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Do you agree with this video?

#41
The message of this video is a straw man. He is refuting the idea that 'listening alone' will make you a better player, absent of anything else. I say that it is a straw man because I don't really believe that anyone is making that assertion.

If someone does tell you that listening alone will make you a better player, then you have Jeff Berlin to make you feel better about not believing it.

Otherwise, you can quote my 5 year old: "Duh!?!"
 
#45
It's not like Jeff Berlin is outright wrong here, but the fact is, many musicians don't listen and that becomes a major problem. I agree with Joe Nerve in that it sounds like he just wants to stir the pot.

First off, musicians often don't listen to themselves, they aren't really aware of what they really sound like. Recording yourself helps immensely here in that you can sit back and hear what is happening, then when you are playing you can cue into whatever it is you are trying to achieve.

Second, musicians are often pretty bad at listening to each other. We are often just focused on just what we are playing, a cool riff or whatever, and really aren't tuned in to each other and trying to help each other. Time/groove, tuning, tastefulness be damned, I am playing this riff because I like it. Great musical group moments are created by everyone listening intensely to one another.

Last, we don't always listen to the vast array of music available to us. We so often limit ourselves to one genre of music and don't realize that every bit of musical knowledge we have can help us.

In spirit Jeff Berlin is kind of right, at his level all the above points are just a given. He knows what he sounds like, he is aware of what his band mates are doing and reacts to it, he is well educated and knows a lot of music and many styles. The problem is that to gloss over this and just say well yeah listening isn't really much, skips over all the important steps it takes to get where he is. So this video just sounds kind of glib to me, what's the point other than trolling.
 
#47
I listen..most time to the drummer & I want to throw my bass down go over & choke him. :-)

I can't believe so many can't separate the humor & analogies from the intent or facts. Listening to the folks playing around you will not make you a better player. Period!! End of story. It is not a lesson to be paid for or an exorcise you should focus on at a beginner to intermediate level at all. If you paid somebody to tell you this & kept going back for continual lessons on "How to listen to the guys you are playing with " You are a schmuck!! Even more so if you are doing this & you can't play, identify or locate on your own instrument a C triad or whatever yourself. Taste, feel, groove etc etc etc can't be taught.

Anybody who has followed Jeff knows where he stands in regards to performance related teaching or entire lessons & exorcises that are not noted on standard notation being called lesson at all.
 
#48
I like to borrow from the Music as Language analogy of Victor Wooten:
I am a pretty miserable speaker, reader and writer of German these days. "Ich kann nur ein bischen Deutsch gesprechen und gelesen." Sorry, Germans out there!
If I don't have some rudimentary vocabulary I won't understand what I am listening to. Because I have my limited knowledge of German I was able to get more and more acclimated to German by immersing myself in German TV, magazines and newspapers while I was on tour there. After several weeks I got pretty fluent (for me) but I always had my English-German dictionary and phrasebook.
As a listener who didn't play bass I knew the sounds off of records, I could even put my fingers down and imitate them on an instrument. As someone who learned the Music Language, I could say to myself, "Oh that's a Blues Progression. He is playing an 8th note groove. It's a lot of Dominant 7th Chords." and find things pretty readily. Like German, the more information I had the more I could understand what I was listening to.
An African Grey Parrot has a pretty wide vocabulary (maybe even mechanical sounds, a phone, etc.) but I'm not sure they know what they're saying.
If you like a certain style or wish to learn more about a certain style, understanding the Music Language allows you to more effectively analyze what it is you want to play. IME, the more you "think" while you are playing you are screwed-it's like thinking about every minute thing you do while riding a bicycle. You will fall over in 10 seconds if you think about everything you do. The more you practice anything the more second nature it becomes. The goal as I see it is to increase your vocabulary so that you're always in the Comfort Zone. My goal is to be "in the moment" at all times, even when sight reading. It can be done, but it takes time, lots of hard work in the practice room and understanding.
If an aspiring player knows a very limited set of information, he will only be able to process so much at a time. The first time I attempted to play a Jazz Tune (I think it was Autumn Leaves) in a Jam Session, I failed miserably because I didn't understand the progression. I was frantically trying to listen to what was going on around me, but there was so much information coming at me my 17 year old brain couldn't process it. As I practiced, studied and began to understand how this all worked (chord progressions, ii-V cadences, walking lines, etc.) it became no big deal and now 40 years later I can pretty much nail the changes of a tune after one pass if I don't know it and "fake" the first pass pretty successfully. That's because of a lot of studying so that the vocabulary is second nature. I think that's Jeff's point.
 
#49
Well said Roy, but i will make this point and and an observation.

The point, how can so many others get the message over of what they are saying, yet Jeff does not?
Quite a few have put an interpreatation of Jeffs meaning, so why cannot Jeff just say what he means in a clear and concise way?.......that is the job of a good teacher.

The observation, Jeff is known for not putting any worth in any lesson that is not music based.....yet here he is giving advice under the title of a lesson and it is not music based???????
So why is Jeff allowed to give advice under the guise of a lesson and others are not?
If you think, "well i have not paid for it" then i would assume that if you attend one of his paid classes or courses he offer no advice at all, because it is not music based.....but that is not so.

P.S.
Jeff makes issues out of non-issues, he creates the very issue himself, so i assume that this "not having to listen" is Jeffs new un-founded 'snake oil' idea.
 
