Victor Wooten's Groove Workshop: Help Understanding how to play without thinking.

[StatesideRambler]

I'm sure that for the majority of us ensemble playing is a goal. In ensembles, if you're tied up full time with thinking about your own playing there's not much of your thinking resources left to hear and interpret and accompany or react smoothly to what the rest of the band is playing.

Most of us start in music with learning the notes, leading to the presumption that the notes, being first-learned, are the most important things. With that as our beginning, it soon becomes the greatest obstacle to our becoming musicians. We burden ourselves with a false obligation to get the notes right before giving any thought to the other aspects of the music. Unfortunately, we hold fast to our early learning (in all areas, not only music) so when we're told to use feelings instead, we have a mental disconnect to deal with.

I don't have what it takes to convey that "feeling" idea to someone online. However hard it seems, try to digest what Vic's DVD and your teacher are giving you. FWIW a friend who struggled as a beginner started getting it when I persuaded him to lean back in his chair instead of forward when practicing scales or etudes that he already had half a handle on. Leaning back is a more relaxed posture and the lower body tension seems to have helped him. YMMV

 

[Derry Murbles]

An analogy I like is this:

As you are talking (or typing in this case) you are unconsciously aware of words, grammar, syntax, etc.

But you are not thinking about each and every word and where it goes.... you just have an idea to express and it just comes out.

Music is like that.

So much this.

 

[Bioflava]

Tons of good stuff in here -- and some people have mentioned this in passing -- but let me underline it: Ear training! I think this is what Anthony Wellington was getting at: As you develop your ear, you can think less and just play by ear and, eventually, with your heart. I'm not there by any means, but I've found that I'm starting to get to the point where I can "audiobilize" (the audio equivalent of visualize) a note just before I want to play it when I'm jamming and then play it.

 

[StatesideRambler]

So in short they expect you to know all the theory before you can just "Play" That makes sense, but the perspective I got from the video was "Stop thinking about theory, or notes, just play!" But I need that theory!

No, you don't need that theory.

Before there was "music theory" there was music. If music theory had never developed there would still be music. You can learn, perform, teach and enjoy music without knowing any formal music theory at all. That's not to say that music theory isn't valuable because it's extraordinarily valuable. Just not to everyone in all situations. You're laying that obligation on yourself and it's gotten in the way of playing music. Stop doing that and just learn and play the songs. The music theory will be there waiting for you when you're ready for it, if you should eventually need it.

Paraphrasing what [a big name bassist] said at a clinic I went to, "when you're learning songs, you're learning music theory. You probably don't need it yet so don't give it any of your time."

 

[equill]

I don't suppose you eat fried chicken with a fork.....

Pfft. I eat hamburgers with a knife and fork, if the cutlery's there and it's that kind of place.
But fried chicken can be a more interesting challenge, when I'm in the mood for it.

 

[JimmyM]

No, you don't need that theory.

Before there was "music theory" there was music. If music theory had never developed there would still be music. You can learn, perform, teach and enjoy music without knowing any formal music theory at all. That's not to say that music theory isn't valuable because it's extraordinarily valuable. Just not to everyone in all situations. You're laying that obligation on yourself and it's gotten in the way of playing music. Stop doing that and just learn and play the songs. The music theory will be there waiting for you when you're ready for it, if you should eventually need it.

Paraphrasing what [a big name bassist] said at a clinic I went to, "when you're learning songs, you're learning music theory. You probably don't need it yet so don't give it any of your time."

Geez, I don't agree with that at all except "before there was music theory, there was music." If it wasn't for learning the theory behind playing music, I could have never figured it out except in the most simplistic ways. Some people can, and they are what are known as "flukes." The rest of us needed it to make any sense out of making music, and the vast majority of people who don't learn it end up never getting anywhere with it.

 

[Thumpin6string]

Ok I think I understand a bit better. I think even at the start of the DVD, Victor said something like "When you start learning music, everyone starts to teach you theory, when really we shouldn't" It's not exactly what he said, but that was my takeaway from it. It's like...You have to have that theory to know what to play.

I'm over 60 and have been playing since I was a teenager. I didn't learn theory until I was in my 50s and the only reason was to understand why certain notes worked when you wouldn't think they would. It opened my eyes, but honestly I remember very little. Pick songs that you like, learn them so well that you can play them with your eyes closed or even while having a conversation. I believe that is what Victor is talking about. Get to the point that you don't have to think about it, you just play it.

 

[aprod]

I like to use the analogy of driving a car. When you are learning you have to think about everything as you gain experience you do it without thinking. And so it is with music, you built your dexterity and learn your theory and after you build a foundation you don't have to think about it during performance.

 

[brianrost]

the perspective I got from the video was "Stop thinking about theory, or notes, just play!"

There's more to feel than just the notes you play...on the beat, behind the beat, ahead of the beat, loud vs. quiet, bright tone vs. dark, busy vs. lots of space, staccato vs. legato, slides, bends, etc. Even if you don't know a lot of theory you probably already know a lot of licks that can be used interchangeably, so use the one that feels right at any given time.

It's like...You have to have that theory to know what to play.

Not at all...you can read off a chart without theory. You can learn songs by ear without theory. You can sing without theory.

Theory is only thrown at bass players early on because most of what we do can be explained by theory, which is in fact all theory is...an explanation. When you are trying to come up with something other than what is on the chart or you are trying to think of chords to match a melody, that's when theory can be used to come up with possiblilties.

