Addendum: The Feedback Loop
Hello All,
This week, I am heading out on tour with Gary Burton’s Quartet and I’m really excited to delve completely into his music and get my jazz chops back into shape. I haven’t played consistantly like this with Gary in quite some years, and it’s also been a while since I’ve played in this particular orchestration, with Vibes, Guitar, Bass, and Drums. So needless to say, I’m already preparing myself for some of the potential challenges ahead and eagerly looking forward to learning as much from each gig as possible.
So, one of the things I often tell students, but don’t do nearly enough, is to record all of your performances, and actually listen back. I used to record everything and then maybe listen back to 1 in 5 shows, and usually only the guitar solos at that. If the solos on the hard tunes sounded ok, I would relax a little bit and then resume my lazy demeanor. Totally lame. So this time, I want to try it for real. My intention is to record every performance, and listen to them in a timely fashion. In my experiences, however, listening to shows during the same period that you are performing can get a little confusing at times. If your playing doesn’t sound the way you want, it can be easy to get super critical and bring that energy to the stage, and if you are especially happy with your playing, it can be easy to start expecting that you will sound that way every night, and when you don’t live up to your expections, well, you know where that leads: epic failure.
So given these observations, I’m curious what you think would be a good approach to fulfilling the feedback loop. I know I’ll learn so much from hearing what I sound like if I’m able to do it without judgement or taking the results personally, but I’m not sure I know the best way to approach this on a regular basis.
What do you think? All ideas are greatly appreicated!
Big thank you, Julian
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