Vocal Cohort, or How I’m Learning Jazz Part 1
/For the last 2 months, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to teach a class at the Nashville Jazz Workshop. I call it “Vocal Cohort”. A cohort is a group of people with a shared characteristic. Our cohort sings.
When I was asked if I would consider teaching at NJW, my first thought was, “yes, anything but singing.” Teaching vocal technique is a sacred thing, and one which I’m absolutely not qualified to do. When the instrument is one’s own body, there is such incredible diversity that only a well trained student of voice science ought to try explaining the voice to another entirely unique person with an entirely unique instrument.
So what do I teach? I heard a quote recently that seems to be derived from something attributed to Galileo: You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself. The modern version I heard made me think of someone holding a flashlight on a table of tools. As a ‘teacher’, I’m just shining a light on these tools, and each learner has the choice to pick them up and try them out for herself. A 90-minute class once a week is not going to change a singer’s life. But 15 minutes of practice every day in between those classes will.
So here I’d like to write down some of the tools I have collected and shine a little flashlight on them. I’ll add more as the Frequently Asked Questions add up, but here’s a first collection of practices, ideas, books, apps, and more that my musical peers often recommend.
Practice Strategies
Consistency. Maybe the most important thing to start with is building consistency. This often means starting small—set a timer for 10 minutes and practice. See if you can do 10 minutes twice a day. See if you can build that streak for a whole week. After a few days, make it 15 minutes. 20. Build slowly, but protect that time as sacred!
Intention. A little bit of focused, intentional time goes much further than a lot of time without a goal. You could set your timer for an hour every day, but if you don’t have a goal in mind, it will not be efficient. On the flip side, you really can start to grow with 10 minutes a day (although the true purpose of a 10 minute practice is just to build the habit—once the habit is established, I would recommend building up to at least a 30 minute practice session, or multiple pockets of 20 minutes). As a parent of a toddler, I have less free time now than I’ve ever had in my life, so making small pockets of time count is essential! Get a binder or notebook that is ONLY for your musical practice. Write down the date and time you’re practicing. Write down a goal or intention. Your intention might be simply to warm up. Or to practice breath control by singing whole scales or phrases in one breath. Transcribing a solo or a bebop head. Practicing whole tone scales. Practicing diminished patterns and arpeggios. Whatever! Write it down, then do it.
Patience. I recently spoke to the incredible guitarist Jocelyn Gould, and she shared how when you’re studying jazz, your ear develops first—think of your ear or aural skills jumping up a stair, but your ability to create what you hear hasn’t caught up yet. By the time your performance ability catches up to your ear, your ear has jumped up another step. Meaning we will probably always feel acutely aware of our imperfect abilities. That can sound sort of torturous—get ready for a lifetime of feeling inadequate and behind on your craft! Or it can be freeing—let go of the need to ‘measure up’ to something, and embrace the lifelong journey of studying music. There will probably never be a moment when you feel you’ve arrived. But there will be moments when you look back and realize, “Wow, I couldn’t do that 6 weeks ago. I’ve really made some progress.” And hopefully there will also be moments when you experience the transcendence and flow of communal, improvised music, and you’ll feel addicted to creativity and excited to keep plugging away at that practice.
Active Listening. This one is a concrete practice strategy. You are what you eat, so feed your ears great music! While it’s wonderful to have quality music playing while you cook dinner or float in and out of rooms doing chores, that is most likely very passive listening. Passive listening is cool! But active listening brings growth. So what does it mean? In simplest terms, it just means paying attention. No distractions; the music if your focus. I recommend listening through the layers. As a singer, the first thing I usually hear is the voice. So I might listen to the song once through listening to the voice (if there is one, obviously). I might try to notice the characteristics of the singer’s voice. Is she relaxed or intense? Is her voice controlled or wild? Is her phrasing part of the groove or does it float over the band? You don’t have to know the technical terms for what you’re thinking—if your analysis of the vocal was “it made me think orange”, that’s great. So then I might listen to the song again, but listen to the instruments. First, I might just try to notice what instruments are playing. Is that electric or upright bass? Is piano taking the lead, or guitar? Can I lock into whatever rhythm the guitar is playing and sing it back? Or can I tune into a single drum and copy the rhythm it’s playing? Do any instruments ever drop out or get added in? Listen as many times as you can stand it—at least 3 to start.
You can go a couple ways with this strategy. You can go for breadth or depth. Breadth would mean doing this for a broad variety of recordings. Let’s say I’m new to jazz and using my active listening practice. I’m going to grab the notebook or binder where I make note of my practice sessions. I’ll pick a song—I’m currently listening to Conception by George Shearing. I’ll listen once, write down what I’m noticing, and repeat several times. For tomorrow’s active listening, maybe I listen to (and make notes on) Oscar Pettiford’s Tricotism. The next day I might move on to Green Dolphin Street and after that I might just pick a random tune I find in the Real Book or ask for recommendations from players I look up to. In this ‘breadth’ listening practice, I’m not really learning any of these tunes, but I am feeding my ears patterns that will absolutely stick with me if I am truly listening actively. Then, of course, I can return to the tunes that tickle my brain and beg to be learned.
