Moving on

I’ve been in a reading frenzy of late, as opposed to a practice frenzy or a write-in-my-blog frenzy (as readers may have noticed). That’s mainly because I’ve been in an incredible, invincible, indecipherable, undefeatable practice rut for the last two months. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the tendinitis in my elbows. Maybe it’s the distraction of yard work. It’s something, but the bottom line is, I just haven’t been practicing the piano like I’m capable of. I felt so sorry for my instructor, after torturing him for two months, I decided to stop lessons for a while. Instead, I picked up a book to hopefully get me out of my practice rut.

I bought Practice-opedia after reading comments by the author in an article in the Wall Street Journal about how to keep kids progressing with their music lessons during the summer. Everything he said made sense, and I thought that a 376 page books of practice strategies and ideas would be the ticket out of the rut. Unfortunately, all it served to do is to make the ocean of practice I’m swimming around in, wider and chopper. It’s hardly a good thing.

Practice makes perfect, making this the perfect book. Maybe.

Of course, some ideas in the book are worth pursuing, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with having a new perspective. But some of the ideas are just aimed too specifically at children learners who shuffle from lesson to lesson, and I think what I really need is something that helps with the big picture. I need a practice book for a musician, not for someone who might ot might not become a musician.

So, I’m reading, I’m studying, I’m practicing (a little), and I’m trying. I’m moving on, on my own. We’ll see how this goes.

Because you can’t play jazz all the time

Not long ago, I happened across the works of Frederic Burgmuller. I was looking for some piano pieces that would provide me with some direction as far as improving my chops, but I didn’t want anything that would be too much work because I didn't want to spend a lot of time playing something that wasn't jazz. I’m not sure how I “discovered” Burgmuller, but it was exactly what I looking for. Here’s what I said for the benefit of people shopping on Amazon:

Deceptively easy and enjoyable way to improve piano skills

I don’t remember what it was that first led me to discover these pieces. All I remember is, I had downloaded the sheet music to “L’Arabesque” and after about thirty minutes, I was playing it start to finish, not at tempo, but with very few mistakes and a reasonable amount of musicality. (So you know where I’m coming from, I've been playing organ and electronic keyboards since I was twelve (I’m 50 now), but have only been studying piano seriously for seven years, playing mostly jazz.) I took the sheet music to my regular lesson and played it, and my instructor said, that’s excellent, here’s all the stuff you’re doing wrong, and he proceeded to set me straight on playing these classical period etudes. We decided these could be beneficial to my playing, so I bought this book and then began in earnest to learn the pieces. Since then, I've learned about one piece a week. I’m finding them incredibly valuable in filling in a number of gaps in my piano technique that were created in my rush to abandon the organ, flee from church music and dive headlong into piano and jazz.

 

Sure you can download the lot for free, somewhere, in a goofy font, without correct fingerings, and you'll have to bind it, somehow, after you research the correct order, then pencil in the correct fingerings, then start learning the pieces. Or, you can buy this for five bucks then start learning the pieces. (It was an easy choice for me.)

What makes these pieces so useful is that they are approachable and relatively easy, but they still require diligence and proper attention to execute well. Most of them are played at tempos which I consider to be borderline preposterous, but even at slower tempos, they are musical enough that they can be enjoyed at a slower pace as well. They are all also different from each other in mood and tonality, so the skill sets required to perform any given song is slightly different from piece to piece. Although they are pretty easy, I think most serious students will want to  work on these under the guidance of a piano instructor, because the tendency will always be that because they sound pretty and pretty “complete”, you will think you have it down, but I've found that my instructor can always find one or two things that can be done better or more easily or efficiently, and often enough, he will also find something I’m playing out-and-out incorrectly. Once I've looked at a piece, had my instructor listen and instruct, then spent another week on it, I pretty much have the piece down. I must say that, especially for me (the king of piano books), actually working through a book page by page and being able to play the pieces has been tremendously satisfying. They also provide a good break from playing jazz all the time, and correspondingly, my usual jazz tunes and exercises are better attenuated to my ears after I've played these classical style pieces for a while.

