Knowing vs. Understanding

0:02 What's good, everybody?Scoobert Doobert here.I just got back from New York City.It was a big, awesome production song running tripand took in a lot of that energy, and now I'm a little tired.But it's nice to come back to San Diegoand experience also kind of the different musical culturesbetween SoCal and New York City.But a lot of it started to crystallize this one thing

0:39 that I was thinking about, is thinking about it on the plane.I was listening to an audio book that is all about Beethoven.It's like an audio, not an autobiography.He did not write it himself.It is a biography of Beethovenand it's kind of going into his arc, I guess.And so it's by Jan Swafford.It's a long one.I'm only like, I don't know, 10 hours in.But I was listening to it on the plane

1:07 and it was an interesting kind of take on the compositional mind.Because Beethoven started working on compositionbefore his teachers, before his father,before the people that were in fact full in his life,told him that he was ready.And it was an interesting kind of thing of like,what makes somebody ready to start doing?And how much of becoming Beethoven, you know,arguably the greatest of all time across any genre.

1:39 How much of that comes from his instruction,versus the act of doing?And so I wanted to talk briefly about understanding,versus knowing.So it's easy to like, think of those two things as the same.But think of a teacher that cannot do,or think of a historian or a theorist.There might be great understanding,but little ability to take that understandingand actually turn it into a new body of work.Some people have both.

2:18 That's probably the best thing to have.And then there are other people that have knowing.And I know, like a lot of times it gets thrown out.Like the Beatles, they didn't really understand music theory,you know, inverted commas, but they clearly knew it.They were reaching into a bag of really interesting Sonic choices.And whether or not they completely understood what they were doing

2:46 or why it worked, they knew it worked.But they only knew that by cultivating a deep sense of what music isand what composition is.And so I would say that a lot of this stuffdoesn't necessarily come from grasping it,but instead is swallowing it,incorporating it, becoming part of it.And the way that you do that is through imitationand through the act of doing and the cultivation of taste,of your ability to discern.

3:27 And a really cool example was Beethoven trying to catch up to Mozart.Awesome, right?So he has this savant,this child prodigy Mozart that he's trying to catch.And so what does he do?He either is assigned or he signs it to himselfto try and start copying Mozart's work.Through his own lens, but trying to say,okay, this is the arc of this piece.I want to make something with the exact same arc,but I want it to be mine.

4:00 And then I want to see, like, why is his better than mine now?And it's fun to kind of trace some of these through linesinto where he ended up as an older personversus where he started as a younger and experienced personand listening to the comparison of those piecesand how he developed his own voice.But he develops the voice throughout the process of imitation,but critical imitation.And I think that by doing that,

4:33 there's a thing with playing jazz or whatever.It's really big on transcription,it's not just transcribing what the notes are,it's transcribing exactly the articulation.And so, for example, on a guitar, is it a hammer on?Is it a pull off?

4:48 Is it a slide?Are you hitting the pick really hard or really softer?Are you using your fingers for some notesand your picks for others?Are you not even using your picking hand and just hammering on and pulling off really hardso that those notes are being sounded just by the sheer forceof your left hand, which is somethingthat buddy guy used to do all the time.But it's so cool.All these different nuances,

5:13 you're transcribing those nuances.With not necessarily the goal of,I'm going to be a great cover band.The goal is, I want to get that in my fingers.I want to train my muscle memoryso that when I don't know what to do next,my fingers do.It's like tracing the Mona Lisa kind of thing.You're not necessarily trying to become a portrait artistbut you're trying to get that into your soul.

5:40 It's like the people that type out Fitzgerald, the writers.They want it.They're going to type out The Great Gatsby or whateverand get the feeling of typing that workso that later when they make their own unique workthat does not sound anything like a Scott Fitzgerald,they will have some bit of that inside of themselves.That is a very kind of bizarre, inductive way of learning.

6:06 Then you have the other side that's the deductive way of learning,trying to deconstruct.You can compose a symphony that is trying to hit certain emotional arcswith certain dynamics,with certain kinds of key changes and things.That's more inductive.Then you have the deductive of,I'm going to go through all of Mozart's pieces.You know exactly what chords he's doingand check it out, music theory wise

6:37 and see what school did he come up inwho were his influences,both of those things have value.But when you index too heavily on the deductive,I think you end up missing like 80,maybe 90% of the thing itself.It doesn't necessarily come from breaking it down.It comes from internalizing it.And the goal is not to pair it,but instead to develop your own manner of speech.In the same way that learning a language,

7:11 you can only learn so much by breaking down grammar textbooks.Not to say that's not important,but the best thing you can actually go dois talk to somebody and fumbleand learn how to speakand then figure out how to speak in your own way.Music is very much the same.If you enjoyed this, I will be back againwith another podcast next weekwith an awesome guest.But I'm not going to tell you who it is,

7:41 so you come back and you check it out.It's going to be really, really fun.I've got a great slate of guests coming upand we have five or six already edited in the can.So definitely like, subscribe, rate five stars if you could.To this podcast, I really appreciate your support.If you'd like to check out my music,you can hear it at www.scoobertdoobert.pizza.scoobertdoobert.pizza.Thanks guys.Bye.