Meet Adam Douglass

We were lucky to catch up with Adam Douglass recently and have shared our conversation below.

Adam, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

There are so many myths, or even just bad and sometimes toxic ideas about creativity in the music business. From jazz musicians thinking they had to do heroin to play like Bird, to songwriters thinking that being in a healthy romantic relationship will stifle their ability to write good songs. All of that is absolute nonsense. Creativity stems from the input of new ideas into the mind of a creative person, and the creative mind corrupting those ideas into something completely new.

For example, many songwriters struggle to find the right lyrics to a song. The best way to combat struggling over word choice or expressing oneself is to be an avid reader. Taking in the stories of another storyteller, or hearing the way they describe something completely mundane in an incredibly beautiful manner opens the doors of the creative person’s mind to doing similar things.

The same can be said for musical composers. Studying new harmonic ideas, new rhythmic ideas, and new melodic ideas is the best way to get inspiration for new music of your own. While living in Brooklyn, I’d exercise at my local gym every morning, and on the walk home I would have whatever pop song was playing there stuck in my head. Not being particularly fond of pop music, I would deliberately corrupt the melody until it was something completely different, write it down, and incorporate it into songs I would compose.

This reminds me about how in my younger years, I thought I had to sit down and compose the entire song at once. I think Paul McCartney once said something along the lines of something not being worth pursuing if you don’t finish it in once sitting. Unfortunately, we don’t all have the luxury of clearing our entire schedule for the day if inspiration happens to strike. It is absolutely okay to work out a piece over a period of time, and especially go back and edit.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention that there is absolutely a difference between taking a musical idea and making it your own and plagiarism. Led Zeppelin was sued by a band called Spirit over a song called ‘Taurus’ and its similarity to ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Led Zeppelin’s defense, I believe, was along the line of the song being structured around a cliche, and that many artists have used that cliche. If you listen to other songs that use that cliche, such as ‘My Funny Valentine’, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ by Pink Floyd, ‘Something’ by the Beatles, and ‘Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodeloo’ by the Grateful Dead, one can draw one’s own conclusions about constructing a song around a cliche versus plagiarizing another artist’s work.

Finally, Steve Howe of the band Yes once said in an interview that although dedication to practicing an instrument is incredibly important to becoming an accomplished musician, it’s also necessary to live life. In order to be inspired to play music (or maintain creativity, in general), one must live an inspiring life.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I’m a professional musician. I just finished my second book for Mel Bay, ‘The Encyclopedia of Pentatonic Scales’, which is slated for release this year. I own a guitar lesson business, www.bushwickguitarlessons.com, where I teach online and in person guitar lessons. I perform with my eponymous bands, The Adam Douglass Band and The Adam Douglass Trio, which play rock or jazz music respectively. Depending on the demands of the venue, I both bands can play my original compositions or covers.

The ‘Encyclopedia’ is a very special project to me because I spent many hours learning these strange scales seldom heard in American music, creating guitar fingerboard diagrams for them, and then composing melodic sounding exercises for the reader to learn so that they have more than just a bunch of scales with no context– they’ll have the ability to make music with them.

I’m generally always composing music of my own, and I’m particularly excited to be performing a solo jazz guitar concert at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach on Sunday, June 29th.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I would say that work ethic is an important aspect of being a musician, but it’s never felt like work to me. It’s just something that I have to do. I’ve always wanted to do this and I knew that it was going to be an immense amount of work. At times it would get overwhelming, but like I mentioned above, the most important part about being inspired to play music is living an inspiring life. So when I felt like the task was insurmountable, I would go get in nature or go to a concert and remind myself why I’m doing this.

The ability to look at yourself and ask the hard questions is paramount. Music doesn’t lie. Recordings don’t lie. The metronome doesn’t lie. Why are you speeding up in this section? Why are you too far behind the beat in this section (generally, people seem to commit one of these atrocities rather than both)? You have to take stock of what you have and figure out how to get better at it. Fortunately, that usually spills over into life in general. Good musicians are usually some of the most solid people I know, as well.

To those looking to gain more experience, I would just say play as much as possible. Study as much as possible, take lessons, go to jam sessions, take whatever gig someone offers you, play with your friends who are better than you, play with your friends who are worse than you (obviously be kind to them), and learn as much as you can from each experience.

Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?

I think there were three books that were key in the development of my improvisational vocabulary that every guitarist should work out of:

1.) The Guitar Grimoire: Scales and Modes by Adam Kadmon. This book maps out the guitar fingerboard diagrams of the major scale, melodic minor, harmonic minor, and all of their modes in every key. There are also diagrams for countless other exotic scales that will help a guitarist looking to expand their vocabulary be able to navigate the layout of the instrument.

2.) Chord Chemistry by Ted Greene. Although he jokingly referred to the book as ‘Chord Catastrophe’, I found entire pages of different voicings of the same chord to be incredibly useful for compartmentalizing information and playing the same thing in different ways.

3.) Linear Expressions by Pat Martino. Martino’s book outlines playing in a different manner than how one would approach playing with scales, as well as his unique view of substituting minor chords as major and dominant chords. Excellent exercises to run and expand one’s knowledge of the CAGED system.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.adamdouglass.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adam_douglass_music/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adamwdoulgass
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AdamDouglassMusic
• Other: https://www.bushwickguitarlessons.com