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Your Own Course By Ernie Rideout with Marian McPartland & Fred Hersch So you're doing the Home Schooling for Keyboardists routine, are you? And why not? After all, it is the 21st Century. Or do you consider yourself to be merely "between teachers"? While it's always a great idea to study regularly with a good teacher, you can still improve your playing by leaps and bounds in the privacy of your own practice room. Whatever your reason for going it alone, though, at some point you're bound to face the familiar problem, "What the heck should I work on now?" Don't despair. Here's some advice on how to plan out the coming weeks, months, and even years of your own well-rounded development, from two of the most experienced players and teachers around: Marian McPartland and Fred Hersch. Check Your Assets First off, do a self-assessment of your playing and musicianship skills. "To succeed, you have to have a realistic view of where you are," says Fred. "Do you have technical facility? Are you familiar with harmony? Do you have an interest in composing? Can you memorize things quickly? Can you make up things easily on your own? How good are your ears; can you hear something and play it back right away?" Or not? "You have to be honest with yourself," says Fred. "A tape recorder is a great tool for this. Put one on the keyboard, and play into it." You can record a classical piece, a jazz tune, a country waltz, a comping groove, a solo over a sequence, a left-hand bass line anything at all. Listen back and see what you think. How is your rhythm? What about your note choices or chord voicings? How is the balance between your hands? Is your groove in the pocket? "You may find that you're good at one thing, or three things," says Fred. "We all have weaknesses. If you hear that you're not good in a few aspects, it doesn't mean that you're a failure. Don't get stressed out about what you're not playing; accept what it is that you are playing. Enjoy it. Treat yourself compassionately." You can also get feedback from other musicians. Play your tape for a friend. Ask to sit in with a band. Show up at a rehearsal. Many established players will be happy to offer a little one-time advice. Ask what they think of your playing, and what they think you should do to improve. Then be open to what you might hear. What if there's something about your self-assessment that really bothers you? What if you find yourself saying things like, "I can't play 'Giant Steps' at 212 bpm, I must be terrible"? "If you find yourself saying things like that," says Fred, "then ask yourself first how important it is that you play 'Giant Steps' at 212 bpm." And that brings us to our next giant step. Set a Goal Before you jump right into practicing those arpeggios, what are the specific things you want to do as a player? Do you want to be able to improvise with other people? Do you want to be a professional studio player? Do you want to make records of your own music? Is there a particular style or genre that you want to get into? Do you want to play like a particular player, like John Medeski, Seal, or George Shearing? Or do you just love music and want to know more about it? Having a specific musical goal in mind can help you sort through the myriad of keyboardistic options and get over the inertia of starting out. "There's so much information out there nowadays that it's easy to get overwhelmed," says Fred. "You don't have to know every chord. You don't have to be able to play flawless double thirds and double sixths at lightning speed. If you really want to do those things, then learn to do them. But whatever you do, you should understand and do it well. And you should be emotionally connected to it." Marian McPartland concurs about the importance of having goals, and adds that sometimes a little time crunch can be helpful for reaching them. "I'm dying to learn the music of Wayne Shorter," she says. "But I work best under pressure, so what I'm going to do is hire him for Piano Jazz [her nationally-syndicated radio show on National Public Radio], and then it'll force me to learn the tunes I need to learn in time for the show taping I hope he doesn't get mad at me! For me, it's like Duke Ellington said, 'I don't need time, I need a deadline.'" For those of us with less auspicious connections, one of the best deadlines to set for yourself is to look for and accept a gig. Then you'll really need the next step. Listen Closely Once you have a goal in mind, you need to establish the steps that will get you there. A great way to do this is with concentrated listening. "Pick one cut from a recording that you're interested in," advises Fred. "Listen to that one cut six or seven times, each time listening for a different musical attribute. Pay special attention to things that aren't in your skill set. The first time through, listen for harmonic things that interest you: chord voicings, progressions, modes, keys. The next time through, listen to rhythmic things: how the keyboard parts sit rhythmically, what kinds of rhythms are used in the part. The third time, listen to how the rhythm section plays together. The fourth time, check out how the phrases fit together, or listen to the composition, or to the keyboardist in particular. Listen to how the soloist leaves space, or how they develop motives." What you're doing is analyzing the things that intrigue you about the track and isolating them. Pretty soon you'll have a nice list of practice topics, and a good aural idea of how to approach them. Then you're ready to start your daily practice plan. How to Practice "Don't think of practicing," says Fred. "Think of experimenting. When you sit down at the keyboard or