You Are the Instrument — Insights from Hal Galper
Attitude is everything
Hal Galper is a masterful jazz pianist and teacher. Through his website and YouTube videos, he offers life-changing insights for any musician — including guitar players. This post links you to three of my favorite videos by Hal with notes on each one.
The Illusion of an Instrument
Hal refers to The Art of Piano Playing: A Scientific Approach by George Kochevitsky as a book that “radicalized” him.
Your own mind and body are the instrument — not the physical object you’re holding or contacting.
If you can hear it, you can play it. The stronger the aural signal, the better you can reproduce it. Dizzy Gillespie was once asked “What’s going on in your head when you play?” Dizzy answered by singing a musical phrase at high volume.
What Is Practicing?
Practice whatever resonates with you emotionally.
If you feel bored with it, then don’t practice it.
Practice is global: Improving one area of your playing improves other areas as well.
Attitude Is Everything
Practicing and playing gigs are different. When practicing, you work to achieve goals. When playing, you don’t have goals. Don’t bring a practicing mindset to a performance.
Playing gigs is about having fun. Practice seriously, but don’t play seriously.
When you play gigs, remember the reason that you started playing: to have a blast.
Don’t plan your solos. If you start playing memorized licks, you leave playing mind and return to practicing mind.
How do you get into playing mind? This is different for everyone. But one part of it is releasing your fear of not sounding good. This fear makes you self-centered: While focusing on how you sound, you forget about the other players — and about the music itself. Lighten your load by dropping all that extra baggage. Notice the fear and let it go.
You will display whatever attitude you have — fearful or joyful — on the bandstand.
Playing and fear are incompatible.
Playing and thinking are incompatible. Play gigs from a state of no-mind — a state where you’re free of trying to reach goals and sound good. Practice to learn tunes so well that you can play them without thinking.
More precisely: You do think and even make decisions while playing gigs, but this is not the kind of thinking you do while practicing. Performance happens too quickly for you to think about it in that way.
Playing gigs is about process, not results. You learn the process by doing the process.
You cannot evaluate your playing while you’re playing gigs. There’s too much information to process. Instead, record yourself during the gig and then listen to the recording six months later. Your playing will sound better to you than it did during the gig.
Embrace surprise. Allow accidents. Walk up to the edge of a cliff and take a leap. Record first takes. To overcome your fear of mistakes, practice making them on purpose.
It’s not what you play that matters: it’s how you play.