If you are an advanced pianist, I would venture to guess that you've already been through your share of Burgmuller pieces at some point in your learning. If you are, however, a beginner or intermediate player who hasn't yet set about practicing and playing these pieces, I recommend you give them a try and it’s worth five bucks to pick up this book rather than scrounge for them on the Internet. (Internet downloads often do not include the proper fingering, whereas Schirmer’s nearly always does.) The pieces are fun, highly musical, very instructive, and eminently learn-able, and playing these pieces has been one of my best musical experiences in seven years of learning piano. That’s why I give it five stars.

The best thing about these pieces is that they are all self-contained, but if you work through them, they develop different skills that every pianist needs. The other thing is what I mentioned in my review: they function well as nifty little songs and they dispel boredom, unlike drills and some other etudes. My playing has noticeably improved since I started working with Burgmuller, and I enjoy the twenty or thirty minutes I spend every day playing these song. For five bucks, this book is a bargain at twice the price.

Next: A look at another book on jazz in general, From Birdland to Broadway.

Now comes the boring part

This is a brief story of what happens when you skip establishing the proper foundation right at the beginning.

Scales

Having learned to play the organ when I was young, I never had any formal piano instruction until I began taking lessons six years ago. At the time, because I was an adult, and not very savvy about these things, I basically told my instructor, I don’t care how I play, I just want to sound good. Recognizing that he was half my age and he had to do what I said if he wanted me to pay him, he diligently taught me what I thought I wanted to learn. If I asked about technique and skill improvement, he helped me, but he never force fed me what I didn't want to eat. Not so my new instructor.

Scales

He said, before I really said much of anything about why I wanted to take lessons this time around, “Really, in order to play better, you have to improve your technique.” I knew what this meant, but demurely asked a one word question: “Scales?”

Scales

“Scales,” came the one word answer.

Scales

So, I’m playing scales. In the interest of getting the fingering down and not stultifying my brain too much right at the start, I’m doing contrary motion two-handed scales. That way, the same fingers are always doing the same thing at the same time, hopefully programming my muscles to hit the correct keys at the correct time. It’s not refreshing, but it is somewhat invigorating to be tackling these rote sort of tasks at long last. So this week’s project is contrary and parallel scales in C, G, D, A, and E. I’ll probably go ahead and push on to at least B so that by next week, I’ll be halfway finished. Honestly, I don’t know if I can get there by next Tuesday, but we’ll see.

Scales

Kids, learn your scales now and don’t cry. You’ll thank me later.

Rhythmless practice

Just after I got back from Las Vegas a week and a half ago, I sat down to work on our band tunes, and I had a hard time getting my drum machine to work. I fiddled with the power switch and adapter connection and eventually got it to run, after a fashion. A few days later, with only four weeks until our concert, it refused to start up at all. I took it apart and tried to clean the connections and whatnot, but it was done. Since I had bought it used and got basically two years out of it, I decided it was time to buy a new one. Then I found out how expensive these suckers really are. So I went used again on e-bay.

I was really concerned about buying a used machine, because sometimes people are pretty lackadaisical about shipping off their used items. But I found a machine I wanted and was able to get it at a price about one-third of new. Imagine my surprise when I got the machine sent to Alabama (from San Diego) in just three days. I was delighted.

Until I turned the machine on, that is.

It didn't work. The sound was fading in and out, and both channels did not work properly, either in headphones or with jacks. Turning down the volume and messing with the jacks and adapter cord and connection helped (just like with my old machine that gave up the ghost), but I was worried. Since I could make it work, however, I decided to see how it performed over the weekend. Unfortunately, I found some of the buttons and functions inoperable, especially the ones which would allow me to eliminate the bass sounds so I could play just with the drum tracks. So, I am still without a drum machine and practicing with no rhythmic support (not good).

Of course, I will try to get my money back on the defective machine, but with less than three weeks to the concert, I can't wait around and guess at quality anymore, so I ordered a brand new machine from a reputable dealer on Amazon.com. Hopefully they will succeed in getting me the machine this week so I can get back to practicing with precise rhythm and timing.

Solo pianists and band performers can take liberties with time and timing in jazz (sometimes), but in a large combo with lots of solos and parts that bounce back and forth and respond and call, time and timing take on a new importance and "criticality". The level of my performance depends on being able to eliminate this rhythmless practice and get the timing as well as the notes of my parts down as soon as possible.

