Professional Sound Mastery

It has occurred to me after hearing myself play enough times—whether it be on recordings or during practice—that the line between amateur and professional sounds is not always as clear as we would like it to be. The search requires an admirable level of dedication, but beyond that it requires a level of comprehensive understanding. The journey becomes less clear as one ascends into the clouds on a mountain. This being so, the journey should not be taken lightly.

A Zen parable I heard from a friend wasn’t actually a Koan, but it goes something like this:

The parable starts off with the Zen Master telling the student he needs to fetch water and bring it to the top of the tallest mountain where another Zen Master awaits. The student, troubled, pleads to the master, stating that no one has ever climbed the mountain before: he could die trying. Countless attempts reached closer and closer to the top, but not a single individual ever made it. Most have returned defeated. The Zen Master tells the student that this is true. However, there is Zen Master on the mountain waiting atop the mountain. This other master has barely survived all of these years alone. Other attempts haven’t been futile, but have been very important. Sometimes the Zen Master will have enough energy to climb a small way down from the top to retrieve supplies, but he is also taking care of a family and cannot let them leave for long because they are not strong enough yet to climb down or take care of themselves. The student then pleads, “But master, no one can see the top! It is covered by clouds!” The master brushes this off and says, “Do you need eyes to climb with your hands?”

The student reluctantly begins his journey upward carrying a container of water and minimal supplies as to not get bogged down. As he climbs, he finds many things no one has ever discussed: there is a good amount of foliage and plant life for him to eat safely without getting sick. Exhausted after many days, he sees clouds almost within arm’s reach. He begins what he feels is his final ascent. He thinks to himself if he cannot reach the top by the end of a full day of the sun rising and setting and rising again, he will descend down the mountain.

As he feels the air get cooler and cooler deep into the clouds, he begins to fear death. His skin is cold: he is unprepared for this weather. But he knows if he could just see the sun again he would be warm. As though he were aimlessly climbing through a thick fog, he finally sees the fog begin to clear in a small ridge on the mountain that inclines much less than the path before. He only needs to use his legs here and comes upon what appears to be a cave. The cave is not completely dark and as he feels his way through, he begins to see a light at the other end. The ground, still inclined, is damp and warm.  He can see the sun itself as a blinding light. When he emerges from the cave he finds himself looking out in every direction. There is no house and no family. There is no Zen Master waiting for him. He opens the container of water, sits, and drinks. With a sigh of relief, he is enlightened.

Obviously this is a short, non-technical version of the information that I wanted to convey through the rest of this essay/post. When we talk about the masters in music, we are talking about people who have made long journeys through music, sometimes at younger ages than others, sometimes much older. The people we aspire to be often times are not much different than the people that inspire us the most. We might get casually discouraged when we see a young child who has an amazing gift that makes us wonder, “What in the fuck am I trying to do here if Joey Alexander can do this already at 13?” Well, hopefully I have some answers that will encourage you to take your own path and seek your own results. And maybe we’ll all find a gift that we can share with others in the same way.

When we talk about the difference between a master and a student, sometimes these Zen Koans are almost the exact link between what those differences are and how sometimes there is an ambiguity in the ”end.” The conclusion of this story is very telling, as we see that the student succeeding where his/her master claimed all else failed. When the student becomes the teacher, we find out a lot about the art form itself. So it might be a good idea here to look at what constitutes a master.

A master has a clarity and understanding of a set of rules that create music and make music communicable on a social level (I’ll explain this in detail later). I don’t think this necessarily boils down to music theory, but there are certain intrinsic traits of music I think we should look at that might constitute a set of “rules” that musicians abide by whether consciously, unconsciously, or simply physically.

Historically, music has gone through some serious changes in complexity since its inception. Given that we take music that was written down as examples of what could have been performed versus traditional types of music which are inherent to some cultures, these types of music to any degree have changed since their initial birth through performance. In short, music is not the same music it once was. These transformations may have come from yearnings for variable types of expression beyond simply happy or sad music, and often times relayed messages—whether in rhythm or harmony or both—to other people in communicable if not visceral ways. What I’m getting at: I believe music is a language which has grown in complexity the same way as any given language and it is important for us to know how to speak and execute ideas clearly in this language.

If we look at the rules of counterpoint, we might see how very recently these rules have been broken to the Nth degree and no longer apply. But we can also very easily hear the benefits of these rules in terms of consonances when we listen to the composers who abided by these rules or perhaps at least imitated music following these rules. These ideas of rules and mechanics apply to music way beyond the European spectrum, mainly in how we as human beings competently perform in groups. Masters then are the people who have the highest level of not only understanding—whether intellectual or intrinsic—but of execution in a coherent manner. The point being that if we tried to speak a language without knowing anything about the language, it would be pretty offensive the same way imitating an accent and speaking in gibberish would be. I suppose this doesn’t, however, stop people from playing music any more than it would speaking. We often hear this and might not even know it.

I don’t believe any of the great composers—Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Bartok, Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Ellington, Parker, Monk, Coltrane—would have pursued new forms of expression had it not been for some degree of understanding of the music they emulated and pursued initially as students of the music. The same goes for performers who are or were virtuosos. A series of initial imitations and expounding upon those imitations ultimately lead to their real successes as artists. This might be why we remember them: the masters pursued music with a degree of understanding and (ultimately) execution that was clear and concise enough that others were drawn to it on a universal level.

