Walking- part 1
This is another post that isn’t for everybody- if you have an instrument you can’t move with- piano, bass, cello- this won’t quite work.
I was very lucky almost twenty years ago to study with the master soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy. Steve is best known for his commitment to solo performance, and to the music of Thelonious Monk. Steve was a lovely person, soft-spoken and ideosyncratic, as I think you can hear in his playing. The first two things he taught all his saxophone students was an overtone exercise (that’s another post), and a very specific way of practicing scales. He wanted us to practice our scales while walking, one note per step.
His reasoning was twofold. One, it made playing scales, which can feel very rote and boring to practice, something of a meditation. Sound and music are physical; this makes the playing more embodied. It also allows you to really hear how you play a scale- does the tone and dynamic match note to note.
Second, we aren’t metronomes. Our hearts don’t beat metronomically, we don’t breathe on a perfectly predictable count. Metronomes are important (see appendix at the end), but a conductor or a drummer or the cellist in your string quartet is not going to move the time as a metronome would. And that’s okay! It’s part of the humanity that is at the root of all great music. When we play to the pace of our movement, we start to tap into our own internal time feel, the one all of us are born with, which is going to help us find our own voice in whatever music we play.
I still use this exercise, but I’ve adapted it to help me with time and technique in general. I’ll demonstrate in the accompanying video, but here’s the gist.
First get comfortable with playing a scale, through the comfortable range of your instrument, one note per step. Make sure you can do it for all 12 scales. (or however many if it’s a different kind of scale- whole tone, diminished, etc.)
Then, start playing subdivisions against your walk- 2 notes, per step, then 3, 4, etc. These days I go up to 12, but it took me a long time to get there. Be honest- don’t start speeding up or slowing down your steps to make the notes fit.
The added advantage of this is it allows you to start feeling subdivisions in your body. I’m much more comfortable playing four-against-three, or five-against-two or other polyrhythms from practicing this way.
There’s a lot of ways to use this, and I’ll go into some I like in the future, but try it and see what you think.
Appendix- Human time vs. metronomic time.
In this day and age, when computers are such a huge part of how we make music, and where almost any timekeeping device we use is digital, working with a metronome is still very important. I’m not recommending this way of working instead of practicing with a metronome. Indeed, if you ever want to do any kind of studio work, or work in pop music settings, being able to work with a click-track (a kind of metronome used in studio settings), that precise sense of time has never been more vital.
But when you only practice with a metronome, I think you miss something vital, as I explained above. Playing this way has made my playing more of an extension of my body and how I move (which has also changed how I move some). And when you play with people, I think it makes you more aware of how their internal time works, and more sympathetic.