The Permutation Plus The Personality

1:05 What's good, everybody?So I have Nicole McCabe coming on to tape this upcoming week.She's one of my favorite saxophonists in the entire world.I don't know exactly when the episode is going to come out, but there's this, I've justbeen listening to a lot of saxophone music in anticipation, including her great music.And she's played on some of my records, and hopefully many, many more to come.

1:27 And I wanted to talk about how I view the saxophone as a guitarist, and also how I view thebass and the synthesizer and the piano and all of those kind of various ways of gettingto the same notes.You know, we all have various means of producing notes and then chords and music, but thenature of an instrument makes you approach those notes differently.

1:55 In the same way that like human voice versus synthesizer, you can do different things.It's just built different in that it's not just the tone, it's also the mechanics.So like a synthesizer typically doesn't have weighted keys, so you're able to fly throughthese things.Or you can set these settings so that like an arpeggiator, you play the chord, you hold

2:21 it static, and the synthesizer itself plays those individual notes, and you can spina knob and it goes faster or slower.You can hit a button, it goes up, it goes down, it randomizes.And I really like thinking about arpeggios because arpeggios, which are just the notes

2:42 of a chord, typically played fairly fast, arpeggios are a great kind of lens by which to seehow all the different instruments approach them.And then as a guitarist, really the moment that I started to feel like I became a musician,not just a guitarist, no hate on guitar, I love guitar.But the change was when I was playing gigs and people started to say like, hey the saxophotuscan't make it, can you play the saxolo?

3:11 But I wanted exactly like the record.So you go, okay, and you go and you learn the saxolo, and you go, huh, never would havethought of that.Some strange leaps.And then as you start to get better and you're listening more things, you hear the articulation.And on guitar, it's a great example because you can either hammer on or pull off as in likeyou're just doing it with your left hand, you're not striking the string.

3:34 So it has a more fluid kind of sound.Or you can strike the string every single time.You could strike it half the time, never at all.But a guy does a cool thing where he puts his right hand behind his back, and he justhas hammer-ons and pull-offs to do a whole guitar solo.And it ends up sounding kind of like a different instrument.But the idea of how hard am I striking it, am I striking it?

3:58 Soft, hard, soft, hard, soft, or hard, hard, hard, hard, hard, or hard, not at all, notat all, not at all, hard, not at all, not at all, not at all, not at all, like that.All of those articulations can mirror other instruments.And so like I was playing with an artist from Saudi Arabia, and we would do these reallycool like cultural nights where there would be, you know, traditional Arabic music.

4:23 And there's the instrument that Oud that's like kind of like a lute kind of, it's likea big gourd-looking body, it's a guitar-like instrument.And I loved watching the way that these players would go about like slides and hammer-onsand pull-offs.The things that like I do on guitar, but it's coming from a different cultural context.

4:48 And watching the ways that they would hold their wrists, which is a weird thing to say,but it really influenced the way that I play guitar.I like to do stuff on single strings because I'm able to kind of replicate them in justa little bit.It's obviously like different cultural context and note choices.But some of the cool things that I really liked from that, in the same way that I really

5:10 love slide guitar, you know, Derek Trucks is one of my favorite guitars of all time.And he's so good at that, he's great at all kinds of guitar, but he's, you know, my favoriteslide guitarist.And I've never been very good at slide guitar, mostly just because I haven't done it, youknow, haven't practiced it, and maybe I'd be bad at it even if I did, but I have tried

5:33 to take the slide guitar things and put it on the guitar.And now I'm, you know, doing more of that with saxophone, and then also thinking aboutsynthesizers.I've had a lot of experience like that with gigs, and now with my own music, I like tothink of that a lot because, you know, I'm playing all the things.I like to think about how can I have the synthesizer pass the football or pass the baton to

5:53 the guitar or vice versa, and carry on the line.It's things to like bridge sections together, so it doesn't feel so blocky.And I like that's one of the things that I like least about digitally recorded music isyou can feel the copy and paste a lot of times.And I don't really like feeling copy and paste because like just make the song one minute

6:15 and let me repeat it then instead of just like fooling me and doing the exact samechorus or just like, eh, not in my favorite anyway.But one of the ways that you can combat that, even if you are copying, pasting the vocals,I don't really mind that too much.If you have some instruments that pass the baton or blur the lines between sections, and

6:35 the interaction between different instruments is very like a classical kind of thing whereyou're passing a theme.It's going from the woodwinds and it's going to the brass, you know.These ideas of like, how do we apply that cool concept from classical music and pop music?And it's really simple.It's just like, we got a cool phrase, I'm going to either continue it, respond to it,

6:55 or just repeat it, and I'm going to throw it into a different instrument.And it's even more impactful when you throw it into a different instrument and you changethe articulation or you change the instrument types so much that even if the tonal differencesbetween the instruments are not too different, the approach to notes are so different thatit can just add space, you can add interest, you can add surprise.

