[HN Gopher] Thelonious Monk's Tips for Musicians (1960)
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       Thelonious Monk's Tips for Musicians (1960)
        
       Author : jynxxx
       Score  : 145 points
       Date   : 2022-12-22 06:33 UTC (16 hours ago)
        
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       | Yhippa wrote:
       | Ooh, some good ones in there even for us concert band folks:
       | 
       | > Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.
       | 
       | I usually just tap my toes quietly within my shoe.
       | 
       | > Don't play the piano part, I am playing that. Don't listen to
       | me, I am supposed to be accompanying you!
       | 
       | Sub piano for whatever solo or soli instruments have the
       | spotlight.
       | 
       | > What you don't play can be more important than what you do
       | play.
       | 
       | > A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends
       | on your imagination.
       | 
       | > Those pieces were written so as to have something to play & to
       | get cats interested enough to come to rehearsal!
       | 
       | I love seeing articles like this.
        
         | UIUC_06 wrote:
         | > I usually just tap my toes quietly within my shoe
         | 
         | Right. The conductor will hate seeing you tap your feet. So
         | just don't let them see.
        
           | dwringer wrote:
           | I don't think I ever met a conductor who would openly
           | disapprove of foot tapping unless it were loud or _maybe_
           | someone sat on the very end directly in front of the audience
           | and did it in a very distracting way. The alternative of
           | musicians keeping poor time would be far worse.
        
             | to1y wrote:
             | it's considered very bad form, especially in orchestra's ,
             | _especially_ by the conductor because it means 1. you're
             | not following them 2. it's very distracting for the
             | audience/other members of the band 3. it's a 'beginner'
             | tendency, shows lack of self-control.
        
               | dwringer wrote:
               | I've played in a few orchestras in my life and never
               | heard that opinion (other than the part I previously
               | mentioned, when it becomes a distraction to the
               | audience), but I suppose some conductors may feel
               | differently.
        
         | hammock wrote:
         | >Don't listen to me, I am supposed to be accompanying you!
         | 
         | As a conductor and director in my experience this is the
         | hardest one for many musicians to learn, and it even goes a bit
         | against the "keep the time is #1" rule.
         | 
         | As accompaniment, harmony, etc you need to understand who the
         | lead is at any given moment and follow it. If you just keep the
         | time robotically and don't pay any attention you will destroy
         | any possible magic. If you are homophonic harmony but you are
         | out of time with the lead, it won't be tight and may be bad
         | (unless a loosely hinged style is what you want). The lead may
         | be taking micro beats of time here and there with the line and
         | you'll want to follow this.
         | 
         | Even this has nuance though. Sometimes the lead might be taking
         | time (or rushing time) and actually expect you to be keeping
         | time, to stay in the pocket, to give him a landing zone to
         | anchor back to once he's decided he wants to come back in time
         | on a cadence or a downbeat or something. And you need to know
         | that too, as the lead goes in and out of the pocket what is his
         | intention there?
         | 
         | In this way it's beautiful how the really best music doesn't
         | require only experienced musicians, or even musicians
         | experienced with each other (understand each others styles,
         | tastes and intentions) but also requires a level of trust
         | between them to be able to leverage those experiences in a
         | special way. And that could be generalized to other areas of
         | work and life
        
       | asplake wrote:
       | "Make the drummer sound good"
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | which makes perfect sense to anyone who believes a band is
         | there primarily for the benefit of those dancing to its music.
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk suggests Monk
         | belonged to this confession: _... during performances: while
         | other musicians continued playing, Monk would stop, stand up,
         | and dance for a few moments before returning to the piano._
        
           | SpiralLibrarium wrote:
           | I wish I could be even a smidgen as cool as he was.
        
           | scarecrowbob wrote:
           | When I play pedal steel in my country band, I do a lot of
           | laying out and dancing.
           | 
           | It feels good, and I wish more folks felt free to layout for
           | long sections of most songs.
        
