I have to admit that even after teaching guitar and musical principles for over twenty years, I’m still amazed by my students. Usually, this amazement is joyous in nature, such as when a teenage student asked me, somewhat out of the blue, if she could borrow some recordings of J.S. Bach. Occasionally, though, a student will ask me a question that leaves me struggling to find the most helpful answer. This happened recently, and there’s a lesson here for all of us.
While all names are, of course, changed to protect the guilty (j/k), the scenario was this. Nearing the conclusion of a lesson, one of my more advanced students – we’ll call him Jack – and I were practicing the use of various scales in improvisation. I played a melodic passage, and Jack stopped playing entirely. “That,” he said. “I want to play like that.” Of course, I was flattered, but I wasn’t sure what “that” meant. “I want to play like you,” he continued. After some more questions: “you know, with melodies, not just licks.”
I explained that he was already on the right track. After all, melodies come from scales, and from the harmonization of the notes in the scale with the chords playing beneath. But there’s more to the picture. From our previous lessons, I knew the kind of music Jack listens to – mostly modern pop/rock, the kind you turn on, volume high, and lose yourself in. And this led me to at least a partial resolution of Jack’s “problem.”
“Jack,” I explained, “in music, nobody invents something from nothing. You learn by imitating, and after enough practice, you leave aside your influences and keep what is uniquely your own.* But you have to start by listening. Listening, and learning from what you hear.” Jack seemed confused. I continued. “Let me put it this way. How can you create melodies if you never listen to melodies?” And with that, Jack got the point.
So, keep this in mind as you go through your daily practice routine, and, equally important, when you’re not actively practicing. Even if you are only “listening” to music, you are learning, but only if you are listening in an active fashion. The American composer Aaron Copeland (1900—1990), in his book, What to Listen For in Music (1957), described three levels of listening. The first, what Copeland termed “sensuous” listening, is easily thought of as what happens when you’re driving on the highway with the stereo cranked up; you’re not carefully listening to the music, but it sure is fun. By contrast, the third stage, the “sheerly musical,” consists of “the notes themselves and their manipulation,” as Copeland put it. In other words, you are listening to every note, every harmony, every nuance.
It is this sort of listening that we all, as music students, need to engage in frequently. Listen to the flow, the “shape,” of the melody. Listen to the chords that support the melody, and the interplay between them. Listen to the rhythmic patterns, and how they support (or challenge!) the melody. Listen to the various instruments, and how they interact. Does the guitar mimic the vocal line? Is the bass really in sync with the percussion?
Add this to your daily regimen. Listen actively, carefully, even if for only a few minutes. My guess is that you’ll find those minutes turning into hours, and those hours becoming a constant habit. And when that happens, my friends, you’ll have entered the next stage of your musical journey.
*“Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.”
--Bruce Lee
