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Have you ever felt confused by musical modes? In this episode, we discuss how you can understand these fascinating scales through active listening and a simple yet eye-opening exercise.

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Links and Resources

• The Many Moods of Musical Modes
• Interview with Marshall McDonald
• Crazy Easy Weird (Modal) Improv Trick
• The Ultimate Guide to the Dorian Mode
• The Lydian Scale: Seeking the Ultimate Mysteries of Music

Transcript

Christopher: On our recent episode with Marshall McDonald we were talking a little bit about jazz and improvisation. And one topic that comes up almost immediately when you mention jazz improvisation is the idea of modes in music, and so I wanted to pick up on that in this episode and talk a little bit about modes and maybe give a new way of looking at them for anyone who has previously encountered them in a thick music theory textbook, and been a bit baffled or overwhelmed. This is one of our duo episodes. I’m joined today by Anastasia Voitinskaia from the Musical U Team who recently put together a fantastic tutorial on modes for our website, and I wanted her to come in and share a bit about how she presented them in that article, ’cause I thought it was particularly good. Say hi Anastasia.

Anastasia: Hi Anastasia. Just kidding. Hi. It’s nice to be back on here, thank you for having me.

Christopher: So, what I particularly liked about the article and I think I can be fairly complimentary ’cause I wasn’t involved in this one at all, so it’s a musical article, but I did not write it. And what I particularly liked was it was all about the moods of modes and modes are often taught purely in music theory way or in a very kind of logical improvisation context and the article really covered the theory, but really focused on what makes the character of each mode and why we should be interested in modes in the first place. So, we’re not going to be talking in this episode about the in depth nuts and bolts of each mode. You’ll find all of the stuff about intervals and about sharp and flat scale degrees and all of that in the article. And we’ll have a direct link to that in the show notes for this episode, but we will be talking about a couple of the modes and what makes them sound interesting musically. So, I’ll kick off with the simple question, Anastasia, what are modes?

Anastasia: So, to put it simply, a mode is simply a scale that’s derived from the major scale that we already know, but we essentially change what notes play what roles – more on that the musical modes article – and so the sounds and the tone and the mood of the scale changes.

Christopher: Gotcha. And I think back when I was first taught modes, in a way it was really simple, because my teacher just said, “It’s the major scale, but you start on a different note.”

Anastasia: Yes.

Christopher: And when you’re trying to learn the clarinet fingering, that sounds great, but it meant that I was faced immediately with I guess seven new scales, because I could start the major scale from any note instead of just the first one, and I think that’s probably why I never really got a handle on modes. I felt like I had these seven random scales with weird names thrown at me and although the concept of them was simple, I’d never really got a handle on why I should care.

Anastasia: Totally.

Christopher: Or what the musical point of them was. So, maybe you could explain a bit, an easier way for musicians to get their head around the modes. Are there any that are particularly easy to understand or be familiar with?

Anastasia: Well, there is a way of understanding them as you play the major scale, but you simply start on a different note than you usually would. But again, as you said, that just leaves you with seven scales with very funny sounding Greek names. Some of them sound vaguely sinister. Some of them sound happier. Is there a way to really internalize them and make them mean something in your head is kind of just to listen to the sound of each one, because all modes are, are really variations on major and minor scales, but the cool thing about them is they convey moods beyond just happy, bright, major and sort of wistful, melancholy, minor. They can be mysterious. They can be floaty or calm or sinister, foreboding, or even some of them kind of sound rebellious like the Mixolydian scale.

So, really the way to internalize them and the way to make them mean something is to listen to the sound of each one. How does it make you feel? Play the scale. Play the scale ascending and descending. Do a little improv containing just the notes keeping that first note that you play as the tonic and see what it sounds like to you.

Christopher: And I really like that way of looking at it, not just because it’s ear based and we talk a lot on this show about your ear and the important of understanding what’s going on in music by ear and developing that instinct, but because I think it cuts to the heart of why modes are powerful, but also can be confusing, which is that they’re not a strict thing. You know, you talked there about how the mood can be sinister, when ultimately we’re talking about the same notes as the major scale, right? Like if we’re talking about a C major scale, all of the modes derived from that are just going to use the white keys on the piano, and so in a sense, you kind of wonder, well is the mode fundamentally different? Why would it be different? Why would it sound different? And I think you kinda cut to it there. It’s about how those notes are used, so in the same way a melody using just the white notes of the piano could be written to have a sinister feel to it, if we use a collection of notes in a certain way that can be a mode and that can be a sinister character mode.

Anastasia: Exactly.

Christopher: So, let’s get a little bit more specific. We already talked about the major scale as our starting point, and that is one of the modes, right?

Anastasia: It is. It’s called the Ionian mode in fact, but no one really calls it that, because it’s simply the major scale, but it is one of the seven modes.

Christopher: Yeah, if you wanna sound fancy or impress your friends you can refer to all of the Ionian scales you’ve been playing lately.

Anastasia: Yeah.

Christopher: But one of them might see through your clever ruse, if they’ve studied modes. And there’s one of them that’s quick and easy if you’ve been studying major and minor scales. What’s that?

Anastasia: That’s the Aeolian mode. So, if you go on your keyboard and you play starting from your A note an octave all the way up to the next A using only white keys, like so,

you’ll hear that it sounds just like the natural minor scale, and that is the Aeolian mode, because if we think about scales as being derived from playing white key to white key starting on C, then starting on D, and so on and so forth, then the one starting and ending on A, becomes the Aeolian mode, also known as the natural minor, so in fact before you start learning modes, you already know two of them. And that should make you feel a lot better, because that means that the other ones are cake, you can just move up and down your little piano keyboard on the white keys and derive the rest of them without too much difficulty.

Christopher: Exactly. And I should make clear, you know, we’re talking about piano and piano keyboard, but the reason is just that the piano keyboard’s quite a clear visual way to look at pattern of intervals in music, and so if you’re playing saxophone for example, you might find it easier to think in terms of the intervals or in terms of the key signature, and you’ll find much more info about that in the full article on the Musical U website. So, that’s Ionian and Aeolian. We can take the first or the second note of the major scale and play the major scales starting from there. What about others? Can you give a couple of examples, Anastasia, of interesting or different modes that listeners might be interested to get to know?

Anastasia: Absolutely. Yeah. I’ll give my two favorites of the seven, and these two are quite different, so I think they’ll make a nice contrast. So, first of all, let’s talk about the Dorian mode. This one’s a cool one because it starts on D and ends on D if you’re looking at your piano again. I’m referring to the piano, because this is something that you can easily visualize. I’ll include a link in the show notes to a virtual keyboard so you can maybe try these modes out on your own.

So, looking at the keyboard, if you start on the D note and end on the D note playing an ascending scale, it sounds like this.

So, it’s different than the major scale, right? It shifted to something that kind of sounds more serious, so the Dorian mode is in fact considered a minor mode, ’cause there’s that minor third interval between the first and the third degree of the scale. So, rather than sounding happy and upbeat like the major scale, it now kinda sounds more bittersweet, a little bit sad, but still optimistic. So, actually a lot of songs written in Dorian mode kind of sing of unrequited love or lost love for good reason. So, I think this is a really cool one, because it kind of straddles the line between major and minor and you know, basically conveys a human emotion other than just happy or sad, but you know just real emotion and I think that’s really the beauty of modes and the Dorian mode illustrates that really, really well.

Christopher: Nice, and the Dorian mode is a good one too, because if you have come across the analysis of modes in terms of raising and lowering scales degrees based on the major scale, the Dorian is a nice case study, because as Anastasia said there, it’s about a minor third interval rather than a major third. That’s what gives it it’s minory feel, but it also has a raised sixth, so that makes it relatively bright and happy compared to it’s natural minor scale. And so just two simple kind of music theory explanations of why the Dorian ends up with this kind of bittersweet feeling to it.