       | quacked wrote:
       | Oh yeah, Monk is 100% right. Keeping time is far more important
       | than both intonation and feel. (And intonation is more important
       | than feel.)
       | 
       | Young music students in the US are usually taught in a pre-
       | conservatory style (analogous to how young students are taught in
       | a pre-academic style). This leads to the mental prioritization of
       | playing the correct notes, giving recitals once or twice per
       | season, and following the movements of the ensemble leader. These
       | are all terrible habits if you want a society where lots of
       | people can play songs together and don't take music too
       | seriously.
       | 
       | If you've ever been to a kid's recital and all the pieces sound
       | awful, it's not because they can't play their instruments, it's
       | because their teachers taught them the mental habit of stopping
       | when they made a mistake, and then assigned them pieces at the
       | upper limit of their competence. You must play through mistakes
       | like they're not there, keep the rhythm with your foot and the
       | melody line in your head. Also don't play the hardest stuff you
       | just learned in recitals, play stuff you can do with your eyes
       | closed while holding a conversation.
       | 
       | If you're a hobbyist musician, stop focusing on scales, theory,
       | improvising, and correcting miniscule mistakes and start focusing
       | on keeping perfect time and memorizing a whole shitload of songs.
       | If you look up "Victor Wooten Music Lesson" on YouTube and
       | basically watch every single thing he has to say you'll make more
       | progress on your sound in one year than you did in the previous
       | ten.
       | 
       | Music is meant to be played together, and to play together you
       | need to keep time.
        
         | analog31 wrote:
         | My kids both went through music lessons, and I believe a lot of
         | this "culture" is brought by hyper competitive parents. It's
         | not inherent to the process. The Suzuki method (which is the
         | dominant variant in the US today) starts kids playing by ear,
         | and involves them in as much group playing as possible. You
         | can't get in the habit of stopping, if nobody else stops.
         | 
         | Imposed on top of this is a culture of treating it like a
         | contest. This is an easy trap to fall into, because the
         | repertoire is organized by difficulty. But I quickly noticed
         | that the most laid back parents were the ones who were
         | performing musicians themselves. I'm a performing jazz musician
         | so my kids have heard me play plenty of clams on the bandstand
         | without stopping. ;-)
         | 
         | The _parents_ have to get out of the habit of stopping their
         | kids when they make a mistake. I read a comment from a famous
         | teacher, that he doesn 't stop his students when they make
         | mistakes, because it kills their flow. Unless the mistake is
         | repetitive. Isolated mistakes are not teachable, repetitive
         | ones are.
         | 
         | My daughter's teacher had a really nice thing, an open recital
         | at his house every Friday evening. Because it was so frequent,
         | kids could just show up and play whatever they were working on.
         | 
         | There are alternatives to traditional classical teaching. In
         | addition to their classical lessons, my family has gotten into
         | fiddling. That's a totally different vibe. We went to a fiddle
         | jam, and recognized one of the fiddlers from the previous
         | night's symphony concert.
         | 
         | Now for my own opinionated opinions, not necessarily contrary
         | to yours: 1) At least in classical and jazz, a player has to
         | get over the hump and learn to play in tune at some point. In
         | any event, intonation problems typically reveal technique
         | problems. 2) "Feel" is not orthogonal to technique. Wherever
         | the note belongs, your brain and body working together have to
         | put it there. And "feel" is anything but absent from classical
         | music -- you just have to listen harder for it because it's
         | more subtle. You can hear it when it's too rigid.
        
           | quacked wrote:
           | Great comment, I agree with pretty much everything you said.
           | I'm definitely going to steal the "Friday recital" idea.
        
