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Transcriber: Eren Özbay
Reviewer: Denise RQ
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Thank you very much.
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It's true I was born into a band;
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very literally, I mean that literally.
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When I was born, my four older brothers
who were already playing music,
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knew that they needed a bass player
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(Laughter)
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to round out the family band.
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I was born into that role.
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As I'm older I'm looking back right now,
now that I'm called a teacher.
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When I look back on that,
and how I was taught,
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I realized that I wasn't really taught.
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Which is why I say
that music is a language;
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because if you think
about your first language,
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for me, and probably
most of us here might be English,
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so I'm just going to go with English.
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If you think about how you learned it,
you realize you weren't taught it.
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People just spoke to you.
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But the coolest thing
is where it gets interesting
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because you were allowed to speak back.
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If I take the music example,
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in most cases, our beginners are not
allowed to play with the better people.
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You're stuck in the beginning class.
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You have to remain there a few years,
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until you are elevated
to the intermediate, and then advanced;
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and after you graduate the advanced class,
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you still have to go out
and pay a lot of dues.
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But with language,
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to use a musical term, even as a baby
you're "jamming" with professionals.
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All the time.
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To the point that you don't even know
you're a beginner.
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No one says, "I can't talk to you until--
You got to go over there.
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When you're older,
then I can speak to you."
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(Laughter)
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That doesn't happen.
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No one tells you what you have to say.
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You're not made
to sit in a corner and practice.
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You're never even corrected
when you're wrong.
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Think about it: when you're 2-3 years old,
and you say a word wrong over and over,
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no one corrects you.
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If you say it wrong enough times,
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instead of correcting you,
your parents learn your way.
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(Laughter)
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And they start saying it wrong too!
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The coolest part of that
is that you remain free,
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with how you talk.
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And so you never have to follow
the musical role of learning
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all these years and then,
going and finding your voice.
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With your speaking voice,
you've never lost it.
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No one ever robbed you of that.
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And so, when I was young
that's how I was learning;
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I was learning English
and music at the same time
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and in the same way.
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So I tell this to people; I usually say,
"Yeah, I started when I was two or three."
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And I say that just
because that's more believable.
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But when did you start speaking English?
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Did you wait until you were two or three?
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No.
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You were speaking,
I'd probably say, before birth.
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Whenever you could hear
is when you probably started learning it.
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To me, that's very, very cool,
and very very clever of my brothers
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- my oldest brother, out of the five...
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I'm the youngest, Reggie is the oldest -
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He's only eight years older than me.
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So how he was this smart, I don't know.
That's the real question.
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That should be the real TED talk.
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How he figured out the ingenious way
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of not teaching us,
younger brothers, how to play!
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He didn't start me
by putting a bass in my hands.
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No.
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The first thing they did
was to play music around me
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from my earliest age that I can remember.
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I can remember living in Hawaii,
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my brothers would set up,
and I can remember seeing a plastic stool.
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A lot of times
we'd set up in the front yard
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where I can see a plastic stool,
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with a little plastic toy,
Mickey Mouse wind-up-guitar,
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laying on top of that stool.
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No one had to tell me
that that was for me.
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The same way no one has to tell you
when it's your turn to talk.
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You know how to do it
and so I knew that stool was for me.
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I knew that instrument was for me.
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It had plastic strings on it, you would
wind it up, and it would play a song.
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But you couldn't really play it from
the strings, and it wasn't about that.
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By the time I was old enough
to hold an instrument,
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they gave me something to hold
Just for the sake of holding something;
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preparing me for the later years.
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It wasn't about playing that instrument.
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That's the mistake
a lot of us, music teachers make:
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we teach kids how to play the instrument
first, before they understand music.
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You don't teach a kid how to spell.
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Teaching a kid to spell "milk"
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before they've been drinking
a lot of it for a few years
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doesn't make sense does it?
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But for some reason,
we still think it does in music.
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We want to teach them the rules
and the instruments first.
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But by the time I was about two,
and they put that toy in my hands,
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I was already very musical
because I believe you're born musical.
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Just listen to anybody's voice.
Listen to any child's voice.
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There's no purer music than that.
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So my brothers somehow knew
I was born musical,
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but they wanted me to be a bass player
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so when I was old enough,
they put a toy in my hands,
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and they would play.
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I would just bounce up and down
and strum along, too.
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But the coolest thing about it, again,
is it wasn't about the instrument.
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I was learning to play music
not an instrument.
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And I continue that hopefully today.
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Again, what I did know
was I knew what it meant
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when my brother opened up his high hat
at the end of a four-bar phrase.
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Or I learned these phrases
versus that phrase.