Anastasia: Uh-huh. (affirmative)

Christopher: Cool, so that’s the Dorian mode. And that’s a popular one to improvise with particularly on guitar and you can play around with that if you click through to the article and the web synthesizer Anastasia mentioned there. That’s a fun one to play around with. Give us another. You said you had two favorites. What’s the other?

Anastasia: Yeah, so that’s the Dorian mode. That’s a really great one. It appears a lot, it’s in Jazz and Blues and Pop music. It’s kind of everywhere. So, it’s nice popular one and it conveys a specific mood that I think we can all relate to, which I think is part of its popularity. The other one I’m gonna talk about is way, way, way less popular. In fact, this is maybe like the weird boogeyman of the modal family. This one’s called the Locrian mode. So, if you start on your B note on the piano and play an ascending scale only on the white keys and stopping on the next B, it sounds like this.

So, some words I would use to describe this personally are creepy, unsettling, and just plain odd. Something seems wrong. Something is not resolving, and it just, it doesn’t seem like it’s even a scale. It seems like an odd, scary collection of notes. This scale’s interesting because there’s no perfect fifth, which is kind of like the interval that makes things sound warm, stable, and happy. So, this particular mode is perfect if you’re looking to write horror soundtrack or if you’re a heavy metal guitarist looking to write a really punishing solo.
So, if we want to do a little bit of an improv with the Locrian mode, it’ll sound like this.

So, yeah it’s unsettling. It’s unpleasant. It’s scary and it keeps you on edge, but if that’s the mood you’re going for, it’s really great and I think that’s what I like about it. It definitely adds an element of interest to whatever music it gets used in, and it’s not used in very much music. So, it is rare to hear it, but when you do, I think it really stands out and makes an impact.

Christopher: Very cool and yeah, if you’re a songwriter, feeling like all of the notes of the C major scale have been used to death, maybe a Locrian mode is a new angle on it that could lead to some distinctive tracks. You found a really interesting Bjork one for the article.

Anastasia: I did, yeah. Bjork has a Pop song called “Army of Me”, and we know that Bjork likes writing weird stuff, but she was perhaps one of the only people maybe even the first person to really write Pop song in Locrian mode, and the song “Army of Me” actually charted, so people did like it, but when I listened to it, I’m like, oh, this is unsettling. I’m amazed that people liked it as much as they did, but I guess that’s the magic of Bjork.

Christopher: Very cool. So, if someone’s listening and thinking, “Oh, these modes things sound interesting. Maybe I’ll go and play around.” Do you have any tips for getting started with that beyond just sitting down and plunking through the scale top to bottom or bottom to top?

Anastasia: Absolutely, yeah. Although it definitely helps to play the scales ascending and descending and then get faster so you can kind of sauce out the tone of it. There’s a really great exercise that Andrew, also here at Musical U, came up with, and it’s called the Crazy, Easy Modal Trick. I’ll include a link to that in the show notes. To summarize the exercise briefly, sit down at a piano or grab an instrument. Piano obviously works very well for the reasons Christopher discussed, everything’s kind of laid out for you. Guitar works well as well, and obviously go to the virtual piano if you don’t have access to a piano at home.

So with your left hand, you wanna hold down just one not sharp, not flat note, it’s gonna be a white key on the piano. Hold it down so that it’s a sustained sound. You can use the middle pedal on your piano if you have one to do this. For example if you’re trying to do this in Dorian mode, which is a good place to start, it’ll sound nice and pleasant. Hold down the D with your left hand. Now with your right hand, you want to improvise over top of the drone that you’re playing with your left hand, but again using only the white keys, because then you’re playing modal.

So, what’s happening here is basically your left hand is kind of establishing the tonic and the note that you’re holding down, the note that kind of is sustained is kind of where your tonic lies. It’s the gravity of your improvisation. Meanwhile all the notes that you play with your right hand, your brain is understanding in relation to that drone played with your left hand. So, if you want to modal improvise and experiment with different modes, all you really need to do is play different white keys with your left hand. Change the drone note and continue just improvising with your right hand over top with white keys and see how the sound changes. See how the mood changes from perhaps calm and floaty to darker and sinister to upbeat and energetic, something reminiscent of flamenco music. It’s really cool. It’s a really simple exercise, but you can achieve a lot and learn so much even if you just sit down at the piano for 20 minutes and try this out. It’s great.

Christopher: Fantastic. That’s a great exercise to try out, and it just comes back again to this point that modes are clearly defined and in another sense, kinda fuzzy. I think what’s great about this exercise is it sidesteps the question of how do we know what the tonic is, and yeah I think that’s probably a conversation for a whole other podcast topic. The next episode is finding the tonic by ear, but you know, obviously when the mode only differs from the major scales based on what we perceive as the tonic, that could be a question of well you know if I’m wondering around these keys how does someone know if it’s C major or Aeolian or whatever the case may be.
This exercise is great, because you’re just kinda hammering away that tonic note. You’re leaving the listener in no doubt as to what is your intended tonic and that gives your mode a very clear definition, so it’s a great way to kind of force the ear to perceive it as the mode it is rather than leaving this ambiguity that can make it harder to really get your ear into the mood and the character of the mode.

Anastasia: Definitely and that definition is really, really important because again, you could argue that you know, all seven modes use the same white keys, so what is the difference? Well the difference in the most basic sense is which notes are emphasized and how do they related to the other notes. So, the left hand drone, right hand improv exercise is the perfect way to understand that better.

Christopher: Yeah, and this is why you’ll find endless guitar forum debates and flame wars online arguing over Malmsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Steve Vai and what mode they’ve written this solo in.

Anastasia: Yes.

Christopher: The answer is often, you know, it depends on how you listen to it.

Anastasia: Definitely, your ear kind of plays tricks on itself after a while.

Christopher: For sure. So, I think we’ve kind of cut to the heart of it and hopefully given everyone a taste of why modes are interesting and how simple, but how interesting they can be.

And I think all that remains is to remind you that if you want much more info on this, do check out the full article. You’ll find a link in the show notes and kudos to Anastasia for putting that together. I think it’s a really great all in one guide. We also have I think in depth ones on the Dorian and the Lydian mode, which will link up to in the show notes. So, a big thank you Anastasia for joining me today. This was a lot of fun, and yeah, everyone listening go out there and try the Crazy, Easy Weird Modal Improv Trick and drone away with different notes and see what you can come up with.

Anastasia: Yeah, have fun!

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The post About the Moods of Modes appeared first on Musical U.

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It’s vital to have a plan for your musical training. As the old saying goes, “failing to plan is planning to fail”. Learn more about the Roadmaps at Musical U and how they can guide you to your goals. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/do-you-have-a-roadmap-for-your-ears/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/musicality-means-having-good-rhythm/
What do all master musicians have in common? Good rhythm.

Developing a sense of rhythm is something that every musician can achieve and is a key part of your musicality. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/musicality-means-having-good-rhythm/

The trick is to hone this skill beyond just hearing your favourite song in your head, so you can use it to better understand the music you hear and play.

In this article, I’m going to introduce you to the technique of singing basslines, a method that will lend you a better understanding of harmony while improving your sight singing, sight reading, and audiation skills – regardless of which instrument you play.

Harmonic Audiation

We can audiate rhythmically, melodically, and harmonically.

Most musicians perform melody with a rhythm together in order to make their music.

However, if they are not aware of the underlying harmony – or, “the changes” – they are missing what famed composer Leonard Bernstein called “one third of music”.

If you were to hear the melody of a simple children’s song, would you know what chords to use to accompany the song on a piano or a guitar?

As audiators, we can train our musical brain to “hear the changes” by singing basslines.

Singing basslines is a technique from the pedagogy of Music Learning Theory, developed by Dr. Edwin E. Gordon. Music Learning Theory, or, MLT, attempts to explain how one learns music. One important aspect of learning music is to be able to audiate harmonically – if you’re not hearing harmonic changes when you’re listening to music, you’re not fully audiating.

An excellent place to start with harmonic audiation is with basslines that lie beneath the melodies you know and love.

Why Sing Basslines?