         | kwyjibo1230 wrote:
         | Cannot +1 this enough. I learned so much more when I took
         | lessons from an improvisational jazz bass teacher who focused
         | on
         | 
         | (1) Learning as many songs and standards as is reasonable each
         | week
         | 
         | (2) Focusing on improvising along to my teacher playing the
         | melody on piano. He wouldn't stop unless I asked, so I needed
         | to keep time with him. If I made a mistake, and lost my place,
         | he would keep playing and I'd listen to where he was and jump
         | back in when I found it again
        
           | mtalantikite wrote:
           | I've also been studying with a jazz bass player (I'm on
           | piano) and from the beginning he always emphasized just
           | getting back into the tune. He never interrupts me.
           | 
           | The other big one is singing the lyrics to every song I'm
           | learning, which I really didn't like at first. He told me the
           | story of Ahmad Jamal recalling a time playing with the sax
           | player Ben Webster when Ben just stopped playing a tune:
           | "Why'd you stop Ben?" "I forgot the lyrics!".
        
         | marconey wrote:
         | _You must play through mistakes like they 're not there, keep
         | the rhythm with your foot and the melody line in your head.
         | Also don't play the hardest stuff you just learned in recitals,
         | play stuff you can do with your eyes closed while holding a
         | conversation._
         | 
         | Brilliant life advice in general, keep your head in the game,
         | carry on and maintain the flow.
        
         | aidenn0 wrote:
         | My son is learning the piano and I cannot seem to teach him
         | rhythm. Aside from the habit of stopping at every error (which
         | bugs me to no end), he can hear a song once or twice and pick
         | out the correct notes, but rhythm is still a mystery to him.
         | 
         | I learned rhythm so long ago (it was a core part of my
         | elementary school music class before I ever started learning an
         | instrument on my own) that I have no clue how to help him.
        
           | kashunstva wrote:
           | Metronome diet.
           | 
           | I play professionally and still use the metronome every
           | single day. I tell students if I can, they can too. Some may
           | see it as a crutch that prevents one from developing an
           | internal pulse. I disagree; but maybe it's a fake it 'til you
           | make it circumstance.
           | 
           | If you set the metronome to accent the downbeat, it is
           | difficult to allow yourself the luxury of stopping and
           | restarting on errors.
           | 
           | The most frequent issue though is starting the learning
           | process faster than you can consciously process the music.
           | When a student asks me about the correct tempo, my answer is
           | always the same: it's the tempo of perfection. If you play a
           | piece no faster than you can play it perfectly, most things
           | take care of themselves.
        
             | mtalantikite wrote:
             | Also I'd have them try setting the metronome to half speed
             | so it counts the 2 and the 4. It forces you to internally
             | feel the downbeat. Plus it's nice to switch things up
             | during your practice session.
        
               | aidenn0 wrote:
               | double speed?
        
             | quacked wrote:
             | > it's the tempo of perfection
             | 
             | I believed in this as well for many years, but I've taken
             | some lessons with famous bluegrass guitarists and all three
             | of them said that you can't really play _fast_ (which in
             | bluegrass is  "blistering") unless your body has a feeling
             | for what it's like to be moving quickly at speed without
             | tensing up. All three recommended occasionally taking a
             | swing a tempo that was too fast just to get the feel there.
             | 
             | I've ended up on the following practicing diet, all to
             | metronome:
             | 
             | CYCLE THROUGH:
             | 
             | - 1 rep Slow, No Mistakes (you can think really
             | deliberately about what comes next)
             | 
             | - 1 rep Medium, 1 Mistake Max (you're using mostly muscle
             | memory)
             | 
             | - 1 rep Fast, 3-5 Mistakes Max (focusing on how your body
             | feels moving this quickly without tensing)
             | 
             | Then at the end of the practice session I'll take one or
             | two (or admittedly five or six) inappropriately fast just
             | for fun. I've been informed that this is possibly undoing
             | some of the work I did in the practice session, but I'm
             | playing music to enjoy myself, not to get as good as
             | possible as quickly as possible.
        
