Paul Chambers and other thoughts

In these days I’ve been working on playing over the bar line and things like that.

Instead of practicing with the metronome or by myself I did it over some records, to make the exercise more fun.

I did it over some classic Miles Davis recordings with Paul Chambers on bass and I couldn’t help myself from stopping and listen to what he did.

His solos and his bass lines are great from many perspectives and answer many more questions than any book ever did, although there are good books out there.

Paul Chambers playing doesn’t just feel right, it feels deeper than that, and most of all his sound, either he’s comping or soloing, is coherent to itself. It doesn’t feel like he’s switching personality from comping to soloing or viceversa.

We spend time mimicking our heroes and the musicians we look up to, but their concept is way deeper than what we might think or get from one or ten transcriptions, or by learning a few of their licks to quote here and there.

I’m thinking of all these nuances that might get lost if we focus on transcribing rather than just listening and being aware.

Being aware is the key to stay in the moment and taste something while it’s lasting.

Many thoughts and lessons come to mind in this moment: I remember Ron Carter telling me that you don’t do much with a transcription of notes, or Rodney Green stressing the difference between mimicking someone vs modeling after someone. I don’t think that I didn’t understand it then, but I feel that now I understand it more.

It’s all about the small untouchable things and what is impossible to write correctly with words or through music notation.

Just like the little moments that we live in our life that for some reason become part of who we are.