WHY IT MAKES YOU MORE USEFUL:

It avoids confusion.

WHAT TO DO:

Either lead or follow, but put somebody in charge of making quick decisions onstage. When the unexpected comes, let one person make the decision. You can always second-guess them later.

THOUGHTS:

The first time I heard the band at Saddleback Community Church in Lake Forest, CA, they blew me away. They were having fun. On one song the song leader invited the sax player out to take a solo. I assumed this was planned ahead of time, which is fine. He blew a fantasticsolo. (I thought ‘where did they find this guy?’ But of course, it was a huge church—20,000 attendees on a weekend—and this was Southern California.) As the solo was ending, the song leader turned to the sax player and said, “Do it again!”. I held my breath. I thought, ‘If that request was pre-planned to LOOK spontaneous, I’m going to be grievously disappointed.’

So I looked at the band to see how they acted. Were they surprised? Did they see it coming? I assumed the piano player was the leader, so I watched. To my everlasting delight, everyone in the band, when they heard ‘Do it again!’, looked at the piano player. The piano player put his hand up in the air and made a little circle—‘Take it around again’. I think I laughed out loud with delight. This was wonderful ensemble playing. It was soooo refreshing to see in a church band. There was a hierarchy in place: the song leader called for a second solo, and the band looked to their leader to confirm it. And then they just rolled with it. I wanted to marry this band and have it’s babies. Their music was so fun. It was real. It was human. It was compelling. It was not just live music, it was a-live music. They didn’t know the extra solo was coming, but they followed the leaders and made great music out of it.

Later, in a breakout session with the band leader—his name was Bob Barrett—he said, “Spontaneity and improvisation are two pillars of live playing”. Just writing this, 22 years later, I remember how badly I wanted to play with those guys.

This is an excerpt from my book, “The Useful Musician”. Available on Amazon

WHY IT MAKES YOU MORE USEFUL:

It makes you consistently the best you can be.

WHAT TO DO:

Flip the ‘ON’ switch and give it your all. Tell yourself, every time you play, that thistime, this performance, this will be the best one you ever did. No holding back, no coasting, no excuses. You have to practice doing this, but you can get yourself to the point that it becomes habit. No sleeping through anything—EVER.

THOUGHTS:

I learned this lesson kinda hard, but I owe a debt to the guy who taught it to me. I was in the recording studio, making a record with a band back in the early 80’s. We were laying down tracks the old fashioned way—all of us playing at the same time, looking for a take that had the magic dust on it.

The guy producing us was experienced, had worked as a kid at Chess records, running cables and plugging in mics when the Rolling Stones came through and recorded a couple of tracks. His name was Brandon Wade, and he’d been the voice on one of those ‘Letter From Vietnam’ records that had actually made it onto the charts. I looked up to him, and had bent his ear about wanting to be a successful musician.

On one particular song I was struggling. Just kept messing up, wasn’t happy with what I was playing. At the end of the 5th or 6th take, I said, “I don’t know what’s wrong, here…must be the barometric pressure, or something…”. I thought it was a clever thing to say.

Thirty seconds later Brandon came charging out of the booth, angry and headed in my direction. With his finger in my face, he shouted at me:

“I thought you wanted to be a professional. I thought you wanted to be a CRAFTSMAN. That’s what you told me. If that’s what you want, you’d better STOP making excuses and start learning to give it your best EVERY SINGLE TIME. Whatever you have to do, wherever you have to go in your head, you’d better learn to reach down deep and FLIP THE SWITCH when that red recording light comes on. EVERY SINGLE TIME. If you can’t do that, if you can’t make it happen when it needs to happen, then somebody who CAN do that will come and TAKE YOUR PLACE. Let’s do it again, and this time, MAKE IT HAPPEN.”

I was speechless as he stormed back into the booth. The other guys where saying, “Hey, Ed, we’re really sorry. He shouldn’t have talked to you like that. He was out of line.”

But I was so scared, embarrassed and angry that I was really, really pumped up. And guess what: I played a great take the next time around.

And then I went home and thought about it. Was he right? Up to that point I’d always thought…I dunno…that I had to be inspired to play really good. Could it be that I could play my best every time by just…pumping myself up? So I started trying it. Every time I played I’d raise my breathing rate, psych myself up and charge into whatever I was playing. Even the slow, soft songs—I played them with as much passion, accuracy, humanity and feeling as I could muster. After a while, it started to become habit, and I was on my way to, if not playing like one, at least acting like a professional.

This is an excerpt from my book, “The Useful Musician”. Available on Amazon

WHY IT MAKES YOU MORE USEFUL:

When you embrace a song, no matter how simple, you set yourself up to play the best possible version of that song for your circumstances.    