           | biggieshellz wrote:
           | Not sure how old your son is, but this is what I'm doing with
           | my 5 year old with the same issue. Find some good old-school
           | funk from the late '70s / early '80s with a four-on-the-floor
           | type of drum beat. Zapp, Cameo, Gap Band, or something like
           | that. Get your son to count along "1-2-3-4" with each of the
           | beats and clap his hands on "2" and "4". Once he's reliable
           | at doing that when you don't start it for him, then get him
           | to stomp his foot on "1" and "3", or just "1". Once he's got
           | that down, there are all sorts of things you can do. He can
           | copy rhythms you clap, or if he's good with notation, he can
           | practice writing down a rhythm you clap.
           | 
           | Alternatively, you could always get him drum lessons. This is
           | the meat and potatoes of what a good drum teacher would
           | cover.
        
           | chemeng wrote:
           | If you've done all the standard stuff, clapping out beats,
           | playing drums, etc and it's not clicking. The best tool I've
           | ever found is dance. Try to get him to learn how to move his
           | body in time to music. Doesn't matter what he's doing or what
           | kind of dance. Rhythm is something you feel.
        
           | quacked wrote:
           | It really depends what his temperament is like. If he's like
           | I was when I was young and is really stubborn, resistant to
           | practicing stuff that matters in favor of stuff that's fun,
           | and doesn't listen to your advice, then you'll probably need
           | to find a local talented adult musician that he latches onto
           | and hero-worships to teach him rhythm. I don't know what
           | they'd do so I can't predict anything there.
           | 
           | If he listens to you really well and wants to collaborate:
           | 
           | 1) You can play a lot of rhythm games all the time. Here are
           | a few starter videos with source material to improvise rhythm
           | games off of:
           | 
           | Rhythm Yardstick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sw_trDFJw8
           | 
           | Counting Lesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dALpbzL7xqo
           | 
           | Counting to Seven:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Njy7pMVKJ8Q
           | 
           | As a game for when you're waiting around with him in line or
           | in the car or whatever, I also recommend challenging him to
           | try to keep time differently with different limbs--can he tap
           | quarters with left foot, eighths with left hand, halfs with
           | his right foot, and the melody with his right hand? Can he
           | cycle these responsibilities randomly on his limbs?
           | 
           | You can also play songs and challenge him to identify the
           | time signature and count along to it, or sing the songs and
           | clap along at the same time.
           | 
           | 2) Listen to a lot of music together, and dance/snap/tap/head
           | nod to the music. Really rhythmic music is good in this case
           | --Irish, Bluegrass, Gospel, R&B, and Motown are typically the
           | most exciting and danceable.
           | 
           | 3) Play "call and response" improv games. Sit at the piano
           | with him, play a jazz backing track, and play and sing him
           | simple rhythmic phrases to play back by ear alone. "Quarter
           | Quarter Quarter Dotted-eigth-sixteenth!" etc.
           | 
           | 4) Get him drum lessons.
           | 
           | 5) If he's totally rhythmically deficient, let him have piano
           | as just a fun random hobby and teach him to fight instead ;)
           | 
           | The most important thing to remember is that a good sense of
           | rhythm can take 5-10 years to really develop. It's more
           | important to attack the same thing every day until it's
           | really mastered than it is to press forward for unearned
           | progress.
        
           | holri wrote:
           | Play with him together. Ask him to play a very easy bass line
           | while you are playing / improvising a simple melody, and then
           | change. Do no stop when he stops. Keep the time rigorously
           | and request that from him. My teachers lesson always starts
           | with such a simple improvisation together. It is fun and he
           | will learn a lot.
        
         | kashunstva wrote:
         | > If you've ever been to a kid's recital and all the pieces
         | sound awful, it's not because they can't play their
         | instruments, it's because their teachers taught them the mental
         | habit of stopping when they made a mistake
         | 
         | Professionally I'm a collaborative pianist. My job is
         | accompanying pre-college instrumental students in auditions,
         | recitals, master classes. Trust me, there's a near infinite
         | variety of ways to sound awful, only some of which relate to
         | the mode of practice you describe. (Stopping on mistakes is not
         | an inherently bad thing, but it does require that you
         | consciously reintegrate it, which most students do not do.)
         | 
         | I do agree with the observation that some of these problems
         | relate to playing in isolation. This is true of the vast
         | majority of piano students, most of whom will never in the
         | course of their training play in chamber music settings, or
         | even accompany others. This is a very neglected area of piano
         | pedagogy. It also relates to the great difficulty of most
         | chamber works for piano. There's practically nothing out there
         | for piano trio (piano, vln, cello), quartet, quintet, etc
         | that's not a RCM grade 10++ difficulty. By the time students
         | reach this level, the rhythmic/collaborative horse is out of
         | the barn.
        