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The same way a baby knows what it means
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when the mother raises
the pitch of her voice
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versus the father lowering
the pitch of his.
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You know these things,
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and even though you may not
even understand what the word means.
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And so you're learning all these things.
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By the time a baby can speak a real word,
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they know already a lot
about the language.
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So I was learning music the same way.
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By the time I had the instrument
in my hands, I was already very musical.
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When I would turn about three years old,
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Reggie took two strings off
of one of his six-string guitars.
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He took the two high strings off,
and that became my first real instrument.
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So Reggie actually started teaching me
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to put my finger
in certain places to produce notes
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to songs I already knew.
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I wasn't starting from the beginning.
I was musical first.
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Now, I just had to put
that music through an instrument.
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And looking back on it now,
I realize that's how I learned to talk.
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It wasn't about learning
the instrument first.
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Who cares about
the instrument you talk with?
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It's about what you have to say.
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I've always musically maintained
my own voice.
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I've always had something to say.
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And I've learned how to speak
through my instrument.
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So if we think about a couple of things
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not being forced to practice,
not being told what you have to say
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- I'm speaking English again -
not being told what you have to say.
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When the teacher teaches you
a new word in English,
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she has you put it into a sentence;
in the context, right away.
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A music teacher will tell you
to go practice it.
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Practicing works but it's a slower process
than putting it into context.
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And we know that with English.
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And so this was the way I learned.
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As I grew older, about five years old,
we were actually on tour; the five of us.
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We were fortunate enough
to be able to tour
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opening for a great soul singer
named Curtis Mayfield.
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So if I was five years old,
my oldest brother was only 13.
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But when I think about it,
we could speak good English at that age.
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Why not music?
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So I've always, since then, approached
music just like a language,
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because I learned it
at the same time and in the same way.
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The best part of it all
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is I've maintained something
that little children are born with.
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And that's freedom.
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A lot of us are talked out
of our musical freedom,
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when we are first given a lesson.
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Because we go to a teacher,
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and the teacher rarely ever finds out
why we came in the first place.
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A lot of times,
that kid playing that air guitar
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where there's no right or wrong,
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it's not about the right or wrong notes,
it's not about the instrument.
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They're playing because it feels right.
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It's the same way and reason
that you sing in the shower.
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Or when you're driving
to work; you're singing.
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You're not singing
because it's the right notes
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or you know the right scales,
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you're singing because it feels good.
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I spoke to a lady at breakfast who said,
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"I'm Ella Fitzgerald
when I'm in the shower!"
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(Laughter)
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And of course she's right!
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So why does that change
when someone outside starts to listen?
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That freedom becomes lost
as we grow and as we learn,
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and we need to find
a way to keep that freedom.
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And it can be done!
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It's not gone forever.
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A kid playing air guitar will play
with a smile on their face.
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Give them the first lesson,
the smile goes away.
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A lot of times you have to work for
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your whole musical life
to get that smile back.
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As teachers, we can keep that smile,
if we approach it the right way.
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And I say approach it like a language;
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allow the student to keep the freedom.
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As I got older, a little bit older,
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and my brothers and I started
to tour and play a lot,
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my mom would ask a question
that I never understood really
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until I got much older
and had kids of my own.
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My Mom would ask us boys,
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and she was saying,
"What does the world need
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with another good musician?"
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Think about that.
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And I'm saying music,
but insert your own career.
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What does the world need with you?
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It really made me realize
that now, as I've got older,
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music is more than just a language,
music is a lifestyle.
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It's my lifestyle.
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Don't get me wrong: I'm not talking about
the lifestyle a lot of musicians lead.
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Because we can look back
at our musical heroes of the past
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and realize that they were
huge successes in music,
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but just as huge failures in life.
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I could name a few of them,
but I don't want to upset anybody;
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but if we think about our heroes,
a lot of them were like that.
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I think our parents were
preparing us for something
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that we didn't know at the time,
but I think she could see ahead.
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"What does the world need
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with another good musician?"
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So we're practicing all these hours.
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We turned our whole house
into a music room
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where all the neighborhood, all
the state-wide musicians would show up.
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We would practice,
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my parents would spend money
they didn't have
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to make sure we had
the next newest instrument.
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Every Christmas,
Santa would bring the newest thing.
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What was that about?
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Was it just so that we could make money?
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So that we could stand on stage
and bask in the glory?
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I realize now, that it is
much more than that.
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Music is my lifestyle.
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And now as I'm going into
really studying music,
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so that I could share it with
other people in a teacher's role,
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I realize that there's a lot
that we can learn from music
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and apply to our lives.
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To be a good musician,
you have to be a good listener.