Come on, Amazon, don't fail me now!

Neither here nor there...

I still suck at ear training. Best I can get is 64% right. Usually, I'm in the 40% area. In fact, I think I'm getting worse. I noticed I can't even detect octaves half the time now. That's really bad.

I watched the Arturo Sandoval story, "For Love or Country", starring Andy Garcia. It was pretty good.

Spent two and a half hours today on my jazz theory class homework. It was all about harmonic minor scales and 13th chords, two more weak areas for me, and man, it was a lot of work. So when I can't play anything in the band tomorrow, I'll tell the director (who also teaches the jazz theory class) that I had too much homework. We'll see how that goes.

I've been listening to a lot of Dizzy Gillespie lately. Sometimes, you just forget how good some of these musicians are when you haven't listened to them for a while, and then when you do, you just can't put them away because they sound so fresh all of a sudden. I can honestly say, only jazz music does that to me. Or so it seems.

And it finally stopped raining in Alabama. I got some sunlight vitamin D today and it felt great!

I put out an ad online looking for a free piano. No surprise that one hasn't shown up yet. I may have to break down and spend some money on one. I should do it soon, too.

When your ears abandon you

Here are ten things to do when you are practicing your ear training and you become completely unable to identify anything that isn't an octave or a tri-tone. (Believe me, it happens to me, ... a lot!)

1) Have a glass of wine
2) Listen to some music
3) Play a couple of hands of poker online
4) Have another glass of wine
5) Log into Facebook and check up on your Mafia Wars character and see if you have enough energy to do a job in Cuba or not
6) Play with your cat (here's one of the two I'm apt to play with)



7) Have another glass of wine
8) F....o....c....u....s.....
9) Cry, throw a tantrum and bash your keyboard against your computer tower
10) Switch to whiskey

Here are the expected results of each action, based on what happened when I tried each of them during a recent ear training session

1) Feel a little better, still can't hear crap
2) Feel a little better, wish hearing intervals was as easy as listening to Bill Evans
3) Feel better if I win, skip to #9 in above list if I lose
4) Feel even a little better, begin thinking interval training is a waste of time
5) No, it's only been fifteen minutes and you still can't do anything in Mafia Wars yet
6) Causes me to think about ears, but nothing really constructive
7) Alcohol doesn't improve anything, including my hearing, but at least I don't give a damn
8) Continue to be wrong only now with much more intensity
9) Causes some minor excitement in the house, but could be a potentially expensive and seriously regretful activity (I was lucky nothing broke this time)
10) No longer able to see the computer screen, I only hear ocean sound in my ears, and anyway, I can't click a mouse accurately enough to continue (it was bedtime anyway)

For those who missed the comments in my previous entry, I am training my ears using the fine free application available at Good-ear. And for the record, none of the above was good-ear's fault. I just suck at identifying notes with my ears, and that's that. Maybe someday I'll be able to report progress, but I've been down this frustrating road before and I recommend my readers not hold their breath for that (undoubtedly) joyous day.

Practice regimen

I’ve been thinking about my practice regimen lately. (As opposed to actually practicing, which would require that I sit at the piano and work, which I just haven’t been in the mood for lately.) Back in March, I developed a sort of plan, a list made up of things that I thought might be useful to practice on a regular basis. I put it in a spreadsheet so that I could print out a sort of tracking grid to actually be able to see what I was practicing and when and how often and sometimes (if I noted it), for how long. It was an excellent idea and I kept at it for one whole month before it got shunted to the wayside. Since I’ve been working on some new things in my lessons, I thought it would be a good idea to revisit it, add to it, and start using it again.

Here it is:


Obviously, there is far too much here to practice it all every day, unless you maybe do so for just a few minutes on each exercise or practice for at least two hours – which is out of my reach at the moment due to a lack of discipline. I would think that a minimum of ten minutes per area is required to realize any sort of advancement, but I find I have to spend more than that on most things before I feel I’m doing any better on it (like scales and stride work.).