           | quacked wrote:
           | > This is a very neglected area of piano pedagogy. It also
           | relates to the great difficulty of most chamber works for
           | piano.
           | 
           | You are SO right. I really wish that modern composers would
           | come up with a bunch of chamber stuff that actually sounds
           | good (i.e. like real baroque/classical/romantic music) but
           | isn't incredibly difficult. I have never once played in a
           | chamber ensemble as a pianist, and I was up to about the
           | level of the easier Beethoven sonatas by the time I "quit"
           | and started focusing on guitar. All of my favorite chamber
           | piano pieces (Mendelssohn piano trios, Schubert Trout
           | Quintet, Brandenburgs, etc.) would require 2-5 years of
           | intense daily practice to even play a movement at speed with
           | mistakes.
           | 
           | > Trust me, there's a near infinite variety of ways to sound
           | awful
           | 
           | Yeah, yeah, okay, fair enough. But I'd bet that the biggest
           | improvement most of them could make right off the bat would
           | be keeping time properly. (Maybe not if you're on a wind
           | instrument and can only honk.)
        
             | aiwv wrote:
             | Yeah, I was astounded by how quickly my singing improved
             | when I started practicing with a metronome. Keeping time
             | seems to me the easiest thing to improve if you focus on it
             | (but that's just my subjective opinion). Once you can keep
             | good time, the rhythm of the song imposes restrictions on
             | you that actually help you figure out how to physically
             | perform the movements demanded by the music and then
             | subsequently groove them so that you can focus on all the
             | other elements of making music.
        
         | biggieshellz wrote:
         | I agree with you on the vast majority of this, but I think it's
         | a bridge too far to put intonation above feel unconditionally.
         | 
         | You are correct that keeping time (what an engineer would call
         | "maintaining a common time base between transmitter and
         | receiver") is necessary to play together with other musicians.
         | But what musicians would call "feel" is what an engineer would
         | call "phase modulation" -- whether a note is ahead of the beat,
         | on the beat, or behind the beat; and by how much. Especially in
         | Black American music (jazz, blues, soul, R&B, and a bunch of
         | pop that's been influenced by those styles), there is a lot of
         | crucial information there beyond what is conveyed in the
         | "gridded" rhythms that are conveyed in Western musical
         | notation. If you are not aware of this, you will still have
         | problems playing with other musicians. From personal
         | experience, it is anxiety-inducing to play with musicians who
         | are ignorant of their beat placement and as a consequence have
         | what an engineer would call "jitter" -- their timekeeping is
         | correct on average, but on each given beat, they might be a
         | little bit ahead or a little bit behind. You can play with a
         | metronome for ages and never realize you're doing this wrong,
         | as you're not consistently rushing or dragging, you're just
         | inconsistent.
        
           | mtalantikite wrote:
           | There's a video up of Barry Harris giving a class around
           | feeling the and that this reminded me of. Not sure why you're
           | being down-voted, because feel is super important to
           | practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uMNrujMdJU
        
           | the_cat_kittles wrote:
           | words of wisdom, no idea who is downvoting this
        
