Tonefiend Forum

Well, er (blush), I'm still working on trying to channel Pete Townshend. That's one aspect of it.

But to be more serious, the thing that really got me into playing was hearing David Grisman. I heard his first "Quintet" LP in about 1978 and it totally knocked me on my bootay. After much searching and actually getting a job I bought a mandolin and a small book of trad and original "fiddle" tunes arranged by Mr. Grisman himself. Over the next few years I convinced myself that I would never be the mofo he is but I did sorta learn some bluegrass tunes. Also most of my friends played the guitar and were trying to play rock and roll so I tried that on guitar and also tried playing mandolin in a rock context which has a cool sound. Another friend had a bass and I decided I could be way more useful in general as a bass player than either a guitar or mandolin player.

After I got out of college I met a guy who turned out to be a lifelong friend with a serious blues and R&B thing. Played bass with him pretty constantly for a few years.

I had heard fiddler Dave Swarbrick and Fairport Convention and got a really excellent book of Celtic tunes by Robin Williamson. Tried going Celtic on mandolin and guitar with occasional bass thrown in (thanks Dave Pegg!).

All through this I was a complete fanatic of Frank Zappa's music although I can only play a handful of his most straightforward numbers. You know, the ones with the ice cream cone chord changes.

Somewhere in my fertile years I heard some early UB40 (such as "Present Arms in Dub") and thought that was a pretty cool sound. So I wrote some original reggae-rock sounding songs.

The most recent influence I can name is Cape Breton fiddler Ashley Macisaac. His most compelling stuff typically takes a traditional or contemporary Cape Breton melody (think of it as traditional Scottish) and slams it together with elements of techno, hip hop, and metal. I actually purchased an electric violin thinking I was going to become just like him, but that was just too different for me to get much of anywhere on it. Nevertheless I did come to realize that Cape Breton tunes make excellent techno pieces as well!

Here's an excellent example. Some people might find themselves disturbed by this video.

This last Christmas, I looked around and realized I didn't have a ukulele! So I got one of those too along with a book of tunes and have learned a few nice Hawaiian numbers.

I do still play frequently to relax and unhook my mind from the pressures of the day. What I'm most likely to play on the uke would be some of these Hawaiian numbers, or an old rock tune (Genesis "Squonk" lays out nicely, as does Zappa's "Sofa"), or even a bagpipe tune like "Clumsy Lover". If I pick up the guitar I am most likely to play the electric guitar unplugged and either do some Celtic melody, some rock tune from my youth (e.g. the sixties), a handful of generic blues licks, or occasionally one of the songs I wrote back when I had the presence of mind to do that. I also sort of copped a couple tunes from Penguin Cafe Orchestra, which I'd describe as almost trance inducing in their repetitiveness and no I am not the least bit ashamed of it. And they really go well with a phase shifter!

Were I ever to play with other people again I'd like to play rhythm guitar and or bass and or extra color instruments like mandolin or uke. I am no flying fingers virtuoso and my harmonic realm is strictly folk-rock-blues but I think I can create a decent groove or riff given half a chance.

It's difficult for me to summarize my conceptual approach neatly. My own music has compositional and improvisational elements to it, but I'm also a teacher and a general player and have to be versatile enough to explain or play a variety of things.

If I were to summarize my approach, it would be something like this:

- When performing music*, use the simplest theory necessary to play the music to the best of your ability.

*key word is "performing"

I should quickly say that I'm using the word "theory" very broadly here. Theory, in its most general sense, just means a connection between two or more ideas. We usually mean "classical or jazz-based conservatory common practice" when we say music theory, but it's even more elementary than that. Even the idea that a certain chord shape will sound the same every time you play it, or that a certain chord shape is commonly called "G" or "C"... that's all theory. It'd be virtually impossible to operate without some sort of musical theory.

