The Art of the Trio

feat. Carlitos Del Puerto & Marcus Gilmore

Pt. 1
How to Listen in a Trio
Chick Corea: What about if we get started with a soundcheck?

Carlitos Del Puerto: Yes.

CC: I wanted everyone to experience - well, the pros out there will know what a
soundcheck is, but this is a soundcheck. You guys have been, you fixed your
instruments up, but we haven't listened to one another.

Marcus Gilmore: Sure, sure.

CC: So ...

MG: Talking about that, do you have any charts for us? I see what you're doing.

CC: I've got a few things.

MG: Expose you.

CC: I've got a few things. I've got a few things, but you know, we can fool around with,
we can sound check with ... Well, first let's see if we can hear each other. Let's sound
check with Fingerprints.

MG: Okay.

CC: How about that?

MG: Perfect. That's what we were just playing.

CC: Do you remember that? Let me hear what you've got, Marcus. Oh yeah. Oh, that's
good. That's pretty good. Yeah. See, let me explain to everybody. So I'm monitoring
Marcus a little bit. Sometimes I need to hear the tip of the cymbal, but the drums I can
hear fine. Sometimes I need to hear a little bit more definition.
See, if we played without amplification at all, then my sense of it is that a grand piano
like this and an acoustic bass like this, the piano would be like that and the acoustic
bass would be like that in terms of force of sound. So the bass, the acoustic bass
needs some amplification. Carlitos has an amp behind him for your thing. Then how
are you hearing, Carlitos?

CDP: I'm just hearing him from there I guess.

CC: But you hear the general sound.

CDP: Sure, the whole thing over here.

CC: The whole thing, yeah.

CDP: That whole thing.

CC: Yeah. Then yeah, so we're trying to even out the instruments. The drums,
depending on who's — my opinion, the drums, depending on who's playing can be
anything from a whisper to ...

MG: Right, right, right.

CC: So that's, you know.

MG: Sensitive. Sensitive.

[ Band plays Fingerprints ]

CC: So let's see. You okay? That was nice. Fingerprints. We play Fingerprints a lot.
This is the slowest we ever played it.

CDP: I think so.

CC: We kept the tempo too. That was interesting.

CDP: Yeah, that's right.

CC: Okay, well ...

CDP: That was interesting.

CC: ... that was an easy sound check. That was a little bit ... That was one of the
easiest sound checks. There wasn't much to adjust. Actually, actually I learned from
your granddad, Roy Haynes, that when playing in a group, it's choices because
modern bands that have amplification have amplifiers and then you have monitors,
speakers that monitor one another, the tendency is for everybody to get a mix for
themselves and it's very electronic.

That can be okay, but what can happen is you can lose your spatial sense, that there's
a drummer over there and there's a bass player over there and they're playing with you
and there's lines going over here. You tend to put your lines directly into the monitor
and you get introverted, you see. So the basic thing for communication is actually
where the sound comes directly from the guy who's making it.

I learned that from Roy because Roy Haynes comes from a totally acoustic tradition, so
no matter — when I played with Roy, no matter what kind of monitoring there was
around, he didn't really rely on the monitoring. He always just heard the piano from
wherever it was. I find that a good rule of thumb. I think the three of us do that anyway.
That's why the sound check was easy. So the sound check's over.