Final Project
For my final project, I really wanted to see if I could improve my ability to improvise with more genuine jazz feel through learning about and trying out the approaches that Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, and Herbie Hancock used on a day to day basis. After reading about the three of these unbelievable musicians, I learnt a lot about practice technique as well as a lot about the type of mentality that It takes to be a true jazz musician. Since I play at least one jazz gig a week, I thought it would be cool to map my progress through these gigs.
The first thing that I started working on was fixing my practice regime to match more of what these guys were doing in their day to day lives. One of the things that really inspired me was something that Mingus had said about the way that he practiced music. He stated that he would practice without his instrument every second of the day. He would actively listen to music and pick up on important things that one would not find unless actively looking for them. Due to what Mingus said about this, I started to actively listen too every piece of music that I could, Including my own. This is something that Herbie had talked about. He mentioned that listening to your own music is the most important way to edit yourself to find out what the best parts of your playing are so that you can do those things more often. In order to try out this method, I started a new instagram page called Jakebaynesjazz so that I could focus on editing my playing and find the moments in my playing that I liked the best. I have to say that doing these two things have really helped my playing out a lot. They have helped me remove the grey area in my playing and replace that grey area with interesting things that I hear when actively listening to jazz.
The next thing that I started working on was changing my mentality about jazz. Miles had stated that Jazz is an attitude and that one should play what they hear and what they feel. They should not worry about criticism on what they play or how they play it. This comment really meant a lot to me. Due to my love for blues music, I have always liked fusing some blues with my jazz. Unfortunately, I get a lot of criticism about it from some of my straight ahead jazz peers and jazz director. This criticism changed my mentality when it came to playing jazz as it made me feel pressured to only play like a jazz musician and not like myself. The only good that this did me was ending up with stale ideas as I could not think creatively. This quote by Miles made me realize that I need to play like myself in order to be the most effective improvisor. This changed my playing completely. Recently, I have begun to feel a lot more comfortable when it comes to improvising over jazz changes. This is because I am not worried about what I play. I have just started to play what comes to mind. I really started putting the time into this when practicing too. When I use to practice before, I was working on eliminating certain aspects of my playing because some of my peers and jazz director were not fans of blues music. Now I have stopped worrying about that, my practicing has been much more effective. Like Miles did, I have started to take on the approach of really trying to play the music that I hear in my head, not what others what to hear. In the beginning, I just sounded really bluesy, but since then, I feel as though I have really started to gain my own voice as a jazz musician.
To map all of my progress as I started taking the advice of these powerful musicians from their books, I began to record small segments of my weekend gigs. I chose to use this as my final project as it really shows how I have grown as a musician since I started reading these books and begun taking the time to really digest and try out what these musicians had to say. I have two videos to start. The first video was recorded around the end of finals. The second video was recorded this Sunday.
First video
Second video
In the first video, you will notice that I am not relaxed for starters. I look very tense as I am not enjoying myself due to the lack of my ability to be creative. In this video, I also play very with a very monotone accent as I am spending more time focusing on the chord of the moment than what I am actually saying with my own music. The song that I am playing in this piece is titled "Ornithology". I use to play this song a lot because it was swing jazz, one style that is a favorite of my peers. I have now listened to what Miles had to say about playing music that is not your own, so I have now stopped playing this piece.
The second video was very recent. In this video I have ditched playing hard swing like I use to, simply because it does not match my own style. You can also hear that there are a lot more interesting ideas happening. These ideas came from listening to different styles of music and fusing them with the jazz that I am playing. I got this idea from Herbie Hancock. My accompaniment towards josh in this video has also changed due to what I worked on regarding what Mingus had said about music being about communication. I really spent the time to learn how to hear and communicate with Josh's playing.
The growth from the first video to the second I feel is a significant growth due to the time that I put in applying the mentality and techniques from the musicians that I read about this summer. I am very pleased with the outcome of this project as I have wanted to improve my playing like this all school year. After this project, I plan on reading more autobiographies like these in order to learn more techniques and mentalities that will add more depth to my playing as a musician.
