Top Ten Tips for Guitar Players from Jazz Guru Bill Frisell

Bill Frisell is a giant among giants of the jazz guitar world. A contemporary of legends like Johnny Smith (from whom he took lessons) and Pat Metheny (who gave him his first big break), he has spent his entire life in music perfecting his craft.

Along the way, you could say he picked up a thing or two. And while he acknowledges that learning and practice are essential, he also emphasizes that being a musician is much more than many people realize.

Known as “The guitarist who changed the sound of American music” in the title of his new biography (opens in a new tab), Guitar Player caught up with Frisell to talk about the finer points of musicianship.

Here are ten of his best tips…

Bill Frisell, 2019

(Image credit: Luciano Viti/Getty Images)

1. Listen

Listening comes first: divert attention from oneself.

In a way, it was good to get back to practicing and being in my own head during the Covid lockdown. But when you’re playing with a band, that’s not what you’re supposed to do.

You need to have your attention away from yourself. I don’t want to be thinking about what I’m doing. I want to be as focused as possible on the people around me.

It helps me a lot just looking at the other people in the band. Somehow it opens everything. It’s such a simple thing but it really helps the music for me.

Listening is such a great thing. It sounds simple, but it’s a lifelong struggle to really, really listen.

Bill Frisell, 2019

(Image credit: Luciano Viti/Getty Images)

2. Don’t judge yourself

What we perceive we’re doing when we play often has almost nothing to do with what comes to the fore.

At that point you might think: This is the rudest shit I’ve ever played in my life! And then you listen to a recording and you’re like, “What was I thinking?”

Or, you could be having a meltdown in your head like, I just can’t touch anything! But when you listen back, it’s beautifully formed.

All those things in your head, you have to turn them off. The idea is to get rid of all that and just immerse yourself in the music.

Try not to get attached to what just happened. You have to constantly get rid of the idea that it was good or bad.

Bill Frisell, 1995

(Image credit: Bob Berg/Getty Images)

3. Be present

If you had a great night, like you were completely stoned from the concert, you can’t think, That was great, let’s do it again at the next concert.

The reason it was great is because you were in the moment and you were responding to what was going on around you.

You just have to be as present as you can at all times. It’s the most amazing thing when the whole band is in the moment. It’s like you’re not thinking.

Concerts can be completely different from what you expect, no matter what you do beforehand to prepare.

You get there and there’s like a noisy refrigerator motor moving over here and a bunch of people over there screaming or whatever, just nothing like what you’ve been planning.

But you can’t hold on to what you expected to be. It’s about accepting and letting go. You just have to be there, present.

Bill Frisell, 2001

(Image credit: Jane Tyska/MediaNews Group/The Mercury News via Getty Images)

4. Accept mistakes

The mistakes are awesome. If you don’t get scared.

Like if you go for something and mess it up, maybe the tendency is to think, Oh shit! I fucked it up! But again, it’s about listening.

If you listen to what it is, if you’re in the moment, it might be better than what you were trying to play.

If you make a mistake, what you play next can make it sound good. If everyone in the band is in the zone, listening to each other and trusting each other, it’s like they’re rescuing each other all the time.

It’s not supposed to be a contest. I really don’t like the whole ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’ thing. I mean, let’s try to make something cool out of what just happened.

Bill Frisell, 2019

(Image credit: Luciano Viti/Getty Images)

5. Practice is great (up to a point)

I used to think that if you practice really hard you get to this place where everything is great all the time. But it’s not like that. Joy is being in the process.

Anyone who says they have it completely under control is lying.

I’ve seen that mess with people. You can’t think, I’m going to practice and get to this point and then I’m going to do something. Because you will never get there.

You just have to try right now and do the best you can, and move on.

You can’t wait until you’ve finished something before you get to music.

Bill Frisell, 1999

(Image credit: Luciano Viti/Getty Images)

6. Do not think for others

You are the only one who really knows how successful you are.

