so important for us as jazz musicians, I think, because our egos are so inexplicably bound to what our sound is. But maybe we should define what that means first.

I think that's the first step in this is definitely to define what it is to have your own sound. To me, your own sound is a combination of many things. It's a combination of your actual sound on the instrument. your feel, the tone you produce, and what you choose to play, your decisions. It's the combination of those two things. And, you know, the dirty secret about your sound is that it's like, it's probably the most difficult aspect of playing music. I mean, it takes a lot of work.

It takes time and it takes work. It does. And I think for many instruments, certainly our instrument, our primary instrument, the piano, it's kind of a, it gets obscured or pushed to the side as we're developing other parts of our technique because it, on the surface, it seems so easy to get a sound on the piano. Right. You press a button, you know? Right.

And there isn't that learning curve, at least for the initial part of it, like there is for a trumpet or a saxophone or, you know, English horn. What, you got months of just, you know, air, a different thing. Years. Years. Yeah. So for the piano. But I think, you know, I think about that video we did with Christian McBride called Your

Sound is Your Signature. I just remembered about that. And he has such a great concept on what your sound is. And of course, he has such a big, beautiful, welcoming sound. I think, you know, the closer you can match your sound to kind of the vision of how you want your sound to be. That, to me, is what technique is really about. And we always think, you know, playing fast or playing high, depending on your instrument, you know, playing tricky phrases, fingering, whatever. But really, I think it's all about getting your personality.

your vision of how you want your instrument to sound and then the reality of what's coming out of your instrument to be the closer they get, that's technique. I think that's, I totally agree with that. If you start with technique, you have to realize that technique is a means to get your personality, what you're trying to say out as truthfully

and honestly as possible to your audience. So in that regard, if you are practicing anything technical or you're practicing, you're working on your technique, if you hear anything that that's not how you, how it sounds in your head, that needs to be addressed, like, straight away. You can't gloss over that. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Okay, so I think that's, yeah, we kind of covered what is the sound. So now we got to give them the punchline that we promise. How do you get it? Well, and this, I kind of alluded to this earlier. There's no easy answer to this. This is like mastery of your instrument. How do you get your own sound? The first is, I would say, is to, you know, strive to always be yourself.

when you play, strive to make your personality come out. The counterintuitive part about this is, in order to do this, you have to learn, you know, language from other people. Yes. There's no getting around that. Exactly. You're not going to develop your own sound unless you know other people's sounds and the, you know, the cliched sounds of what's happened before you or else there's no context to what you're doing at all. Right. I mean, I think, yeah, and I think you have to be, go into this with the, with the thought,

process that you're playing for the long game. Right. So in terms of saying, okay, I really want to have my own sound, I'm willing to go through these months, really years of learning from others, emulating others in order to get to that. But also at least doing a little bit of work on your own sound as you go. The difficult thing is as you start to learn other people's sounds, you're going to like those sounds better.

And that's okay. Yeah. That's okay. But you can never lose sight of yourself within that. So we never go and learn solos or listen to recordings to try to just imitate and almost like mock somebody else. Right. Exactly. It's, I mean, you do, you do that as you learn the solo, but you're learning a variety and a diversity of different things.

So that even as you go, we're not waiting to the end to get our own sound. We're injecting our own sound with these new things that we learn as we go. And I think the easiest way to do that is just as you're imitating others, always put, you know, in your practice and in your performance. always taking some time in your practice to just play whatever it is your feeling. And just to kind of turn off the conscious brain and just to really just play and let whatever you do have come out. It might not be the greatest and it's not going to be as good as all the things you're listening to, but you're getting in that habit of expressing yourself. There actually does have to be a little bit of self-promotion as you're approaching your own sound.

Like you have to, to your point, you have to put yourself. in there. And that takes a certain amount of confidence to be like, well, I've just learned all these Herbie Licks, whatever, and they sound awesome. But I have to put myself in there. I mean, for me, the great players that I've met, they all have very strong personalities, and they're all very confident to put their personalities out there. Right. And that's not like, I don't mean they have, like, big, gregarious personalities. I mean, they just have a very defined personality. They know who they are. They know who they are. And they're confident putting that out there. And that comes across in their music.

