Tuning Slide 5.9- Learning from Jazz

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

You have to take a deep breath and allow the music to flow through you. Revel in it, allow yourself to awe. When you play, allow the music to break your heart with its beauty.
― Kelly White

As any regular reader of this blog knows, I am a huge jazz fan. I was first introduced through Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Al Hirt. I expanded with Buddy Rich and Maynard, then later with Miles. I was hooked when the jazz DJ at the college radio station started playing other musicians and then my good friend Glenn opened the whole jazz world to me. It is a musical language I understand at all kinds of levels and has enriched my life in countless ways. (It’s in my earbuds as I write this!)

Over the past 10-12 years I have been working hard at taking that language into playing it in groups. As I was surfing the other week I came across a post on the Piano Power site on how learning jazz can give us musical superpowers. Overall jazz takes us into all kinds of different nuances, styles, and emotions than we are used to. As I looked over the list all I could say was, “Amen! That IS true.” Here's the gist of it, starting with the question:

How will jazz make me a master of my instrument?

The answer to that is so simple as to defy imagination. Improvisation! (I said simple, but far from easy!) Improvisation moved me away from the printed notes into thinking, listening, feeling, and then playing the music. When I attempt to improvise I end up with a far more physical and even spiritual connection with my instrument and what it can do. Which leads me to see what I can begin to do. Like with any language, it takes practice and it can seem like a long road ahead when you start. The easiest way to start working the sounds and chords is through the blues- and then moving up from there. You get it in your head and heart and you become the composer. As a result I have found that I am also better able to hear the sounds of other music and more easily fall into the rhythms and scales. I become a better trumpet player in all styles I am playing.

Lucas Gillan said in the post, “If all you ever do is read notes on a page, you’ll never quite know what your instrument is capable of.” Nor will you discover what you are truly capable of across the whole range of the instrument.

Another post by Austin Consordini on the Making Music site took me into a different area- about the Seven Everyday Tasks That Every Jazz Player Must Do.

1. Clean Your Instrument
2. Practice Scales
3. Play Something by Ear
4. Practice Improvising
5. Listen to Music
6. Increase Your Repertoire
7. Practice Multiple Instruments

I don’t know whether he put these in this order for any particular reason, but I was struck by #1. Only in the past few years have I paid much attention to that one. How does regularly cleaning my horn make me a better musician? Personally, I have found that taking care of my trumpet is an expression of my caring about the music I am making. I don’t know if my sound or style changes with regular cleaning, but my feeling about my playing does. This reminded me of something else I have long observed. When I take my car to the car wash and get it cleaned inside and out, it “feels” like it drives better. I know it is my perception and reaction, but I feel more comfortable driving a clean car. My horn helps me make music! I need to be kind to it and take care of it!

The second item on the list takes me back to the idea of improvisation and knowing music overall. It is one thing- and an important one thing- to do the scale exercises in Arban’s. It is another to do the 12 major scales by doing them without music in front of you. Sometimes I work my way around the Circle of 4ths (C, F, Bb,…); sometimes I start at middle C and work up the notes to the next C and beyond; sometimes I start on G on the staff and expand down and up one note at a time. All this without music in front of me. It is “relatively” easier to do it from a written page, but I think I learn it more deeply when I don’t use the music. BUT, I found I also have to do scales from the written sheet so that when I see a piece of music in one of the scales, I know what I am looking at! It’s a “Both-And” situation.

I still have to do some work on the minor keys, though.

Playing by ear and practicing improvising have been covered earlier but they lead to the next two for me. The more music I listen to with attention and intention the broader becomes my understanding of music overall. That has then led me to the increase of my repertoire. Sometimes I do that through new or different etude books or some of the solo and etudes I have worked on in the past. Pulling out Mozart or Haydn or taking a fake book and working through the melodies can increase what I am discovering about music. A friend recently mentioned an etude book I had never heard of. I borrowed it and played through some of the pieces. I found them significantly different from any of my other etude exercises in ways that changed my listening skills.

In the end Consordini says in his post:

Becoming a jazz master takes living and breathing jazz music every day. You must be willing to dedicate time each day to mastering your instrument and sound. Being able to integrate these 7 steps into your everyday life will help you to be immersed in jazz and be on your way to becoming one of the greats yourself.

I may not become a jazz master, but I am improving as a musician by doing these things. Amazing how that works.