Latch Music Blog

Latch Music Radio Top 20 week ending 31-12-05. As voted by the people who listen to Latch Music Radio.

#20. Allan Holdsworth - Zone - All Night Wrong

#19. Chick Corea - Nite Sprite - The Leprechaun

#18. Gentle Giant - Just the Same - Free Hand

#17. Weather Report - Predator - Domino Theory

#16. Weather Report - Freezing Fire - Live and Unreleased (1 of 2)

#15. Chad Wackerman - Tell Me - Forty Reasons

#14. Al DiMeola - Casino - Casino

#13. Jean-Luc Ponty - Nostalgic Lady - Enigmatic Ocean

#12. Joe Zawinul - Orient Express - My People

#11. Return to Forever - Vulcan Worlds - Where Have I Known You Before

#10. Dave Latchaw - Lone Voices - Transitions

#9. Miles Davis - Yaphet - The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (August 1969-February 1970) (2 of 4)

#8. Billy Cobham - Quadrant 4 - The Best of Billy Cobham [1992]

#7. Nat Janoff - Looking Through - Looking Through

#6. Brian Derek - Jacology - Cosmic Truth

#5. Dave Latchaw - Too Much Coffe & CNN - Looking Out

#4. John McLaughlin / Shakti - Joy - Shakti with John McLaughlin

#3. John McLaughlin Trio - Mother Tongues - Live at the Royal Festival Hall

#2. Stanley Clarke - School Days - School Days

#1. Robben Ford - The Hong Kong Incident - Jing Chi

You can catch Latch Music Radio 24 / 7 at Live365 where you can listen to or broadcast your own internet radio. Very Good Fun.

Big Fish, Small Pond
by Dave Latchaw

Being a “Big Fish in a Small Pond” can bring about complacency quicker than one would want to imagine. Especially in a small community of musicians, it’s easy to become content with one’s abilities. That complacency will completely squelch creative growth and expansion of musical expression. Since not all musicians are destined to live in a large metropolitan area where competition is a regular and daily event, it is essential for the remote regional musician to be self-motivated, especially if he isn’t pushed by the musical community he lives in. The regional musician does not have the same obvious types of competition to stimulate creative growth and ability as big city musicians. For every capable musician you come across in a large city, there is a long line waiting, keen to replace them. If a musician stops being on top of their game, they can easily be replaced with such a big pool of players to draw from. This can be a great motivator for one to keep working on their abilities! In smaller communities, being replaced is less of an issue, due to the simple fact that there are fewer players available. Competition, either from others or against yourself, is necessary for motivation and the expansion of abilities and creative growth.

For the improvising jazz musician, creative growth is essential. One can learn to improvise and sound decent on a tune like “Blue Bossa”, which is great, but after that has been mastered with consistency, you have to move on to the next thing. Moving on to the next thing is a challenging thing for many musicians. If a musician is curious and open-minded about music, it’s easy for them to follow their instincts to find the next interesting challenge. Working on things that are past one’s current ability is hard, but it’s very rewarding, and essential for development. If it was easy, everyone would do it! The curious musician will tend to explore many varied aspects of making music, which leads to having a broader voice. As a musician moves on to other new challenges and then comes back to a tune like “Blue Bossa”, they will add a creative energy to their performance of the piece.

In a small community, if the musician is playing enough gigs to pay the bills at their current level of ability, it is easy to be content with that and be the “Happy Gigster”. Nothing wrong with being the “Happy Gigster”, but if you have lost your curiosity about music, you won’t be a vital, growing musician making a contribution to the improvement of all music. For the “Happy Gigster”, it is easy to get a false sense of reality about their abilities because they are “It” in their own town. Those musicians who then just kick back and no longer work at their craft are not giving music its proper respect. Ego, and/or lack of competition, will increase the likelihood that a musician will sound like an uninspired bore. If a musician isn’t challenged, from other players and their musical situation, they need to take responsibility and create their own challenges. In Smallville, U.S.A., change is scary. You can see this in communities where the same Jazz tunes are played the same way for decades, simply because it is familiar. The older players tell the younger players, “this is the way to do it”, which in more remote regions creates musical in-breeding. The music education availability for Jazz keeps improving every year, and is developing younger and better players all the time. Take advantage of educational opportunities and stay curious about music always. If you think you are “It” or you have become complacent, you are probably just in the way. Work hard. MUSIC RULES!

Never Stop Being A Student
by Dave Latchaw

Teaching is not for everyone, but for those who have the patience, they get the reward of helping someone with their musical journey, and they also have an opportunity to keep improving their own abilities. All aspects of teaching music can help sharpen one’s own musical skills. The more an educator maintains the idea of being a student themselves, the more they can get out of their teaching situations. It is up to the teacher whether they make the educational situation routine and mundane, or if they bring a great level of enthusiasm towards learning.

The right attitude for teaching is very important. Patience is a necessary ingredient, but it doesn’t come naturally for many people. I think it’s easier to stay patient when I remember that the more times and ways I have to explain and demonstrate any aspect of music, the more connected I stay to my own abilities. It doesn’t matter whether you are explaining the finer points of being expressive to a student, or simply how to find middle C. If one can’t explain a musical concept many times, and in many ways to a student or group of students without freaking out, teaching may be not the right thing for you! Having the ability to be patient and help a student break down their musical problems into manageable chunks helps the student be patient with themselves too. Just having the ability to break down a musical problem and the patience to tackle it can make one a better musician. The more times an educator explains how to handle a musical dilemma, the easier it should become for them to sort out their own musical problems.

Realizing that not all students learn in the same manner, and being willing to think “out of the teaching box” to connect with a student or a class, will make any educational situation more rewarding for all involved. The more ways you have to teach any given concept, the better you will be at teaching it, and doing that concept yourself. Even if the concept is somewhat natural for you, repetition of teaching that concept in a multitude of ways can enhance your own musical ability. Rather than being burned out or on auto pilot when teaching, it is all down to the music teacher to utilize the teaching time in a positive way for all. For example, if you are working on sight-reading rhythms with a student, use examples that you have to sight read also. (Hopefully it will be easy for you!) Helping the student get more proficient at sight-reading can help you stay sharp on your own sight-reading chops. If the student doesn’t get concept #1, then you need to come up with concept #2, #3, #4, and so on. The more ideas you have to be a better sight-reader (or any aspect of music), the more people you’ll be able to reach, and you’ll have expanded your own brain power at the same time.

Teaching Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star or Giant Steps can both be rewarding for the educator. It is up to the educator to have a balanced attitude. Okay, Giant Steps has all the fun challenges that go with improvising over interesting chord changes, and Twinkle doesn’t. When teaching music that isn’t personally challenging, it really helps to come up with ways to make it interesting for you to teach. Try doing things like playing along with the students on an instrument you do not normally play, or work on your singing harmony while the student is playing. Being engaged, motivated, and proactive while teaching music can increase your musical chops, and remember, students are very perceptive of whether teachers are keen or not about what they teach. The more inspired the teaching is, the more inspired the learning will be. The educator that enjoys teaching and is engaged with the more basic aspects of music can inspire students to evolve into musicians that will have motivation to learn the more challenging aspects of music. Then you can work on things that are more sophisticated.

The educator who hasn’t stopped being a student will create more successful situations as an educator. If you are keen about expanding your musical chops it will carry over into your teaching. We all know too many bad music teachers, so if you teach, be keen. Teach by example and be a student yourself. Besides helping your students, your chops will get better too!