The Music Lesson

by Victor L Wooten

  I knew better than to ask for the key, so once again, I fumbled around until I found it. And, once again, as soon as I did, he stopped.

  “What kind of bass is that?” he inquired for some unknown reason.

  “A violin-shaped Univox. It’s a copy of a—”

  Not letting me complete my sentence, he spoke firmly.

  “Why is it that when I ask you a verbal question, your answer is immediate and direct? But when I ask you this—” he started playing again in a different key, “you don’t seem to know how to answer. Don’t you know this song?”

  “Yes, I do, but—”

  “Well, what’s stopping you? Play!” he nearly shouted.

  “But I need to find the key first!” I tried to hide my frustration, but he sensed it, and didn’t seem to care.

  “Oh, I see. You can’t play Music until you first find the key. Very elementary.” He stood up and walked over to where I was sitting. I guess it was so he could talk down to me. “What do you need a key for? I didn’t even need a key to get into your house. Do you think your listeners have time to wait for you to find the key?”

  “Well, usually I know the key before I start playing,” I responded with hesitation.

  “Do you always know what you’re gonna say before you start talking?”

  “No.”

  “And does that stop you from talking?”

  “Not usually.”

  “Okay, then, play!”

  He sat back down and, again, started playing in yet another key. For the first time, he seemed a little irritated, which didn’t make things any easier for me. I took a deep breath and jumped right in, playing along with him as best as I could.

  I fumbled around trying to find the root note so I could figure out something good to play but quickly got frustrated and put the bass down.

  "That was horrible,” I mumbled.

  “You could use some help, but we’ll get there,” he replied in a gentle voice. He was smiling now, as if pleased with me all of a sudden. “What were you thinking about when you were playing?”

  “I was trying to find the right key.”

  “And you need to find the right key before you can play Music?”

  “It helps.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to find the right key so that I can play the right notes.”

  “I see. Notes are so important that all Music stops until you find the right ones?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yes, you did. You said it clearly with your bass.”

  “Well tell me, then; when should I find the right notes?”

  “You shouldn’t.”

  “I shouldn’t?”

  “No! Not at first anyway. There is something more important you should find first.”

  “And what is that?”

  "The groove!”

  "The groove? Wait a minute. So the first thing I should do is find the groove when I start playing?” That was news to me.

  “No! You should find the groove before you start playing. It doesn’t matter whether you know the song or not. If you need to, let a few measures go by while you figure out what the groove is saying. Once you find the groove, it doesn’t matter what note comes out; it will ‘feel’ right to the listener. People generally feel Music before they listen to it anyway. If finding the key is so important to you, at least find it while you groove.”

  I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t think of a way to prove him wrong. I just stared at him while I fidgeted with my bass.

  “Forget about your instrument,” he said, staring back at me. “Forget about the key. Forget about technique. Hear and feel the groove. Then allow yourself to become part of Music.”

  Still holding the guitar, he started playing again. He leaned forward and nodded. Realizing I was not going to win the staring contest, I closed my eyes and waited, trying to figure out what to do. I decided to give in and do what he had suggested—listen. I listened to the groove.

  Then a strange thing happened. Listening to the groove allowed me to hear more of the music. All of a sudden, along with Michael’s guitar part, I could hear the drums, then the piano. I could hear Miles’s trumpet too. I could even hear myself playing the bass, even though I wasn’t holding it yet.

  As if he was listening to what I was hearing, he spoke, more softly this time, “Play.”

  Without opening my eyes, I picked up my bass and started playing. I don’t know if the first note I played was the right one or not, but it surely sounded good. Really good. I was shocked. I didn’t want to lose the feeling, so I kept playing. I was lost in the music. The thought of a blue-eyed stranger in my house was no longer an issue. I was jamming with Miles Davis!

  I opened my eyes to see that Michael had stopped playing and had already put the guitar down. He was applauding me, yelling, “Bravo! Bravo!”

