The Secret of Internalizing Music

pickitjohn

Got this from Martin Taylor's mailing list.
Thought it is worth sharing.
Enjoy...

pick on

pickitjohn :peace:

Music doesn’t come from the instrument. It comes from within us.

Here’s how you can use the power of visualization to improve
your playing:

The Secret of Internalizing Music

http://martintaylor.com/blog/internalizing-music/

Buco

That is interesting.
I often have some music playing in my head but of course that's a whole another level you're talking about if you can actually accurately visualize your instrument and match the notes in your head to the frets on the guitar.
He was able to do that as the young kid and compose??? Jeez!

I had a guitar teacher who is able to similar stuff. He showed me once a chord melody arrangement he did for some jazz tune while he was bored on the plane coming home from some gig/tour. He was, just like Martin says, playing guitar in his head, wrote it all down on the music sheet and once he got home only had to change a note or two.
I was shocked, never saw anything like it. He's, Tony Do Rosario, is a pretty modest guy and said you just have to train your ear that's all.

Jazzaferri

Not quite right though....you have to train your brain....ear will follow ......rofl

Hemert

Oh my...guess I better stay out of this one I recall an earlier discussion in which I exposed myself as an anti-ear training bully. But this:

Jazzaferri wrote: »

Not quite right though....you have to train your brain....ear will follow ......rofl

+100! Well said!

Lango-Django

I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and I can see both sides of the argument... as Hemert has pointed out in another thread, Stochelo didn't become a great player via what we might call "ear training", but mainly by learning a whole lot of Django solos and other assorted GJ licks.

But then you could also argue that that in itself is really a form of ear training!

What I notice about this process is that I go out walking the dog, and some hot lick comes into my mind, so I say, wow, let's try to play this when I get home!

And invariably, I find that I CAN play the lick, usually quite easily.

Which is, I suppose, good in one way... I'm happy that my fingers can go where my mind directs them.

But then I keep thinking... WHY can't I imagine a lick that I CAN'T play?

Is my "licks" imagination limited to being able to think up only ones that my fingers can actually find on the fingerboard?

Why can't my imagination be freer than that? Or can it? What if I tried to think like a trumpet player, or a saxophonist?

Or does improvising work sort of like language, where I can only express my thoughts using words, and there's really sort of no such thing as an idea that exists beyond words?

*********

I hope some of the hard-headed realists around here will tell me if Im just babbling metaphysical nonsense...

jazzygtr

Although I have spent most of years NOT doing this, I have found that the combination of singing what I play and playing what I sing has made a HUGE difference for me.

I don't believe there is just one way to learn, and I also don't believe that we all can simply internalize in the same way that Mr. Taylor could at such a young age, but singing what I play and trying to play anything that I can sing has really been good for me. Maybe someday I will be able to simply do everything in my head, away from the guitar, like others, but until then I'll keep singing (assuming no one can hear me... hehehe).

bbwood_98

Jazzy, Sing, even in places where people can hear you - in particular record solos of yourself singing, and learn them! That helps to make the transition to guitar easy. Lango - Learning any solo is ear training. . . Pushing your ideas to licks you can't play means to me that you need to listen to music that is more challenging to you, and be trying to understand it (hear, play, derive from). Me, I'm trying to remember how to play straight ahead on an electric . . . In addition to keeping some Gypsy jazz style chops.

Jazzaferri

Semantics I know ...but most of the ecucators I know ...would not call learning a solo ear training...although it does train ones ear.