#50
Omiem said:
But isn't there a difference between listening and having an internal rhythm? Maybe the player in the music store just doesn't have a good internal rhythm?
Click to expand...

What in the world is 'internal rhythm'? How many people have you who do not have a physical problem walk out of tempo? I'm guessing all people have 'internal rhtyhm'.

After teaching band and music of all kinds for 40 years I can tell you that no amount of 'internal rhythm' will overcome faulty technique. If you have to wait (even a fraction of a second) to find the right place for your finger, you'll come off as having bad rhythm.

And that's what Jeff is talking about. If listening were the silver bullet some people feel it is, then all we'd need to do is pick up any instrument, and listen.. and presto, excellent musician. If you doubt this, try playing a theremin. Yea, you gotta listen, and that's the first baby step.
 
#51
Listening to the band will not make you a better player, but it will help the band be a better band. A band is more than the sum of its parts. And when everyone is listening to everyone else the result is a very tight organized sound. This is how session players, who have never played together before, can come together for the first time and sound like they have been playing together for years.

So Jeff is right that it doesn’t really improve your own ability at all, but it does improve the overall sound of the band.
 
#52
Blah, blah, blah ... pure pedantism, but that's his business, isn't it? I agree that simply listening to music no more makes one a musician/player than sitting in the garage makes one a car. But there IS such an activity as listening with a musician's ear. If one's ears can't hear the difference between what "right" and what's "wrong", can't hear and anticipate changes before they get to them, don't take audible cues from their band mates ... well, I hope they have their solo/originals act well polished.

Wha? No one ever heard the phrase "ear for music"?
 
#54
I completely agree with Jeff here. I thought that I wouldn't until I finished watching the video because it sounded like a rediculous premise. However, I think that his point is salient for those players who are not well versed in musical language. Learn what your playing and play it right. Understand what you're playing and play it without thinking about it because you're fluent in the language of music and, more importantly, your fingers are fluent in the language. Until you can do this, there is very little to be gained by intently listening to the other people playing around you.

Now, when you can play at that level, listening becomes invaluable. If the rhythm guitar player is playing some crazy inside voicings of the chords and you can latch onto that, you can add some further flavor. If the lead guitar is throwing out some cool phrases you can respond to them or play a counter melody with them. If the drummer is adding some cool syncopation you can enhance it.

Those are the things that focused listening can do for you. Listening beyond a cursory, "does what I'm playing gel with the rest of the band?" or "that's the cue from the lead guitar that were going back into the verse..." is just a distraction, and, in most cases, causes some problems...
 
#56
blah blah blah, "listened to the first 15 seconds"
skipped to the next 10 then heard all I need to hear.

blah blah blah

practice and listen, so dam simple
most people do more "listening" than practice so it becomes a poor excuse. that somewhat seems the point aside from his other rants or what not.

just practice
 
#57
The guy is trying to sell his SCHOOL!!!! This is an advertising.

He's trying to sell a "concept" based on the contrary of most schools or teachers are saying. He is trying to say something different that will make people go to his school instead of another.That's all.

I'm sure he must say sometimes in the heat of a lesson: "Dude, listen to what you are playing"!!! :D
 
#58
I think Jeff takes it for granted that musicians listen. Like, the way some musicians don't listen would just blow his mind.

That said, it is kinda non-advice to a musician that practices daily and has good discipline.

There are moments when I have received non-specific advice from my teacher and it helped, but most of the time the focus is on exactly what I'm going to be DOING with the instrument.

Most well-rounded people will be helped by all kinds of advice. Sometimes you need the nuts and bolts stuff, and sometimes it's cool to chill out and watch a Kenny Werner thing or something. If you are really interested in music, you'll seek all of it out.
 
#59
Here's a good clarification on this topic, in my view this is JB's alternative to the "listen" platitude in drag as a "lesson". This is probably what he means when he talks about listening and the content you'd get from him instead:



Speaking for myself, I'd get a lot more out of a lesson like this than a simple command to "listen". This is probably underlyingly what he was reacting to in the initial vid. Notice that he talks about "listening" a lot in this series, but it's targeted and accompanied with "academic" content.

LS
 
#60
unclejane said:
Here's a good clarification on this topic, in my view this is JB's alternative to the "listen" platitude in drag as a "lesson". This is probably what he means when he talks about listening and the content you'd get from him instead:



Speaking for myself, I'd get a lot more out of a lesson like this than a simple command to "listen". This is probably underlyingly what he was reacting to in the initial vid. Notice that he talks about "listening" a lot in this series, but it's targeted and accompanied with "academic" content.

LS
Click to expand...


Nice to see Jeff understanding how music education works for the majority. This video he has presented as a lesson is standard clinic material, the very sort of lesson that if someone paid for Jeff would condemn as a waste of money and not necessary.
So nice to see Jeff is understanding that players can go to bass clinics or have lessons that are not academic based, because some lesson do not need to as they are applications of academic ideas in real practice.....such as this video and the "listening" video of this thread.

So maybe Jeff will shot a video on how best to use a click of metronome and how not to use one, rather than just condemn every use of one.....because these latest video lessons he is presenting is the very thing he said was, "wrong with the modern teachings" that other teachers present as meaningful lessons and not worthy of time or money.......welcome to the modern world Jeff......we have been expecting you. :)
 

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