When I became a parent six years ago, one of the things I struggled with was finding uninterrupted time alone with my instrument.
Before becoming a parent, I was used to practicing for long stretches of time. I could sit with my bass, go down a rabbit hole, and stay there for as long as I wanted.
Then my life changed.
And for the longest time, I used the lack of uninterrupted time as an excuse for why I wasn’t practicing as much as I wanted to.
I’d often tell myself, “I don’t have enough time.”
“As soon as I start practicing, I’m going to get interrupted.”
“What’s the point of pulling out my bass if I only have a few minutes?”
But eventually I started to realize something.
There was nothing stopping me from continuing to build my musical vocabulary.
My life was just teaching me that I might have to learn how to do it differently.
I Had About Five Minutes
This morning, I woke up and saw a notification on my phone for a TikTok post.
While I was getting ready, freshening up, and brushing my teeth, I decided to watch the video.
It was a rehearsal tape of pianist Bill Evans.
Right before kicking off his solo, Bill played a phrase that immediately caught my ear around minute 17:45.
And I wanted to know what he played.
So I opened Music Phrase Pyramids, captured the audio, grabbed my bass, and started figuring out the phrase.
There was only one problem.
My daughter wakes up pretty early, especially once she starts hearing sounds around the apartment.
I knew I probably had five minutes, tops.
So I challenged myself to learn the phrase before she woke up.
I got close.
Very close.
But she woke up before I completely finished.
I ended up learning the rest of the phrase with her in my room.
This became Phrase #003 of 1,000 in my Great Bass Vocabulary Project.
And the entire experience reminded me of something I’ve been learning over and over again:
You don’t need an hour to build your musical vocabulary.
One Phrase Can Be a Practice Session
I think a lot of us have an idea in our heads of what practicing is supposed to look like.
- You sit down.
- You warm up.
- You work on technique.
- You practice scales.
- You work on songs.
- You transcribe.
Maybe you have a practice journal or a list of things you’re supposed to get through.
And if you don’t have enough time to do all of that, it’s easy to feel like you don’t have enough time to practice.
But what if you only learned one phrase?
What if you heard five seconds of music that caught your ear and spent the next five minutes trying to understand it?
That’s still practice.
More importantly, you may have just added a new sound to your musical vocabulary.
I’m starting to think about my own practice this way more and more.
I’m not always trying to finish an entire solo.
I’m not always trying to complete a one-hour practice routine.
Sometimes I’m just trying to collect one sentence.
If You Want to Remember It, Sing It
One thing I’ve been experiencing throughout this journey is that singing dramatically reduces the odds that I’ll forget what I just learned.
And I don’t mean singing well.
Sing everything, even if you’re bad at it.
Think about all the nursery songs you heard as a child.
There are probably songs you haven’t intentionally practiced in decades that you can still sing accurately today.
Why?
You didn’t memorize a diagram of the song.
You didn’t study the intervals.
You didn’t write the notes down 50 times.
The sound got inside of you.
You heard it.
You sang it.
You repeated it.
Eventually, you didn’t have to think about it anymore.
That’s what I’m chasing with musical vocabulary.
I don’t just want to know where my fingers go.
I want to be able to hear the phrase without the recording playing.
I want to be able to sing it and for it to feel familiar enough that when I hear an opportunity for it in music, something in me recognizes it.
I’m Also Trying Not to Slow the Music Down
The second challenge I’ve given myself is to stop slowing everything down when I’m trying to learn it.
This is an experiment.
For years, slowing music down has been a completely normal part of transcription for me. And there are absolutely situations where slowing something down can be helpful.
But right now, I’m interested in developing a different skill.
I want to hear a musical phrase the way I hear someone speak to me.
When someone tells me a story, I don’t ask them to repeat every sentence at 50% speed so I can understand each syllable.
I hear the entire thought.
The rhythm.
The inflection.
The shape of the sentence.
I’m trying to approach musical phrases the same way.
Hear the thought.
Sing the thought.
Then find the thought on my instrument.
It’s harder.
Sometimes it takes more attempts.
But I’m becoming increasingly interested in what happens when I train myself to hold the sound in my head instead of relying on slowed-down audio to expose every note.
My Life Didn’t Stop Me From Practicing. It Changed How I Practice.
Six years ago, I thought becoming a parent meant I no longer had enough uninterrupted time to practice the way I wanted.
In some ways, I was right.
I don’t always have hours to disappear into my instrument.
But I was wrong about what that meant.
It didn’t mean I couldn’t keep building my musical vocabulary.
It meant I had to stop waiting for the perfect practice session.
This morning, I had about five minutes.
I heard a Bill Evans phrase.
It caught my ear.
I sang it.
I grabbed my bass.
And now that phrase is one of 1,000 I’m challenging myself to learn.
Five minutes was enough to add another sentence to my musical vocabulary.
Maybe that’s enough for today.
Want to keep building your musical vocabulary? Explore more ideas, experiments, and practice approaches in my Musical Vocabulary series.
