Been thinking a lot about covering other musicians as practice. It’s not only one of the oldest ways to practice, it’s one of the best ways to practice. Don’t practice scales: practice imitating musicians you love.
Here’s a 15-year old stellar version of Stevie Wonder’s I Wish, featuring a young Derek Trucks, as well as the incredible skills of Victor Wooten and Joey Defrancesco.
If you can’t afford a “real” life coach to help you with your practice, I offer you Cookie Monster.
A cartoon showing what my own horn must think from time to time.
Some lessons from the master. Find more and subscribe over at Chick Corea’s website. Find yourself getting lost in the form when you improvise? Corea and Stanley Clarke give you a tip: And a tip on rhythmic displacement Related articles Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea to tour together
Glad the issue of learning over “natural talent” is getting more attention, and not just from researchers like Steven Demorest and Peter Pfordresher (et al.), who just published a research paper on the subject. Here’s an excerpt from a recent Chicago Tribune article. <snip> Singing is more of a learned skill than a natural talent, said…
Here’s a great example, because these Led Zeppelin tunes have some tricky rhythms that these kids nail. I don’t know if they learned by ear (probably not), but you can bet these kids (age 7-12) listened to the tunes many times. Check it out.
From Musicomic.com, by Dustin Mol:
An upright bass player I used to play with told me that his teacher owned a $40,000 bow. A bow!
When sound quality is your top priority (and you have money), no amount seems too high a price. See Neil Pert’s new drum set in the video below for an example of a fine (and expensive!) instrument.
Nothing about practice in this post, but you can bet it took a lot of practice of all sorts to shoot this very cool video from musician Nigel Stanford. In fact, it took months of preparation, and 2 days of shooting in a Brooklyn warehouse.
Composers use lots of ways to create compositions. Stanford’s use of these physical properties of sound (and frame rates of cameras) to create a piece is fascinating. Check out the “behind the scenes” vids for details on these experiments with sound.
There’s another study about the benefits of music practice to the brain. Here’s an excerpt from music.mic writer Tom Barnes (full article):
Musicians steal all the time. Chord progressions can’t be copyrighted, musicians often borrow a progression from a well-known song and put a new melody over the top of the chords. The uber-standard chord progression in the jazz world is “Rhythm Changes,” the chord changes from the Gershwin brothers’ tune “I Got Rhythm,” used in hundreds of songs, including The Flintstones theme.
Herbie Hancock stole a melodic idea for his hit album Headhunters (the super-hit song Watermelon Man–see below) from other master improvisers, improvisers not too many people know about: the Pygmy people (specifically, Mbuti Pygmies of Northeastern Zaire).
The amazing Dr. Carol Dweck explains how your belief about intelligence profoundly impacts your motivation to learn, the depth of your learning, and your persistence in the face of failure. In music, Dr. Bret Smith discovered similar findings. Lots more in Chapter 6 of The Practice of Practice (free shipping in the US).
The Practice of Practice 