Becoming a Competent Musician: Playing Instrumentals Helps

To become a jazz musician, or any genre of musician, you must practice consistently over time, both with other musicians and alone.  Progress will be incremental over time.  You will not wake up one day and voila:  you are a competent musician.  You will get better little by little and you will reach plateaus of achievement. 

It is very helpful to record yourself, especially when playing with other musicians or a band.  Do this for both practices and actual gigs.  The feedback is invaluable.  You can learn what you are doing right and what needs improvement.

I record all the practices with my band.  Over a year and a half, while listening to the recordings, I notice that I wince less than before!  I hear fewer missed beats, fewer wrong chords, better rhythms.  I can tell I am progressing and it is encouraging.

Yesterday, Sunday, August 19th, we had our usual Sunday practice.  Our singer couldn't make it, so we used the opportunity to polish our instrumentals.  It's a different trip to play just instrumentals, because the lead instruments (guitar and piano, in our case) have to carry the lead by themselves. 

Have a listen to the practice here:  www.soundcloud.com/gwaltrip.

Musicians & Singers: The Importance of Recording Yourself

Why should you record yourself?  Obviously, to see what you really sound like, e.g. what you are doing wrong and what you are doing right.  It is easy to fool yourself into believing you are the next Jaco Pastorius, or if you are a singer, the next Mel Torme.  You aren't hearing the actual sound, you are hearing the sound in your head, which unfortunately, is not the sound the audience hears.  We've all seen those comical clips of singers trying out for American Idol, thinking they are really killing it, but blowing it so badly that it's embarrassing.  Poor souls.  Don't be one of them.

A few months ago I purchased a Handy H5 Zoom Recorder from Sweetwater.  This is a hand-held recorder that does a great job of recording live performances and practices.  All I do is turn it on and lay it down somewhere, and after practice I turn it off.  The micro disc then goes into my laptop, where I download and analyze the recording.

I use the free program Audacity to separate each song from the larger recording, and then I export each separate song into its own MP3 file.  These can be uploaded to Yourlisten.com or sent to band members via dropbox, or even emailed if not too large.

The first time I recorded my bass playing, I was appalled.  This was several years ago.  I learned that I was not hitting each note right on the head.  There was a slight delay.  This was because I was listening to the band and searching for the right note to play.  You can't search, you have to know what note you are going to play.  I don't mean you should memorize the bassline, necessarily.  If you know the song thoroughly, you can improvise and still be on the beat.  Now I concentrate on hitting the note right on the beat.  It sounds much better.

A Plan for Learning to Sing With the Band

Being a good musician isn't enough if you want to have a steady source of gigs.  You have to sing.  You don't have to be the lead singer, but you must contribute vocally.  That raises considerably your value as a band member.

Here are some ways to go about it.

1.  Buy a book about singing and learn what it is all about:  the different kinds of voices, the myths and the facts about singing, common problems and solutions, posture, breathing and vocal exercises.  Any good book on singing will come with a CD of vocal exercises.  You can't learn to sing by reading about it, but reading about it will help you form an effective practice plan.  I recommend Singing For Dummies by Pamelia Phillips and Set Your Voice Free by Roger Love.

2.  Avail yourself of free online resources, like eHow's series on singing, to learn about singing.  Watch this while waiting for your books to arrive from Amazon.  (The series instructor has some great tips on things to do and to look out for.)

3. Choose the vocal exercises from the CD's that you want to practice on a daily basis.  I used iTunes to store copies of all of the exercises, then segregated out those that I intend to practice daily.  I made a CD of just these exercises for practicing while driving.  When not driving, I just play the iTunes playlist from my laptop and sing along with them at home.

4.  Keep a practice log, to keep track of what you have done and to plan for what you want to do.  I just use Word in my computer to do this.  Writing down accomplishments and goals keeps them in your subconscious which targets those goals like a heat-seeking missile.

5.  Practice singing to karaoke recordings.  To do this, you need karaoke files, and you can buy them from many different sites on the net (see sidebar for some links).  These files are usually mp3 or mp4 files, and readily play in Windows.  The best karaoke files are those that scroll the lyrics while the music plays, highlighting the lyrics to sing at any given moment (these are mp4 files).  Other karaoke files (mp3 files) merely provide the backing instrumentals and backing vocals, and the lyrics are all up to you.

You can get a lot of free karaoke files off of YouTube.  Search for "karaoke" and a lot of them will queue up. You can download these as MP4 files using keepvid.com.  (Copy and paste the YouTube URL into keepvid and it will download the videos onto your own computer.)

6.  Record yourself singing along to the karoake files, for playback and analysis.  While singing along to the karaoke files, you can simultaneously record your voice using free recording software from the net.  The best of these is probably Audacity.  Once you've recorded your singing with Audacity, you can export it to an mp3 file.  An mp3 file (if you don't know) is a music file that plays once you click on it.  You can save it to disk or even email it to other band members for comments, criticism and suggestions.

You can even embed mp3 files into a website, as I have done previously in this blog, using a third party website that hosts these files.

Although it is shocking the first time you hear yourself singing, don't be discouraged.  Everyone feels that way.  They hear their own voice and say "Ugh!"  However, keep at it and the recordings will improve over time.  These recordings help you to know when you're ready to sing before an audience.