           | quacked wrote:
           | > whether a note is ahead of the beat, on the beat, or behind
           | the beat; and by how much. Especially in Black American music
           | (jazz, blues, soul, R&B, and a bunch of pop that's been
           | influenced by those styles), there is a lot of crucial
           | information there beyond what is conveyed in the "gridded"
           | rhythms that are conveyed in Western musical notation.
           | 
           | I agree wholeheartedly, but I actually lump this in my head
           | under "rhythm" rather than "feel". One of the reasons that
           | black musicians tend to have on-average better <"feel" for
           | you, "rhythm" for me> is that they often have spent a lot of
           | time physically dancing or playing live gigs at church/with
           | their adult friends, and had to learn how to place notes just
           | by hearing other people do it. This is a more effective
           | method for training feel/rhythm than showing someone note
           | durations on a sheet of music and telling them to figure it
           | out themselves.
           | 
           | I think the way to correct the bad "feel" habits you're
           | talking about is to play a lot with talented, on-beat
           | musicians who will correct your playing in rehearsal. They
           | will also assign you parts that you can handle that serve the
           | sound of the band, rather than serving the intentions of the
           | composer per the sheet music. Another issue that young
           | western musicians have is that they most often play with
           | other players at about their skill level, which stops them
           | from being able to quickly learn good habits from better
           | musicians.
        
         | sporkl wrote:
         | As a music student at a conservatory, I believe this is true in
         | that setting as well! (Though I would say feel is more
         | important than intonation, as long as a baseline level of
         | intonation is in place, and of course ideally you have both)
        
           | quacked wrote:
           | It's of course my own interpretation of what's important
           | about music, but I've found that an arrangement sounds better
           | if everyone's in tune and playing robotically than if
           | everyone's out of tune and playing with a lot of passion. You
           | kind of said it with "as long as a baseline level of
           | intonation is in place"; if someone's playing way out of tune
           | but with a lot of feel and passion... you get folk punk and
           | "gifted kid" middle school folk ensembles.
        
         | aiwv wrote:
         | > If you look up "Victor Wooten Music Lesson" on YouTube
         | 
         | I can't recommend Victor Wooten enough. His book "The Music
         | Lesson" is also great.
        
         | UIUC_06 wrote:
         | OMG, yes. Any conductor will tell you they'd much rather you
         | play or sing the wrong note _in time_ than the right note with
         | the wrong rhythm
         | 
         | I was at a recital of adult piano students. "Kill me now" was
         | my reaction when one of the students had that habit of stopping
         | and playing every note "right" before continuing.
        
           | quacked wrote:
           | I grew up with the same habit, and sometimes could actually
           | see the wincing in the audience during recitals. It was so
           | disheartening. Last year I started deliberately playing
           | incorrect notes during practicing, ceasing to play, and
           | getting back on the melody line without losing the beat. It's
           | improved my live playing a great deal.
        
       | wholinator2 wrote:
       | Sadly cannot view the website on mobile. Adblock detected popup
       | is larger than the screen and cannot be dismissed.
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | try
         | https://cdn8.openculture.com/2017/12/17225415/monkgigtips4.j...
         | for most of it.
        
         | Lio wrote:
         | Try turning on the Reader view. At least in Firefox that
         | bypasses the Adblock blocker and shows the text of the article.
        
       | biggieshellz wrote:
       | I think the article takes the "discrimination is important" quote
       | as cryptic and philosophical when it has a very real meaning.
       | Compare it to an interview with the great Dizzy Gillespie:
       | 
       | > Interviewer: What's it take to make a great trumpet player?
       | 
       | > Dizzy Gillespie: (long pause) Well, the first thing is to be a
       | master shit detector. Detect what is valid and what is not.
       | 
       | And to the well-known Feynman quote:
       | 
       | > The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you
       | are the easiest person to fool.
       | 
       | What Monk is getting at is that when you're woodshedding
       | (practicing by yourself) and trying to build up your playing and
       | improvisation, you have to be your own critic a lot of the time.
       | Are you really playing something hip, or are you playing
       | something corny? Are you swinging? Are you making the chord
       | changes? Are your time and intonation as good as you think?
       | Amongst all the other musicians you hear, live and recorded, are
       | you selecting the influences that are really going to build your
       | playing in the way you want? If you're coming up with ideas on
       | your own, are they really fresh and valid, or are they just the
       | first thing that came to your mind?
        
         | idontwantthis wrote:
         | Any idea what "all reet" means?
        
