Tonefiend Forum

Finding our voices as musicians is one of the greatest challenges we face. Its easy to find ourselves slavishly regurgitating the work of others in an incoherent jumble of stock licks we lifted off records, or letting our muscle memory run the show. We may be playing stuff that fits but doesn't quite inspire.
Back in the mid-nineties I was part of a blues quartet, doing most of the fronting and playing guitar, with harmonica, bass and drums rounding out the band. I had been really working hard to broaden my knowledge of the music and become a deeper, more fluid player, but I was having a really hard time phrasing things in an elegant, musical fashion. At some point, almost all of my solos went off the rails, lost in indecision, or worse, by some accident of rote, scalar finger-memory, with the results sounding dilettantish and incomplete.
One night we were booked at a particularly dire venue -sterile, pastel and patronized by folks who'd rather we were somewhere else- when I decided to try scatting out all my solos as I played them. I reasoned that if my ideas were formulated in the freer melodic recesses of my brain (as opposed to the mathematical realm of the fretboard), it should result in a more musical statement. So I sang out every idea I wanted to play as I played it (off the mic).
And wow... I improved my playing drastically in that one simple step. It was as if I had had two years of practice since the gig a week before. What an amazing feeling of freedom I experienced that night in front of the bored punters; I'd finally freed myself of worrying about the instrument more than the music and turned the licks into melodies.
Like many neophyte players, I'd made the mistake of becoming overly interested in the guitar and it's practitioners, falling in love with the lore, and obsessing over gear. That stuff is all fun and games, and some of it is important, but people the world over have made jaw-dropping music for eons without access to fancy instruments, record collections or glossy magazines. What's important is playing with heart and soul, playing with ears more than hands, playing the melodies that exist deep within us.
As soon as I started scatting out my solos, I saw improvement in several areas:

- I started using the vocal melody as a basis for my improvisations a lot more.
- My sense of relative pitch improved.
- I employed "breath" pauses between phrases more often.
- I caught myself rushing/dragging more readily.
- I employed longer lines, drawing ideas out over many more bars.
- I ran out of ideas much less often.
- I structured my solos much more effectively.
- Phrasing, phrasing, phrasing.

Without a doubt, scatting my improvisations resulted in the most accelerated period of learning in my career. Certainly, the most instant gratification. Potential downsides? Well, I have to admit watching video of my mouth pronouncing every lick I play can be a bit excruciating. And sometimes I wear out my voice soloing, hollering away all my breath and stamina off microphone. Oh yeah, stay away from your mic when you're not singing, 'cause all kinds of ungodly mumbles, shrieks, gasps and moans will likely be emanating from your pie-hole as you're wailing away on your instrument -you're in good company: Oscar Peterson, Keith Jarrett and Freddie King are all noted mumble-scatters, famous for their inadvertent vocalizations.

I sing parts to decode parts when I'm trying to learn a song off of a recording, too, and it can help a lot with trickier stuff.

Quote from dasein on August 10, 2012, 09:57
Really good post on an important topic.

Singing is not only a really good way to break out of ingrained guitar-centric habits, but also is a good way to gauge what you're really hearing and how well-developed your aural skills are.

Jazz players, for instance, learn all kinds of fancy substitutions and harmonic devices (especially for playing over dominant chords). It's easy to understand them theoretically, and with time and practice you can get them under your fingers. But how well can you hear them? If you can't actually hear all those neat tricks and how they relate to the music you're playing, it's very likely that you're forcing this material in, instead of allowing it come out naturally.

Singing over a tune or chord progression without an instrument is an excellent way to test what you naturally hear, without well-practiced muscle memory to bail you out. And if you find that all your new tricks aren't coming out, singing is also is an excellent way to ingrain them in your ears.

Beautifully stated, my friend. Exactly what I'm talking about.

Can't remember who said it but I remember reading someone say. "If you can't sing it you can't play it". For me I sort of sing stuff in my head while I play it.