One of the important things missing from the sheet is tunes. I feel that after practicing, one must make time for playing. That can be playing just to play, or playing to implement what was practiced. More often than not, for me, it’s the latter, because I think that’s what makes me sound better, but I also an not entirely against the idea of just playing a few songs to make me feel good in general and forget about the burn in my knuckles.

And so, having written all I can write for the moment about practice, I think I will go and actually do some. School starts pretty soon and if I’m going to take some classes, I’m going to have to audition, so, I’d better practice.

Virtuoso? More like "lazy so-and-so"

It is said that in order to be a virtuoso in something, you have to practice whatever it is for 10,000 hours. That would make you “world class” or put you into the top 1% in that field, or something like that. In other words, make you a virtuoso. As of this August, I will have been formally studying jazz piano for two years, and while I have not tried to keep track of every single minute that I play the piano, I have tracked the majority of the time that I spend practicing, playing, taking lessons, rehearsing with bands, etc.

Now understand, I have no delusions here. 10,000 hours is a long, long time. To put it into perspective, if I were practicing piano as a full time job - that is eight hours a day, five days a week - it would still take five years to become a virtuoso. If (for example) I worked at it full time, and worked twenty hours every weekend as well, it would still take three years, four months to reach 10,000 hours.

Folks, I can’t even SIT at a piano that long, much less sit at it and play something. (I’m ashamed to admit it, but since school ended, I’m pretty sure I haven’t played ten hours all together. I just haven’t felt like it.)

Given that, the fact that I’m pretty close to having five hundred hours under my belt is actually pretty amazing. If you throw in my plonking around time, plus some of the time I had as a kid learning to play the organ, I’m probably up around two, maybe three thousand hours total. Still, a long stretch to the 10,000 total.

It is entirely possible that I won’t play ten thousand hours of jazz piano in my life. If I do somehow stick to it and play, say, five hundred hours a year (two hours a day, five days a week for the entire year ... yeah right, not likely), I’ll be 65 when I reach the virtuoso total.

What’s the point? I’m not sure, but I think the point is that I need to set manageable, near-term goals, or the title of “virtuoso jazz pianist” is going to fairly and completely elude me.

Only 9500 more hours to go. Let's shoot for two hours today, anyway.

Ups and Downs

As we kick off Jazz Appreciation Month...

The past week has been filled with a series of ups and downs. Monday night was big band rehearsal, and our drummer was absent. This allowed us to hear the band in a completely different light, and the fact that I wasn't playing very well at all really came out. On one of the songs, I was even play a completely wrong chord, pretty much altering the whole progression of the song. Although I arrived at rehearsal full of confidence after a productive weekend of practicing, by the end of rehearsal, I was starting to feel like an accident that put my hand into some kind of cast for the next three weeks would not be completely unwelcome.

Due to the emotional strain of putting down our eighteen year old cat on Tuesday (a story that I won't go into other than to say that after spending 18 years together with any sort of living thing, it has to be the hardest decision in the world to decide to end that being's life), I didn't practice very much on Tuesday, so I showed up for band practice on Wednesday, pretty much looking forward to the drummer being back and covering up my mediocre, uninspiring sound.

Unfortunately, the drummer wasn't there yesterday either.

So I did what any other jazz pianist with my lack of skills would do: I created space. I played sparser chords more sparingly, played fewer notes, played less on the beat, and even got a section taken away from me where we changed how we play the solos. I was fine with all those decisions, and I think they were made for the betterment of the music. Plus my overall sound was more interesting because I stopped doubling the left hand with the right.

Jazz ensemble actually went pretty well from start to finish. I picked up some good pointers on soloing and was able to implement them right away. At my piano lesson, we worked on some chord voicings for one of the songs I've been having trouble with in big band. The end result was, my confidence is back, my willingness and desire to practice is back, and my sound is better.

That's what I'm going to school to learn, anyway, so it's good to know we are at least accomplishing that.

There was a quote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, that John Coltrane once said, "This (jazz) music is a serious as life itself." I'm not sure I buy that on its face, but I will say, if you had to pick something to take seriously while pursuing it, jazz would be a good selection.

