Masterclass by Branford Marsalis

[Music] when I was really starting to understand what I needed to do to play jazz I had an argument with a couple of saxophone player friends about how to approach learning how to solo and learn how to play jazz Wayne Shorter was playing in Los Angeles and we all went to the show and after the show he was very accommodating and Wayne Shorter tends to speak and he speaks in English the words cryptic you know speaks in paradoxes and circles and crazy so the guy said we're weighing if you had one piece of advice for us what should we understand about music and Wayne says well you must understand that notes are like people and that you have to go up the steps and greet every one of them and nobody knew what that meant so the guy comes to him with the with it with a chart and it's just like see right here in this chart when you played this in Wayne says man I don't want to I don't want to see that man what do you what are you doing you just need to learn how to walk up the steps and greet each note so I had a recording I said well let me play this solo for you when one away and souls when he's playing with miles playing a Stella by starlight and he said now listen to the solo and then he says I'll go up the steps you know when he played something that ascended he says now you go down the steps and he plays something that descended now I know goddess okay and when we finished listening to the solo the guys kept asking him technical questions and he says look and he says like rhythm changes you guys know rhythm changes right and he says this is how Lester did it and he played some Lester young phrases and then he said this is how bird did it and he played birds phrases this is how train did it and he played like train he says now this is how Wayne does it and any play it is in any left and but but but I got it you know I got it well what I got out of it was that I had to go and learn some Lester Young and some Charlie Parker and some Coltrane and really understand these solos because Wayne was like my all-time great hero and I thought I knew a lot about his music but it was clear to me if if you know if I didn't go through the process that Wayne went through so when I started learning all these other solos then I started to understand Wayne's playing a lot better [Music] you [Music] I did practice unsound but it's it's more about I would learn solos from guys who had big sounds so you know Coleman Hawkins or Ben Webster try to emulate those sounds Sonny Rollins and then I had one set up and I say well this isn't working so and that go to a larger setup try to try different Reed's try to see if I could get something to approximate that sound I didn't really do sound exercises it's more about using music to change the sound that you have in your head because ultimately you're going to sound the way that you hear yourself no matter how many times you change your mouthpiece so if you were used to have a brighter sound so I started listening to musicians who didn't have that and then I was able to change how I hear the sound in my head because that's really what it comes down to you change your mouthpiece in a week you sound just like the oh that's the same person you can change anything it won't matter it doesn't matter that's not where it comes from it's not the gear it's not the gear you can you're going to go right back to what it is you do you because your brain will find a way to use physical alterations to create that sound so to me you have that you have to change the way that you hear and I think the best way to do that is with recordings [Music] there's a difference between playing an instrument and playing music those are two separate things and and you they need to be separated because you have technical issues on an instrument that you have to overcome but you have to get away from the idea that the technical issues is actually what the music is about because it's not the music's not about that so I listen to a lot of musicians who are great at it and I just try to emulate them or be inspired by them and as I got older I started to understand you know I read things you know there's a book called meet the composer that I read that was really great they were interviewing classical composers from from 1950 1940 1947 actually so darius mio was in there and Stravinsky was in there and I mean that they're pretty unified and they talked like music is about people it's it's our interpretation of their lives and the harmony and all those things are good and important and necessary but that's not the music the music is how do people feel when they hear the music what do they walk away with because when you when you start thinking about your career and realizing that and any concert that you do 95% of the audience doesn't play an instrument and when you really understand that it changes your perception about what it is you're doing so then when we start talking in the band that's I mean what are these songs about songs have to be about something other than some chord changes it has to be about a human condition songs have to be about happiness romantic songs you have to be really romantic sad songs have to be really really sad you know and you and you and then you notice I was about 37 years old when somebody said you played that ballot tonight and it made me cry [Music] Darrius me Oh the French composer he said he said any good student of music can develop a brilliant technique you know they all do it everybody's competent in that Rick he says but it just doesn't mean anything he's just the most important thing that a composer can do and our time is write a song that has a melody that so strikes a listener that it's almost like they feel they have to put it in their pocket and they walk around whistling it all day that's the power of what we do so we have all of this information and we have all this stuff but then we have to distill all of this stuff to this essence we're regular people can say whoa you know and that's what what kind of blue did and that's what Coltrane