All We Grow

I've been listening to this album almost non-stop since one of my buddies [David Andrew.. who also is an author/co-founder of this blog/musical genius] sent it my way a couple weeks back... and thank God he did. I can't believe it took as long as it did to get into my hands [it was released in Aug last year]. Most of us know Sean as the drummer and supporting vocalist from Bon Iver. This is his first solo venture and isn't your typical "album" - a couple great songs and a bunch of useless ones. Every song is dripping of brilliance. His voice possesses the power to quiet and still any storm that might be raging in you. You can hear that each song has been carefully crafted and that his blood, sweat, & tears coat each note, each layer of instrumentation, and have been woven into each harmony. Oh the harmonies... this is probably one of my favorite elements of this album. Its a lot like getting into a nice warm bath after a long and hard day... you slowly sink in and slide down, letting the water cover you from head to toe and swallow you whole. His melody and harmonies don't follow the norm of what we hear every day on the radio, but at the same time they aren't so 'out there' that they lose their relevancy. They are so smooth... so warm... seem so familiar, but at the same time are quite unfamiliar and create dissonance. Its the same kind of paradoxical familiarity that bewitches us when we first meet certain kinds of people. It doesn't happen often, but when it does... time seems to blur, your heart pounds, stomach drops... and even though you've just met her... she feels so familiar, so comfortable... like home. 

So... do yourself a favor and get this album right away [click here]... then make yourself a cup of coffee, put on an old sweater, find a rainy day, and press play. 


-Frey


   "Move"

  "In the Stream"

   "All We Grow"

What Jazz Soloists Know

Read an amazing article earlier today on The 99% by Scott McDowell:

What Jazz Soloists Know About Creative Collaboration...

"One of the defining elements of jazz is improvisation, the act of composing on the fly.  Anyone who’s heard a classic Miles trumpet solo knows the potential beauty of individual improvisation within the group setting. The team depends on each person to contribute his unique skills, ideas and views to the collaboration, and the individual relies on the team for support, guidance and judgment.

Since it depends on improvisation, jazz is highly interactive.  A player must be responsive to the moment-by-moment actions of the other musicians. Like a properly tuned creative team, jazz is above all a collaborative pursuit in service to the composition (the agreed upon goal), and the individual voices in the band (the members of the team)." - Scott McDowell

His bullet points to enriching your skills as a team member by mimicing the great jazz soloists are as follows:

1. Practice until it’s intuitive. The only way to learn improvisation is by doing, and the only way to become great is by doing repeatedly.


2. Listen. Pay close attention to those around you. Heightening the skill of listening, if you do nothing else, will have a significant impact on the team.


3. Try not to repeat yourself.  Make an effort to constantly develop new approaches and angles. Charlie Parker was a relentless harmonic innovator, constantly editing his solos in real time at blistering speeds and changing the jazz vocabulary in the process.

4. Spur others into action. In jazz it’s called “comping” (an abbreviation of “accompanying”) when one instrumentalist plays a phrase or group of notes to support or provoke the soloist.


5. Fail admirably. It happens often in live jazz settings and it’s usually noticeable. The thing is: nobody cares. Missteps are part of the path to greatness, and those solos that do become classics sound that much sweeter.

See more...

“It’s the group sound that’s important, even when you’re playing a solo. You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That’s jazz.” - Oscar Peterson

-Frey




1. Miles Davis - "Seven Steps to Heaven" 
2. Charlie Parker - "Koko" 
3. Oscar Peterson - "Cottontail" 
4. Lennie Tristano - "Line Up" 
5. Ornette Coleman - "Lonely Woman"

The Confident Musician

One of the greatest tools available to you as a musician is confidence. In fact, it should be as essential to you as scales. It should be as familiar to you as your repertoire. Why? Because music is a emotive nuance-driven force. There are so many variables to music, that to say that something has a great melody is not nearly enough. A great melody can be overshadowed by awkward phrasing which shaves milliseconds from notes, which is the actual physical sound. A millisecond difference in how your ears and brain perceive the vibrations of music, can drastically alter the fundamental experience of music. Our music is seemingly held captive by the tiny, almost imperceptible variations of time.

Okay...before I lose everyone in the psuedo-analyitical nature of the frames that hold our music...let's bring it back to practise.