The ‘depth’ variety would mean sticking with one song, or a few songs, for a longer period of time. Maybe a set time like a week or a month, or maybe just ‘until I’ve learned it’. So going back to Conception—my hope is to learn this tune. So I would probably do my active listening for a couple days, then start trying to transcribe the melody (I would probably literally write it out but aural transcription is totally a thing). Maybe eventually I try to transcribe some of the bass line, and at this point I’m halfway to charting it out by ear. I wouldn’t say I know the song until I can sing the melody without the recording playing. That might take a heck of a long time, depending on how hard the tune is, but I also know that learning/transcribing tunes is a muscle that grows with each use, and the more I do this, the quicker it’ll go in the future!
Side note: You don’t have to jump into the deep end, whatever the deep end is for you. I find that big band music (try Ellington or Basie) and salsa (try Celia Cruz) are melodic encyclopedias and make for GREAT active listening without being too ‘out there’ harmonically. Or Motown! Listen to everything Marvin Gaye ever did!
BYOH - Build Your Own History. If you’re like me and didn’t grow up listening to jazz or study jazz specifically in college, you might feel overwhelmed by how much history everyone seems to know. Same! Let’s eat this elephant one bite at a time (that’s a real saying, not a personal appetite for exotic game). Grab that practice journal, or create a running Google/Word doc. Whatever tune you’re working on, just google it. Who composed it? Who first recorded it? When? Listen to the first recording. What was going on in the world and in jazz the year that tune was composed? I’ll go back to my Conception example.
Conception was published in 1949, written by George Shearing. Some people believe Bud Powell actually composed most or all of the song, and Shearing just heard and adapted it; others disagree. Miles Davis notably rearranged the tune in 1950 and this arrangement was a favorite for Chet Baker.
Hey, in those 4 minutes of googling, I identified at least 4 important figures in jazz (George Shearing, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, Chet Baker). I learned that they were all around at the same time—I can add 1949-50 as an anchor point in my mental timeline or my google doc. I can make note of what instrument each of those folks played (piano, piano, trumpet, trumpet, respectively). I know I love Chet Baker’s vocal recordings, so if I have time, maybe I just read a little about Chet Baker and get a sense of his general timeline and career overview and put that in my running doc. In just a few minutes a day, I can start to build my own understanding of jazz history without needing to conquer the whole thing at once.
Books
The War of Art - Steven Pressfield. I just started reading this, so I can’t give you a full review, but it’s been recommended to me about a thousand times so I’m guessing it’s good.
The Artist’s Way - Julia Cameron. I have read this book several times, and almost every time I’ve gone through the book (because it’s a workbook—you cannot passively read this; you do the practices described within) it’s changed my life. I have also never successfully completed the book! So if the idea of finishing it is intimidating, just know you might experience some benefits even if you ‘fail’ at finishing the program.
Effortless Mastery - Kenny Werner. I have never read this book but I’ve heard quotes and ideas from it that sound exciting and freeing, and once again, it’s been recommended about a thousand times so I have confidence there’s some good info there! This one, I believe, deals more specifically with improvisation, so it may be a great choice for folks exploring improv.
Apps and Technology
iReal Pro. This is an app lots of jazz musicians use at a jam or on a gig if they don’t know a tune well or have to change keys for a vocalist and don’t know the tune well. You can download hundreds of user-generated chord charts for popular songs. It’s an incredible resource, and notoriously ‘kind of right’. It’s a great starting place for tons of songs, and if you care about a song it’s really important to learn it beyond whatever iReal says the changes are. BUT it’s not just useful in performance!! This is an incredible practice tool. Vocalist friends, we can pick a song in iReal, try out different keys, different tempos, different feels (try it as a medium swing, or as a samba, or something called ‘doo doo cats’ which I’ll never get over). You can also create your own chord charts, so if you transcribe a song by ear and find that the chords are different than what iReal has, great! You can make your own. You can also do this for originals. Caveat—iReal Pro only allows for chord changes, not melodies, and melodies are…. pretty important. iReal charts are a great starting point, but we should always aim to get melodies written out if we’re asking other musicians to play the song. On that note…
MuseScore. MuseScore is a notation software like Finale (RIP) and Sibelius, but worse. But free. So it’s what I use. It’s honestly an incredible resource and I rarely run into things that MuseScore isn’t able to do. It’s not the most professional notation software, but it is the most accessible and I’ve used it as a professional for years and it’s going great. Highly recommend. There are tons of online tutorials for how to use it.
Metronome. Old faithful. Time is a pretty important component of music, and the metronome exposes all. There are so many ways to practice with a metronome, and that could be its own blog post or instructional video. Check out YouTube—’how to practice with a metronome’ for some ideas.
Drumgenius. This app just has hundreds of drum loops played by real drummers. It’s an Encyclopedia of drum patterns that you can use to practice or you can use to look up what to call a certain groove (instead of just saying ‘let’s do this tune Latin’ on the bandstand).
SpectrumView. This is an app that shows you the spectrum of frequencies and which overtones light up depending on how you produce sound. I think any visual representation of the voice is incredibly useful, even when you’re not totally sure what you’re looking at. This is definitely nerdy and in the weeds, but I like being able to see what a note that feels great looks like, versus a note that feels pinched or ‘off’ in some way I can’t describe.
YouTube. Did you know you can learn almost anything? For mostly free? Just don’t get sucked into the rabbit hole of clickbait chess videos like I do.
My brain hurts so that’s all for now, but I’ll gladly add to this as folks share questions and recommendations!