The bassline usually contains the important notes that define the harmony. If you can sing a bassline, and you can identify the function of the note you are singing, you are well on your way to being able to audiate harmonically.

Singing, meanwhile, is a direct connection to your audiation. It is the connection between your musical thoughts and your external music production. When we sing, the sound immediately goes back into our ears, and we check for accuracy – it is a very important loop in the music education process.

Singing basslines, rather than just playing them, is the perfect way to relate them to melody and to internalize harmony. Generally, if you can sing it, you can play it on your instrument – which makes it a great place to start.

Hearing one thing while singing another is challenging for musicians to do at first. However, a good learning guideline: if it’s challenging to one’s musicianship, then it’s worth working on!

Start with I and V

Even though you may be an advanced technical musician, let’s start very simply with the tonic and dominant – that is, the I and V chords – in major and minor. We will use melodies from familiar folk tunes that only use I and V chords as the basis of their harmonic structure. Thankfully, as we’re about to see, there are plenty.

Major Tonality

In major tonality, a tonic chord (I) is any combination of “do”, “mi”, and “so”. You can hear these all at once, as in when you strum a chord on the guitar, or you can hear them individually in an arpeggio.

A dominant chord (V) is any combination of “so”, “fa”, “re”, and “ti”.

Music Learning Theory teachers teach their students tonic and dominant patterns, which are varying arpeggiated combinations of tonic and dominant chords, and for good reason: patterns are the words of music. By learning tonal patterns, you are learning a vocabulary of musical words that you can use in a myriad of ways. You can improvise with those words; you can read them; you can write them.

Here are tonic and dominant patterns in major tonality. Try singing these patterns. To hear these tonic and dominant patterns, you can watch these videos.

Minor Tonality

In minor tonality, a tonic chord (i) is any combination of “la”, “do”, and “mi”. A dominant chord (V) is any combination of “mi”, “re”, “ti”, and “si”.

Here are tonic and dominant patterns in minor tonality. Try singing these patterns:

Connecting I and V

Once we can successfully audiate tonic and dominant chords, it is a good idea to find the pathways between the two harmonic functions. Again, we can use solfege to assist us.

These two videos show the various ways that we can connect tonic and dominant chords in major and minor:

Singing Basslines Video Series

Once we have a firm grasp of tonic and dominant and how they function, we can sing the basslines of each chord to drastically improve our musicianship.

To give my students practice singing basslines outside of my classroom, I have created some YouTube videos with practice exercises. These YouTube videos follow these steps:

1. Listen to the melody of a familiar tune. This first video uses the folk chestnut, “Skip To My Lou.”
2. Listen again, and hum along with the tune. Ask yourself if you hear the harmonic changes that accompany the tune. Do you hear where the I and V should go? If not, then this video series is definitely for you!
3. Hum along again. This time, I will add the bassline. Tune your ears to both parts. When the bassline changes notes, this indicates a harmonic change.
4. After you are comfortable with that, “bum” along with the bassline in whatever octave feels comfortable. You will be hearing two parts simultaneously – the melody and the bassline.
5. Next, add a verbal association. This gives your brain a label for the sound. I use the words “one” and “five” on the pitches “do” (tonic) and “so” (dominant).
6. Finally, alternate between singing the melody while listening to the bassline, and singing the bassline while listening to the melody. Do each one three times. Begin by singing the melody.

Follow the same steps for the rest of the tunes in this playlist.

If you play the piano or the guitar, you may want to try playing the melody on your instrument while singing the bassline. Then switch, and try playing the bassline while singing the melody.

Here is the musical notation for several more songs in Major and Minor with only I and V harmony.

Considerations

When doing these exercises, there are several factors you should be thinking about, related to the song of choice and your singing voice.

Range

Typically, the bassline falls into the range of an adult male singer. However, displacing the pitch by one octave will not decrease the effectiveness of this exercise. You will still be tuning into the harmonic changes in a very powerful way.

Is This Really a Bassline?

While playing through some of the exercises above, you may be wondering: are these even basslines? Technically, yes and no. It could be a bassline, but a very simple one. Most basslines contain notes other than the root, somewhat resembling melodies themselves. This exercise, however, is intended to focus your attention on the harmonic changes. After we learn the foundational notes in the bass that outline the harmonic changes, the other notes will be much easier.

Moving Forward with Harmony

Once you have mastered humming or singing the bassline to songs with a I and V harmonic structure, it’s time to challenge yourself further.

How? Try adding in more harmonies. There are plenty of songs that have I, IV and V as the basis of their harmonic structure – the 12-bar blues are a fantastic example for beginners, with a predictable and easily-audible progression.

Understanding harmony is part of a bigger musical picture – harmonic changes are the backbone of great songs, and with an understanding of harmony under your belt, you’ll be able to analyze chord changes in songs to see why they pack such a punch, and even use the principles of harmony to write your own music with movement, emotion, tension, and depth.

Andy Mullen is a teacher, folk musician, multi-instrumentalist, and recovering songwriter, presently working as a middle school teacher and curriculum coach in Burlington, Massachusetts. With certification from the Gordon Institute of Music Learning (GIML) in Elementary General and Early Childhood Music, and Masters degrees in Music Education and School Administration, he is now setting his sights on Doctoral scholarships.

The post Singing Basslines to Improve Musicianship appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/talking-rhythm-the-kodaly-method/
Are you struggling with counting out basic rhythm? Do you wish that you could understand a rhythm on sight? Fortunately there is a way to translate playing by ear into understanding written rhythms that is easy to use for musicians of all ages! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/talking-rhythm-the-kodaly-method/

We’ll admit that we were a bit nervous going into this interview. Marshall has had an amazingly impressive career, and although we’re jazz fans we’re not jazz musicians ourselves – and we know that jazz cats often have an encyclopedic knowledge of jazz records, jazz history and the jazz musicians behind it all. And Marshall’s certainly no exception! But fortunately he is also the most kind and humble guy and it was an absolute pleasure to chat with him – and he certainly didn’t hold back on the amazing stories and insights on teaching and learning jazz – and music in general.

One might assume that a world-leading alto sax player would talk mostly about the specifics of jazz and sax – but as you’ll hear, Marshall’s got a breadth of wisdom and insight that cuts right across music itself. There is a ton in here for any musician to learn from.

In this conversation we talk about:

• Talent, and how he and the amazing musicians he’s worked with and learned from think about talent
• We ask him about learning to improvise, and the balance of preparation versus spontaneity to improvise in a way that moves the listener
• And he helps Christopher shrug off a grudge he’s been harbouring for 20 years and realise some advice that he got back then was actually pretty solid!

Marshall’s a natural story-teller, so this is a really fantastic interview – and we take no credit for that! He’s also a skillful educator, offering private lessons online and giving masterclasses, so he really knows how to explain what he does. Between the stories and the insights, we know you’re going to love this one.

Listen to the episode:

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Links and Resources

• Marshall McDonald’s website
• Study with Marshall McDonald – all levels of saxophones, clarinet, and flute
• Contact Marshall McDonald

Transcript

Christopher: Welcome to the show, Marshall. Thank you for joining us today.

Marshall: I’m glad to be here. How you doing?

Christopher: Doing well, thank you. You are at the top of your game as one of the world’s leading jazz musicians. And I would love to understand how that came to be. Where did you get started in music? Was it jazz to begin with, did you start at an early age, what’s the backstory for Marshall McDonald?

Marshall: No, it was classical studies. My father was an oral surgeon. I was born in 1959. All of the children took lessons. My brother was already a child prodigy on trumpet, quite advanced. He’s eight years my elder. And what’s interesting is my mother had him babysit me in my crib, and I was told later that he used to practice while I was sleeping.

I told my mother as I got older I started singing two things. I started singing the Haydn Trumpet Concerto and the Vivaldi Trumpet Concerto. They still sit in my mind. I think somewhere along the line, hearing my brother who was quite advanced, hearing my brother practice somehow instilled something in me about the whole concept of music and practice.