Time to Practice

In a first for our jazz combo, we came up with a play list well in advance of our concert, which is going to be April 13. Since we are technically students, our recital has to take a specific format, namely, we have to cover what are considered the four "main" areas of jazz performance, namely, swing, blues, ballad, and Latin. Our play list, in alphabetical order, therefore, looks like this:

Cherokee
D Natural Blues
Desafinado
Ruby, My Dear

Ruby is a carryover from our Valentine's songfest song, which we didn't get to perform as the program designer "picked" a different song for us. Cherokee was insisted upon by our director, despite at least two of us having a certain disinclination to perform it (including me). D Natural Blues and Desafinado we came up with on the fly, ran through them once or twice, and they sounded good enough, so we decided to stick with them.

And that was that.

I'm glad the selection process is out of the way, because now I can practice those songs diligently and confidently, knowing that every minute I put into improving them will not go to waste. Still, coupled with the four (maybe five) songs that the big band will be performing on April 17, that's eight songs I've got to get down pat and really be able to play. I should be able to master them, though, because I don't have much of anything going on between now and the concerts. There can be no excuses for not accomplishing some serious polishing of my chops on these tunes.

I'm almost as excited about learning these songs as I am about how I will feel when this semester is over and I can play whatever I want once again. The home stretch is the best part of studying jazz in school.

Back against the wall

A while back, shortly after I joined the big band, I made the comment that I thought playing in the big band would balance well with playing in the jazz combo because I wouldn't have to work as hard in the big band as I do in the combo.

Well, I think I was wrong.

We are preparing for our April 17 concert, and we have a singer who does jazz workshops coming in to sing with us, Kathy Kosins. We will be doing two songs with her, plus an undetermined number of other songs, possibly including two Count Basie songs arranged by Neil Hefti. Long and short: there are critical piano parts in each of the Basie songs, and plenty of solo licks in the two vocalist songs, and it is very hard to practice the songs outside of the band because there is nothing for the piano to do when the singer is singing and the brass is blowing. I've taken to recording bits of our practice sessions to play back and play along with, but that hasn't gone so well (yet). Fortunately, I have the Atomic Basie CD, so I can play along with the two Hefti tunes. I also bought two of Ms. Kosins CD's (which haven't arrived at my house yet), one of which has one of the songs were doing with her on it, so hopefully, I'll be able to learn and swing those four tunes, plus our boogaloo tune which everyone is intent on doing (except me).

As if that weren't enough, our combo director wants us to work on Cherokee, which is a very difficult tune (for me) to play, and one I've given up on several times but now will not be permitted to give up on. Our drummer threw Keith Jarrett's The Magician in You into the mix, and I, unthinkingly, threw Falling Grace in (which I can play serviceably enough). And, last week when we practiced without our director, we came to the conclusion that I would be responsible for leading our group into and out of the endings of all our songs, a responsibility that I will not shirk, because I do believe the piano is "the key" to that part of the song, but it is something I'm not very experienced with and will have to work hard on.

So, even if I only do, say, fifteen minutes a day per tune, that's almost two hours, and that isn't that much practice when learning tunes. That's also more time than I have available to practice. Suffice to say, my back is now against the wall, and the only thing that can save me is focusing on these tunes in my private lessons and practicing my butt off every weekend and during spring break.

I asked for it, I got it.

Jitters

For four years, I played organ at good ol' St. Mel's in Cleveland OH, mainly as accompanist to the adult and children's choir. Our “season” ran basically with the school year: from Labor Day through Memorial Day. Every week I played a limited liturgical repertoire spiced with simple Bach and Handel chorales and whatnot, always on the same instrument, always with the same choir, largely for the same people.

And every week I got nervous as hell.

I'm amazed to think back to that now and realize, I can honestly never remember a single occasion when I did not get nervous. One would have thought that after a while, it becomes second nature, you really don't think about all the people who are hearing you play, and you don't get nervous, but I always did.

When we played the Flying Monkey last semester, I was nervous, but not in a terrible sort of way. I was mainly just worried about how the performance would go, since the band hadn't played together but one of the previous four weeks. For some reason, though, with tomorrow night's concert looming, I am pretty nervous. This is despite the fact that both of the bands I'm playing in have practiced together every week for the last five, and that I have also practiced hard and finally mastered all my sections. I should be less nervous, but I'm actually more so.