Yeah. And I think that's a big part, maybe the biggest part of getting your own sound is being confident personally that you have something to say. Yeah. And that people want to hear it. That's the key. Confident that you have something to say and that people want to hear it. And then I think that what you have to say is just as important as valid as anybody else.

Yeah. You know, and that's not to be like, oh, right when you're starting out, I'm just as Kirby Hancock. No, of course not. But you do have something to say. And if you ever want to get to that promised land of having music and an audience and a repertoire and a following and a tribe around you, you have to have that confidence from the beginning. It's true. You also have to be self-aware within that.

But, I mean, the same type of people you're talking about, the great players, even if you know them as they're getting to that greatness, they have that confidence. But they also have that sense of self-awareness and where they are in the music and where their sound is and a realistic thing. Like you don't, you know, I mean, it's not as easy as like a great football player or a great basketball player where if you're, if you think that you're great, the score or somebody shoving the ball back in your face will tell you that you're not. Right. But we do have those signals in the music. If you know and love the music and understand musicality and artistry, the music will humble you and it should. It doesn't mean you're not confident, but it'll humble you to know your place within it. And if you're interested in getting better and you're confident in that journey and you're patient.

you know, and you're willing to put in the work, you'll get there. Yeah, I agree. I think that's, the patience is key. And I think you can be confident and humble at the same time. In fact, most people who are truly confident are also humble and self-aware about where they are. Have you ever gone into a situation? These, to me, are the most difficult situations to have your own sound. And that is to go into a situation where it's already in the established band.

Yeah. And they already have their sound. Right. And maybe you're replacing someone that had a sound that really added to that band. Love it. You know what I mean? Yep. These can be tricky.

I kind of dealt with this in a situation a little bit last week. And at first I was trying to do what I thought they wanted to hear. You know what I mean? And that's like the kiss of death for not just your own sound, but for playing badly. You're not going to sound good. Right. And so I think you really do have to assert that like, hey, this is me. You know, you have someone else.

Yeah. I'm not going to do it just like the person that was here before. I'm not going to maybe do it just how you hear it. Yeah. It's going to be a little bit of me. Right. And that's okay. You know, sometimes you have to kind of convince other people.

Part of this is like selling yourself. That's right. And your thing. That's right. No, I love that. I love all that thought process that you're talking about. I think that is such a big part of just human interaction. And so, you know, to me, some of the most beautiful parts about this music, jazz,

are the human interactive elements. And it's never interesting when everybody of the same age and the same ability level and they know each other really well, come together and play, that's like a recipe sometimes for just super bland music. But when somebody has to come in, like, how do they negotiate that? How do they fit into that kind of musical organization? You know, how much do they assert themselves? Like, and that stuff, of course, with experience becomes a lot easier.

But, I mean, also our number one thing of listen, that can help a lot too. Just like any situation, if you come into working for a new job or a new company or a new school or something, you know, like how much you know. Like how much, I was just, I just met somebody who came into an organization here in St. Louis. And I was asking some other people. He had to replace somebody as the head of the school that was just beloved and actually helped start the school. And I was asking some people how the new head was working out. And they were like, he's doing great, you know.

And a bunch of people said the same thing. They were like, he spent a lot of time just listening to everybody at first. Even though we all knew he had a lot of great ideas. And he led, but he led by listening at the beginning. you know and I think maybe your kind of situation as far as that that can really be rewarded but to your point you do have to find a way also to confidently assert your voice because people want to hear that they need that you know and that's the fun that's the fun part yeah and I'm not saying that you need to like assert over assert yourself right to the point where you're not serving the music

or if you're serving the leader of the band or whatever you still have to recognize that you're there to serve that music but you have to serve it in the way that you serve it yeah not in the way you think they want it served, not in the way that you think the person before you wanted it. But those things can become, I think those do become part of what we're talking about your sound. Now we're getting to the high level your sound. It's like

you know how to make a sound, you have a style, you have maybe even enough of a style where people are like, well, that's the Adamana's sound you know, they can recognize. But then it's not over then. Then there's this thing of like how do you fit into different situations? How do you, you know,

I like the fact that you said serve the music, because that's what it's about. It's never about serving the band leader, the institution, or whatever. This is, you want to play at a high level and have a great sound, serve the music. And so our sounds, something that may work solo piano in a certain situation, then you get into a group. You have to adjust your sound because ultimately the total sound is the most important thing. It's true. So any kind of ensemble, like how do you fit into that? Maybe you have to lead everything.