  I was proud of myself. “How did I do that?” I asked.

  “How did you do that?” Michael repeated, forcing me to answer my own question once again.

  “I don’t quite know, but it sounded good to me. I just grooved, I guess. I didn’t think about the notes at all, but everything I played seemed to work.”

  "That’s right. Everything worked because you grooved before you started playing,” he added.

  “Groove before I play.” I resolved to commit this new concept to memory.

  “I have a saying,” Michael said, “and I think you should remember it. It goes like this: ‘Never lose the groove in order to find a note.’ ”

  “I like that, and I think I understand it. Are you saying that grooving is more important than playing the right notes?”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions prematurely. All the elements of Music are equally important, or not.”

  "The ‘elements of music’? What are you talking about? What is that?”

  "The elements of Music are the individual parts that make up Music as a whole. Many musicians like yourself struggle because you are not familiar enough with all the elements. You rely mostly on one or two of them when you play. Doing that is a great recipe for frustration. A musician like me, who appropriately uses all the elements, will be one of the greats even though he may not be aware of the fact that he is using them. Actually, it would be nearly impossible to become a great musician without using all of these elements. ”

  What he was saying was interesting even though I didn’t totally understand the concept. “Elements” was not a term I usually associated with music.

  “Can you please tell me more about these elements and how to use them?” That was something I had to know more about.

  He flashed a sly smile, leaned forward, and whispered,

  “Why do you think I am here?”

  MEASURE TWO

  Notes

  If you stopped playing notes,

  Music would still exist.

  "Let’s pretend that Music is made up of ten equal parts,” Michael began. "If we were to take a few minutes to break Music into parts, we could come up with hundreds of different ways of doing it, but for the sake of argument, let’s just say that it contains only ten different parts. Ten different elements that are all equal, or not.”

  “Michael, why do you keep saying ‘or not’?” I asked.

  “Because the choice is always yours,” he answered.

  “Okay, then, Michael, let’s do it . . . or not!” I countered with my own smile.

  His eyes widened and he gave me a “thumbs up” before continuing the lesson.

  “Even though you didn’t know the key, what you just played sounded good because you had most of the elements in balance. If you do that consistently, it won’t matter if you make a mistake. It will fly right past the listener’s ears because the Music will still ‘feel’ right.” He raised an eyebrow. “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I think so. But can you tell me what each of the elements is?”

  “I would rather you tell me. I’ll give you the first one just to get you
started, but you must give me the rest. You’re already very familiar with the first one because it gets most of your attention when you play. We’ll call the first of the elements notes.”

  “Yeah, now I realize that notes are the first thing I think about. What about the other elements?” I asked.

  “What about them?” Michael continued, “If notes are just one of the ten elements, what would the other nine be?”

  “How about melody or harmony?” I asked.

  “Wouldn’t those be included in the first category? Anything dealing with pitches we’ll put into the notes category. That means harmony, melody, re-harmonization, scales, modes, chords, key signatures, relative majors and minors, and other stuff like that. What else besides notes can you come up with?”

  “How about articulation?”

  “Good one, that’s number two. What else?”

  “Technique.”

  “Nice, go on.”

  “How about feel?”

  “I like that one because it can be looked at in different ways. Most people think about feel as it relates to the groove, but that’s just the obvious way to look at it. I can show you other ways of looking at feel. If you approach it from the angle of emotion, meaning how you feel when you play or how the listener feels and how you can affect that, then it gets interesting.”

  "That sounds cool,” I said. “I’d love to learn more about that.”

  “It’s up to you what you learn. I will show it to you if you’d like.”

  “Okay with me.”

  “Good! Feel, number four. What else?”

  I paused, trying to think of more elements to add to our list. Michael allowed me to take my time. Just before I reached the limit of my frustration, he spoke.

  “Can you hear me?” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “CAN YOU HEAR ME?” he yelled.

  “Yes, I can! Oh, I get it, dynamics. That’s the next element, right?”

