While her professional life has taken her around the world, Jane Miller’s personal life remains close to her roots. She still resides in her home state of Massachusetts, where — like so many of her colleagues — she works primarily from her home studio.
Miller grew up in central Massachusetts, the youngest of four sisters from whom she absorbed record collections and discovered a variety of singers and styles. Piano was her first instrument, but she felt drawn to the guitar and developed a passion for singer/songwriters. Eventually, she discovered jazz, and since then, she has fluidly merged all of those influences into her own work.
Her debut album with the Jane Miller Group was released in 1993. In 2013, she introduced her first solo guitar album and fourth overall recording,
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, a 14-song collection that she wrote and arranged. She is joined on the project by bassist Lincoln Goines, pianist Tim Ray, and drummer Mark Walker.
In addition to being a career musician, songwriter, and recording artist, Miller is well versed in other aspects of the industry. She is a professor at Berklee College of Music, contributes articles and lessons to guitar magazines, and has authored two books:
“It has become clear that writing music now includes recording and knowing how to put projects together by yourself, ” she says. “I used to separate those two things, writing music and arranging it. But more and more, when someone is looking for a composition or piece of music, they’re looking for a complete, put-together package for the whole production, so those things are harder to separate. So what I’m working on now is just getting better at presenting my music that way.”
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How was Boats the next chapter in your writing and recording trajectory? It features new songs as well as older ones, some going as far back as 1992.
Came to me. In the meantime, I recorded a solo guitar CD, so that kept being put aside. It never left my head, but it just kept being put aside. Over time, more songs gathered that seemed like they would fit this collection. I don’t know how to explain when the time is right, but when I felt like I was ready to do it, I applied for a grant and that got it off the ground. I completed the work outside of the scope of that because once something’s going, I can’t stop. I have to finish it. Once a song comes through, then I can explain, “All right, now I’m going to apply the craft, arrange it, give it a form that makes sense, think through the instrumentation, ” and all that. That part’s easy to explain. But the very beginnings of things and the timing of things, I don’t know.
I like stereo recording on an acoustic guitar — two mics, and sometimes three. For electric guitar, I like miking the amp and going direct. I also like to take a line from the acoustic so that there’s that feed to mix in. I have a piano at home, and I keep a pair of mics on the piano. I have an iPad that I keep next to the piano bench so that I can switch on GarageBand very easily and then just play whatever comes out. If I happen to capture something I like, I have it there, and if not, I move on. It’s like a scratch pad version of sitting at the piano and writing.
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The family story is that I begged for piano lessons when I was 3 or 4, and I was found walking down the street, going to the house of a neighborhood woman who taught piano lessons. She had a musical note on her door. I have a vivid memory of that. I don’t remember her name; I just remember seeing that note on her door and thinking, I’m
. I was quickly grabbed by my parents or older sister. Once my parents decided that I was old enough for piano lessons, when I was 7, they took me to someone they knew, and I did that for four years.
I still love piano, but when I added guitar, that became a deeper musical connection for me. It spoke to me. I don’t know if it was something I related to, or a generational thing, or a voice of the time in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It just felt like a good match for me.
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, and I watched her faithfully when I first learned to play. She taught a classical approach to fingerstyle, but through the filter of folk music, and I just thought she was the coolest thing. That’s how I learned to play at first. And this was television, so it was, “Oh my God, it’s six o’clock — time for my lesson!” It didn’t matter if we were in the middle of dinner or whatever.
She was so ahead of her time. She was awesome. She was into Phil Ochs and Hot Tuna, and she would have guests on her show sometimes. Every now and then, her name comes up, and notable folk singers give a nod to her.
I listened to The Beatles, of course, and I have three older sisters, so I listened to records that they brought home. I loved singer/songwriters — Crosby, Stills, & Nash, Joni Mitchell, Kenny Rankin. Janis Ian was a huge influence. I read liner notes and learned about the studio musicians and their stories, and I learned more about music that way.
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Eventually, I started listening to singers who did the standards, like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, and Tony Bennett. I still have a big record collection of singers along with instrumentalists. I learned by listening to them, which is a good way to learn because you learn the lyrics, you learn the tune from every which way, and when you listen to an instrumental version, you get it from the inside out.
Of course, I was floored by Ella Fitzgerald with Joe Pass. Wes Montgomery was a life changer. When I heard him play “While We’re Young” from his album
, that was a turning point. To me, it was absolutely impossible. This gorgeous song, this gorgeous arrangement — how was he doing that? I wanted to learn, and it’s funny, I never really wanted to learn that piece. I wanted to learn how to do that in general.
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That’s also true of favorite bands, favorite arrangements, and compositional styles. I take it in, and then it somehow filters through later. Steely Dan is another example. Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, and those kinds of writers had instrumentation or arrangements that were really interesting to me. It’s not like I did their tunes, or covered things and learned note for note what they were doing. But just listening, taking it in, made it come back out of me in different forms in my own way. When I go back and listen to those recordings now, I go, “That’s where I got that.” I can hear writing styles or arrangement styles that are deep in my bones now.
The barrier to breakthrough for me was playing single-note lines versus chords all the time. Accompaniment came somewhat easily, but crossing into single-line territory was the thing to figure out. I took lessons with a friend of mine, Mark Marquis, and I learned scale positions and things like that from him, and a little bit about chord soloing, which I was already beginning to do.
I also took a few lessons from a friend of mine in Worcester, Massachusetts, named Rich Falco. He’s a brilliant player. I went to him because my hand was sore. His technique is just so impeccable, and I wanted his advice on what I was doing to my hands. Plus, he gave me good insight about improvising ideas.
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But I think the biggest growth for me was listening to Emily Remler and taking lessons with her. We became fast friends when we met, and I learned a lot from her.
It takes dedication to your vision of what that is, and it takes courage and commitment to that, rather than looking around and thinking that you have to be this or that, or you’re not as good as this person or that person. You have to trust yourself to be who you are, and it might not be as important for each of us to be everything.
Comping is my thing that I’m creative with and naturally good at. Soloing is something that I can do and teach, but not in the same ways that other people can do. Everyone has their own little angle and gift. To be good at whatever it is that you do, you want to trust yourself and give yourself permission to really develop that and present that.
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I always thought of myself as a better writer and arranger than player, so that’s usually where my focus is. And I love to play. I never get tired of playing standards and playing with different people and freelancing. Taking solos is fun, I
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