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We're in a studio the other day and a young hot shot player seems to have the other session guys in awe of his ability to sing while playing his lines. When asked about it he shrugged " I just play what I hear" and began showing off his ability. But I just couldn't buy it, so I asked if he could play what he heard someone else play. Again he just shrugged, so I picked up a guitar and played him a single blues chorus I'd recently transcribed from a Tina Brooks record. He didn't get it. So I just played him the first bar. He struggled, kinda like how most people (including myself) do when we're transcribing.
Now here's the thing, I know there are musical freaks out there, and I've known at least one, that have magical ears, and probably can play what they hear, whether it's in their head, or from somewhere else. However, that's quite a different level when compared to guys who have learned to sing what they know they can play. When guys say they can play what they hear, they usually are just "hearing" what they know, or just singing what they're playing. I'm just not as impressed as most people seem to be.
What do you guys think?
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12-04-2014 01:18 PM
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Paraphrasing Hal Galper, the problem isn't "I'm playing what I hear". The problem is, "I'm playing exactly what I hear".
Our hearing (mine definitely) is not mature, attenuated enough.
All music is aural; if you can't hear it, you can't play it.
Personally, I'm not hung up on exact note choices (my hearing is what it is, and thankfully it's not as BAD as when I first started out, even if it has a ways to go)--but I definitely aspire to play what I hear RHYTHMICALLY--rhythmic placements, patterns, displacements, accents. That's much more important.
That is to say, it is more important to scat out rhythms.
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Excluding the Benson's and other who have amazing ears. I think over time of transcribing and what teacher have to me to do sing the lines and exercises people do start getting some skill to sing what they hear. From listening to many and big names many aren't singing note for note they are singing the shape of their line/target notes of their solo. I know for me when I do that it helps my phrasing.
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Playing what you hear is not a matter of some freakish ability. It is the consequence of good ears and lots of practice.
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What an interesting insight. Thanks for posting. When I think of guys who vocalize when they play, I think of Keith Jarrett and John Pizarelli. They seem to have different reasons for their vocal expressions. I suspect that Keith Jarrett takes docbop's road of singing shapes rather than exact lines played on the instrument. Perhaps it is for the reason that docbop states in that it help the soloist conceptualize his lines.
John Pizarelli, on the other hand, seems to use his singing as a musical instrument meant to compliment his guitar lines. I find his singing to be very pleasant to listen to whereas I try to tune out Keith Jarrett's dying animal noises whenever I can.
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Herb Ellis stressed "playing what you sing or singing what you play." He did it and Oscar Peterson did it. He said Joe Pass and Barney Kessel did it too. He also said horn players (-the ones he knew) did it but that you couldn't hear them do it because they had horns in their mouths.
One advantage of this----aside from the obvious---is that it shuts down the anxious voice in your head that keeps suggesting all sorts of things you might do, or else is saying, "O, God, this sucks, I'm toast..." Herb said it is what makes the lines personal. That is, gives them your own voice...
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THIS.
Originally Posted by NSJ
I once took a guitar class with this great, really melodic player. And he always stressed, "You should be able to sing back rhythmically, whatever line you just played." He frequently would stop us unexpectedly and have us sing back a line we just played, ignoring the notes, and just trying to get the rhythm right.
He would mainly do this to show us when we were playing rhythmically uninteresting lines that just sounded like running scales. We would sing it back rhythmically, or clap it back, and it would just sound like a load of nonsense. Really opens your ears.
He could do this masterfully from ANY line. Whether he played it, or we did, or it was on a recording. I think this is really the key to everything. But, easier said than done.
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I can play what I hear as long as I don't hear what I play.
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When playing over bop changes I hear what I play just before I play it - when I was starting out, my teacher (who is an excellent bop player) was adamant that it was a skill you had to acquire. But yeah, you're hearing notes, phrases and lines that you've drilled a thousand times - your own musical vocab you've generated from over the years - it's not some type of fantastical magic. But by rearranging those mini-phrases, or enclosures if you will, on the fly you generate new ideas - hearing it just before it happens. It's not an extreme either way, i.e. playing a pre-fab solo.. or constantly conjuring totally new phrases out of thin air. Originally Posted by princeplanet
Put it this way, if you're not hearing what you're about to play just before you play it - that means you're just finger walking.
I'd say most guys on this forum could hear what they play using just a blues scale - they might mostly play the same old licks, but they would be hearing it in their mind first. With changes it just takes more work. My2c
As an aside - I know a classical pianist. I asked her if she can hear the score of a piece she knows away from the piano. She told me that she can hear a score completely even with a piece she's never played before - just like reading a book. Pretty cool.Last edited by 3625; 12-05-2014 at 01:53 AM.
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Wow. Another post lost. I'm impressed any time I hear someone play well, regardless.
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Like most people I'm hearing bits I've drilled, and re-arrange those bits on the fly, so every note is intentional - there are no surprises (for better or for worse)... but because I use many rapid, heavily chromatic ideas, I can honestly say that these ideas are more readily expressed by playing them rather than singing them. So trying to simultaneously sing them slows me down, but not in a good way, besides my vocal range is very limited...
On the subject of just purely "hearing" or even singing things, to me that's a separate concept I sometimes indulge, without the instrument in my hands. Even here I am smashing together tidbits of things I have heard, so sometimes it might be Jackie Mclean meets Rollins mixed up with some Oliver Nelson or Eric Dolphy. It sounds amazing in my head, less so with my voice, but there remains a vast chasm between hearing that shit in real time, and being able to express it with the fingers!
So yeah, with me at least, these are 2 entirely different ways of "hearing"- hearing what I know with the guitar in hand, and hearing what I don't without...