WHAT TO DO:

Drop the posing and respect the song.  Simple songs, good simple songs are hard to write, and deserve respect.  Don’t believe that you can improve the song by adding something really clever and complicated—you probably can’t.  Relax, play simply, play only what’s needed, and enjoy the music.  Concentrate on making the song feel good.  If you’re not enjoying the song, chances are your audience isn’t either.  

THOUGHTS:

Complicated doesn’t = good, simple doesn’t = bad.  That’s missing the point.  

One night at rehearsal I said to my band, “This weekend let’s play ‘Wild Thing’ by The Troggs.  There was eye-rolling, and ‘come on, man’, and ‘Jeez, Ed—that song is just so dumb.’  But I held my ground, and that weekend in front of a crowd I turned to the band and said, “We’re doing Wild Thing.  I got a feeling about this one.”  

To the audience, I said, “We’re going straight for the gutter.”  And then I turned my amp up loud and played the opening chords—loud, raucous, utterly devoid of finesse.  I hit the guitar strings so hard they rattled on the fretboard.  The reaction was electric.  Chairs scraped back, people jostled each other to get out on the dance floor and the looks of joy on their faces was, well—it was just so much fun.  Playing a complex song onstage, and playing it well is satisfying, no doubt—but it’s not NEARLY as much fun as someone leaping to their feet and saying to their neighbor, “Oh, I LOVE this song!!”  

This is an excerpt from my book, “The Useful Musician”. Available on Amazon

WHY IT MAKES YOU MORE USEFUL:

It teaches you to hear a note before you play it.  This enables you to more easily play what’s in your head. Also, it greatly improves your phrasing, which makes your playing more interesting. 

WHAT TO DO:

Start by just playing a simple scale—the major scale, the pentatonic scale, the blues scale, whatever.  Go slowly and sing along.  Try moving back and forth as you go, moving up, then down a little, then back up some more.  

Invest in background tracks made for improv practice.  Pick a slow track and play long notes at first.  Next try skipping notes, jumping to a note farther up or down the scales.  Be aware of your singing and breathing and how it affects your playing.  If you can’t do it the first time, keep trying.  Like anything else, you’ll get better at this the more you do it.  

When you’ve gained a little confidence, try this onstage, in front of real people.  They’ll never hear you, and if they see your lips moving, they’ll think you’re being an artiste.  

When you can hear something in your head and then play it without missing a note, you’ve crossed over from playing patterns and memorized motifs to real, honest improvising.  Real improvising comes from your head, not your hands.  

Also, this improves the phrasing, or musicality of your improvising.  When you sing, you have to pause to breathe.  If you’re singing along with what you’re playing, you’ll naturally pause your playing while you pause to breathe.  This goes a long way toward curing a run-on style of improvising.  Even 4 bars of constant 8th or 16th notes is tedious and boring.  Singing along forces you to think in phrases, and will result in much, much better sounding solos and other little things you might improvise. 

Lastly, it internalizes everything.  You need the music to start from inside you, not your instrument.  Ideally, you should never, ever be surprised by something that comes out of your instrument.  It should start inside you and work it’s way out into your instrument.  

This is partly about training your ear and partly about learning to connect the notes your hear with the physical act of playing your instrument.   You hear a note in your head, and then you feel where it is on your instrument.  You connect the two.

THOUGHTS:

There was a time I couldn’t do this.  I clearly remember sitting at my parents’ piano, trying to play the melody to a Christmas carol without any music.  I could hear the melody in my head, but I couldn’t get it into my hands.  I’d find the first note, then sing the next note, then try to find it on the keyboard.  I’d miss every time, or if I hit one right, I was just lucky.  It really, really frustrated me.  

And then one day in my high school band class, the band director said, “Can you hear the notes in your head before you play them?”  

He had my undivided attention.  

“We’ll start with the interval of a fourth.  For instance, a C up to an F.  Does that sound like anything you’ve heard?  It should—it’s the opening to ‘Here Comes The Bride’.  If you see an interval of a fourth on the music, then start on the first note, hum ‘Here Comes The Bride’, and you’ll know how the second note should sound.”

I tried it, and it worked.  I went home and sat at the piano playing random note after random note, then singing ‘Here Comes The Bride’ starting on that note.  

That day he also gave us other songs for other intervals (‘My Bonnie’ for a major 6), and let me tell you—I felt like he’d let me in on a priceless secret.  I’d listen to songs on the radio or my record player and try to identify the intervals.  After a while I got pretty good at it, and found that my ability to pick out a melody on the piano was getting much faster.  I’m pretty good at it after all these years, but only on piano and in my head.  The guitar is an entirely different animal, and I have a long way to go on THAT instrument.  So I work at it.  Sometimes when I’m driving in my car or the work truck, I’ll think of a melody and see if I can play it on the guitar neck—in my head.  I get it wrong a lot, but every once in a while I’ll get a revelation and think, “Okay, that little nugget was worth missing my turn.”   

Be curious.  

This is an excerpt from my new book, “The Useful Musician”, available on Amazon.