If you’re worried about what someone else is going to think, it’s just another thing that gets in the way of doing it. Because you will never know what the audience is listening to.

For me, the most honest way to act is to think, I love this and I will do my best.

If I feel any kind of joy in what I’m doing, I hope the audience will hear it and get excited. And if they don’t listen to you, well, there’s nothing you can do about it.

I’m lucky. I’ve had people listen to me play. But if he was just trying to figure out what they wanted to hear, he’d be chasing them forever.

Bill Frisell, 2006

(Image credit: Luciano Viti/Getty Images)

7. Be yourself

I definitely spent time in the beginning trying to be cool. Maybe there was a song that I liked, but I thought it was kind of cheesy, so I didn’t want people to know that I really liked it. I wanted people to think I was some super modern blues guy or something.

But as time went on, I realized that I had to be honest about who I am and where I come from.

I can’t take on someone else’s personality. He wasn’t a jazz guy who grew up in the ’30s and ’40s; I grew up in Denver in the ’50s and ’60s. That’s my experience.

Being honest with your own experience will make things much stronger. Don’t be afraid to show who you are and where you come from.

Sometimes it’s scary to put yourself out there, but try to get past that and don’t be afraid to be yourself.

Bill Frisell, 2012

(Image credit: Anthony Pidgeon/Redferns)

8. Destroy the competition

This whole idea that music is about competition, like someone is better than someone else, or this instrument is more difficult than that, what are you talking about?!

I mean it doesn’t make sense. I love what John Andrew Rice, one of the founders of Black Mountain College, said:

“There are things that are learned through observation that cannot be learned in any other way. What cannot be expressed in words cannot be learned through words…

“The struggle that is worthwhile is the inner one, not against the fellow but against one’s own ignorance and stupidity.”

Instead of trying to keep score, we should just help each other. We know how successful we are in trying to do what we’re trying to do. And that’s enough to worry about. We don’t have to put that on someone else.

John Andrew Rice thought that there shouldn’t be a winner and a loser in a debate; he believed it was about finding the truth, rather than being a contest.

That’s how I feel about music. Let’s try to unite and do something good. It is not a competition.

Bill Frisell, 2017

(Image credit: John Lamparski/Getty Images)

9. Take a risk

Music goes a lot higher when everyone in a band feels confident that they can take a chance. It is much better to try than to be thinking, it is better not to try it because it could mess it up.

It can be good or bad, but that’s how you learn. It’s the only way to get ahead.

The ability is great, but there has to be some kind of story behind it. All this technical stuff is nothing if you’re not saying anything with it.

It’s about showing who you are, that’s all you can do I guess. And that’s often not about what you learned in a book.

Bill Frisell, 2021

(Image credit: Luciano Viti/Getty Images)

10. Learn to forget

I know we need to practice our instruments, but you have to be able to shake that off when you’re really trying to play the music.

I’m in a privileged position because I have a lot of concerts, but if I practice all day and have all these things in my head later in the concert, it can be detrimental.

Sometimes you’ll find that there are things you can do in practice that you can’t seem to bring to another stage. You want to carry it with you all the time, but it just doesn’t work that way.

When you’re on stage you’re not in your own living room, you know?

We have to practice and learn things. If I’m learning a song, I want to have the song so deep inside of me that I’m not thinking about math or numbers, that place where it becomes automatic. As if you are riding a bicycle, you are doing a million calculations but you are not thinking about it.

Sonny Rollins (one of my biggest heroes) said that music happens too fast to think about it while playing.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer: The guitarist who changed the sound of American music

(Image credit: Faber & Faber)

Order Bill Frisell, Beautiful Dreamer: The Guitarist Who Changed the Sound of American Music by Philip Watson here (opens in a new tab).

Keep an eye out for upcoming Frisell shows here (opens in a new tab).

Source: www.guitarplayer.com