The benefits of learning an instrument in lockdown
WHEN THIS correspondent formed a band in his early 20s with four other jazz maniacs, little did its members think it would still be going decades later. But then A Night In Tunisias business model worked impeccably until the pandemic. Rather than charge money, the band bribed listeners with food and drink. Alas, that approach, now defunct, made this saxophonist lazy. His sound lacks control, squawking involuntarily like a duck being taken to the plucking shed. Fingers refuse the brains bidding. Ears cannot tell the phrygian mode from the aeolian. Recording himself on a smartphone brought a brutal reckoning: intonation and technique were woeful. But then a strange thing happenedinstead of dismay came mounting anticipation. Improving your playing can be a more pleasant prospect for an adult than for a young music student hectored by tiger parents. You are not aiming for the sky, yet gratifying progress can be swift. Even a few minutes focus on a study brings audible improvement. As well as time for practice, the pandemic has bestowed another bonanza: teachers of all sorts of instruments. For instance, Chris Caldwell is a British saxophonist of the highest calibre, a member of the world-class Delta Saxophone Quartet and in normal times in demand from London to Pyongyang. As with so many freelance performers, these months have been brutal. But he now has time for lessons beamed anywhere via Zoom. They are a revelation. Teacher and student are going back to first principles: turning air into breath into sound. A saxophone is a sinuously complex bundle of harmonic compromisesintonation varies not just in different octaves, but from one note to the next. Think not about taming the instrument, Mr Caldwell urges, but rather of living with the wilder acoustics that embody the saxophone sound. Amateurs may aim to reach the high notes of a soprano sax by belting them out. The approach, Mr Caldwell says, should be more like walking on eggshells. Happily, todays music students are also locked down with historys masters. Every jazz great learned from those who went before, painstakingly copying solos from recordsprobably the most critical part of woodshedding, that is, practising by yourself. How much easier, technically, is the task today. Spotify provides a boundless library of recordings. Transcription apps let you slow down solos to commit every scoop and grace note to memory. Other programmes provide a backing band to help you learn the changesie, the chord progressions in jazz tunes. Charlie Parker said that the secret to improvisation was to learn the changes and then forget them. To judge by this students progress, A Night In Tunisia should not ditch its business model yet. But his homebound musical journey is its own reward.