did with my favorite things and that's you would with a Brubeck did on take five is you have all this information you have all this stuff and you just condense it and you distilled it to a simple idea and it doesn't mean that every song has to be like that but something has to be like that and when concerts are over people will come out and say man I really love the third song and they mean it they might think the rest of it was but you gave them one thing that they can hold on to and then the music students will say man I love the fourth song because it was complicated it moved all over the place so you have this situation where you have different parts of the audience reacting to different things at different times and and I think that that's that's that's a successful formula for playing music and having people pay money because as much as they're supposed to be hearing you they're also seeing you it's just as a reality and if you in you need to start thinking you know in those terms like people are paying money to see this crap what are we gonna give them and and that that's when around 1990 was when I started thinking it and it took a long time after that mostly because I if I hadn't gone on that television show I might have got there five years sooner but I did this television show and then when we left the show it was like starting all over again oh where were we oh yeah learning how to play ballets right yeah second one of those things [Music] to me and a combo jazz is a conversation and like you and I are talking right now I mean you didn't go home and extract some sentences from a piece you like and tell them to me now you asked me a question I haven't answered I asked you a question you have an answer and that's what music is to me we should be having a conversation and the conversation should be as unprepared as possible you know so it's like listening to Sonny Rollins that's why he's the greatest improviser in the history of jazz because when you listen to him it's like he learned all these he learned all of the technical stuff the patterns and the scales and all of that and then he learned 10,000 songs that are so ridiculous you hear him play songs at a soul far removed from what jazz is circus songs classical pieces and they just come out in his solos at times and you say what the hell is that and it might be years before I figure out what the song is in what it is is that he gray he has so much information in his head that he can talk about anything and the song can start and he just starts playing and it goes in directions where you don't anticipate where as with other guys they have this conversation and it's an amazing conversation but they tend to repeat the conversation a lot and we tend to call repetition consistency that guy's really consistent when all it is is it's the same over and over again it's a regurgitation that's what it is it's not improvisation improvisation is supposed to be improvised not repeated over and over and over again in every song and 12 different keys now there guys in it and that's the only way they can approach it and you say okay well great it's just not what I want to do you know III don't think that everybody in the world should embrace my philosophy but my philosophy works for me and I wanted to when I'm on stage playing I want to I wanted to be as fresh I wanted to be I want I want to surprise the guys in the band too you know here's something Oh where'd you get that from I ain't it's trust I don't know just you know you learn all this music and it's it's in there and then it comes out whenever it feels like and sometimes it surprises you I like that method it works for me yes yeah Harvey Patel he's a saxophone player he teaches out at the University of Texas he looked at me play and he says you're never gonna play the saxophone well that way know what he actually said was he watched me play and he goes I think you're probably one of the most amazing saxophone players I've ever heard I said really he says yeah I'm amazed that you can get any sound at all out of that thing with all the bad things you have going on and I said cool that's why I pay you come on you know and he starts horn has to be higher he says it can never be high enough every time you think is high high get some more when you play the saxophone low like the air coming through the mouthpiece should be coming through this way when the horn is low it comes in this way so what you notice is that as you start going down to the lower parts of the instrument it's more difficult to get the notes out because you're basically the English is shunting you're shunting the air column which makes more overtones increase so as you start playing low they tend to go up an octave so the solution is to start sub toning on the low notes dropping your jar real low to get the sound out so it goes [Music] when you start raising and then soft on is optional it's a sound effect not a requirement to get the note out and you listen all those old jazz records and the guys play real low and they can't play in the lower register but if you see pictures of Charlie Parker point is high he picks his a Coltrane one is high [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] you you

Channel: Friso Heidinga

Views: 132,759

Rating: 4.9230771 out of 5

Keywords: Branford Marsalis, jazz, saxophone, amsterdam winds, masterclass, tenor saxophone, tenor, music, branford, marsalis, amsterdam, amsterdamwinds, franz von chossy, joost patocka, sean frasciani, master class, workshop, saxophone shop

Id: z3sFBk3ZU_o

Length: 18min 41sec (1121 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 21 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/SevilDrib]

Thank you

[u/ShitImBadAtThis]

I was a part of one of his clinics awhile back, and he's a really great guy. Amazing performance. One of the most underrated saxophonists out there, imo

[u/Spamakin]

The point about him listening and transcribing soloists who he wants to sound like is more reinforcement of how important listening is to develop jazz sounds.