piano, have an attitude of, 'Let's see what happens.' "Practicing is like going to a health club: You shouldn't do things in the same order all the time. For instance, I never just sit down and do scales and arpeggios first; that shuts down your ear. I'd do free improvisation first, or work on a tune first. "Make a list of different musical elements covering the broader areas of harmony, rhythm, composing, and arranging. The specific topics can come from your listening list. Under 'harmony' you might have written '7th chords' or 'voicings in fourths'; under rhythm, perhaps 'sixteenth-note off-beats' or 'dotted-eighths.' Put your list on the keyboard, set the metronome, pick one element, and play with it for a while. "To develop technique and your ear," he continues, "choose a tune, play it in time, but isolate one rhythmic or harmonic element and play a solo or an accompaniment using only that device for a chorus or more. You might play a chorus using only intervals wider than a fifth, or lines that you play with your hands together two octaves apart, or lines in contrary motion, or moving block chords whatever the devices are that you want to master." Most styles of music involve songs or similar compositional structures. Select a couple and begin learning them. "You have to know a lot of tunes," says Marian. "Learn them however you want to: from recordings, from sheet music, from other musicians. A repertoire of tunes is essential. Old tunes and new tunes; you need to keep up with what artists in the genre you're interested in are currently doing. Tunes that maybe you don't like, too, but that may get played in the venues where you want to play. I would spend hours listening to records of Teddy Wilson over and over, trying to duplicate what he did. That's how I learned so many tunes. I've never seen the music for most of them." To really learn a piece, and to know that you know it, Fred advocates transposition. "Take a tune you're interested in and play it not only in a variety of keys," he says, "but also in different tempos and grooves." If the piece is a classical piece or a composition where the keyboard part is written out, you don't have to start at the beginning and play the whole thing through right off the bat. Fred likes to outline written pieces. "Outlining is playing only what occurs at the beginning of each bar, or perhaps the chords on just beats 1 and 3, for the entire composition, so you learn the big structure. That will give you a good musical perspective when you come back to fill in the details later. "Sometimes you can spend a whole practice session on just one thing that interests you. Other times you can cover more stuff, or even just dabble around. Just see what happens. If you keep isolating interesting musical devices on your own and plugging them into your routine of transposing things, you'll be doing a lot better than if you were looking outside of yourself in method books for the latest hip stuff to learn. This way, you develop your technical skills as you develop as an improviser, rather than by just using someone else's patterns and plugging them in. You're generating your own problems to solve. It's more interesting, but it still gives you a structure to practice over." Play with Others Start playing with other people, even if you feel you're not yet ready. "When you play in a group," says Marian, "you develop the ability to listen, to be sensitive to other musicians, and to interact musically. These are things you can learn only by doing." Setting up a rehearsal or jam schedule with other musicians gives you a regular goal to work towards, and gives you some larger structure to adjust your practice time to. "The reason I can play solo piano as well as I do is because I've spent 25 years playing with other people," adds Fred. "Playing with other people is the best way to learn about rhythm and time, too." Immerse Yourself "Don't just hole up in your room with records," advises Fred. "Get out to see live music as much as possible, even if it's just the local hotel's lounge act. You have to sit in the audience and watch and feel the music unfold. That will help demystify some of the process. "Not everybody needs to practice six hours a day, though," he continues. "Some have a greater gift, others know maybe only one way of playing. You can tell how committed you are by whether or not you keep coming back to the piano. If you keep coming back, if you're restless in a good way, if you keep thinking about it, if you're not willing to settle for things being merely okay, and if you want to improve, then I think that's your indication right there." "How involved or interested you are is really important," says Marian. "Being immersed in music is important. To really improve, it's not enough just being a dilettante." Hang in There As you progress on your musical journey, keep your eye not only on your goal, but on the goal of music in general. "Sure, you can use books for information," says Fred. "But ultimately what makes a good musician is how well they use that information. You have to practice that, too: the application of what you're practicing. It's not about how much you know, it's about whether you can use the information for some reasonable goal. And in music, I think, the goal is to tell a story, to take the listener on a trip, to communicate something. "It's not about learning a bunch of stuff. You do have to get into the process, and just try it and see what works and what doesn't. You don't improve in a logical, linear way. It comes in fits and starts. There are times when you'll be progressing, and times when you'll be on a plateau but that's how it is for everybody."
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