Final Project

For my final project, I decided that I would take what I learn from the musicians that I read about and attempt to apply their ways, to my music. I picked four musicians that are musicians that have really inspired me in the last half year. I figured that since my last blogs have been more genre specific, I would break from that and get even more personal. By doing this, I hoped that I would be able to answer a few of my own questions. Some of these questions included, how should I mix Jazz and Blues together without it being "Incorrect"

The first step to adjusting my musical mindset to what my inspirations had to say was literally changing the way that I approach music. In the last few years, I have been really hard on my playing. I have been trying to perfect two totally different voices in my music. To be more specific, I have been working really hard on developing my blues roots and my jazz roots just like Miles and the earlier musicians I read about had suggested. However, I managed to get it into my head that I should always try to play just like the roots all the time. This is good practice, but I kept having a really hard time with connecting to my music. Reading about the three musicians that I chose this quarter really helped me a lot with fixing this issue that I had. All three musicians did their own thing. They did not attempt to do what someone else had done. I think that the biggest thing for me this quarter was reading about Stevie Ray Vaughan. Stevie started playing in a setting where everyone was playing roots blues music. Stevie on the other hand, played what he wanted to play. He persisted at doing this until he gained his fame. Stevie Wonder is pretty much the same story, he just did what he wanted to do and made music that connected the most with him. From reading about this, I seriously changed my mindset towards music and my own music.

In changing my mindset, I found a lot of relief in some sense. What I did first that relayed from the people that I had read about is I began listening to music that I enjoy listening too. Not music that I SHOULD be listening too because it will benefit me in some way. However, after about a month or so of only listening to what I wanted to listen too, I began to find that I really wanted to branch out into some different areas that I had never been too before. This for me was really cool because it meant more music for me to listen too! Through this process I discovered that I really liked music like this Joey Landreth - Better Together. What I found in this process was that I started really reconnecting to my guitar playing like I use too. I began to play more of the music that I wanted too, and less of what I was supposed too. However, remembering what Miles Davis and Coltrane had talked about, I still practiced what I needed to practice. I then tried to apply it to what I wanted to sound like. If it did not work, then I did not use it. This began to also improve my jazz playing because I began to find all of these unique new sounding ideas in jazz. I think that this is because I was less stressed about playing what I should be playing and more focused on connecting with the music that I was creating.

To map my progress as a musician over the last half year or so since I began this project, I have been trying to get as much material of me playing as possible. Most of this content is through Instagram. The videos that I will be using to compare my progress are two that I shot with this in mind at two gigs that have been spread apart quite significantly. The first video is from the first gig I ever played with my band Temporary Sanity down in Connecticut. At this time I was really struggling with the mixing jazz and blues thing as I had mentioned previously. The last video is from my most recent gig when the band and I went on "tour" up here in Mass! At this point in my playing I had used all of the devices that I had read about from my most influential musicians. What I found from watching these videos is that in my most recent gig I seemed to know what I wanted to play at all times, where in the older video, I seemed to struggle to find what I thought I should be playing.

Here are the two videos:

Early gig

Most Recent


I think that I achieved my goals with the readings that I have done for this class. I have gained a lot of knowledge in what a musician should think like as well as how a musician should practice in order to become the best that a musician can me. This to me means a lot. I think that this will also help me a lot in college as I will be studying music. With what I have learned from these musicians through their life stories, I will be able to apply that to my curriculum and how I practice in order to maximize my time and ensure that I am on the right path to my own personal success in my goals as a musician!