  “Works for me; five to go.”

  “How about rhythm?”

  “Rhythm is perfect. It is an elusive element. It also lets us know that the elements are related to each other.”

  “How so?” I asked.

  “Rhythm can be looked at as harmony slowed down.”

  “What do you mean?” He totally lost me with that comment.

  “A-440 means that a note vibrates four hundred and forty times per second, right?”

  “Yeah, I understand that.”

  “If you keep cutting that number in half, 440, 220, 110, 55, etc., you will eventually get beats per minute. At that point, it’s called rhythm. You see?”

  “I do. Man, that’s cool. I’ve never heard anyone talk about that before. And the best part is I think I actually understand it.”

  "Thinking is good enough for now,” he said. “If we want to, we can combine rhythm with tempo. They are different elements, but for our sake, let’s put them together. Cool with you?”

  “Cool with me.”

  “All right, that’s number six. What else?”

  I sat there for a full minute trying to come up with something else to add. I was still trying to digest what had already been said, and it was getting harder and harder to come up with more elements. I knew they were there, but thinking of them was difficult. It shouldn’t be this hard, I thought. My struggle made me realize that when I play, my thinking is quite limited.

  “Can you hear me now?” Michael asked in a high thin voice.

  “Yes,” I answered, trying to figure out what he was getting at.

  “How about now?” This time he used a low bassy voice.

  I knew he wasn’t trying to demonstrate pitch because that would be in the first category called notes. Then it hit me.

  “Tone!” I yelled.

  Michael chuckled. “You’re slow, but you do get there eventually. Tone, number seven. Very good. Next?”

  “How about phrasing?” I asked, almost immediately.

  “Phrasing is a good one,” he answered. “Most people only think of phrasing as pertaining to notes, but any of the elements can be phrased. We will look at this again, later.”

  He was right. I’d never thought of phrasing anything but notes. But how can you phrase tone or dynamics? The concept intrigued me. Michael interrupted my thoughts.

  “Two more to go.”

  I sat there struggling for another couple of minutes before he finally broke the silence.

  "The final frontier.”

  “What?”

  “Star Trek, William Shatner. The final frontier.”

  “Oh. Space.” I finally got it.

  “Right. Space, rest, not playing, very important! This is the underused but all-important element. Think about it: If there were no rest, all Music that was ever played would still be playing.”

  The thought of there being no rest was disturbing. Right about then, I was really appreciating the existence of that element.

  “One more to go,” Michael stated.

  Once again, I sat in silence, thinking, until Michael helped me out.

  “What are you doing when I am talking?”

  “What? Oh! Listening! I get it! The final element,” I answered.

  “Very good. Now, we have ten different but equal parts of Music: notes, articulation, technique, feel, dynamics, rhythm, tone, phrasing, space, and listening. We could have made our list one hundred or one thousand elements long, but for now, we will stick with these ten. Is that okay with you?”

  "They work for me.”

  “Good. Think about all ten of these elements and tell me this: When most teachers talk about music theory, which element are they usually talking about?”

  I thought for a few seconds. “Well, ‘notes,’ I guess.”

  “Good, what else?”

  I tried, but couldn’t think of anything else.

  “Notes,” I repeated.

  "That’s right,” he laughed. “Notes, pitches, and that’s it! All the fuss about learning music theory, and now we see that most teachers only teach you how to use one tenth of the elements on our list! Their music theory only teaches you how to use notes, and it’s only a theory! That’s it! Nothing else! It doesn’t teach you about dynamics, feel, tone, or anything else on the list, only notes! It should be called note theory, not music theory, because it doesn’t teach you Music!

  “You can’t speak Music with notes alone, but you can speak Music without notes at all! I can program a computer to play notes, and it won’t sound like Music! You need these other elements to make it complete! Without them, notes are lifeless! Music theory is shallow! Incomplete! It does not deserve all the attention it gets! But at the same time, notes are important.”