Vin Diesel Teaches Jazz?
I’m still on my Marvel kick and am now watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – an MCU movie starring Chris Pratt with sideburns, a green Zoe Saldana, and a cybernetic Raccoon voiced by Bradley Cooper.
Yup, it’s a weird one!
Oh! I almost forgot about Groot – the walking, talking tree who only knows how to say three words:
“I am Groot.”
Groot is one of the funniest, most lovable characters in the film even though he only has one line, which he repeats again and again.
What’s his secret? How is he able to communicate with the other characters? Why is he such a fan-favorite?
The answer is embedded within one of my favorite music maxims:
How you play is more important than what you play.
Sure, it’s nice to have an extensive vocabulary with which to improvise (or speak), but by no means is it necessary to be an outstanding soloist.
To be totally honest, I used to get hung up while improvising…worrying about sounding repetitive and boring. I’d be about to play something cool and then stop myself short with the thought, “Oh, I’ve played that line before. It’ll sound lame if I play it again.”
First of all, switching off that internal editor is an important step to becoming a better improviser. And second, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley and plenty of other greats repeated themselves all the time, even within the same solo!
The reason they got away with it, and the reason everything they played sounded so amazing, is because of masterful phrasing – the articulation, the dynamics, the inflections they used brought the pitches and rhythms to life.
But let’s get back to our friend Groot for a moment.
The character is voiced by Vin Diesel, and he recorded the phrase “I am Groot” over a thousand times, each take with its own unique nuance…
“When I came into the recording room, there was a fifty-page document, and on the left-hand side it said, ‘I am Groot,’ and on the right-hand side it would have a paragraph or a sentence explaining what he was really meaning or what he was really trying to say.”
We can practice music like this, too.
No, you don’t have to figure out a thousand ways to phrase the same ii V I lick. I just want to remind you that learning jazz scales and chord substitutions will do you no good if you’re not also focused on your phrasing.
So, here’s my advice: dig into one line or lick and play it again and again, striving to make it feel as good as possible. Listen to your favorite musicians and imitate how they play, not just what.
Listen back to recordings of yourself. If your playing sounds amateurish, the reason is almost always poor phrasing. I’ve worked with thousands of musicians at all levels, and the one thing that consistently makes real and noticeable change in their playing is working on the how.
Lastly, if you want to fast-track your phrasing development with simple and effective tips and strategies to make your playing sound more professional, check out my course, Phrasing Secrets.
No, this course is not going to turn you into Coltrane overnight. Getting good at phrasing takes a lot of work – it’s like learning to speak with a foreign accent such that even the locals are convinced you’re one of them.
But, if you’re willing to put in the time, and if you’re willing to trust me that phrasing is one of the most important things you can be working on right now to make real change in your playing, this course will be a game changer.
Click here to enroll in Phrasing Secrets.
Happy Shedding,
Jeff