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Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
31–40 of 70 posts
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#32Oh 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 m…
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)
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#33Oh 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 m…
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)
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.
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#34Oh 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 m…
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 ahe…
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
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#35Oh 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 m…
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.
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#36Oh 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 m…
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.
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#37Oh 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 m…
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 lik…
Great comment, I agree with pretty much everything you said. I'm definitely going to steal the "Friday recital" idea.
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#38I 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…
Even dubstep surprisingly. Wobbly, groovy bass sounds (like a wheezy trumpet)
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#39Oh 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 m…
> 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.
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#40Oh 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 m…
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 h…
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.