I was fortunate enough to attend a workshop with Bill Frisell last night. He had his trio that is touring Australia and it was a small group attending a couple of hours with him.

I was front row and it was amazing to see such a player up close..

He answered a lot of technical questions but in the end it was clear he works with emotions and feelings on songs rather than just technique. A few good takeaways I thought might benefit those here were:

1. Search for the melody in everything including chords and solos. Really get inside the melody…that is what draws him to music. And then search for as many versions of it as you can regardless of musical style..
   
2. Don’t be frightened to keep it simple as long as it’s beautiful,,,search for the beauty in music no matter what the song is..
   
3. Don’t be frightened to make errors and try things.Find people who will work with you. He used the example of his band supporting an error to make music rather than drawing attention to it.
   
4. Don’t judge your limitations but rather work on building them. But also realise they may be part of what develops your style as you work around them.
   
   Don’t compare but work towards building your music towards your own personality, and how you hear things regardless of outside influences. This is why he covers surf, guitar instrumentals, pop/rock and country/bluegrass in his repertoire…because he used his jazz chops to reach the music that means something to him.
   
   This was backed up by him talking about hearing the Bonanza theme that day, and trying to playing but not having the chops and speed to actually match the original. So he played it the way he could make music of it at their sound check that day and they worked up a version of it. He then demonstrated what eh was talking about showing us what he couldn’t do and then did a fantastic version with the band that really was so great to listen to.
   
   That was fun hearing Bonanza and some country music at a jazz college…:-)
   
5. What was interesting was he uses a lot of memories and associations with the music, hence playing pop and movies themes etc because he said he feels emotion when playing them from memories and experiences…and this is what he is thinking about all the time when he plays. The beauty and emotion…
   
   As someone who gets stuck in the nuts and bolts I thought it was a great reminder of what music is about…

That suggestion of learning the basics of tune,and searching for the melody and beauty within a tune, will teach you the tune more deeply, and stay with you, really was an eye opener…I am struggling at the moment with where to start on tunes and not wanting to just rote learn things so this was a challenging reminder…I feel at the moment like I need a system and learning path laying everything out to understand it and that was raised by some students.He said it’s the mystery of it all that should lead us to grow…there is no one way to learn and play music…..it was a very different workshop to anything I have attended before..