Different musical styles require different levels of musical competency. If all you want to do is write simple acoustic songs and play in coffee-shops, an thorough understanding of set theory would be like buying a bulldozer to build a sandcastle. But if you wanted to play like Ken Vandermark, an understanding of set theory is necessary.

So my conceptual approach is very different when I play a traditional blues tune vs. when I play a jazz standard vs. when I play an avant-garde jazz piece. It would be impossible for there not to be crossover between different approaches, that's natural and inevitable. But would I consciously try to play an old-timey tune like "I'll Fly Away" with the same mindset that I would play "Inner Urge"? No way, unless I want to experience music paralysis. Which then brings me to...

- Improvisation has to be an intuitive process

Essentially, the more I consciously think about improvisation, the worse I play. If I'm thinking about all the neat little tricks I can play or about how I have to play this cool lick, at best it'll sound forced and unnatural, at worst it'll ruin the whole improvisation.

I'm not a particularly clever or talented musician in the grand scheme of things, but one of my better moments was when I figured out that I could use a program like Audacity, edit a track so that only an artist's solo remained, put it on my MP3 player and listen to it on loop. It could work for anyone, but I specifically did it with a select group of jazz artists: Lester Young, Charlie Christian, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Ben Webster, Django, Bud Powell, Roy Eldridge, Fats Navarro, Johnny Hodges, etc. Not only are their solos easier to digest because they recorded in the days of 78s and their solos are short and sweet, but together they form a very thorough ur-sprache of jazz. I still listen to the playlists I made, and the intensive immersion in their music did wonders for my playing.

I really do think that's what it takes. If you read enough interviews of great musicians, you see the story of the young player who listens to a certain influence so much that they "wear out the grooves on the record." Thankfully with CDs and MP3s, that's no longer an issue, but the sentiment remains the same. If you listen to Lester Young's solo on "Lady Be Good" a hundred times, some part of it is going to sink into your subconscious. The same process could be applied to any kind of music... concentrated listening to BB King or Tony Rice solos are only going to help.

- Practice is a combination of playing actual music and exploration

Earlier in my playing career, I focused a lot on exercises. I wouldn't say it was a complete waste of time, but now my focus is very different. I'll use the occasional exercise to warm up, but I spend far more time transcribing solos and learning new tunes.

Playing a Coltrane solo or a Bach violin partita provides as much of a technical challenge as any exercise. If need be, I can make exercises based on a particular passage from a piece of music that I'm working on. But the exercises are supplementary to the music, not the other way around.

Practicing is also a time to explore and push my boundaries. It's a time where I can try things I would never try at a gig or performance. For example, I really like working with Barry Harris' harmonic concept. Some of it is much too cumbersome to work out in performance... I'm not going to think of a Maj7 chord as either a "Maj6th with a borrowed diminished note." But it's very handy as a generative system and for finding interesting new voicings and movements in certain situations.

There are lots of other areas I like to explore: counterpoint (sorely underlooked at on guitar... Jimmy Wyble's stuff is only the beginning!), improvisational approaches from Ornette Coleman/Cecil Taylor/Derek Bailey, harmonic stuff from the Van Eps/Ted Greene branch of guitar playing, pre-war blues and folk repertoire...

... but that's largely personal and probably not as helpful or applicable to other people.

Thanks to everyone who's chimed in so far. dasein definitely gets a gold star and a happy face on his paper! That deserves reposting and sending to my music buddies, and is also the very sort of wisdom I was hoping to access here.

From the amateur perspective, it's all about the pentatonic. No secrets.

The Pentatonic forms are also most of the major and minor diatonic scales. It's pretty easy to connect the pentatonic scales gradually into the diatonics, but most method books are lousy at it -- they present it like it's a whole different thing. It isn't. It's two more notes. And arguably it's better to teach the notes as add-ons because it clarifies the interesting thing about them, that they're the half-steps that fall in the scale. Getting these sort of things helped me get modes where they had flown over my head the first time around.