GUITAR
Peter Serravalle is an internationally acclaimed guitarist, musical director, and band leader, having performed with some of the
world's most acclaimed entertainers. Currently, Peter performs on a luxury cruise line while maintaining a first call guitar chair posi-
tion for musical theatre productions and orchestral performances.
Peter Serravalle
Becoming
Fully Integrated
T
his is for all you working cats
out there, fighting the good
fight, diggin’ in the trenches,
vibin’ the vibe, yada yada yada...
We all lead busy lives and, espe-
cially for us sidemen out there, it is not
uncommon to have multiple gigs in
different styles all throughout the week
or month or year.
This article centres around one thing
to consider in order to become a more
fully integrated musician. It can be easy to
get overwhelmed by the sheer amount
of practice material out there. These days,
there are so many books, videos, PDFs,
and what have you, it can be challenging
to know even where to begin at times.
One could say that we are in the informa-
tion overload age and a bit behind on the
knowledge side of things. The question,
“What should I be practicing?” is an all too
common one, and in some ways can be
answered by, “How often are you actually
using what you practice on gigs?” I used
to ask this question a lot as a youngster
but soon answered my own question
when I started getting out there and play-
ing real gigs with other musicians. This
cannot be stressed enough!
Learning in the Moment
The moment is a great teacher. It will al-
ways teach and reveal your strengths and
weaknesses. It’s not subtle and will smack
you in the face at times. (Okay, maybe it’s
just a gentle tap.)
Practicing in all 12 keys was
something I avoided for a long time.
I kept dipping my toes in the water,
hung my head in shame whenever
my teacher asked me how many
keys I took a tune through, and kept
hanging onto my crutches. The game
changer, though, was when I began
to reframe the concept entirely from
a small element of my practice to it
being HOW I practice. What’s that say-
ing? “When the student is ready, the
master will appear?”
So, what does this mean exactly?
Dig this: once you get through it a
few times and after some consistency
has been established, you will actually
start to “hear” what you’re doing and
think less. Whatever it is you may be
transcribing, whether it be a lick, a
larger piece of language, a whole solo,
or an entire tune, working it through
multiple keys (at the minimum, let’s
say at least four) is a great way to start
internalizing the music that you’re
working on. What this does is it starts to
eliminate the crutch that’s limiting you
to only being able to play a lick/line or
tune in that particular key from which you
transcribed it.
Let’s say you got a great line over an
E major seventh chord that you’ve tran-
scribed and/or came up with. Instead of
only having it available in the key of
E , you’ll have it ready and available in any
key. Harmonically speaking, this means
we can start to be able to hear how it
harmonically and functionally relates
to the key centre. For example, being
able to hear how secondary dominants
and modal mixture sound and feel is a
different experience than having to think
it through every time we encounter a
different key.
Eventually and with enough practice,
you will start carrying over material from
one tune to the next, moving you closer
in the direction of developing your own
vocabulary. You will start to see and hear
what full integration really looks like, and
what it means to have a language of
your own.
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 25