Christopher: Wonderful. That’s quite a childhood experience. I think not many people get serenaded by trumpet in their crib, particularly when they’re trying to sleep. It clearly didn’t do you any harm. So when you got to the age of learning music yourself, were you following in your brother’s footsteps on trumpet? Or what did music learning look like for you?

Marshall: Well, I started on clarinet. And of course, my father got me some lessons down at Carnegie-Mellon University where my brother was studying. And every Saturday he put us in the car and took us down there. My first teacher was the principal clarinetist of the Pittsburgh Symphony. My father, being a professional in the medical world, he actually played piano himself, he loved classical music. So he would practice with us, you know, on the piano, and my mother also played piano. We all had to take piano lessons and that kind of thing, and that’s how I started out.

Christopher: And was it enjoyable for you from day one? Did you take to it like a duck to water?

Marshall: I think I did. The good thing is, my parents didn’t put too much pressure on it. I was supposed to practice 30 minutes a day, according to the teacher. I ended up liking it, so I did practice. By the time I was in eighth grade, or whatever that year or however old you are, I was playing the Mozart Clarinet Concerto.
I did stop playing the piano, which I wish I’d kept up. And I think my mother was tired by then, but being on the third kid, you know, I was like, “Mom, I don’t want to play the piano.” She’s like, okay, okay. So my brother kept on playing the piano. And as he got older, he actually played piano, bass, guitar, and trumpet, so he was quite accomplished in that field.

Christopher: Wonderful. And so you were playing clarinet through high school, presumably. And you went on to study music at college, is that right?

Marshall: Kind of. What happened was, in eighth grade, i found an eight track cassette. I bet none of your listeners even know what that is. But it’s a gigantic looking tape we used to put in a gigantic machine and listen to music. I found a cassette tape in my father’s collection of Louis Armstrong that was a Hello Dolly record.
See, up until that point, he basically just played opera and classical music all around the house all of the time. And as you can imagine, it’s a very educated family. My mother had a master’s degree, so going to the library and doing your studies, honestly, it was different in the 60s and 70s. We had three TV channels. Parents kind of controlled your life. You remember those days?

So I heard this tape and I heard Hello Dolly. And I just fell in love with it. Basically, I just loved the jazz on it. And there was a clarinet player on the recording. It might have been Barney Bigard that I found out later. But it didn’t matter. I thought it was the greatest thing.

Now what I did know was my mother grew up in Pittsburgh, and went to a famous school, Westinghouse High School, with Earl Garner and Grover Mitchell and Earl Fatha Hines and Mary Lou Williams, and all of these great black musicians had gone. See, in that time, the towns were segregated so there were two areas where black people lived. And one of the schools had a great musical teacher. And he was producing large number of really great musicians, so Pittsburgh has a tremendous history in jazz.

She told me later that she loved jazz as a child and went to see jazz players. She actually used to listen to Earl Garner practice. I’m just going to jump into practice because a lot of people said that Earl Garner didn’t read music. They possibly learned later that maybe he had some kind of dyslexia or something. They’re not sure why he couldn’t read music. So a lot of people assume if you can’t read music, it doesn’t make you an accomplished musician. And that’s just not true, first of all.

What she did say that all she remembers was Earl Garner practicing all of the time in the cafeteria on the piano. And I think that’s the key. You know, just practice, no matter what your gift is.

Christopher: Wonderful. Well that’s definitely something I’d like to come back to in a little bit. The gift and practice. But I don’t want to leave the story there. You were enraptured with Louis Armstrong and that Hello Dolly record or eight track. What impact did that have on you? Did you immediately abandon the classical world and run off into jazz?

Marshall: No, of course not. Once you study music, you always study music. Most jazz musicians are playing etudes and Close A studies. Charlie Parker played out of the Closed A book and actually had several of them memorized. Every musician studies both worlds. It’s all music, whether it’s country music, blues, or blue grass. There’s only 12 notes on the European scale.

Basically what happened, much to my father’s chagrin, I told him I wanted a saxophone, because when I got to high school, I wanted to join the jazz band. He wasn’t too happy about that, but because he loved me, he bought me a saxophone so I could learn it. And he teased me about it. But I started practicing and pretty much got it together through my clarinet teacher. And I did join, I actually joined the stage band in 10th grade. Whatever you are, 13, I think at that time?

Christopher: Wonderful. It’s great that your dad was happy to support you in that way. I’m not going to try to draw comparisons between your musical career and my own, but I wanted to learn saxophone myself in high school and I was told I could not learn saxophone until I first mastered the clarinet.

And so I had four years of clarinet, being told I had to get the clarinet embouchure just right before I was allowed a saxophone and then finally, that day came and I was able to join the wind band and play sax. And life was much better.

Marshall: That’s a good story. You reminded me of when I first started out as a child wanting to play. I picked the oboe. And a very wise teacher said the exact same thing. He said, “Your son should start on clarinet. If he plays clarinet, he can move to any of the woodwind instruments after that.” It was a great advantage to me because many saxophone players have so much trouble going back to the clarinet.

There was a time, back when the big bands were started, everyone started on clarinet. The clarinet is the home instrument. They are correct. Being home, that is, if you can learn to play clarinet and master the clarinet, you can move to many of the woodwinds from there. But moving from the flute or saxophone to the clarinet is extremely difficult.

Christopher: Interesting. I’ve been harboring a grudge for 20 years and I’m going to have to finally let it go. Clearly the advice that was given was actually valid. They weren’t just trying to fill spots in the orchestra that had an empty clarinet seat.

Marshall: You know Artie Shaw, the great, great clarinetist, one of the greatest ever?

Christopher: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Marshall: And a great classical player. He was also a great lead alto saxophone player.

Christopher: Interesting. Well, it certainly jumped out at me that you play all saxophones and woodwind instruments, you know, for a musician as accomplished as you are. You know, for someone to play lead alto in the Count Basie Orchestra, I don’t think people would expect that you had also reached such a high level on other instruments. Maybe we can just touch on why that is possible for you.

Marshall: That basically came out of my professor at University of Pittsburgh. My father taught at the University of Pittsburgh. Believe it or not, you asked me did I go to college for music? No, I actually started out for two years studying biology and chemistry to become a doctor like my sister. That’s how I started out.

When the band director found out how much I really liked music, he actually made a special arrangement for me. Mark Kirk was a student of Phil Woods who lived in the Poconos. I was going to Lafayette College which is very close to the Poconos where Phil Woods was living. Well, he had a prize student up there. His name was Mark Kirk who I met at one of these jazz concerts.

My band director at Lafayette arranged for me to get a van, drive into the mountains, and take a few lessons with Mark Kirk. The things that he taught me in those few lessons was, believe me, I did not understand very well. And he was a little frustrated with me because he was so advanced. But the things he taught me when I finally got them together years later would change my whole playing concept and I still teach them today.

Christopher: Amazing. Could you give an example or two of what he taught you in those lessons that you’ve come back to all these years later?

Marshall: I sure could because Phil Woods is, or was, one of the best jazz saxophone teachers out there. And so many of his students that you know are playing. Vincent Herring and so many others are all over the place. John Gordon, Richie Cole.

The first that he did is I brought out these fake real books. You know, with the fake charts and stuff? And I had all this music and all this stuff. And Mark took it and he threw it on the ground and he said, “Never come back to my house with again with those, okay?” That was the first thing he said.

He said to play jazz, you have to listen to jazz, you have to learn to hear jazz, and you have to learn your scales and your chords. That was the first lesson. He wrote out a few woods exercise, which I still have and still pass on to students, which involved a chord change. I didn’t know that at the time. It was a minor scale, a dominant scale, with a diminished scale over top of it, ana a major scale. Pretty much going up the ninth. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

That was the pattern and it continued through to diminish and go down to the major. That was my first lesson. Now it took years for me, because he said you have to learn this in all 12 keys. You know, I’m a biology major and this is one of the first jazz lessons I really had. So when I came back and I hadn’t quite figured it out, he was a little frustrated.