Common traits are what we are after here, so if we appeal to the idea that music is a language, what shared traits can we find in the masters? Below, I have documented some concepts that build off of one another to share and discuss:

·         -Clear vision creates a deliberate sense of performance and a clear enough sound to convey an idea sonically. In laymen’s terms: everything sounds like it is “supposed to happen.”

·         -Definition of the music—that is what is “supposed to happen”—is agreed upon by the performers, which seems to convey the music regardless of cultural background. (We could argue that people don’t hear music the same way, but for the sake of discussion we can agree that when we hear something that sounds like music we’ve heard and enjoy, we can label it as “music” to some degree.)

·         -The sonic appearance of the music has enough shared traits amongst its performers (rhythm, harmony, form) that it does not affect the understanding of the music as music.

·         -All performers pressure themselves towards these common musical goals which somehow are heard as a single musical thought and not as separate events (I’m talking about mastering an instrument in the sense of performance and not so much the ideas behind compositions).

·         -A sense of community among the musicians performing the single work begets the language to be heard as a relatable event by the audience, whether simply in sound, feeling, or emotion.

·         -This fact will transcend cultures and somehow reach human ears simultaneously (with the distance of the sound being produced of course) and be understood if only innately to be music. If we are to communicate these ideas, we have to build upon what came before as viable means of expression.

·         -This all happening in time creates the sense of language being spoken (as opposed to a static event) which creates the art form that can succeed or fail in the same way a conversation can succeed or fail.

·         -Somehow it has to be pleasing enough to the ear to be heard as music (which is the struggle of any artist moving outside of what has been done and into new territory).

·        - Listening, remembering, and reproducing these ideas with accuracy and not making mistakes that take away from the continuity of the story or idea is important.

·         -Learning and knowing how these combinations of music function—if not intellectually then instinctually.

·         -The understanding that some sense of repetition creates order and a lack of it creates a certain disorder (and I suppose the opposite could be true of both given different contexts).

·         -A sense of proportion as it relates to harmony, rhythm, and form that creates a performable idea. (As opposed to randomly generated noise in separate areas being considered performance perfect and conveying a clear message. We could get into the philosophy of how we perceive music, but again, I’m talking more about being a master at playing well with others towards a common, tangible goal.)

·         -Performing within the context of these rules, but not letting a single intellectually understood rule take more weight than the others (i.e. using counterpoint, but not adhering to rhythm or using rhythm but not adhering to a common tempo… again, let’s focus on music where people are performing together).

·        - Knowing these ideas well enough that one can begin to listen to the other ideas being presented by other performers.

·         -Being able to reproduce diverse manners of playing (rhythm, harmony, tempo, form, etc.) on a given or any given instrument consistently.

·         -Quality understood universally (can be improved upon).

So music then, on a master-level, has to be performed with others, and will be done so with a working or sonic knowledge of the other performers’ parts (even if it only means playing in time and in tune and balanced and in the right part of the song at the same tempo). What we’re looking at is a large amount of information being digested by the ear quickly during performance.

How does one become a master then?
I think a comprehensive understanding of the basics of music, including and certainly not limited to rhythm and harmony, would be a great place to start. One might learn the basics of their instrument and how it functions in a group, but it would behoove the student to start understanding how the other instruments work, that is, as a musician. The path is not short.

The professional sound, which is what I’m after, has a lot to do with the following:

·        

      -How deliberate things sound (leads to the next one)

·         -How proportional things sound (is it in tune and in time in a way that other people can consistently play with it?)

·        - How nuanced it is if the above two are there (that is to say, how often it sounds less like notes and rhythms and more like coherent phrases in time)

·       -  Ultimately, how accurate and consistent it is (everyone is human, but the masters sound like themselves more than they sound like someone trying to play music for the first time)

I suppose there are obvious routes to improving upon these things, but the biggest one I heard from Hadrien Feraud and Jean-Michel Pilc was “repetition.” Much like an actor delivering a line that you believe, the listener has to believe what you’re playing is music. The standard gets higher and higher all the time. Understanding that no only what you are trying to play has to be believable and also correct to some degree and not muddled with wrong notes or incorrect rhythms will give you a clearer sense of where things you are playing are functioning correctly or need improvement.

One has to be so incredibly honest with oneself about this process: do you have to think before you play it or have you said it enough times that it is a normal sentence for you? Could you play it while holding a conversation much like being able to talk and drive? Could you openly listen to what is going on around you in the same way (have a conversation with another person—listen—and not just say what you’re saying or, you know, playing in time with the drums)?

This is something I believe I currently lack in my playing and practice: a sense of decisive repetition which alleviates any notion of thought about the act of performing music, especially in certain improvisations. In knowing this, I can see where this change in my practice will improve and add to other elements of my understanding and potential mastery of the instrument, or of music itself. Since this is only one action (being able to repeat one or two ideas is fine, but growing from there is more important) there will come other methods and routes to practice when I see some type of issue in my playing that keeps it from being clear and decisive. With this, I can start climbing the mountain again.