Another realization on the road to understanding jazz

For those who have been reading this blog for more than a year, you are probably aware that I graduated from college a mere three years ago this May. I’m proud to say that at the tender age of 43, after achieving credits at 6 different colleges over a period of 26 years, I obtained my BSBA degree. Quite an accomplishment, if I do say so myself. I would say, however, that as hard as I worked, with as many solo and team projects, assignments, papers, etc. that we had to complete, no single project that I undertook toward my degree required as much time and hard work as the project I just completed for my jazz arranging class: a seventeen piece arrangement of Bill Evans’ “Peri’s Scope” with a lick from Thelonious Monk’s “In Walked Bud” thrown in for good measure (or eight good measures).

To complete the 150 bars or so, I estimate that I spent somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty hours. It required complete reworking of the saxophone soli – twenty four bars of five parts. It required at least five hours just learning the software (Finale) to compose. It required two critiquing sessions with my instructor and classmates (three if you count the one for the soli). It even took about forty-five minutes just to print out the parts, make adjustments, reprint them, etc. etc. Then yesterday evening, the big band sight read it, got some tips and insight from me (not much), then played it through once more.

Finished.

All that said, I really enjoyed it. As much work as it was, the feelings of accomplishment and completion were just exhilarating, and it makes me feel good that I can get back to my regular, non-scholastic life. First order of business is to buy myself some jazz CD’s and get all my music that’s been laying about organized. In order to do that, I’ll have to find some shelves to put it on.

And I’m looking forward to keeping up with this blog once again.

Blind and dumb in both ears

I always loved that episode of The Little Rascals where Buckwheat, who can't believe what he's seeing, exclaims: "I thought I was deaf and dumb in both eyes!" That's how I felt Monday night in jazz theory class - blind and dumb in both ears - as the three music majors, the music graduate student, and me tried to determine intervals just by listening. It seemed everybody could do it, except me. Same for naming the intervals of chords, types of chords, everything. It is true that I do know and understand my chords, and I actually hear them pretty well too, but when it comes time to actually name the chords in their proper, non-enharmonic form, I struggle a bit.

Then again, that's what I took this course for. That's where I'm weak. That's where I need to improve, where I need to be stronger. Get the technical stuff down, hopefully the music will follow.

Really, I don't see how a jazz theory course would not help me, if for no other reason than I have to write, listen, read, and think about music, purely in an intellectual fashion. It forces me to spend time on music. I have music homework. Application follows but is irrelevant, at least for the time being. It's bound to have a positive effect.

My presence on Facebook will be scarce for the next thirteen weeks. I'm going to be sitting at the piano playing various exercises, sitting at the computer doing ear training, and sitting at the sunroom table writing out chords and intervals.

A slow beginning to Finale

In my continuing effort to spur the economy on and to keep my interest in music piqued, I recently purchased a software package I had been relishing for the longest time: Finale 2009.

I cut my teeth on the free version of Finale Notepad, and I found it adequate for my purposes. But once I started trying to arrange stuff for quartet and big band, Notepad didn't cut it anymore. I asked around and did lots of research online, and the consensus was that Finale was the package to get. There are lots - really, really lots - of notation programs out there, and they mostly have similar features. I really just went with the one I was most familiar with that also happens to have the largest installed user base (as near as I can determine). With my academic discount, it was reasonably priced, and it arrived very quickly. I loaded it into my computer with no problem, started it up, and

Did practically nothing.

My ability to notate music for piano is now basically unlimited, but I pretty much had that before with Finale Notepad. When faced with a big band quantity of staves, I was stopped in my tracks. The saxes all had three sharps and the trumpets two sharps on my key-of-C song.

Uh-oh.

Now, I can make a few logical guesses as to how to go about notating a song, and certainly, I know enough about how to transpose to be able to move the notes up to the keys of D and A, but I have nothing but questions even after I make those assumptions. Like, do I write for the instrument or write for the piece? Namely, do I put the notes in the instrument's key, or in my key? What's the range of the instruments? Is there some way to transpose that automatically so I can write in a more familiar key and print in the key the musicians need to see the notes in? And what other restrictions are there on the individual parts? (Like, how many quarter notes can a trombone player play legato at 112 before he turns blue and passes out?)

I could go on.

Anyway, I've got probably the single most powerful tool for writing and composing music, but now I'm not only facing the daunting learning curve of the comprehensive application, I've got to actually know about composing music in order to get it down properly. I'll probably buy myself a composition book (of which I found several on Amazon) and try to learn composing and the software simultaneously. Maybe by summer I'll be ready to go.

In the meantime, that's $200+ injected into the economy by yours truly. Don't say I'm not doing my part.