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Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
11–20 of 70 posts
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#12I 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 fir…
Any idea what “all reet” means?
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#13“Get up and walk around in circles for a few bars.”
Hahah, love it. A couple examples for anyone curious about this:
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#14I 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 fir…
Any idea what “all reet” means?
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".
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#15“Make the drummer sound good”
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.
I wish I could be even a smidgen as cool as he was.
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#16Oh 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.
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#17I 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 fir…
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
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#18I 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 fir…
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.
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#19“Make the drummer sound good”
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.
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.
Re: Thelonious Monk’s Tips for Musicians (1960)
#20"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?