7:21 The things that keep you listening, the things that make it not feel like you're just listeningto a section on repeat.Without adding necessarily like a bunch of complexity, and one of the things I love aboutpop music the most is that we're able to hold some of these things constant and createthe illusion of simplicity while making just really interesting choices about tones,

7:47 about who's playing what and how you're playing it, how you're approaching it, and the timingof everything of like, is it ahead on or behind the beat?That's another thing that I find fascinating is that on guitar, especially because we'replaying with a spectrum, we're playing with a pick.There is a certain energy to playing with a pick that tends to bring the guitar earlier

8:12 on the beat, especially if you're like, there's height about doing a guitar solo or youknow, all these things can like pull you into that world versus playing a bass guitar withyour fingers, naturally pulls you a little bit behind the beat because it's a larger string,you're having to strike it in a different way and you're trying to strike it in a way

8:30 that isn't, it depends on the genre, but at least for me, that isn't so sharp, thatis a little bit smoother because you're trying to preserve low end.The more you point at something like slap bass or playing a bass with a pick, you lose someof that low end because again, it's like articulation, it's like how sharp are you pushinginto that big old string, it's going to add harmonics, it's going to add brightness,

8:55 it's going to, but it's always a trade, so you're making that trade off.And I love bassists like, you know, Thumpasaurus, when you listen to the bass, there isa great transition in between like, very attack heavy and then very rounded and just thislike aggression to Logan Kane's bass playing, who happens to be Nicole's partner, just power

9:23 couple to incredible musicians, but I love, I love people that apply their personalityto the way they attack their instruments and that's just so fun.And you go all the way on the other side of like very stonery and you're just playingwith your thumb on the bass, a lot of what I do, where it's like, I'm trying to maximizelow end, I'm trying to maximize chill, exact opposite of what Logan's doing.

9:51 And how fun is that, that genre can be determined by am I playing with a picker with my fingers,or am I playing with my thumb or my fingers, genre can be determined by articulation,slap bass, great example.And so therefore, who you're inspired by and the instruments that you listen to and theinstruments that you emulate, particularly the ones that are outside of your little world,

10:17 can be the most impactful in the way that you play and who you are, it's the combinationof everything.And I don't really like the argument that musicians are just stealing or like creativeborrowers that were all just composed of different things.I think that the beauty is in the permutation plus the personality that so much of whatwe're determined by is our taste rather than our inputs.

10:46 The inputs certainly matter, but our taste determines what do we get most excited about.And opening your mind and opening your taste and trying to put different cultural musicand different, even music in your same genre but made in different countries can exposeyou maybe even unintentionally to different lanes and different ways of approaching, not

11:09 just the notes, but the way to play the notes and when to play the notes.And like on a saxophone, those leaps, those jumps, those lofty, octaves and things thaton the guitars are a little bit harder to pull off.But once you absorb it and internalize it, it's no longer hard.It's just a different path, a different bag, a different approach.

11:34 And it's also really fun to be inspired by electronic music because then you can jumpin and out of robotic and not robotic and then you can make the not robotic feel more impactfulbecause music is all contrast and if you can get better at both sides of the contrast,you don't always have to play super robotic, but it's really cool to be able to have that

11:58 in the bag, even just in small doses because it makes the other stuff that much more interestingI think.And so like you can be inspired by the arpeggiator patch on a synth.You can try and play it, try and play it exactly that way and then try and swing it exactlyin the robotic way and then swing it in exactly the human way.And it's such a fun thing because you could be doubling a synth, this is something I'd

12:22 love doing, synth line is playing a thing, the guitar matches the synth line exactly,the synth line ends, then the guitar continues, but the guitar continues in a less roboticway.So you're not, you're like joining in together and then you're diverging.And I think that's so fun.I say all of this just to say I'm excited to talk to Nicole and I'm excited for the future

12:46 of music, especially as more and more people are coming up and learning it in this way unbounded.And I'm also really excited because I've heard more music from more indie music, likeunderground music from different countries than I ever had before, and I love that and

13:09 say what you want about the internet and Spotify and it's, you know, I hear you, I'msympathetic to a lot of it, but I do think it's really cool, just like social media,right?It cuts both ways, but I've met some really cool people on social media and I've heardsome really cool music on the internet that I never would have, if there weren't somedistribution channels or the opportunity.

13:34 And I hope we can continue that and challenge each other.And I also think that this is a point in favor of playing music in the same room.It's a lot easier to grasp what somebody's doing and how they approach the notes whenyou're sitting right next to them watching their fingers or at a cultural festival watchingtheir wrists.But beware, I did kind of mess up my wrists playing that way.

14:05 I still do sometimes, but you know, there's a reason why the guitar is playing the waythat it is, but whatever, screw the rules.That's a whole podcast is, yeah, screw the rules, but learn the rules, so you can do both.If you enjoyed this podcast, I would invite you to hear my strange music at scoobertdoobert.pizzaand also check out all of the cool music that my guests make, because that's actually

14:31 something we should totally do, a full playlist of all the love music, more guests, becausethe music's crazy, good, and super varied too.I love the diversity of musical genre and taste that we've accumulated on this podcast.I just feel blessed and lucky to be able to talk to people that are, you know, so cool

14:58 and have different tastes than I do and pushes me and then hopefully makes my taste bettertoo.A nice little loop of community and goodness.If you want community and goodness, you can subscribe.We also have a YouTube if you want to watch some of this stuff with our faces and shareit with your friends, five star, all that good stuff, and I'll see you next week.Thanks for listening.