8/28 - Learning from other instruments

I play a whole lot of drums in my school week. I play concert stuff in Brass Band and Percussion Group, big ol' surdo in Brazilian, set in South Indian, lessons on mallets and set, practicing mallets and set, and playing with Senor Fin. Almost all of my technical musical adventures are focused on one "instrument," and I believe that can be a detriment to my musicality.

Sometimes, when it's late at night and Ronan and Jesse and Jesse and I are getting ready for bed (or I am, at least), we hang out in Ronan's room for a little bit and someone puts on some tunes. Today, we listened to Bon Iver, one of Jesse Miller and Ronan's favorite songwriter type musicians:



He does some neat electronic stuff and a lot of good old folky guitar and voice singer/songwriter stuff, and I like it a lot.

One of my favorite things about living in a house full of musicians is that my music and everyone's else music is enjoyed by everyone else, especially in this house. Ronan listens to a lot of jazz that I should be listening to, and Jesse Miller knows a lot of great lyricists and folk songsmiths, and Jesse B. knows where the funk lives and who makes the beats. And everything they play, I always feel like I should listen to that artist more, even though I don't have the time to. I never have the time to.

Not only do we share the things we listen to, but every once in a while we share the things we read or experience, and it's becoming more common with social networking. I can post an article that I liked and 100 of my friends could see it, and it would affect at least a few of them; in the same thought, I'll click on almost a dozen links people have recommended every time I'm online, and I've come to know who to trust for good things and what kind of things certain people will put up. It's kinda cool.

I have a book checked out from the library, "Confronting Silence," by Toru Takemitsu. None of the others have had a chance to read it, but I like his ideas a lot. I'll force it on Ronan some time.

Ronan has a bunch of guitar books, kinda like how I have a bunch of drum books. He steals mine every once in a while just because it's good to know what the drummer's doing in a jazz set; it's good to know what a drummer's doing in every setting, and it's good to know what everyone is doing in every setting. But he uses one of my styles books to see what the drummer plays in a samba, or what the bassist plays in a merengue, and what he should try to add or when he should back off. He's a smart dude.

So, in return, I stole one of his guitar books. I haven't figured out what a bunch of scales and chord progressions to solo over will do for me as a set player (sure, I'll use them for other mediums), but the back section of this book, "The Advancing Guitarist" by Mick Goodrick, has good blurbs of information and thoughts about music, similar to Takemitsu's book. He has a list of "short subjects," and I'd like to share a few with you:

Control usually involves slowing down
No single approach seems to work all the time
To keep learning: aim at always being a beginner
Students often ask me, "Should I do A or B?" Most of the time, I ask them, "Why not do both?"
Remember, music is (basically) a communal sport
No one is better at exactly what your'e doing than you. Also, no one is worse at it.
Don't try to make a study of your own individuality. Make studies of everyone else's.
Notes are clever ways of getting from one silence to another
Music is like life on a small scale, Life is like music on a large scale.

All of those things can pertain to any musician, playing any instrument in any genre anywhere in the world, and even though there are a few strict guitar things in this section, most of it could be useful to every musician. You know when someone is beyond a "drummer" or a "guitarist" when they know the universal laws that pertain to everyone singing or playing, that's when you know they're a musician.

That's what I hope to be.