Mike Stern – The Interview – Part 2

Apart from transcribing, what else does your current practice routine consist of?

I sometimes take some of the ideas that I see when transcribing and I try to work with them. Either take ‘em through different keys, or just kinda forget ‘em if they’re kind of, like phrases y’know. I don’t wanna be learning phrases and just playing them out without, y’know everybody has stuff that they play, eventually which is their signature stuff but you wanna try to change it every time or play it with different dynamics, or play it in a different way rhythmically, or if you’ve played it a bunch of times then play it like it’s the first time you played it, with a lotta heart. For improvisation it feels fresher for me as a player if I try to find new stuff all the time, so I’m always transcribing and checking out different stuff. Sometimes it’s different phrases that I’ll go through, I have books and books, so I forget half the shit (laughs) or sometimes it’s a certain kind of a concept that a phrase would show me, like ‘wow is that kinda the way he’s thinking?’ and I find a new way to think about it, so I find my own thing. Sometimes it’s taking a thing that Charlie would show me, like six note scales, or different pentatonic scales and practicing those with different permutations and combinations, or practicing on single strings or intervals, it’s endless, endless amount of stuff.

I’ve been checking out Sonny Rollins and there are so many ‘things’ he’s got and you get into that world and start hearing it, you kinda see how he is working, cop a couple of his phrases and then you kinda start ‘owning’ that way of thinking. But I like to mix it all up, as you said I started with rock and blues, so I have a lot of stuff and I don’t necessarily box it in, it may kinda overlap. Although if I were playing Body and Soul I wouldn’t use a stack of Marshall amplifiers, y’know what I mean? It’ll be in the context of the music but I might bend a few strings to sing ‘em. I like a singing kind of a sound, that’s what I’m really into.

I noticed you had one of your delay pedals always on

Yeah, there’s this digital delay and the chorus and two amps so it gives it less of a ‘pluck, pluck’ sound and more of a smoother, singing sound. Plus, if I just use one, I put no effects, you would hear that it’s kinda light, and especially if I would turn the amp so it’s not direct at you, you might not notice the difference so much. Some people prefer that but I get off on this kind of a sound and no matter where I stand it is a good sound, also for comping and filling out in a trio, or quartet. So whatever gets you off, it doesn’t matter as long as you can play your heart out - it doesn’t matter what kinda instrument you play, or the processing you use.

Coming back to the transcribing thing, I’ve been checking out Stan Getz, which artists did you transcribe when you first started?

Joe Pass, ‘coz it’s a little bit more 8^th notes and bebop. I wanted some of that and I had more of the singing stuff really from listening to rock and pop music. You get more of that in a different way from Stan Getz but it has that quality sometimes ‘coz there is a lotta singing and even the playing, though it’s a lotta blues it’s very singing wise, y’know? To write something down and get some bebop, sometimes it needs to be more rhythmically straight ahead, so Joe Pass does a lot of that. He would still swing stuff that’s over the bar line. Also Bill Evans, but for guitar players I’d say Joe Pass is a really good one and I don’t mean his solo stuff with chords and everything. There’s a record called Intercontinental that I listened to, just a trio, or there’s some stuff he played with Oscar Peterson, stuff he did with Herb Ellis, or the stuff he did with Ray Brown, and if he’s doing chords you can just take the top note and find some of those voicing’s on the guitar, something close. That’s where I would start.

You have a very unique sense of time, I believe that Pat Metheny complimented you on that when you were at Berklee, is that something you consciously worked on or it came naturally to you?

He got me aware of it and working on it more, but I think I got that maybe from my mom. She’s played classical piano and I recently heard her. She kinda stopped playing for a while, she was more into painting and I heard her go back to piano and play some Bach and I said ‘that’s it! Whatever I got, I got that from her” She just has this solid and very earthy, but really beautiful sense of time.

But also, you can work on time, sometimes people’s styles are defined by what they can’t do as much as what they can do. You try to do what you can’t do; stuff that comes hard to you but you can find a way around. If you can’t play fast, you can find a way around playing fast tempos without playing fast and you may have to talk to the drummer and bass player and say ‘man, don’t bury me!’ Jim Hall can’t play fast but he can play fast tempos and I’m sure he talked to the drummer or they just knew it to play softer behind him. Or, if you can’t play great in time, you can learn to float over the time.

Did you ever sit with a metronome and work on playing behind, on and ahead of the beat?

Yeah, I did, that’s a really good thing to do.

Have you explored Indian music?

Leni, my wife does that. I want to, I’ve had the opportunity but I haven’t taken advantage of it as much ‘coz I haven’t had the time but I want to now, really wanna start learning. Gino (Gino Banks) was telling me some of the ‘tiki taki’ stuff and then ragas, like some of the scales, but also the rhythms and different feels that they have, different song forms and stuff - I gotta get into all of that. Leni’s studying different scales, she was singing every morning with, what is that thing called? (Tanpura) yeah, right by the bed, which fell down and broke! She’s gotta get it fixed, but every morning “aaaaa” (imitates Leni) and what’s that other thing “aaaa..aaaa” called?

Gamakas (laughing my ass off by now)

Yeah that stuff, can you do it?

No way!

Is it hard? ‘aaaa….aaaa’ Like that? Is that good? (laughs) I have to study that! Richard is learning that shit, it’s unbelievable!

Do you sing at all?

I used to when I was little! I sometimes sing with the guitar.

I noticed you were singing some of the lines you were playing during rehearsal

Yeah Richard always tells me that I should sing on my records, he thinks I should sing or at least scat with my guitar playing. He thinks I could do it but I chicken out (laughs)

Okay, last question Mike, what gear have you got here?

That’s a Yamaha SPX 90, then this pitch change thing that I have on 0, it just works as a chorus and I put that through both amps (Fender Twin Reverbs) and then I have the pedal board (Boss TU-2, Two Boss DD 3’s, Boss DS-1).