I think a lot of it has to do with the venue, which this time is an actual hall, where everybody will be able to see and hear me clearly. All I can do now is put it out of my mind, concentrate on not letting the cold or flu bug I'm fighting win out, and then play like I know I can play.

Not a very helpful entry, I know, but hopefully insightful to some of you performing jazz musicians out there. Break a leg!

Going around in circles (of fifths)

I did not have a piano lesson the week of Thanksgiving, and due to my instructor having a rehearsal, did not have one last week, either. Before the hiatus began, he instructed (what piano instructors do) me to work on three-note chord voicings going around the circle of fifths. This is a practical exercise for any jazz musician, one that can never be done too much. In my zealousness to learn our jazz ensemble's music and perform it adequately, I had not been practicing anything in the circle of fifths. Sad part is, practicing chord voicings based on the CO5 would probably have done me the most good.

So, after asking me to play three-note voicings around the circle, and being essentially unable to do so without a lot of mistakes and stoppages to think, that's what I've been practicing for the last three weeks. I've also worked some on four note chord voicings using the 9th and 6th notes, which in some respects is easier, but is difficult to get sounding right. I even learned to play Miles Davis' "Tune Up" using the four-note voicings.

It hasn't been enough. I need to do more of it. I need to work through the boredom.

If you are a jazz musician and you haven't worked through some skill on your instrument using the CO5, I humbly suggest you do so today, or at least, at your next opportunity. No need to thank me. The continual improvement of jazz music everywhere is enough thanks for me.

A new practice routine

Pretty soon, I'm going to write about my experience in buying music equipment. It will, I believe, be very practical and useful for readers of this blog, especially those who are truly new to jazz and the world of music, maybe need to shop around for and buy equipment, but haven't done so in a while. But first, I'm going to put down my practice plan.

This plan is to get me playing better, not to learn tunes (so much), as to just get better. My piano instructor says I need to know more chords and I need to know them more fluently and naturally to play jazz, and he's right. Plus with jazz ensemble being over (for now), I don't have to jam certain tunes into my brain. I can just do what my nerves, muscles, tendons, and will tell me. So, here it is:

-Play three note chord voicings through the cycle of fifths until I've got them down.
-Go through the Real Book and play every song I could play before the concert but haven't played in the last three months (there are a lot of them).
-Work completely through the jazz styles book that I bought and haven't even cracked yet.
-At least once during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays (each), go through Hanon in one sitting, front to back.
-Listen to (carefully) and review all the new music that I picked up over the last few months that I haven't reviewed on Amazon yet.
-Go through the piano chords newsletters I've received over the last two months and pay attention to them and work on them
-Work on Christmas songs
-Play four note chord voicings including the 9th and 13th through the cycle of fifths until I've got them down.

I should be playing pretty good by the beginning of next year if I stick to this plan. I'll let you know how it works out.

Now, to work!

Catchin' that Wave

For a change, I had a good weekend of practice. I was sort of worried, because my piano lesson was cancelled on Wednesday, so I didn't have a chance to look at the ensemble's new songs through the experienced eyes of my instructor, and on Thursday and Friday, I couldn't do anything with any of the new material. On Saturday, I gave up, and on Sunday, on a whim, I thought I would at least try to play along with the records: Frank Sinatra singing Wave, and Clifford Brown doing Joy Spring.

That proved to tip the scales in my favor. While I'm still unsure of a few of the chords, I got the rhythm and tempo of both songs down, which makes it easier to fake when I don't know the chord or I get lost in my fingerings, or whatever.

Tonight I have nothing to deter me from a full couple of hours' practice, and the same holds true for tomorrow, although I will hopefully be able to schedule a makeup piano lesson in there to get just a little clearer image of what I should be playing as an ensemble player. (Yes, it seems dumb to have to state the obvious, but solo piano is different from ensemble piano, and ensemble piano doesn't sound like anything by itself, which is one of the reasons why it is so hard for me to practice.)

