Through the past month, I have asked you to record yourself playing; I wanted to delve a little bit deeper into this work, and see if we can find some clarity and more value from the process. If you have been recording yourself, I think you have probably started to notice some things that naturally arise from this process.. For me, it was one thing that drastically improved my listening, and my ability to hear music and the space around it.
Here is what happened for me when I really started to include this as part of my work on music; first of all, there was a great impact on how I heard what I was playing (tone, lines, articulation etc). I became more aware of these things when I could listen to them without being involved in the physical act in the moment, and I found that had an immediate effect on my playing. However, there were other aspects that were perhaps more impactful, and altered my work to a greater degree. I started to hear the quality of silence in a room, around the sound, in a far more clear way. Resonance in a space, reflections of sound, all of that started to inform my decisions, as did the extra sounds from my instruments—key noise, rattles, clunks and the like. This is not to say that I expect a horn to sound only the tones; not at all, I love to hear the mechanics of the instrument, but not if they are malfunctioning! For example, one can often hear a lot of key noise when listening to Paul Gonsalves, and I love that—but when a student sends me a recording of themselves and all I hear is a clattery horn that is in desperate need of oiling, well, that is not so good! I guess it’s kind of like a car, or a sewing machine; there is good and bad functional sound. And, like a car or a sewing machine, the experienced and attentive operator will immediately know when their machine is malfunctioning, just by the sound.
Once, I was recording in a studio that had exposed ducts in the ceiling, and every time I played an F# it rattled; the other people in the studio with me didn’t even notice that rattle until I pointed it out, which I found very interesting. I ended up moving, so I was as far from the offending duct in F# as possible, but I was very glad that I had trained my ears to outside sounds, and was able to reduce the noise to some extent.
When you play back your recordings, listen to yourself, as well as to the room in which you recorded yourself. See how much more you can hear when you really pay attention, and start to listen for the sound of each room you enter, no matter whether you are playing or not. Walk into a forest and listen to how the trees change the sound. Pay attention to the sound of the space in your bank, at the post office, the cafe; can you hear the change in surface when you walk past a cork board? Enjoy the exploration!
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Catherine Sikora 