Words (1082)
The first thing that I started working on was fixing my practice regime to match more of what these guys were doing in their day to day lives. One of the things that really inspired me was something that Mingus had said about the way that he practiced music. He stated that he would practice without his instrument every second of the day. He would actively listen to music and pick up on important things that one would not find unless actively looking for them. Due to what Mingus said about this, I started to actively listen too every piece of music that I could, Including my own. This is something that Herbie had talked about. He mentioned that listening to your own music is the most important way to edit yourself to find out what the best parts of your playing are so that you can do those things more often. In order to try out this method, I started a new instagram page called Jakebaynesjazz so that I could focus on editing my playing and find the moments in my playing that I liked the best. I have to say that doing these two things have really helped my playing out a lot. They have helped me remove the grey area in my playing and replace that grey area with interesting things that I hear when actively listening to jazz.
The next thing that I started working on was changing my mentality about jazz. Miles had stated that Jazz is an attitude and that one should play what they hear and what they feel. They should not worry about criticism on what they play or how they play it. This comment really meant a lot to me. Due to my love for blues music, I have always liked fusing some blues with my jazz. Unfortunately, I get a lot of criticism about it from some of my straight ahead jazz peers and jazz director. This criticism changed my mentality when it came to playing jazz as it made me feel pressured to only play like a jazz musician and not like myself. The only good that this did me was ending up with stale ideas as I could not think creatively. This quote by Miles made me realize that I need to play like myself in order to be the most effective improvisor. This changed my playing completely. Recently, I have begun to feel a lot more comfortable when it comes to improvising over jazz changes. This is because I am not worried about what I play. I have just started to play what comes to mind. I really started putting the time into this when practicing too. When I use to practice before, I was working on eliminating certain aspects of my playing because some of my peers and jazz director were not fans of blues music. Now I have stopped worrying about that, my practicing has been much more effective. Like Miles did, I have started to take on the approach of really trying to play the music that I hear in my head, not what others what to hear. In the beginning, I just sounded really bluesy, but since then, I feel as though I have really started to gain my own voice as a jazz musician.
To map all of my progress as I started taking the advice of these powerful musicians from their books, I began to record small segments of my weekend gigs. I chose to use this as my final project as it really shows how I have grown as a musician since I started reading these books and begun taking the time to really digest and try out what these musicians had to say. I have two videos to start. The first video was recorded around the end of finals. The second video was recorded this Sunday.
First video
Second video
In the first video, you will notice that I am not relaxed for starters. I look very tense as I am not enjoying myself due to the lack of my ability to be creative. In this video, I also play very with a very monotone accent as I am spending more time focusing on the chord of the moment than what I am actually saying with my own music. The song that I am playing in this piece is titled "Ornithology". I use to play this song a lot because it was swing jazz, one style that is a favorite of my peers. I have now listened to what Miles had to say about playing music that is not your own, so I have now stopped playing this piece.
The second video was very recent. In this video I have ditched playing hard swing like I use to, simply because it does not match my own style. You can also hear that there are a lot more interesting ideas happening. These ideas came from listening to different styles of music and fusing them with the jazz that I am playing. I got this idea from Herbie Hancock. My accompaniment towards josh in this video has also changed due to what I worked on regarding what Mingus had said about music being about communication. I really spent the time to learn how to hear and communicate with Josh's playing.
The growth from the first video to the second I feel is a significant growth due to the time that I put in applying the mentality and techniques from the musicians that I read about this summer. I am very pleased with the outcome of this project as I have wanted to improve my playing like this all school year. After this project, I plan on reading more autobiographies like these in order to learn more techniques and mentalities that will add more depth to my playing as a musician.
Words (1082)
This is very cool! It is so exciting that you are able to preform at different places!
ReplyDeleteAwesome looks like your dream is becoming a reality.. amazing how you make money already preforming!!
ReplyDeleteThis is awesome Jake! Keep music apart of you forever! Good work
ReplyDeleteSo where do you plan on auditioning for college?
ReplyDeleteI am planning on auditioning at Berklee, Belmont, Ithaca, The New School!
DeleteAmazing Jake! Glad to hear that your reading helped a very important aspect of your life!
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing! Great work! Your passion for music is very inspiring!
ReplyDeleteWow this is awesome jake great work buddy!!
ReplyDeleteWhat Kaley said. Great job.
ReplyDeleteI have heard you play, and you are very good. There is no wonder why you chose this as a topic. I hope that music takes you where you want to go in life!
ReplyDelete