I have been expanding my music listening by checking out a handful of jazz records every couple weeks from the local library. I recently picked up a live recording of Thelonious Monk. Catchy song titles such as: “Crepuscule with Nellie,” “Epistrophy,” “Green Chimney’s,” and “Shuffle Boil” are enough to grab my attention not to mention the number of jazz musicians who cite Monk as one of their greatest inspirations. This was enough for me to search out a biography of the great piano player.

Within the first 50 pages I discovered this was a musician whom no one could understand. He suffered from intense depression and was very quiet and reserved. He desperately wanted people to like his compositions but they were too obtuse and unpredictable for the audiences of the 1940′s and ’50′s

A quick read on the life and career of the great Miles Davis lead’s inevitably to the 1970′s where he dropped his musical values and chose a path of popular music. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with popular music, but Miles was a jazz musician. He looked at the world through the jazz filter. His fear of losing relevance under the shadow of arena rock acts caused him to turn and swim with the current instead of forging ahead in his area of great strength.

Hindsight is 20/20. Time has shown what these two musicians contributed to society through their decisions and music. Monk became a hero and Miles a fallen star.

When young musicians come to me looking for who they should aspire to be like or asking me to validate their musical role models, I feel compelled to share the darker side of the lives of their heros so they understand that being highly skilled and talented does not make your life balanced, happy, and perfect. Being great at playing an instrument is hard work—the better you get, the greater your failures become. It takes a huge amount of perseverance to continue upward. Sometimes you feel like giving up. Sometimes you are so driven to get to the next level that you miss out on things around you.

Remember: Music is fun, and Music is to share. Reward and risk. You have fun playing music and some listeners will like it and some won’t. Let’s learn from the great musicians we listen to and remember that the feelings of inferiority, loneliness, and uncertainty are not ours alone. Monk and Miles dealt with it too.

Conversations at my dinner table frequently go like this: “Eat your beans please.” “I don’t like it dad.” “I understand but you need to eat your beans please.” “But I don’t like it dad.” “You need to eat your beans.” On and on it can go. Conversations in jazz tunes run in similar fashion, back and forth between soloist and band like a child with his mom and dad.

Listen to the world around you. What do you hear? A gentle murmur of conversation in the coffee shop punctuated occasionally by laughter. The loud lady in the corner telling stories of her coworkers sometimes rising to the surface, sometimes sinking into the murmur. The thunk of the espresso group head being emptied for the next shot by the barista. Maybe you hear the soft rustle of pencils on paper as 30 students furiously compose their final essay of the school year. The rhythmic tap-tap-tap of the teacher’s feet as she paces up and down the rows of desks. All of these things can be imitated in music. These everyday sounds and experiences are what make jazz.

Perhaps the single most memorable moment in the book is Marsalis’ early encounter with trumpet great Dizzy Gillespie. Marsalis’ father was an accomplished musician who once took the teenage Wynton backstage at a Dizzy Gillespie concert. When his father introduced Wynton to the great trumpet player he said, “This is my son, he plays the trumpet.” Wynton recalls the moment vividly when Dizzy hands him his trumpet and says “Play something.” Partly from nervousness, partly from the fact that Dizzy played with a tiny mouthpiece, Wynton couldn’t get a clear note out. Embarrassed, Wynton handed back the horn. Dizzy leans down and says softly in his ear, “Practice motherf-r.” While this is quite the off-color statement, it resonates strongly with the aspiring great musician. It instantly alienates the wannabe and prods the serious musician to work. If you want to play with the greats, you have to know your instrument. Practice, practice, practice.

It takes more than one person to have a conversation so it becomes vital to play with other musicians. I always encourage my students to find people to play with. The easiest medium to do this with is the blues: there are few “wrong” notes and it is natural to hear the “conversation” of the music.

Marsalis devotes a chapter of the book to reviewing individual musicians and their personal style. It is so enlightening to see how the uniqueness of each musician’s style is often a response to the greatest weakness he has to deal with. Miles Davis had a soft embouchure and struggled playing “fast and fiery” like his bebop inspiration Dizzy Gillespie. His natural tone was “rich with emotion, so it made more sense for him to play sustained notes and leave silences between phrases.” This last year I have spent a lot of time listening to Kind of Blue, Miles Davis’ most influential recording. I quickly found that I could hear his trumpet voice in so many other recordings because I learned to hear what made his tone unique. Like a child comes to recognize his mother’s voice or a mother can pick out the cry of  her baby even among the din of a room full of crying children, listening to music can help you recognize and “know” the greats who came before us.

Perhaps most resonant is the theme throughout the book of sharing. A musician who does not share his gift with others, does not pass on the legacy and language will not be remembered long nor will he find and maintain musical friendship and camaraderie very long. Marsalis himself maintains a rigorous performing schedule in both classical and jazz music. He is also a first-rate educator holding the position of artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

“The most extraordinary dimension of Wynton is not his accomplishments, but his character. Whether waiting in a empty parking lot for an hour after a concert to give an aspiring musician advice, or for a single student to return from home with his horn for a trumpet lesson, or personally funding scholarships for students, Wynton donates his time and talent to make a difference in the lives of individuals and to help raise money for charitable organizations.” http://www.wyntonmarsalis.org/biography/

A quick arrangement overview gives us this layout:

Intro

Verse 1

Bridge (Instrumental)

Verse 2

Break

Bridge

Verse tag

The intro and verses contain alternating 3/4 and 5/4 bars which the casual listener might miss thinking that since there are 8 counts for each chord then the song is simply in 4/4 time with a strange beat pattern. As if this were not challenging enough to a young drummer, at the end of each verse the last bar is cut short by one beat leading us to the bridge in 4/4 time. After the first verse the bridge makes an instrumental appearance foreshadowing the longer version to come. The last measure of the bridge has an extra beat taking us back to the verse pattern of 3 and 5. When the bridge comes around “for real” after verse 2 it is after a 9-count pause. Still hanging on? The bridge ends with the same extra beat returning us once again to the 3 and 5 pattern. The ending is a nice rock-n-roll cliffhanger almost careening into another bridge with the timing but leaving us hanging on the V chord.

When starting a big project song such as this it is best for the young drummer to begin with the overview of arrangement and counting. This ensures that while executing the technical challenges he/she holds onto the primary purpose of a drummer: to hold the groove and time of the song together. I ask my students to do a number of exercises depending on their instrument, skill level, and experience. The first is counting out loud while listening to a recording of the song we are working on. Once we establish time signature we count, and count, and count some more. Some of my guitar and keyboard students create charts outlining chords and arrangements to help commit the song to memory.

My drummers learn to count not just time signatures but larger “passes” to establish fill patterns and sections. This might look something like this: verse groove for 4 bars, fill to next 4 bars, fill to chorus, chorus for 8 bars, fill to intro, etc. Learning that most popular songs are built in sections of 4 and 8 bars helps drummers recognize instinctively where their fills should land.

While this may go against the grain for some teachers, I am a firm believer in finding ways to make all aspects of music more accessible to my students. Sometimes it is easier to count eighth-note groups for syncopated passages. Sometimes it is easier to count the number of beats that a chord covers rather than the simple underlying time signature. However you find yourself counting, count evenly and steadily. Turn on the metronome. I can’t emphasize that enough–Metronome, metronome, metronome. Use it for practice, use it live in your headphones, just use it.

Whether you take on “The New Year” or another project, remember to count, own your parts, and take some risks. You might find yourself creating the next great groove.