Playing The Right Notes but Doesn’t Sound Right?

This is something I often hear from new students-I’m playing the exact notes from the recording but I don’t sound anything like them.  It just doesn’t sound right!

Making the notes sound RIGHT

Understand that with music you have an equation (Let’s say X, Y, and Z are our variables).  They are as follows:

X= What notes you play

Y = How you play the notes

Z = When you play the notes

You can get variable X right but if Y or Z is missing, it won’t sound like you want it to sound.  If any of these components are missing, it won’t sound “right.”

How do we get there from here?

You have to stop only passively listening to music.  What is passive listening?  It’s when you turn on the radio and clean the house.  It’s when you are driving down the road and listening to satellite radio.

What you need more of in your life is ACTIVE LISTENING.

Active listening is when you listen to a piece of music and you take in the nuances and finer details.  Things like:

Active Listening

• What notes did they accent
• Are they playing on top of the beat? Behind the beat? Where in relation to the beat are they playing the notes
• Does it sound like their hand is close to the bridge? Or is their hand closer to the neck (producing a more mellow sound)
• Are there parts where the music gets louder or softer? Aka dynamics.

Take your instrument and try to recreate the exact rhythmic feel and accents as you hear on the album.  I recommend listening at 75% of the speed or even slower and taking mental notes of these things.  

Over the years, people have told me, “I’m listening to music a lot.”  Quality, not quantity.  You can listen to music a million times and still not get it on anything but a superficial level.  

On a few occasions I would take a TAB of someone I liked or one that I transcribed myself, listen to the recording and mark the notes that were louder with a pencil.  I would also make notes above the sheet music or TAB about what I was hearing. 

This is a time consuming process, not everyone is willing to go through the steps to “get there.”  You can’t be in a hurry.  You need to take a small bite size piece of music (sometimes even four bars) and try to recreate it as close as what you hear on the recording.  Really spend time with it.

I want to end by saying, we aren’t trying to turn you into a clone of what is on the recording.   Your own style will naturally develop over time.  However, if you want to be informed by the style, genre, and players that went before, this is the type of process you need to go through with your playing.