Confidence plays out in a really tangible way with drummers. A drummer without confidence does something funny. They will have a hint of hesitancy when they play. But what happens when a drummer is hesitant? What happens when the groove-machine is malfunctioning by milliseconds? The moment of connection between the drum stick and the drum skin is altered. It is usually played milliseconds later than it should have been. It is in this detail, this nuance that the drummer loses..."it". Our highly evolved musical terminology has brought us to this wonderful realisation of 'it". The drummer either has "it" or he doesn't. And a drummer who hesitates a little, hasn't got "it". A drummer who hesitates a lot, plays out of time. This "it", I believe refers to Groove. But not some nebulous groove, to a central syncing up of the collective players in this musical outing. This is where confidence can come striding in.

Confidence, found upon skill, is going to help. And to a lesser extent; confidence, without skill is going to help. A drummer who believes in themselves will start to hit more like they should, no hesitancy, they are less likely to play out of time. This applies itself to all instruments. You are going to play better if you apply confidence, which in turn will lessen hesitation, and will cause the physical sound, the physical timing to change in your playing.

Nice thoughts, but how can this idea become attainable to me? ...Good question...I'm glad you asked.

Firstly, practise.
There is no better source to draw confidence from than a awareness and assurance of your skill. If you can nail that solo, you can be confident about it. If you aren't sure you are ready to play that solo in front of a crowd, your confidence is going to be affected. A honest evaluation that says your skill is at the level of what you are about to attempt to play, is the biggest vein from which to draw confidence.

Secondly, imagine.
Take a few moments before a gig or performance and just imagine. Put yourself in the place of where you are playing that which is ahead of you. See yourself nailing the bits that have caused you some worry. See yourself doing it effortlessly. This is a simple way of saying no to the stress and worry, and a practical outworking of "as a man thinks in his heart...". Now, again, this skill will get you so far...but doesn't negate the need, the absolute essential necessity of practise and preparation. But it will help! It will be the extra top-up that you need. It will be the thing that can help you calm and focus on the task at hand. It has been helpful for me.

How can you apply this to your musicality? What performances, services and assessments could this help you with?

Would love to hear your thoughts and perspectives on the matter.

Virtual Insanity

Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 2.0, 'Sleep' from Eric Whitacre on Vimeo.

Last year, composer Eric Whitacre led a virtual choir comprised of 185 singers from around the world in a piece he composed called "Lux Aurumque". Each member records themselves singing their respective part while Eric conducts them to a piano track, and then they upload the video to YouTube. [To see the actual video they audition/sing to click here.] Also, you've got to check out his session on TED Talks. In it, Eric takes us through the creative challenges and process he went through in composing music powered by YouTube. Above is a video of his newest work entitled "Sleep"-- boasting a video choir of 2,052 people from 58 countries across the globe.

"Human beings will go to any lengths necessary to find and connect with each other." - Eric Whitacre

-Frey

Strand of Oaks

Found this great song on Daytrotter the other day by "Strand of Oaks" as well as a great review by Sean Moeller: "We've grown into an old age, perhaps a middle age, here with Timothy Showalter and his musical project Strand of Oaks. We're twixt that age when we've started reeling from time that's railed on us and has reeled off like a marauding storm system, knocking us down like all of the weakest branches and leaves of a tall and proud tree and a time when we were overcome with energy and defiance. It bears the markings of a man who's been swayed and bowed, then embattled and tipped until they've regained a balance somewhere in the distant future. It's a future that's haggard and humble, melancholy and stripped of all artifice. The recollections that Showalter makes in these gorgeous songs that remind us of the fragile relationships we have with our loved ones and those that love us impossibly from afar and how they can easily crumble like dried out bread. There is a heartbreaking reach that Showalter and Strand of Oaks gets to with all of his grief-stained and grounding lyrics - all of which read as long-harbored confessions and brilliant odes to the stumbles that have been made over the years. They beg for love and they beg for forgiveness, these words, opening the souls that they're coming from and just crying if they must, soaking their tee-shirts with years of remorse and regret if there's any thought that an act like that could help. "Lawns Breed Songs," is as emotional as father and son confrontational songs go. It involves a middle son who admits that he's "just young and selfish" and pops banging on his chest and demanding his way - as he did in his younger years - wasn't going to work well. It was what led to the separation, the rift that's been growing and leading to what seems to be a deathbed reconciliation - a meeting of what both wanted to believe about the other all along: that they couldn't have meant any more to each other than they did and that all of the fighting and pushing were these feelings coming out in their own ways. The young man, talking to his father, insists, "We don't need a drink to talk." It brings the relationship of father and child into such a devastatingly beautiful synopsis - where the complicated situation is never all that complicated. There is undying love and there is undying stubbornness coming from a child needing to not always been associated with another man who can claim almost sole responsibility for the junior's existence. It's pretty heavy and yet, Showalter here summarizes it all with a spectacular folk song that will kill you in ways you didn't expect it to. He deals with the end of the world and illicit love affairs the same way, finding ways to make us cry from the simplicity of the sentiments."