 

[Jehos]

It's like that old saying. In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not.

Learning music theory is good. But it isn't the same as practice. Wooten is saying the practice is the most important thing. You can't music theory your way into getting people dancing. But you can certainly practice your way into it.

 

[Mushroo]

Exactly! A bassist who knows lots of theory is going to lose the audition to a bassist who has practiced 1,000 songs.

 

[Sparkl]

So my Bass teacher is having me go through Victor Wooten's Groove Workshop DVD. I'm about half way through, and Victor talks a lot about playing what you feel. Not thinking about what you want to play, or playing the correct notes, or finding the key of the song. Just play what you feel. I'm having trouble understanding this though. I can feel a type of sound I want to play, but my issue is that...Where is that sound. I can't just randomly start hitting notes in hopes that what I feel comes out. In theory you need some kind of foundation right? Victor even mentions that he isn't a master of music theory, and I'm not a master as well.

I just have trouble wrapping my head around this concept of playing without thinking. I've practiced this a couple
of times where I either play to a backing track, or not play to anything at all. In both situations it either sounds
like garbage (Because I don't know what I'm playing) or I stay to patterns I know. (R, 3rd, 5th) or just minor pentatonics.

It's like there's a secret that everyone else knows but me.

One of the key powers to have in order to really understand your instrument is greatly developed relative pitch. Most of the top musicians (especially jazz and jazz related fusion genres) use this to an extent. Next there is your own vocabulary of expressions and ideas you are able to produce while playing your instrument. Some people naturally possess this and people immediately dig their playing (usually the leading force of music evolution and development) while others develop their vocabulary by studying recorded pieces and absorbing the language.

Miles Davis once said that there are no wrong notes in Jazz. Absolutely true - as long as you are able to retain the chord quality in one way or another (could be nothing more than just a hint) you can freely walk around and express your internal feeling and energy. By using chromatic approaches or something completely else.

A professor on my academy for jazz once said that sooner or later we are going to realize that everything always resolves around the dominant. So knowing your dominants and how to turn them around is the most crucial thing in jazz. Everything else will always forgive a lot of fiddling.

Just get your fiddling to actually sound good, not just like a random fiddle.

Rules on the paper seem so easy in music yet it requires a whole person to work on it and go through the endless journey of studying, absorbing, contemplating and polishing to be able to really sound convincing and pleasing for masses.

Edit: And one last thought - know your scales. KNOW them WELL. That's, how I like to put it, your first step to personal happiness.

 

[Sam Dingle]

I was just thinking about this today. I heard this right when I started playing, and it made me refuse to learn anything because "you're just supposed to play what you feel!"

 

[mambo4]

if you're tied up full time with thinking about your own playing there's not much of your thinking resources left to hear and interpret and accompany or react smoothly to what the rest of the band is playing.

exactly. To me the goal of practice is not perfection,
but rather to free up my mental bandwidth to actually pay attention to the music

 

[DuckSoup]

Lots of good feedback here, and I appreciate it. I think the gist of it is that I need to know the theory well enough that I don't have to think about it. I think that's the piece I'm missing. I know some theory, but not well enough that I can just let my mind go free and worry less about exactly what note I should be hitting next.

 

[lowfreqgeek]

Lots of good feedback here, and I appreciate it. I think the gist of it is that I need to know the theory well enough that I don't have to think about it. I think that's the piece I'm missing. I know some theory, but not well enough that I can just let my mind go free and worry less about exactly what note I should be hitting next.

You probably know enough theory; what you really need is to connect the ears to the fingers. Knowing a scale does little to make your fingers move to the right notes in real time as your ears hear where you should go. The "secret" is that you need to develop the channels from your ears to your hands. That means hearing your intervals and then being able to play them without any (explicit) thought in between. That process just takes work, but doesn't take a lot of intense thought. Being able to sing the intervals that you hear would be a good first step. If you can sing it, you can play it.

 

[JimK]

Practice is Practice (thinking)

Play is Play
I'm not that good, so I do (sometimes) think while playing. You can tell 'cause the sweat will be pouring off.


...even the greats, though, get harassed for "practicing on the bandstand".
Miles (again) would chop Coltrane's ass for his 30-minute solos.

 

[zubrycky]

Hope that helps.

 

[lowfreqgeek]

Hope that helps.

That's heavy.

 

[JohnArnson]

The thing is that conscious thought processes is only a small part of the calculations that is going on in our brain, conscious thinking is also delayed by like a half second or so, forgot the actual number, might even be a second, but it's something like that, point being that at the point you realize something is happening on a conscious level it already happened like half a second ago, meaning it is impossible for you to act on it in real time using your conscious thought processes, so if you first have to think something up you are going to play you are already too late.

And it's not just some sort of hip New Age idea, it's neuro-science.

You'll have to know a little about how our brain work to understand this.

The foundation you speak about comes from experience, you just have to trust your intuition, in many cases the "thought" processes going on in your unconscious brain will know better what to do than what you can hack together with conscious thought processes.

Think about it, where do your conscious thoughts come from?

The foundation happens on an unconscious level.

Most people who write their own songs will know this, a lot of the time it seems like we are merely taking dictate of ideas that seems to come from somewhere else.

Conscious thinking is really overrated, especially in music, it's all about intuition.

Perhaps you can think of conscious thinking as the graphical user interface of a computer operating system, it's only a small part of what is actually going on, the real actual computing happens on a much deeper level.