Yikes!

For me, I don’t read piano music too well.  I had the bad habit when I was taking lessons to stare at my fingers and loose my place in the music.  So, I was not looking forward to this piece because I felt out of my element.  I still had to play my part and help the sound of the band.  Here’s what I did:

Practice

First (as always), I needed to practice.  I had to brush off my reading skills and hit the woodshed on my part.  There was an especially important lead in that I had to nail, so I practiced that many times.  I ended up attending extra practices with the orchestra and choir so I could hear the song better.  Do the work if you want the results!

Simplify

Don’t try to be Mr. Virtuoso if you don’t have the chops.  I certainly did not have the chops then to pull off the song as written.  I usually play more of a free style and only have chords in front of me.  This chart was all orchestrated, so I came to a compromise.  I’d play the chords (which were written on the chart).  But not everything on the page.  The band leader was ok with this, so I just tried to make it as simple as possible.

When you don’t know what’s going on, keep it simple.  You can add once you feel comfortable.  But don’t try to add way too much and get lost when a mistake happens.  It sounded good, and I didn’t detract from the sound.

Watch/Listen

The last thing I needed to do was to watch the conductor and listen to the band.  I couldn’t rely on a click track for this, because the piece had many tempo shifts.  So, I had to watch the conductor for the tempo and cues.

There was also a soloist, so the whole band had to listen to her as we were following her lead.  If she jumped ahead, then we had to follow, or if she held out a note extra long, we needed to be prepared.  Paying attention to your band is one of the most important things to do when playing.  Listen to them, watch the leader, and you’ll not be lost.

Has anyone else been thrown a curve and have a good story to share?

Everyone wants to know how to do something.  Sometimes it’s learning a new skill, and sometimes enhancing something you already know.  Whatever that is, there seems to be one good way to do so.

Go and do it.

Sometimes the best way to learn something is to be thrown into the situation and you having to just learn it.  Think swimming.  You can talk about it all day, learn strokes on paper, practice breathing, but until you actually get tossed into the deep end, it’s all head knowledge.  Once you have to tread water, it becomes learned (or you learn you can’t swim!).

Here’s another thing.  You can’t learn something if you never do it to begin with.  You can’t learn the guitar having never picked one up.  You can’t learn to write if you never put pen to paper.

So here’s some encouragement for you, and some friendly pressure: go do something if you want to learn how.  You’ll never know unless you try.

So, what do you want to learn?

[ Image by SNAKPhotography ]

Think of a baseball team.  9 guys all playing together.  They all have one goal: win the game, be the best team.

How do they get there?  They practice, they work together.  They usually have very good players.  But they’re not perfect.  They have imperfections.

No team is made up of perfect players.  That means they all have strengths and weaknesses.  The shortstop plays there because he’s a good shortstop, not catcher.  The catcher isn’t a good pitcher.  The pitcher can’t hit very well.

We have teams because we need each other.  We can’t all play every position.  Nor should we.  God made us all different, so together we make a better whole.  We should learn to use our diversity.  It gives us a vast resource to lean upon.  The slugger can teach the pitcher how to hit better.

When you have a team, you can rely on your teammates to help cover your weaknesses.  And you can help cover their weaknesses.  As a team, you can accomplish more.

In your team, where do you fit in?  What are your strengths and weaknesses?  What are theirs?  Once you learn these, your team can work better together and achieve more.

Some things to think about.

I was reading this post on sojurnmusic.com about the keyboard and how to play it in a modern worship band, and I thought that some of it applies to all members of the band.

As a musician myself, when playing in a band you want to contribute all that you can.  Unfortunately, when we do that, we tend to create chaos.  So here’s a few things – some from my own head, some from the post above – that I would suggest for a band to become better.

Listen

The most important lesson you can learn being a musician is to listen.  If you don’t listen to your fellow bandmembers, you will never reach your potential.  Listening enables you to hear what each instrument is doing.  If you are listening, you’ll hear when the bass line is sufficent.  You’ll hear where that perfect hit will be.  You’ll hear that you and the other guitarist are playing the same thing and you should back off or play something different.  If you forget to use your ears, the music becomes more like mush than art.

Look

When you’re in a band, you need to look around.  Looking is the act of communication that band members make.  When the band is looking at each other, they are in sync.  Listening can sometimes be deceptive, especially with timing issues.  Just ask any school band member who has played in a gym.  Looking is your confirmation that the band is together.  Also, those perfect hits you were listening for need to be together.  Watch the leader for cues.  Look at the guitarist to tell him to start his solo.  Look at him again to tell him to quit!  If you’ve got your head stuck in the music stand, you’ll miss something.

Learn

Play and practice often.  If this thing called music is your craft, refine it, make it better.  Learn scales, learn licks, learn solos.  Linking back to listening, go and listen to your favorite group/musician.  Learn what they do, try to emulate it.  Music is a language all its own.  You need to learn its ABCs to make words, to make sentences, to make stories.  Music, after all, is a story told through sound.  In addition, learn what your bandmates are doings.  As you play, you’ll begin to pick up tendencies, know where the drummer will fill, what line the guitar will take.  This will allow you to do more listening and looking while you are playing.  Which leads to better playing.

Less is More

Here’s the hardest part.  Less is more.  The crux of the problem.  When we’re doing all these things, we want to do them all the time.  Add little licks everywhere, throw in that cool thing we just learned, try that hit here or there.  The problem is when you do too much, you end up taking away from the music itself.  A fill in the wrong place covers the singer.  A hit is only effective when the song warrents one.  An overdone solo makes the song (and the musician) appear worse.  The perfect solo may only contain three notes.  The perfect fill may be one extra tom hit.  I heard once that you always want to make the audience want just a little more.  If you give everything in the first five minutes, then the impact is lost.

Above all, music is an art.  Enjoy it.

Posted via web from On Life, Stories, and Music