You know, the way he taught and Phil taught is he would sit at the piano and play chords, you know, which is the way it was when I started with George Coleman, he say at the piano and played chords. So it took a while to get that together.

Now you asked me about the saxophones. It was Dr. Nathan Davis. When I came back to Pittsburgh and transferred to the University of Pittsburgh, I started as a music major. Dr. Nathan Davis was one of the first who started the jazz program in the United States at the University of Pittsburgh. He, and, see, you get older and you can’t remember nothing, right? David Baker. David Baker and Dr. Davis were some of the two first who started a jazz program.

The schools at that time didn’t really accept the jazz degree, though. You know, it wasn’t really acceptable, so it had to be something else, or ethnomusicology or something like that. One day Dr. Davis, Nathan said to me, he said, “You’re really focused on be-bop and the alto saxophone.” But he said, “You know, music is very difficult to make money in. You have to learn to do a lot of different things.” For instance, this is a quote, “You can’t be a janitor and walk in here and say, ‘oh, I’m sorry. I don’t clean tile floors.’” That’s exactly what he said.

And after he said that, I think he handed me a soprano saxophone from the rental office and said please go home and start this. And so you see where I’m going. Later on, he gave me a tenor saxophone and said, “I need you to take this home and learn how to play this.” Then he had me playing baritone saxophone. So that’s really how it happened. So what I learned was that each saxophone is a separate voice, though. You can’t play the tenor like you play alto. You can’t use the same airstream, you can’t use the same concept, or you’re going to sound like an alto player playing tenor.

Christopher: Interesting. And it sounds like some really amazing people were taking an interest in you at this phase. What do you think that they saw in you that they were willing to kind of invest in you in this way?

Marshall: I have no idea. I was a little crazy then. I was young. But I guess the one thing they saw was that I was willing to work hard. The band went to Trinidad and Tobago. And we also had jazz seminars with James Moody and Freddie Hubbard and Grover Mitchell, and everyone would come in Pittsburgh. There were also some very great local musicians, Eric Closs. There was a group of young musicians, Ned Gould, Frank Molla, Andy Fite, Dave Budway, Leon Lee Dorsey. Many of them moved up to New York, and they were more advanced than me.
Ned Gould went to play with the Harry Connick orchestra. Dave Budway played with people in New York. Leon Lee Dorsey has a doctorate, played with Art Blakey and Lionel Hampton. So there was a heavy scene. You know, Eric Closs was there. He was a staple. He was a child prodigy. So it was something going on in Pittsburgh.

So I didn’t just learn from Dr. Davis, I learned from these guys. For instance, Frank Molla was a tremendously talented and advanced trombone player. The way he learned to play was he had transcribed, I’m not even sure how, he knew how many. When I say transcribed, he learned solos off of records, and they were records, everyone. They were records. You know, off of records, memorized them, and he knew at least 400 or more of them. And so when he would come over to my house, well not a house, to my little room in those days, if you put on a Miles Davis record or J.J Dawson, he could play along with the solo without reading any music.

So one day I said to him, Frank, how can I learn how to play jazz? And he said to me, Pittsburghers talk like this, you know, they talk through their nose. He said, “You know, Marshall, you know, you got technique. You got a good sound. You just need to listen to the big birdy.” I said, the big birdy? Who’s that? He said, “Charlie Parker. All you need to do is just transcribe a bunch of Charlie Parker solos.”

What he told me was, and he thought playing along with Jamey Aebersold records and reading solos, and learning to read chords in that way didn’t teach you to play jazz. And then as I got with a lot of the heavier musicians in town, every one of them said the same thing. You have to learn to hear to play any music, basically.

Christopher: Interesting. So I want to circle back in a little bit and talk more about transcribing and that process of learning jazz. But let’s continue with the story for a little bit. So you were immersed in this amazing Pittsburgh scene. And at this point, you had switched to ethnomusicology to cover your jazz program?”

Marshall: No. I made a self-designed major. You know, they were just coming up with the jazz major. And I picked courses and honestly, I was, there was a lot of partying going on in those days. Basically, maybe what they saw in me that I was willing to practice a lot. So when I say we went to Trinidad and Tobago, he had given me a soprano and I was playing lead alto on saxophone. I basically was an alto saxophone player at the time. I got a flute in high school to learn how to play flute because I knew they had those in the parts.

I used to sit on the bus. They had some kind of bus that would take us places. So everyone was at this party, including Nathan Davis, which is a funny story. He came running out of the party because we were in Trinidad, apparently some lizard had run up his pants, right? And he’s running around, help me, help me! But what I was doing was, I actually was on the bus for hours, practicing the soprano saxophone.

And people were reminding me, they said, you didn’t go to class and stuff, but you sat in the practice room downstairs and you used to practice six or eight hours a day.

I’m going to jump in with something I know you’re going to ask. You want to talk, people were always curious about talent. How do I learn music? What’s the process? How do I enjoy music? It’s really simple. First of all, you have to remember why you enjoy music in the first place. That’s step one. Don’t look at it as work. What song do you like? What song moves your heart? Have you ever listened to a song or listened to the words and it makes you cry?

Christopher: For sure.

Marshall: So any person in the world can play music. I’m not saying that any person in the world can be Michael Brecker because that’s just not true. That’s like saying anyone can be Mozart. No. There’s only, those people are like alien beings. They’re like from another planet. There’s only going to be one Mozart, one Beethoven, one Michael Brecker, one John Coltrane, one Dizzy Gillespie, one Charlie Parker. Those are surely the masters that show us the way.

But that doesn’t mean we all can’t get enjoyment out of music, whatever level we’re on. So the first thing is just you remember the joy of the music. Now how did I start to learn jazz? I had classical teachers, so they basically couldn’t tell me anything of what to do. They didn’t know, but I was in the jazz band.

A kid came up in 10th grade, and he had actually had a jazz teacher on saxophone, so he knew about chords and stuff. And he sounded pretty good. And I’ll be honest, I was envious. You know, I was two years older and I was a little bummed out. I never was taught that stuff. My classes as a clarinet player were, well, you know.

I had a solo my senior year, and this kid was in 10th grade. And we’re still friends on Facebook, by the way. And he was good. So this is what I did, and this is what I think everyone should remember. I recorded the band where my solo was supposed to be. I took the tape home, and night after night I sat there and I sung what I thought that I might play along with the recording, right? So whatever it was I was singing, I slowly wrote that down on a piece of paper.

And this went on night after night. You know, I would listen to the recording and maybe you know, do, do, do, do, do. I would just sing. I had no idea what I was singing at all. You know, the technical scale of it, I just knew it was the key of G. After that, I was still a little confused. So I wrote out this whole solo. Then I memorized my solo, what I had sung, right?

And so we’re down at Duquesne University and my father did come. Remember the man, much to his chagrin who one day had told me, “Uh, son, you know the saxophone sounds like a tugboat. Do you really have to play that?” I’m sure you know about that. But my dad came down to this thing, and I won the award for the best soloist of the band.

So how should you learn jazz or any music? Whether it’s classical, jazz, rock and roll? First of all, don’t isolate and say it’s jazz and there’s a special way to play it. It’s music. The classical masters could all improvise. Mozart, Beethoven. Improvising is actually just spontaneously composing. That’s all it is. Mozart could improvise because he had a mastery of harmonic progressions, chords, where they should go, all of the scales, all of the patterns that he could possibly play.

There’s a famous story of Mozart sitting down and what they call variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Maybe while he was drinking. And no one knows if the story is true is not. But the point is, and I know this from studying classical music, that the masters could improvise. And that’s simply making up spontaneous composition. It’s the same as composing.

So when you improvise jazz, you’re not really making things up or in the moment or jamming, it’s none of that. It’s basically studying scales, chords, patterns, devices, understanding the harmony, writing it down, completing absorbing it into your mind just like Mozart.

As you know, Mozart didn’t write at a piano. He sat with a paper and wrote out a complete symphony from his mind. That’s what I’m talking about. A great jazz player has absorbed so much of the music, that they can spontaneously compose a solo full of the devices and the things they’ve learned.

