Flexibility

I've been thinking a lot about ways to streamline my practice. This is something I think is fundamental in learning to play an instrument - at least after a certain point, there is so much to study and master, and only a certain number of days to do it in. A typical list of requirements for a musician might be the following:

1) Learn scales thoroughly
2) Learn all the chords
3) Learn to sightread
4) Learn to play in time, and develop a sense of groove
5) Develop the ability to play what you hear and hear music in detail (improvisation & transcription)

And so on. Look familiar? I think we all work on these 5 points to some extent. In our practice we tend to break down these goals into exercises and grind them over and over. For example - we might break down 1) into the following:

- Learn C Major scale
- Learn C Minor Harmonic scale
- Learn C Melodic Minor scale

And so on.

For a beginner this is a reasonable approach. However, we get to a certain point in our learning where the possibilities explode -can we play C major in 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 7th chords, triads, quartals, up to the 7th down to the 3rd, with added notes and so on.

At this point, I think it's important to develop a flexibility mindset. Rather than grind through the same patterns every day, we need to learn the ability to randomly access different patterns and ideas at tempo. The good news is that it is possible to develop this ability just as much as it is possible to learn one scale by repeating it.

I was reminded of this when Barry Harris came to town last week. Attending his Improvisation class is always a challenge, especially if you haven't been to one for a few years. It's very rapid fire - Barry shows students how to put together idiomatic bebop lines from scalic material - he might say:

- Play the Bb major to the 5th
- Play the Bb major to the 5th up and down
- Play it up to the seventh and down to the third
- Start on the offbeat, go from 7 to 1 and add in a note between
- Play 1 3 5 7
- Play it in thirds going up
- Add a half step before each note in each third

It's all very fast, and not repeated. What Barry is teaching (I think) is the ability to not only master scales but the ability to master the process of accessing scalic material. This reminds me of some of the techniques used by Warne Marsh - the material is a bit different in some ways, but the idea is the same. The aim is to develop flexibility rather than trying to learn 'everything' one item at a time.

The aim is to move progressively towards more flexibility, so you can play things you haven't practiced before quickly and accurately.

By practicing the process you don't need to simply practice the material.

I'll give you some more examples. Someone asks you to improvise on a difficult set of changes. What's the best preparation you could do for having to solo on some strange set of chords in a sight reading situation?

1. Practice one set of changes a week?
2. Practice a different set of random triads or a different (unusual) progression every day for 5 minutes?

I'd say the latter! One is deep learning - nothing wrong with it - great if you want to learn a tune really thoroughly, but the flexibility training in the second example will help you more in this situation.

Another example might be, you want to be able to play on a bandstand and busk tunes that you half know. What's your strategy?

1. Aim to learn every tune
2. Develop the ability to recognise chord progressions and key changes by ear, and busk melodies with needing a chart.

In the second case it might be a more on practicing busking lots of tunes on a very basic level rather than focussing on learning one tune really well. Again, it's not wrong to really get inside one thing, but the flexibility training is important too.

It's something that I've noticed about experienced musicians - partly it comes from playing a lot of gigs, but you can practice it too! It might be hard at first, but slowly you'll find you can bend in all sorts of ways....