Matt Glaser on Beyond Mastery
Gene Friesen interviews the great fiddler and lover of all kinds of music.
I've been listening to Eugene Friesen's Beyond Mastery podcast again. This time the interviewee was Matt Glaser. Matt was chair of the string department at Berklee for twenty five years and founded Berklee's American Roots Music Program. He's played fiddle with just about everybody, from the Wretched Refuse String Band to Ken Burns.
As with the Barbara Bogatin interview, I enjoyed it so much and found so much to think about it that I've listened to it three times. Here are my highlights, some of which relate to practicing.
Matt has been playing for close to fifty years, most of that as a professional, and most often in styles that involve improvisation. He said that in his daily practicing he always goes back to Square One. “I want to be able hear intervals and rhythms, and play the intervals and rhythms that I hear... and I cannot yet do that. That's my lifetime goal, and I find it very gratifying to practice every day, trying to hear a little thing, and play a little thing that I hear. Hear a rhythm, play that rhythm. Hear a melody, play that melody.” From an improvisor's point of view, it seems like practicing hear-it-then-play-it is about as fundamental as you can get.
The ideas he practices are small, he says – no more than two bars. He didn't say what he does with those small ideas, but I take a similar approach, and for me it allows for lots and lots of repetition with just a few things to think about in each repetition. Whatever the focus, working with small units of music makes it easier to maintain it.
My practicing emphasizes the physical, for two main reasons – it seems to make the most sense in theory, and it seems to fit the current holes in my playing. (I'm still working mostly in terms of Touch.) Matt’s hear-then-play emphasis made me question mine, which is, I guess, kind of think-then-play. I guess you need both, but maybe I’ve been leaning too much one way.
Gene and Matt get into the importance of listening. Matt says, “There's no getting around the necessity of listening to vast amounts of music and trying to absorb it through your ears... and, to me, if you don't do that, I don't consider you a well-trained musician.” Gene says later, “The first thousand lessons in learning any style of music are in listening.”
This is something I don't do enough of, and I'm wondering if I'd be better off changing 30 to 60 minutes of my practicing time from playing to serious listening. Not listening while I drive, or wash the dishes, but listening as the only thing I'm doing.
I use Spotify. It's convenient, but I've been making what I suspect is a common goof – I listen mostly to things I already know and like. It's easy to find music I don't already know and like, but I haven't been doing that. Now I'm thinking I should stretch a bit.
This is all of a piece with Matt's reputation as a lover of a vast range of music without regard to category.
One last thing from Matt. “What I believe in and what I try to teach, is what I call the path of the musician... I believe in being a musician as a way of life, regardless of the vicissitudes of your career, like whether or not you're successful as a professional musician... This thing we've been talking about - of playing simple rhythms and melodies each day or learning to sing things - that kind of life I think is valuable until you die, regardless of whether you continue to have gigs or not have gigs. I think that that's extremely valuable. Very simple, fundamental musical things that you do on a daily basis are good for the soul, and a good way to live.”
Matt doesn’t seem to have a website, but here’s a link to Gene’s Beyond Mastery site. I listen to the podcast on Spotify.
When it comes to listening more deeply, I find the DAW irreplaceable.
It solves the chicken/egg problem of being able hear a finer level of detail.
Let me know if I can set up a demo for you!