Now how does that relate to a young person or a young adult who just wants to enjoy some music? I think they should think like guitar players. You know how guitar players get a rock record and learn a riff just off the record or learn the song? Honestly, I believe in the Suzuki method for piano. Learning to hear by ear first and not reading music first.

When our mother spoke to us, she didn’t write down something and had us read us. We just spoke back what we heard. And so what happens in the lessons when I was young, because my ear was good, my piano teacher was frustrated because I wasn’t reading the music. I don’t remember who it was. The person would demonstrate the song and many times I could just play it back by ear and then she or he figured that out and got angry with me. And told my mother, “He’s not reading the music.”

And my brother was even much better at it than me. I know I’m talking a lot and you probably got to edit this out.

Christopher: No. I wouldn’t edit a word. There was so much packed in there that I would love to talk at length about. One thing to pick up on is just I love that you were using your voice. Just instinctively, you decided to sing your solo before trying to write it down because it’s something we really harp on at Musical U.

You know, a lot of instrument players are reluctant singers, but we really try and get across to them that you know, if you can imagine in your mind and then use your voice to explore it or express it, that’s such a powerful tool for you to not have to worry about the fingers on the instrument when you’re in that creative moment. And particularly for something like improvising where you want to get to that pure, kind of instinct for expression.

But I also love that you described there that process of kind of stockpiling patterns or vocabulary or systems like chords and scales to kind of equip yourself for that spontaneous composing. And that’s really, really interesting to hear about for a top-level improvisor and jazz musician like yourself. It’s so fascinating to hear how you think about this stuff.

Marshall: Honestly, I think all musicians think the same way. I’ve been blessed to, I started off with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra. So I got to sit with some great musicians there. And I’ve been fortunate to meet almost everyone who was alive, either through Lionel Hampton or Basie honestly. Clark Terry, Art Farmer, George Benson, Frank Foster, Frank West, Danny Turner, James Moody. I played with Paquito D’Rivera.

My point is this. After talking to all of these great musicians, none of them said that there’s no magic to this whatsoever. It’s all a craft. And there was a bass player in Pittsburgh who told me that one day. His nickname was Joe Blow. I forgot what his name was, but that’s what he called himself. And so I was trying to learn be-bop. All those people I mentioned were much more advanced than me, you know.

And one day he said to me, “Marshall, it’s a craft. This is not magic. It’s a craft. You’re going to have to memorize chord numbers.” Like when you think of a scale, like a pianist first learns one, two, three, four, five. Five, four, three, two, one. We then have to attach those numbers to every scale, right? That’s the first step, just like a piano player. So when I was taught from the Phil Woods lesson when I practiced, and this is painful for people because it takes a long time.

You know, Michael Brecker practiced about 16 hours a day. Charlie Parker practiced 15 to 16 hours a day, every day, for a period of three years. Sonny Stitt said he practiced eight hours a day for 10 years. The classical players are just as extreme. I’ve talked to piano players who would practice 10 hours a day. You have to take a break.

So about the number system, how to improvise. When you take a scale, you have to assign a number to the scale. And this is the way I teach on Skype or any person. And this is the same thing Berklee does too, now. It’s a number system. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So that is, if I’m talking to you, I have to be able to know a note. For instance, if I say to you, what’s the fourth note of E-flat major?

Christopher: A flat?

Marshall: Okay. That was too late because the chord-

Christopher: The moment’s gone.

Marshall: And that’s what George Coleman told me sometimes when I would hesitate. He said, “It’s too late, Marshall.” He said, “The piano player already played that E-flat, and you missed it.” So how I practiced was painfully slow. At times literally punching the music stand in frustration. This is the way I would practice. C 1, D2. I would say it out loud. E 3, F 4. That’s how I practiced. Very, very slowly.

I learned later that Barry Harris, I had figured something on my own that was right because Barry Harris used to teach the same way in New York. People would sing it like this, I am singing a major scale. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. What I was doing myself was exactly what the masters were teaching.

So it’s not magic. Say we’re the beginner student or the middle student. We want to have some fun. We’re not going to become professionals, right? We need to make this fun. So my brother taught me a lot. He said, if you want to learn to hear, play a TV theme song by ear. Play Happy Birthday by ear in different keys. Play Mary Had a Little Lamb. If you hear a rock song you like, he said don’t go buy the music. He said just learn it by ear.

How do we learn by ear? Humans sung first before playing instruments. Singing is the root of all music. Classical music, especially. I can’t tell you how many times I was sitting with my father playing piano, and he’s playing the Mozart Concerto part on piano and he’s going, “Sing, Marshall, sing.” (Singing). Right? So if you watch a master pianist, they’re breathing at the spot that they should breathe, right? They go (singing), because they’re thinking like a singer.

I know I got a lot to say. You might have to make two podcasts, man. You might have to make two hours, you know. I love David Sanborn. I love rock music. I love classical music. I love music in general. I grew up in rock music because it was the 60s and the 70s. My brother went off to Air Force, you know, that’s the pile of records before my dad threw them out.

It was Sgt Pepper’s. You know, remember the Beatles record? It was Jimi Hendrix. What’d they call the one Purple Haze was on?

Christopher: Electric Ladyland?

Marshall: Something like that. It was all those records, right? So I’m listening to these. I heard my brother listen to them. I really loved the Beatles, man. And then a sax player said, from college, “If you like saxophone, you need to listen to David Sanborn.” He had his first record in ’76. He had me buy me the 1977 record named Sanborn. I wanted to play, I tried to copy David Sanborn off of the records. I actually had the scales wrong. I didn’t know what he was playing, but I would just pick the notes off by ear.

Christopher: Amazing. And so it was very much kind of an immersion, ear-led, and very practice-heavy learning experience for you by the sounds of it. This wasn’t one of these mythological stories of the great jazz musician who just kind of dabbled on the instrument and had a gift and had amazing success with it. You were clearly putting in the work and surrounding yourself with amazing, inspiring people that you could learn from.

Marshall: I think the key was, though, was i just enjoyed, honestly, I just enjoyed listening to the records. I didn’t really play in any bands in high school. I wasn’t smart enough to figure out to learn songs off of records. All guitar players do, you know. Pretty soon they’re playing a jam. They’re playing Led Zeppelin or something. I never figured that out because honestly, I was really immersed in this classical clarinet and the reading of music. And I was trying to figure out this improvising thing.

There was a guitar player in school who was really playing be-bop, really good. I mean, I’m still friends with him. He lives in Sweden. But he is somehow figured out that you just get a bunch of records and transcribe solos. I hadn’t quite figured that out yet.

Christopher: So we have talked a little bit about the kind of preparation work and study that goes into being able to improvise in terms of learning scales and chords and teaching yourself this numbering system to understand the notes of the scales. But you made a comment in one of your blog posts I loved, which was I think a lot of our listeners could relate to, which you said, “A lot of jazz is calculated brain music. Jazz should have three things: dance, melody, and blues.” I’d love to hear you talk about that a little bit because if it’s not just preparation and careful kind of logical planning of which notes to play, where does that great improvising come from?

Marshall: Hmm. I’ll talk about the first quote. Jackie Kelso was playing lead alto when I first joined the Count Basie Orchestra. I did not really know who Jackie Kelso was, but I quickly learned that he was part of The Wrecking Crew. Do you know what The Wrecking Crew is?

Christopher: Yeah.

Marshall: That was the great recording group of Los Angeles. Hal Blaine, Carole Kaye, who were recording out of, Plas Johnson, recording like the Beach Boys. Glen Campbell. Jackie Kelso was part of that recording group. He was actually in retirement by the time Grover Mitchell brought him back from Los Angeles to play.

I think what all musicians need, and I think what anyone needs in life is always to have mentors. I’ve always searched out and found, and been lucky to find mentors. I don’t think you can get anywhere without a mentor. And you’re always learning, you know, whether you’re my age or whether you’re 12. You know, for instance, my mentor first was my brother, and then my father. And then Mr. Thompson from symphony and then Mr. Ballawatcher from Carnegie-Mellon. You need a mentor to guide you.