You've got to put everybody on your back. Maybe you need to get on somebody's back. Maybe it's a collaborative thing, probably more of that. but that's that's if we started at at your sound 101 that's like you know 1001 totally yeah and I would say we talked about it a little bit but number one in your sound if you really want a practical thing that you can address to get your own sound and that is to listen to a lot of different people I mean you have to start collecting sounds we talked about it as far as like copying other people sounds but there's even there's even ways to sort of

collect ideas of sounds where you're just like I like the way this feels feels. I want to mimic the way this feels. You don't have to get too deep into everything for that to happen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just try to listen to as much diverse music as possible. Yeah, and I think that process of listening, learning, and collecting the process is what helps you develop your sound. You don't have to worry about, like, yeah, certain licks or harmonic things or voicing or little vocal tricks, whatever it is, that'll become part of your playing, but that's not the important part. It's going through that process of discovery through the, you know, musicians. And it's not even really through the other musicians. It's through the music.

Absolutely. It's through the music. And don't be, don't think that you have to play something because you think that's what people expect a jazz pianist or a saxonist to play. Right. Play things that connect with you. This is another element I think of getting you. Tell the people, I want you to get a little dogmatic on this. I like dogmatic at them. I think it's true. You know, you want to be aware of certain of as much as you can be, but don't feel like you have to play a certain style or certain lick or certain whatever because you feel like that's what people do. Yeah.

That's not true at all. No. Play what resonates with you and you'll always sound true to yourself. You'll always have a distinct sound. Yeah. Good. Cool. Well, we are, you know, yesterday I was kind of off the ratings train, but I feel like we provided

a lot of value today. So what do you want? Six stars today? We're going to ask a little ask. Maybe even some Facebook live people out there might even want to jump on this. We're, we are become ratings and review hogs here. Like, we really want it. Like, we desire it.

We need it for our ego. We needed to grow what we're doing here. We want it. But you can go to iTunes or Apple Podcasts, I guess it's called now. Why they keep changing their names? I don't know, man. I don't know what's going on with that. How do they get away with that?

They're struggling over there. I feel for them. No, but go to Apple Podcasts and you can leave us a rating or review. And I think I'm going to go back for the six star. I'm going to ask for some six star. I know that that way, if you're feeling like, eh, I don't want to quite give you, then you go five star. Again, you know, leave us six stars if possible. It's not possible.

But leave us as many as you can. We appreciate any reviews, too. We love the reviews. We love the reviews. We love the reviews. If you want to hear something more, something less, too bad. No, no, no, no. We want to hear that.

We want to hear that. Also go to you'll hear it.com to leave us a comment and idea about a future episode. Or even ask a question. You can ask a question. We have a little voicemail system there. It's an actual tape that we keep running here at Open Studio headquarters. TDK, baby. We do want to hear from you.

Even just pop in and say hi. You know, tell us. Is this thing on? Like, we want to know. is this thing on? Yeah, yeah, we kind of want to know. And then we're still running our special. Oh, Facebook is going to get hit to the special here.

So for our You'll Hear at listeners, you can save 10% on Open Studio's annual All Access Pass. Just enter, you'll hear at 10 in the offer code field at checkout and you get 10% off. This is a, the All Access Pass is a really cool thing. You get access to every course that Open Studio makes. Every course we've ever made, every course that's coming out in the future. We have some really cool, amazing artists in the pipeline. get in on it now get caught up and then you know as the course has come out you're just rolling in it baby get your aAP on that's what we say yeah uh so yeah what's the offer code for that it's you'll

hear it 10 in the offer code field oh that's you got get your spelling on before you get your aAP that's right there's a couple of options you got there hope you hope you get it right that's right yeah yeah so uh as usual you'll hear it