A Bebop player that had tons of technique and could sing every note he was playing, dismissed Larry Carlton’s playing as being just a combination of rock and blues. He said “Any real Jazz Player would make mince meat out of Larry.” That Larry Carlton can read any session sheet’s arrangement, play jazz as well as rock, blues as well as country and has never been limited to any one style, never occurred to this bebop player. That Larry Carlton can bend a note with tremendous intensity and say more with one note than most people can say throughout their whole solo went unnoticed by this particular player.
Being able to hear only some things in music and not others can be something we are all guilty of, but that will only happen if we close our ears and close our minds. When we don’t open our ears to what is musical, then we are cheating ourselves of a great deal of music; and our own playing is left deficient.
Everyone can have a favorite style of music. Often the music we love is music we were listening to in our teenage years. But, a real musician has huge ears; they hear what makes music, well musical! If a guitarist or any solo artist were accompanying a singer and played so loud that the singer has to compete to be heard, then it doesn’t matter if the soloist plays all the right notes and plays amazing melodic lines, if they drown out the singer, it’s as if that musician can’t hear a door slam!
Being a musician and being musical means making everyone else sound great. It means being what’s called being in the pocket. If you want to know what being in the pocket means, just listen to Joe Sample and the Crusaders. When you are listening to a band whose groove makes your feet tap and you can’t pull yourself away if you tried, well the band you are listening to is “in the pocket.”
When someone has really learned how to be musical, you can be sure that they will not only exhibit a total feel for the groove, but they will make music come alive with their dynamics. Having a command of dynamics is one way to draw people into the song, to excite them to cause tension and finally to make everything resolve the way it should.
Another facet of true artistry that goes hand-in-hand with dynamics is phrasing. If we were talking about music as a language, then it would be easy to recognize that just as what you say is important, how you say it can be as important, if not even more important.
Phrasing in music is that secret ingredient that makes what we have special. It’s the difference between just saying words and sharing an amazing story. When we have beautiful phrasing we are playing more than notes. We have opened our ears, our minds and our soul; we are musicians and we are musical!
Tags: dynamics, in the pocket, phrasing