Like I said, there’s very few Mozarts. It was Jackie Kelso who told me one day, he said, he had this very interesting way of talking. He was very sophisticated. He’s actually on the Steely Dan record Aja in the saxophone section. Look on the record, it says Jackie Kelso. He’s on thousands of recordings.

He lived in a trailer outside of the studio, there was so much work. That’s a true story. It’s been verified. He told me that. I asked Plas Johnson later and he said, “Yep. He lived in this trailer. They would beep the beeper.” There was no cell phones, remember, and he would go in a recording session.

One day Jackie said to me, he said, “You have more than enough technique to work the rest of your life, but what you’re missing is the depth. There’s no depth in your playing.” What he told me is he played with Dizzy Gillespie when he was young, and Lionel Hampton. And he said Dizzy was the first person who first talked about that to him. He said when you’re playing, it’s go tot have dance in the music.

And my brother, I remembered later, told me the same thing about Beethoven and Mozart. He reminded much of that was played for people who were dance, that sometimes we were listening to the music in the wrong way. Sometimes, he said, if you take Beethoven and instead of tapping one and three, put it on two and four, listen to it, you’re going to hear a much different concept of what Beethoven was doing. Because even in the symphonies, honestly, there’s dance going on.

Music has always served a function. Music has rarely ever been something that people sat down and listened to. It’s always either a religious thing, a communication thing, a spiritual moment, a celebration. Music has not been like what it’s become lately where people sit at a concert. And that’s why I think so many people love rock concerts and pop concerts, because you’re participating in the party.

You know, when people start to sit in their chair and look at music, it’s never been our history of doing that. And Mozart had to write a lot of stuff for the king and queen, do you remember? But the common people weren’t listening to Mozart, right? They were listening to the local folk music. They had no interest in listening to that. I got sidetracked. You got to bring me back.

Christopher: So yeah, you’ve got to have that dance.

Marshall: The dance. The dance.

Christopher: I think that’s something that jumps out about the Basie Orchestra too, isn’t it? That it’s always that spirit of dance.

Marshall: When Jackie first told me about the dance. Just in the last five years, the great Houston Person, he’s a saxophonist, recorded about 50 records. Very, very longevity in this business. I met him years ago. So one day on the phone he said to me, “Marshall, you know, the secret to music is melody, dance, and swing to jazz music.” And he actually said the Count Basie Orchestra was always more popular than the Duke Ellington Orchestra, though the Duke Ellington Orchestra had some of the most sophisticated music in the world.

But he said what Count Basie figured out to do was always have melody, dance, and swing. And so when you went to a Count Basie concert, the people say it’s like going to a party, right? It’s like having fun. You leave feeling like that you had fun. Honestly, sometimes I think that’s missing from a lot of jazz music today, that feeling of the party and the dance and the fun.

Christopher: Interesting. So let’s talk a little bit about the Count Basie Orchestra. You’ve been an alumnus for 20 years in various sax chairs. And I’d love to know where that came into your own musical journey, and also, I guess, what’s so distinctive about that orchestra in particular? That band?

Marshall: Well, the Count Basie Orchestra is one of the most singularly most influential big bands to the way every big band plays in the world today. That’s simply a fact. What the Count Basie’s genius was coming up with this style and sound, which has pretty stamped every single big band you will hear today. It’s hard to listen to any recording that you find today and not be able to find some kind of Count Basie influence on it. That’s the most important thing.

So when I was at college, going to school and I was playing lead alto and I could read good, and I had a good sound you know, from my studies. Joe Williams was a guest artist. Nathan Davis brought in a lot of people to come into the school. And so I was playing lead alto and my buddy and I, he wanted to study arranging. So since he liked arranging, he liked listening to big bands. So we would drive around in his truck through Pittsburgh and he’d have Count Basie on all the time, you know?

So we’re listening to Count Basie and Joe Williams was a guest. We’re playing the park and Joe stops the band and says, “Oh, saxophones, you know you’re not playing that right. Play it like this guy here. This guy in the front right here,” which was the biggest compliment I felt I had ever gotten, right? So that was my first thing.

Now my brother reminded me later, but I don’t remember, my brother said, “You know, you told me one day, you said ‘I want to play in the Count Basie Orchestra.’” And he said, you know, you did it. So you should be proud of yourself.

The Count Basie Orchestra is like a living organism. We don’t play what’s on the paper. I’ve heard a lot of people play Count Basie music but it doesn’t sound like Count Basie. There’s an interpretation to the music going in the way the band plays. The one thing that Mr. Basie had members that stayed a long time in the orchestra. That’s very important.

I got to meet so many of them when I first subbed in the band in 1994. Frank Foster brought me in and there were a lot of the Count Basie original from playing with Count Basie there. Danny Turner was the one who told me, because I asked them a lot of questions about playing lead alto. I was sitting beside him one day playing second alto or something. And he was saying the style was past.

There’s two Count Basie bands, by the way. There’s the first generation one, you know, with Earle Warren playing lead alto and then the band kind of went out of business. Then the second generation, which is what most people know with Frank Foster, Frank West, Al Grey, that band. That’s most of the music people know.

So Marshall Royal was the lead alto player. And as you know, Marshall had a very unique style of the lip slurs and the glissandos, the bursting into the notes and the vibrato. What’s fascinating about Marshall is that he added all that himself. It’s not on the music. It’s his voice. So one of the great players that sat underneath him at first was Bobby Plater. And then Danny Turner was sitting beside Bobby later.

So Danny explained to me was happened was Marshall was in the band a long time, so we all learned from Marshall. Bobby learned by sitting next to Marshall. I learned by sitting next to Bobby. And then I got to sit next to Danny and I was listening to him play the way he interpreted the music. And when I took over lead alto, John Williams said to me, “You know, you’re playing lead alto. This is the most important thing that you need to know. Two things. You need to sing, and you need to have fun.”

And then Bill Hughes, the great Bill Hughes who’d been playing in the band some 54 years and led the band, he told me it’s really great that you love Marshall Royal, but what I want you to do is I need you to put your own voice on that chair, to find your own way of playing it.

Christopher: And when you talk of singing there, we’re not talking about the kind of singing we were talking about before in terms of creating your solo by singing out loud. You mean, kind of singing through the instrument? Is that right? Being lyrical with it?

Marshall: Yes, that’s correct. All, all, all musicians that sing through the instrument, they need to get back to singing through the instrument and stop thinking of how many notes they can play and how many patterns they can play. Music is about singing and touching people. Music should be listenable. Music should move someone. You should tell a story. It’s not about impressing someone with how many patterns that you’ve memorized, because anyone can do that, clearly. Everyone in the world has learned the jazz method. That’s the method I told you about. Memorizing patterns and scales, et cetera, et cetera. But how many great musicians are?

And I mentioned David Sanborn before. Michael Brecker loved David Sanborn. James Moody said he loved. I met David several times now. He’s one of my favorites because David can say more with one note than most people would say with a series and a flurry of a whole bunch of notes. And what he’s doing is he’s soulful, he’s singing. It’s melodic. But if you listen to his playing, it’s always like you would sing. (Singing). He’s always singing.

In history, the people that have lasted the longest were singing. As complicated as John Coltrane became, you could still sing even the most complicated parts of the solo. It was still beautiful. I know you said you have a lot of middle ground amateur musicians and that’s why I go back to if you want to learn a song, don’t buy the music. Pretend you’re a guitar player. If you play sax or piano or trumpet or guitar or bass, or whatever it is, nowadays get the mp3 and listen to it.

The way that we learn a song is we sing it first and then we try to play it on our instrument by picking it out one note at a time. That’s how guitar players learn how to play. And that’s why Joe Walsh and those guys sound so different. You know, and that’s why rock and roll took over, to tell you the truth. Miles Davis figured that out. If you listen to Miles Davis, first he loved rock and roll. He loved Jimi Hendrix and he loved Sly and the Family Stone.
But Miles was always singing when he played, if you listen to his playing very carefully. Miles said once he knew the words to all of those songs he was playing.