-Frey


  Lawns Breed Songs by swansting

The Airborne Toxic Event

The Airborne Toxic Event's sophomore album All At Once was just released in Europe and will hit the North American shelves [digitally & physically] tomorrow [26th]. These guys are legit. The lead singer and the main songwriter, Mikel Joliett, not only has a unique voice... but his carefully crafted lyrics leave you in their wake speechless and heart pounding. They've got so much depth. I thought, "He must either be a brilliant writer or has gone through a hell of a lot to be able to communicate heartache so well... the kind that scars, leaving a lasting-not totally healed reminder of a grief thats changed you... not the emo 8th grade kind." So I looked up his story and apparently I was right on both counts. He's a writer and essayist and has written for the like of NPR, the LA Times, Filter, and Men's Health to name a few. Not to mention his short stories appeared next to Stephen King. During a week in March of '08 he underwent a break-up, learned his mother had been diagnosed with cancer, and was himself diagnosed with a genetic autoimmune disease that led to the development of two cosmetic conditions: Alopecia Areata and Vitiligo. Enter acoustic guitar and the birth of intense songwriting.

The heaviness of his lyrics and the emotion embodied in his music will take you back to those moments in life that have left their mark on you... or they might find their way to your heart, freshly bleeding.

Ahh, music... the power you hold amazes me.

Their newest album is filled with all the ingredients that makes us love music... you'll laugh, cry, pump your fist... it has 'that one acoustic track' that some of us always skip to first, the power ballads, roadtrip songs, and a couple anthems.

I think one thing we can learn from him and a thought I want to leave you with is...

"Experience is not what happens to you. It's what you do with what happens to you."

-Frey


  Numb by The Airborne Toxic Event


  All For A Woman by The Airborne Toxic Event

  Changing by The Airborne Toxic Event

Musical Servanthood

How you craft a track as a band rather than a collection of single instruments.

One of the biggest killers to groove in music, to the unity that ties the elements of music together into a single event, is the lack of perspective. And it's surprisingly easy to lose track of.

As band member, it is so easy to focus in on our particular instrument with too much emphasis and too high an opinion. But when creating music it is essential that we are able to step back and critique our instruments role in the piece of music as a whole. This is why bands will often work with a producer, who is able to see the whole picture, not just be lost in single parts.

This is the concept of musical servanthood. Musical Servanthood means sometimes you need to put down what you can be doing in order to do what must be done. It's keeping in check the musical "ego", so that what you do serves a greater cause. It's being able to step back and play according to what the song requires.

Practically this means, even though you are a classically trained piano "shredder", sometimes you need to play the pads (the synth equivalent of clouds). Even if you can teach Abe Laboriel a lesson or two, sometimes you need to play eighth notes all the way through this song. Sometimes you don't…but it is determined by what the song requires. Often what the song requires is born out of what style is it written in. It is no use trying to play gospel chops in a folk song. Same time it is not musical servanthood when you are playing everything in straight eighth notes in a Israel and New Breed track.

Musical servanthood, laying down what you can play in order to play what must be played, is not a lack of creativity. I actually believe it is a fuller use of our creativity. It is redirected creativity. Your creativity isn't going into how amazing a riff you can play so everyone knows how gifted you are. You creativity goes into conceiving the best riffs and best lines that will serve the song. Rather than making a song feel like a collection of soloists, try and make it about 1 band, 1 sound, 1 message through musical servanthood.


Some well crafted songs that show musical servanthood include:

Somewhere Only We Know - Keane



You Are The Best Thing - Ray LaMontagne

Once Upon A Time...

Remember when we were little... we could hardly ever simply state anything, whether answering a question or accounting an event. Our explanations were often dripping with imagination, our creative juices effortlessly flowing through our veins. Everything was vibrant and dramatic. Everything was epic and would often cause our listeners eyes to widen... or roll (often depending on their age). Jay O'Callahan said,

"We created effortlessly, imagination pouring out, and as we grow older our minds get more literal and critical.... All that imagination still lives inside us, and telling stories sometimes brings it out."

Jay O'Callahan is a professional story teller who travels the world telling stories. In this clip he brilliantly illustrates the power of storytelling - "that most human, and ancient, art form" - and how it taps into our imagination, engages those around us, and inspires amazing achievements.

-Frey