The jigsaw puzzle of jazz

There really is no such thing as a hard jigsaw puzzle. I'm not talking about those novelty puzzles, now, the ones with no edges, or the ones with the repeated, same tiny pattern with all the pieces cut the same, or the puzzles with a picture on both sides, or the puzzles that include eight extra pieces that don't go in the solved puzzle, or the 3-D puzzles, or any of that lot. (Yes, I know a lot about puzzles.) For the sake of this argument, we're talking about your run-of-the-mill, 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, whatever-piece, straight-up, no-nonsense jigsaw puzzle.

So, I'll start again.

There really is no such thing as a hard jigsaw puzzle. The pieces that are in the box can be combined to form a picture, a representation of which appears on the box the pieces come in. The pieces go together only one way. As long as you don't lose any of the pieces, no matter what, eventually, the puzzle can be completed. It may take a long time, or it may only take one wintry, rainy afternoon with you and a close friend working on it while sipping brandy tea. She or he will take the blue ones with edges, while you take the brown and red ones with edges, then, you'll have the edges finished and most of the pieces turned over, then, it's just a question of persistence and time.

Just like jazz.

Last night at jazz ensemble, we worked on all of two songs, neither of which I could play, due to the rapid chord changes that I was completely unfamiliar with. The first, "Have You Met Miss Jones", we'd started working on the week before, and I'd just forgotten about it. There are a couple of key changes in it, and they just throw me, especially if I'm trying to think of altered chords with 6th's and 9th's to throw in. It was hopeless. My soloing wasn't terrible, but it was aimless and boring. I was glad when we decided to try something different. Unfortunately, the next song was "All the Things You Are". It is very similar in that the chord changes are pretty straightforward, but there are a couple of key changes that just threw me. Again, I couldn't play much of anything, I didn't embarrass myself too much with the soloing, but it was tiring and I didn't sound very good. By the end of the class, I felt like I'd been through a ringer.

And from there to my weekly piano lesson. I told my instructor what had happened, and he was amazed that I hadn't done much better. "All the Things You Are is my favorite, my absolute favorite," he kept saying. "I can't play it," I said. "Of course you can," said he. So he told me, just play the third and the seventh of each chord. Low and behold, if you do that, you only have to move one note through almost every single chord change, and you progress right down through a series of basic, very pleasant sounding, extremely easy to play, ii-V-I progressions. The lightbulb went on over my head, and my instructor and I put on our sunglasses. "I'll be damned," I muttered, "Another piece of the puzzle and it fits perfectly."

Week by week, piece by piece, I've been putting the puzzle together. All those progressions I practiced blindly all of a sudden reveal their intent, their wisdom to me. All of a sudden, I know why a minor scale works where a major scale doesn't, or I see why repeated moving down a specific number of tones (depending) brings about three key changes in complementary tonalities, or why, if you break down a chord to its two color tones, it becomes easier to play and crisper sounding. And guess what: All that practice of ii-V-I progressions comes right out of your fingers when you start to think through the chord changes. Your brain really does go, "We know how to do that. Here's the muscle and nerve movements you've been looking for all night. They're right here." And, wham! You freaking playing the piano, dude!

I went from tired and depressed to energized and relieved in the space of ten minutes. Just like when you can find that one corner piece that links those two sections of edges you've about finished, so you can fit your blue and brown sections together and have your puzzle about two-thirds done. A couple more nights like last night, and then I'll just have the clouds and blue sky to fill in, and then my puzzle will be finished.

If only...

Reduced booze = increased music

An alternate etymology, according to a jazz history book I'm reading, says that "on the wagon" refers to the jazz musicians in the early part of the last century, who, in order to ply their art had a horse pull a flatbed wagon around town with a band on it, playing tunes as it plied its way through the street. The junior musicians were (apparently) often stuck with this task, so the senior musicians would stay back at the speak-easy and - of course- drink. So, if you were "on the wagon", you couldn't drink, and obviously, for jazz musicians who drank too much but suddenly stopped drinking, it would make sense to say, "I'm on the wagon."

I mention this because I started cutting down on my own booze intake this week, simply so I could get longer, more coherent practice time in. I was therefore struck by the amazing coincidence of Stanley Bing (who's blog I'm a big fan of) making the same resolution - albeit for a different reason - at the same time I did. What are the odds?