           | yesenadam wrote:
           | In the vout dictionary, 'reet' is defined as 'right, yes,
           | okay'.
           | 
           | https://fromtheothersideofthemirror.com/2009/04/09/the-
           | origi...
           | 
           | Vout is Slim Gaillard's (very silly) language. Hear it spoken
           | here with Bird and Dizzy, uh I mean Daz McSkiven Vout-o-
           | roonee : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvxpIFZGfAE
        
           | biggieshellz wrote:
           | Same thing as "all right" but different, you dig?
           | 
           | See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4deSYYzffM by Cab
           | Calloway
           | 
           | Or the lyrics before the solo break in Zappa's "Zomby Woof".
        
         | throw7 wrote:
         | When I read that, I thought of this quote: "Most people
         | wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass." -
         | Zappa
        
         | kevinwang wrote:
         | Right, and it also connects to what he wrote about not playing
         | all those fancy notes, and about how what one doesn't play is
         | important. An undiscriminating musician plays everything that
         | comes to mind. A discriminating musician chooses what notes to
         | play.
        
       | 2devnull wrote:
       | "Get up and walk around in circles for a few bars."
        
         | chiyc wrote:
         | Hahah, love it. A couple examples for anyone curious about
         | this:
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qweSlfP6BtI
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgPQkMX75pY
        
       | nadow wrote:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBxjacxRshE
       | 
       | good video from adam neely explaining this list
        
       | angst_ridden wrote:
       | There's a quotation, which I think may have been Monk, which I've
       | been trying to track down the exact source. It's along the lines
       | of "All I want is a simple melody, and I gotta go through all the
       | bullshit again."
       | 
       | Ring any bells? I had someone tell me that I was completely high
       | and it was Ellison, not Monk, but I cannot confirm.
        
         | twelvechairs wrote:
         | I dont know for sure but it doesnt sound Monk--like to me. He
         | wasnt the type to complain about music much. He was generally
         | positive, collegiate, etc as here
        
       | scarecrowbob wrote:
       | "Those pieces were written so as to have something to play & to
       | get cats interested enough to come to rehearsal!"
       | 
       | Of all these thoughts, this is the one I have found most
       | applicable, and applicable to many areas of my life:
       | 
       | a lot of what I do as an artist is not for a general audience,
       | but for the people I am working with directly.
       | 
       | When I write songs or come up with a set list, I focus a great
       | deal on what the other musicians will want to do.
       | 
       | The same is the case with my other projects: what kind of
       | projects can I do that are going to attract the kind of talented
       | people with whom I want to work?
        
       | cypherpunks01 wrote:
       | _Don't play everything (or everytime); let some things go by.
       | Some music just imagined.
       | 
       | What you don't play can be more important than what you do play._
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | in visual arts, cf _lost edges_
        
       | diehunde wrote:
       | I love jazz music. I've spent two years learning Jazz tunes and
       | some theory after 20 years focusing on rock and other genres.
       | Something I've realized is that everything was already done in
       | Jazz. Anything you can find in modern music that you think sounds
       | innovative was probably already done in Jazz before the 70s.
       | These guys were really pushing the limits of music. It's sad so
       | many of the greats died so young because of drugs and other
       | health issues.
        
         | mrob wrote:
         | Jazz pushed the limits of what could be done by human
         | performers improvising live on traditional instruments. There's
         | still plenty of novelty left to find if you relax those
         | constraints. Even back then, people were pushing beyond them,
         | e.g. Conlon Nancarrow wrote piano music at the same time as
         | Thelonious Monk, some of it inspired by jazz, but it sounds
         | completely different because he used a machine to play things
         | beyond human ability.
         | 
         | Now we have computers and digital audio workstation software,
         | the possibilities are still greater.
        
         | kupopuffs wrote:
         | Even dubstep surprisingly. Wobbly, groovy bass sounds (like a
         | wheezy trumpet)
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | sailfast wrote:
       | You got to DIG it to dig it, you dig? Absolutely.
        
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