Christopher: Amazing. I think that’s given such a fascinating insight into the mind of a top-level jazz performer and improvisor. I’ve really loved hearing how you think about these things because you know, there’s so many musicians confused about what it takes to improvise or you know, the balance between theory and ear. And memorizing and preparing versus spontaneity. And I think you’ve given a really great picture of how you think about all this.

Marshall: I think for the person who’s beginning to improvise, they need to go back to the beginning of jazz or something that I can improvise. And basically in New Orleans, what people were doing was, they were taking the melody and then they were slowly changing the melody by ear. That should be the first way everyone learns how to improvise. If you have a teacher that shows you play one, two, three, five, or something like that, that’s the wrong way to go about it. Because now you’re memorizing notes.

So you should take a song like, for instance, as Wynton Marsalis has demonstrated over and over again at his clinics, you take a song like Happy Birthday, and then the second time you just change Happy Birthday a little bit. You just make stuff up. If you make a mistake, it’s okay. You’re practicing. You know, that’s the whole idea. If you can think of anything to play, just try changing a couple of notes.

You know, you might go, first time go Happy Birthday, da-da. (Singing). Now you say, I don’t really know what to do. So next time, it would go, (singing). So that’s pretty good. What else can I go? What about you go, (singing). You added one note. (Singing). So how do you find those notes? You sing it first. You have to start singing, whatever you’re doing. And you’ve got to have fun. You got to have to make this fun.

And then like an hour goes by in no time at all. And that’s how everyone should start to improvise, by ear first. Not by theory first. It’s kind of backwards.

Christopher: Love it. We recently added improv modules inside Musical U. And I think I’m going to go back and put in a big quote that says, “Marshall McDonald says sing first and have fun,” because that is exactly the right spirit to take to it. I love it.

So, Marshall, we’ve talked a bit about your playing with with the Count Basie Orchestra and I’ve been loving your two solo records, well not solo, but under your own name. Standardize and Mama Knows Everything. What else is going on in the world of Marshall McDonald? You’re clearly a very fluent educator in explaining what you do as well. Is that part of what you do these days?

Marshall: Yes. That really is my goal. I would like to settle down and teach and possibly even teach at a college or teach sax lessons. Like I said, I’ve been so lucky. I only touched upon what a few of the things people told me. I think the key for anyone, though, is to absorb what it is that people are telling you, and always be humble. You know, don’t act like I know everything and I’m not going to listen to this person, because that’s kind of silly.
So basically, I’m looking to teach. I’ve also been playing a baritone saxophone with Abdullah Ibrahim a lot lately. We’re going to Paris, to Marseilles, coming up in August. Abdullah is very interesting for me because see, in the Basie band or any big band, you don’t get a lot of time to solo. Abdullah’s using just four horns and I’m playing baritone sax, so of course, there’s a lot more solo space and a lot more freedom.

Abdullah encouraged all of us to start writing music and to start finding our own sound. I think he’s absolutely correct. The music industry’s changing a lot. Maybe you’re aware of that. What do you play? Clarinet? Saxophone?

Christopher: I play these days mostly bass. Yeah, clarinet and saxophone in my past. And these days mostly guitar.

Marshall: You get more work on bass. Everyone needs a good bass player. The industry’s changing a lot, you know, and some things not for the better. We do have a very advanced college education system and some very advanced saxophone players. I remember I heard Lee Konitz say 25, you know Lee Konitz, the great Lee Konitz? One of the greatest jazz saxophonists of all time.

He came out of the Lennie Tristano school. That was the school opposite of Charlie Parker. Lennie Tristano was a pianist in the 40s and 50s. Warren Marsh, Lee Konitz, incredible music. There’d be no Paul Desmond without Lee Konitz.

So once Lee said years ago, he said these kids have so much more technique than I ever will have. But you know, so many times, so many of us would rather go, Lee could play, he had technique, but I know what he means. We would rather go listen to Lee Konitz. I was listening to Paul Desmond play at tune live at Carnegie Hall. Maybe it’s called Eleven Four or something like that. He wrote it. It’s a time signature, it’s eleven beats over four.

It was just so marvelous and beautiful, besides being so, such a mastery of a solo. It was also wonderful to listen to. And that’s kind of been my thing lately, telling people that jazz sometimes has gotten so educated with everyone knowing every John Coltrane lick and every pentatonic scale, and wanting to impress the other musicians, that the audience, they didn’t notice, walked out of the room.

Because in Pittsburgh, the way it was, it was about being in a bar. You know, you’re looking at steel workers. They had a hard day at work. Maybe they got some trouble at home. They’re coming down there to relax and have a good time. They don’t want you educating them with the deepest John Coltrane thing you have.

What used to get people shouting in the bar was when you played a blues lick in Pittsburgh, you know, like say, you’re going along. You’re going like, wow. (Singing). And the people, wow, you know, and they’re drinking, they’re smoking. See, that’s what the, Stanley Turrentine came from Pittsburgh, right? I heard a lot, and I got to meet Stanley when he came back to Pitt to be a clinician.

And Stanley had a prolific, long career because he always played the blues, he always spoke to people. He is one of Michael Brecker’s favorite players, was Stanley Turrentine, you know? And Michael Brecker said he listened to guitar players, did you know that? His focus was on a lot of guitar players.

I did get to speak with Michael Brecker a few times. I was very fortunate. I loved his playing from the late 70s. One of the first solos someone told me to learn was a Michael Brecker solo on Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight by James Taylor. You know, I found a lot of young people didn’t even know that he played the original sax solo on that song. I guess I’m old.

It’s a beautiful solo and again, because Michael’s singing during the solo. You know, Michael played with Carly Simon, James Taylor, Paul Simon, you know, on the Cameo, Cameo record. Great solos. If you listen to Michael Brecker’s solos all of the time on those pop records, he’s singing like Maceo Parker or Hank Crawford. When I mean singing, he’s playing a phrase that’s musical. He’s not playing notes that he’s memorized.

What happens when you practice a lot of jazz and you learn your patterns, Michael said he had a method in high school. He’s obviously incredibly talented. His brother could play. Michael told me his method was writing down different patterns on music because he couldn’t remember them and then he would play them in different intervals and different sequences all over the saxophone front. Four hours after school and then when he got to college, eight to 12 hours a day.

So honestly, there’s no magic at all, you know. Everyone has a different gift, I agree with that. And some people, most of us are not going to be John Coltrane or Michael Brecker, you know. So we have to accept that. But they’re like our sensei, our key teachers. The masters that came and visited a little while showed us, here’s the possibilities of what you might do. You get to grab a little bit from them.

But what I first liked about Michael Brecker was the joy I felt listening to his music. So again, I’m going to go back to that every adult student, young student, if you’re 40 years old and want to play saxophone, it’s all about the joy of listening to the music.

Christopher: I love it. Well, in the same way you were talking about looking up to those greats like Coltrane as a sensei or maybe a space alien but can inspire you, I just think it’s a phenomenal day and age we live in that I have the opportunity to speak with someone like yourself at length and hear these amazing stories and insights. But also that adult saxophone player or clarinet player who wants to study with you has that opportunity, you know?
You’re very generous with your time as an individual educator through Skype lessons and also through giving workshops. And I just think that’s an amazing opportunity where you don’t need to travel halfway around the world to study with today’s greats. You can do it in the comfort of your own home.

So I definitely encourage anyone who’s been inspired by today’s conversation to head to Marshall’s website. We’ll have a link in the show notes. But it’s marshallmcdonald.com, and I just have to say a really big thank you. You’ve been so generous with your time today, Marshall. And it’s been an absolute pleasure to get to speak with you.

Marshall: No, thank you so much. I’ve had a blast. Everyone keep swinging and keep on enjoying the music, you know?

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The post Inside the Jazz Mind, with Marshall McDonald of the Count Basie Orchestra appeared first on Musical U.

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