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Yeah, that type of hearing to me is more of a fantasy type of trip - dreamlike. Maybe for songwriting or composing it's useful in terms of tuning in to an inner, unconscious muse - but for playing a tune like "I Remember You" it has to be very awake and concrete, otherwise you'll get smashed pretty quick. At least in my own experience... Originally Posted by princeplanet
On the subject of just purely "hearing" or even singing things, to me that's a separate concept I sometimes indulge, without the instrument in my hands. Even here I am smashing together tidbits of things I have heard, so sometimes it might be Jackie Mclean meets Rollins mixed up with some Oliver Nelson or Eric Dolphy. It sounds amazing in my head, less so with my voice, but there remains a vast chasm between hearing that shit in real time, and being able to express it with the fingers!
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I'll bet you're a James Brown fan. Me too. Originally Posted by NSJ
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Interesting discussion! I learned to play music reading it in third grade. Messed me up and helped me immensely. I later started playing the songs I wanted to learn and discovered that if I could hear it in my head I could play it. Now I can read the notes fine, but if I don't HEAR it in my head, it doesn't work. On my very limited, very amature soloing I have to almost not hear it and just feel the rhythm. When I do that it works well but if I start listening to what I hear in my head by the time I can play it the moment is past. So I just feel it keep up with the rhythm and get better over time.
Its really more like talking. I don't hear what I want to say in my head, I just say it. When I write something like i'm doing now I hear it all in my head before my fingers work it out but it feels slow and clumsy.
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I've become pretty good in copying licks and phrases from our sax player.
We made it sort of a gimmick to copy each other and I usually start my solo with his last line.
It's great, it forces you to really listen and play notes on a conscious and intuitive level - much more like singing - rather than playing your scales and patterns, which is a more rational and knowledge based activity (nothing wrong with that either).
Secondly I play a lot with my 5 year old daughter and she will sing her children's songs (a lot of them I don't know) and songs she improvises on the spot (boy, she's good at that!) and I have to copy them, in a question-and-answer kind of way.
At first a had a lot of trouble with it, but as with everything: the more you do it, the better you get. I helped me reach a higher musical level.
So yeah, I definitely think that singing along with what you play is a skill (a rather useful one I say!) that can be learned.
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Which proves he sings and plays within his own limitations, but has not yet acquired the skill of really instantly playing what you hear OR even does not yet posses the skill of immediately reproducing a line he just heard ('cause of you don't hear it in your head, you can't play it!) Originally Posted by princeplanet
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Yes, that's what I figure. And of course some things are way more difficult to reproduce than others. Think of your transcribing, with difficult solos, there are always bits you get right away, whereas some phrases can take you several listens. Sure, I've noticed improvement over the years, but most of us will never reach the point where we can reproduce a complex (and fast) Charlie Parker solo immediately, not even only a couple of bars at a time. Originally Posted by Little Jay
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I wonder about this because it seems it would make one perpetually late. (If you hear it and THEN play it, you're not playing at the same point in relation to the harmony; further, you would need to be hearing the following line / phrase while playing the present one. That seems confusing.) Originally Posted by 3625
Take an extreme example, an 8-bar phrase. Well, to pre-hear it would take 8 bars! Not even Miles was keen on 8 bars of silence. On top of that, the 8-bar phrase you pre-heard, might not sound so hot when played over the next 8 bars of the tune. (It might sound fine if the second 8 had the same changes as the first 8, which happens in AABA tunes, but this could never work over an 8-bar bridge because you would start playing the phrase when the rest of the band was back on the A section! Further, if you hear what you play on the bridge before it starts, then you were hearing it over the tail end of the A section, where it would sound different...)
(The assumption here is that regardless of what you may hear in your head, you still hear what is going on outside of it. That is, the other musicians you are playing with.)
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It's really simultaneous, even a little ahead. It really is like singing through your guitar.
RE: Vocalizing as I'm playing--I find that if I keep things simple, I can do it in real time. As soon as I start moving fast I start playing more "stock licks," which I can sing rather accurately by default, because I've played them so many times. So this is not the actual skill we're talking about here, it's more "memory."
But from what I've gotten myself to be able to do slowly, I can see that with a lot of hard work it's definitely possible to do it with more notes and faster tempos.
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Hearing in improvisation is crucial. Otherwise you're just moving your fingers. Not everyone is gifted with a really nice voice aka Keith Jarrett, or the ability to use their voice properly. It's important to work on it to the best of your ability, because your ear does connect to your instrument. working on intervals and sight singing is a great way to improve. However, there are people who can't sing but can really hear intervals and chord progressions but that's rare. I'm constantly trying to improve that part of my playing because I was not born with perfect pitch and had to work really hard on ear training.
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Singing seems to open up your ears, but you'll probably play simpler lines. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
I always listen to the recording repeatedly and then sing along with the melody. I find that if I can sing the melody, it's easier to play it on the instrument.
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"Danny, I'm going to give you a little advice. There's a force in the universe that makes things happen; all you have to do is get in touch with it. Stop thinking...let things happen and be the ball." Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
-Chevy Chase in "Caddyshack"
That's a classic comedy line, but seriously, isn't it a little like this for improvisers? There really isn't enough time to hear it--not all of it--before you play it. Maybe we can start to hear it, but then, in our best moments, we have to almost actually...be the music?
Last edited by Flat; 12-05-2014 at 02:22 PM.
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Love JB. He's "got the feelin'" Originally Posted by Stevebol
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I think this is right. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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"Where'd my guitar go?" Originally Posted by Flat
"Right in the lumber yard."
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