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Doesn't matter how great I am
as a bassist, or any instrument.
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Doesn't matter how great I am.
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We can put five of the world's
best musicians on this stage.
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But if we're great
separate from each other,
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it's going to sound horrible.
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But if we listen to each other
and play together,
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individually, we don't have
to be as great,
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and it'll sound much better.
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I was invited a couple years in a row
to go to Stanford, in California,
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and put together a musical team
to address the incoming freshman class.
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And we were able to use music
to give them an idea
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what the next four years
of their life might be like.
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It was fun using music to do it
because music is a way
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that I can talk about anything
that could be kind of touchy:
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politics, racism, equality,
inequality, religion.
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I can do it through music,
and I'm still safe.
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We were able to pick
someone out of the audience
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who'd never played an instrument before.
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Usually, it was a female;
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have her come up,
we'd strap a bass around her neck,
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and then I would get the band playing.
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And as soon as the band starts playing,
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that person starts doing this.
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(Laughter)
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And I say, "That's music!"
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If you listen to that bass,
like any instrument in a music store,
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when it's sitting there,
it doesn't make a sound.
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So if you want music to come
out of that, you have to put it there.
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And that groove that's in your neck,
you just have to put it in the instrument.
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So I just had her
with her left hand squeeze the neck
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- because everyone knows how
to hold an instrument, that's not new -
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squeeze it and then, let
your right hand dance, on the string.
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She starts bouncing on that note,
and the band kicks up around her.
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All of a sudden, she's a bassist.
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More so, she's a musician.
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A dancer never has to ask questions
before they dance.
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A singer doesn't usually have to ask
what key are we in.
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Musicians have to ask too many questions.
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So what that taught me is that, "Wow!
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Because we're great,
she doesn't have to know anything."
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(Laughter)
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And all of a sudden, anyone who were
to walk into the room and see this band
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with this newcomer on stage,
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no one would know
who was the newcomer.
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So that let me know, "Wow!
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If I use my greatness in the right way,
it can help others rise up quickly."
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And the coolest thing about
that whole thing in Stanford
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is she got to take the bass home!
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(Laughter)
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I saw her recently,
she is still a bassist
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so that's great.
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Listening is a great musical key
that we can use for life,
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working together, of course, being great
to help other people become great.
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When people put you up on a pedestal,
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don't come off the pedestal
acting like you're humble.
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Stay up on that pedestal,
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because if they put you there
that's showing you how high they can see.
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Stay there and pull them up.
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And they'll grow faster
than if you come down.
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So we're going to help these people
because we're great.
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In music, usually, I'm not great
until you say I am, anyway.
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They say,
"He's won all these Grammy's."
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I can't win anything without you all.
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Another thing my mom
always taught us
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is, "You boys are already successful.
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The rest of the world
just doesn't know it yet!"
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I didn't understand that then,
but I really, really do now.
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Really quickly, before I get out of here
I just want you to think about this:
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If I were to play two notes,
Let's say I play a C;
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- just want you to use your imagination -
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if I play a C and a C-sharp
right next to each other,
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it'll probably sound
like those notes clash;
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"Wrong!", "Bad!"
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But if I take the C up an octave,
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play the C-sharp and the C again.
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All of a sudden, it sounds beautiful.
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Same two notes.
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That C becomes a major seventh
to the C-sharp
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which is a key element that makes a chord
almost too beautiful, too nice sounding.
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So how can the same two notes
sound bad and clash in one instance
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and beautiful in another?
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Just take that to life.
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When we see something bad,
or awful, or horrible in life,
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maybe we're just reviewing it
in the wrong octave.
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Maybe we could change our perspective.
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Actually, if you see
something that's wrong,
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you should know
that you're seeing it in the wrong octave
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and find a way to change your viewpoint.
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Or to use a musical term -
change your octave.
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Countries make bombs
with the goal of hurting people,
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instilling fear, killing people,
proving a point.
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Countries, governments bless
the bombs before they're sent.
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This happens from the top-down,
the government down.
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This is our answer.
00:17:35
Makes me realize that the solution
may have to come from the bottom-up.
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Is anyone working on a bomb
that makes people love you?
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Maybe a cupid bomb?
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I believe we already have it.
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It's called Music.
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And every country has
their own version of it.
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And it works. It brings people together.
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You don't have to know
a thing about it to get it.
00:18:01
It's a language. It's a lifestyle.
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And it can save the world.
00:18:07
My name is Victor Wooten. I'm a musician.
00:18:11
And I hope you'll join
me on the battlefield.
00:18:13
(Laughter)
00:18:15
Thank you.
00:18:16
(Applause)