Unlike ol' Stan, however, I'm not going completely dry. Something about that whiskey with big ice cubes in a crystal glass on the end of the piano, just keeps me going.

A new case of the blues

With my piano instructor busy on Wednesdays this month, I had my piano lesson for an hour last night. I told him all about my jazz ensemble experience and that I couldn't even play a blues with altered chords, much to the consternation of the jazz ensemble instructor. So, that was what we worked on last night for the entire time, in the key of F: a standard twelve bar blues progression, where my piano instructor's concept was slightly different from the concept we played at the jazz ensemble class. It wasn't hard except just the first few times through as I had to think about the chords and try and remember them after playing something different. Once I had the hand muscle memory, it was just a question of timing, which wasn't all that good. It's not often that one has an hour long piano lesson, plays almost the entire time, but never once plays a single song.

Productive. Really.

Anyway, now I have a formula, both for the chords and a blues progression to practice on a regular basis. I haven't much time between now and tomorrow's class, so I'll just try two or three likely changes of key and then see how I fare tomorrow. During the next week, I'm going to get out my drum machine, work on all keys in proper rhythm, and then start throwing some of the chords into actual songs. It's just a question of work, and I'm not giving myself any choice or leeway. It makes me a little blue now, but it should payoff with green later (someday, maybe).

So much for that

Monday night was my first class in jazz improvisation. As it turned out, it was also my last (at least for this semester), as the course has since been canceled because only two students registered for it. There were a bunch of other students who said they might consider taking it, but apparently, nobody signed up, and I had notice from the teacher today that it is officially canceled.

Which really sucks because I enjoyed the heck out of my jazz ensemble class on Wednesday. There was a guitar player, a bass player, a drummer, a singer and myself. I think I am probably the least skilled in the group (but as the oldest I won't say "least experienced"). I had thought that it would not be worthwhile to me to take just the ensemble class without the improv, as it is only half a credit and we don't study music so much as just get together and work on tunes. But, since I am enrolled and the class more or less fits with my schedule, and because it was so much fun, I'm going to go ahead and stick with it anyway. I think it will make me a much better player and performer, given time to learn the basics of playing in a group.

So now I've got to go and learn how to play every song I've ever learned with chords that eliminate the root and add the 6th and 9th. (Which, if you've ever played that way, you know those chords don't sound all that good all by themselves, making practicing them in such a manner a tough go. The sacrifices made for art... alas...must continue.)

Entranced by Bewitched

Last week, while in the throes of my cold, I had time but not much energy, so I passed some of the day I took off work listening to jazz music with my Real Book close by. Now, while it is true that I listen to jazz everyday, somewhere on the order of two hours a day no matter what, it is rare that I actually sit down and the only activity I'm engaged in is listening to music. So last week, when I did that, I found it much more of a treat than usual. I pulled out Ella Fitzgerald singing Rodgers and Hart, simply because so many of those songs show up in the Real Book. One that stuck in my brain, because I paid attention to the (very risque for the time) lyrics, was Bewitched. When I took a look at the chart, I found it contained a lot of diminished seventh chords. Well I'll be. I'd just spent two or three weeks working on diminshed chords, but never attempted a song that was as rich in them as Bewitched is. So, I started to play it.

It was a lot harder than I thought, but as is generally the case with standards from the Real Book, I pretty much had it down in two or three days. (Mind you, "having it down" means I can play the melody line with a minimum of mistakes while playing simple chords in rhythm underneath - nothing fancy.) I thought it would be a good song to trot out at my lesson this week, so I did. Imagine my surprise when the instructor says it's one of his favorite songs. He knew how to do a lot of different things with it, and showed me most of them, and so, forty minutes of my half hour (heh-heh) music lesson was Bewitched.

Of course, I can't imitate all of my instructor's ideas and can attempt maybe only a few of the licks he showed me, maybe or maybe not being able to incorporate them into the song by next week, but, I'm liking the song more and more as it opens itself up to me, little by little. Yeah, it may be simplistic, but jazz continually surprises and inspires. What else can a pianist, who hasn't even been taking lessons for one year yet, hope for?