Some more regarding learning about jazz.

Mrs. S is always picking up something interesting at the library for me. Yesterday, she brought home a CD called "Bernstein on Jazz", which is just what it sounds like: the great Leonard Bernstein talking about what jazz music is, what makes up jazz music, and how to tell jazz music from other music. It's another one of those CD's that, had I not listened to, I would not have felt a great sense of loss, but is one that while I'm listening to it, I keep picking up these little nuggets of information and perspective that I wouldn't have gained otherwise, or at least, would not have gained as soon and I'm not sure how I might have gained them anyway. Some of it made me smile all day long just to think about it. (He points out that classic blues are actually written in iambic pentameter and he proceeds to put Macbeth on a blues riff, which is almost as clever as having an opera singer sing a blues riff without syncopation and straight up without blues notes, which he also does.) When I walk around the company after learning something like that, I end up smiling to myself a lot because I think, nobody else knows what I know and I sense that everything else that surrounds me is so trivial when I am learning about and becoming more and more engaged in making music. It's a strangely euphoric, almost smug, feeling.

Bernstein also talks about "playing with" notes. That's what jazz musicians do. Jazz is the only musical art form where the performer and the creator are the same person. I realize that's one thing I need to work on: my creativity. I can play notes and makes songs sound respectable, but my music definitely lacks creativity at this point. This may not be a particularly dreadful thing. Creativity comes not just from talent, but also from knowledge, so, at least as long as I am increasing and improving my knowledge, my hope for achieving some level of meaningful creativity is also kept alive.

Another small realization...

Last night I learned that a local outdoor shopping center is auditioning "entertainers", and I immediately decided that even though I'm not good enough, if they are interested in me as a piano player, and they'll supply a piano, I might go ahead and audition and see if I couldn't get paid to play piano a few hours on the occasional weekend.

To wit, I figured I needed to start adding to my repertoire pretty quick, to wit, I thought it might be easier to learn songs I had started to learn and stopped rather than try a bunch of all new ones. So last night, I revisted McCoy Tyner's version of Afro Blue. First thing I realized is the chords I'd been playing when I was fooling around with it were nothing like the chords that were written for the song, so I corrected those. Next thing I realized was the tempo I was playing was all wrong and there wasn't much "Latin" flavor to how I was playing it, so I worked on that. Then I put the CD on and played along while listening to Tyner play it.

The solos are long and are played over a 3/4 minor blues or an F minor, only. But I noticed something on Tyner's solo (on the version I had from the library) that I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been playing along: with the song in A flat, the scale includes only three white keys. Of course. And while this is an over generalization, for the most part, it sounds like McCoy plays a lot on the white keys, even though there are only three of them. I started hitting C-F-G in various riffs and combinations, high and low, up and down, just smack, smack, smack - and they all sounded perfectly fine with the CD in the background. I tried it again, and again, success. I could play just those three notes, make some tight sounding chords, dainty and not so dainty arpeggios, anything, and it sounded fine. Throw in an occasional E-flat or A-flat when the fingers were positioned "safe", and that sounded okay too. Then, as I was spreading out the notes and playing them just in chords of various inversions, guess what? G-C-F is a quartal voicing. Yeah, no big deal, but I didn't KNOW that. Now I do. And once a jazz musician knows that, he knows all he has to do to "get by" is find a quartal voicing in the scale of the key the song is written in, and go crazy. Something tells me, too, that no matter what scale or key you are in, there is probably at least one "safe and easy" quartal voicing that will work. (I'm planning to experiment on that hypothesis tonight.)

I'm convinced these small realizations are what will continue to help me improve as a piano player. Solo in A-flat over F-minor? I can do it all day long with just three notes, they're all white keys, and they're easy to play. And anyone asks me what I was playing after the fact, I can look at them and go, "Some riffs I developed, using inversions of quartal voicings, with a minor blues scale thrown in for spicing up, man."

Late afternoon follow up: I talked to the talent contest organizers. The shopping center would require me to tote my own piano around. I've only got the box it came in, but I might be encouraged to buy a travel case for it, if I had a reason and need to do so. Then, I'll also need a travel stand. Which means I'll have to take apart and re-affix my piano after every gig. Which means,

I probably will not be auditioning. Maybe I'll audition and just turn down the job when (if) they offer it. It's something to consider.

Revisiting Dolphy

Spending the weekend painting the garage. Yes, no joy. But, it gives me lots of time to listen to music, so I basically pulled out everything I hadn't listened to in a while. Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch managed to make the cut, and I almost put it away without listening to it, but then I thought, aw hell, let's try it. The last time I listened to it, which was probably the second time overall, I had to turn it off. The dissonance, or whatever you want to call it, was wearing me out. This time, I listened to it the whole way through, and I didn't find it half bad. Maybe my jazz ears are finally developing, I don't know. I'll probably give it another try today or tomorrow.

Becoming a jazz musician is a process. I'm glad to find I'm making some progress.

Another jazz resource: Your local library

I used to go to the library quite often. For a while, I was renting two or three audio books every three weeks and plowing through them. In about a year, I pretty much wiped out everything of interest at our local library. (Yes, it is small.) After I got off the library kick, Mrs. S got on it. Since I developed an interest in jazz, she has often brought home a handful of jazz CD's that happened to catch her eye for me to listen to. Since she is not familiar with the jazz world, basically she just picks up any CD that has a "jazz" label on it. While this approach has not helped me to discover any unheard of musicians that I really liked (well, maybe Dave Grusin), it has helped me find some that I know I don't like, and it has also helped me find some rather different works from certain artists that I do like. If I like something, I note it down and buy it next chance I get. Right now I'm listening to Eliane Elias Sings and Plays Bill Evans. Now, I had never heard of Ms. Elias, but I figured if she was audacious enough to put out a CD of Bill Evans songs, she must be pretty good. (And actually, Bill's was a name Mrs. S recognized, which is why she brought this particular CD home for me.) Eliane plays pretty good. She has a nice mellow, full sound, and her voice is not fantastic but admirable and very well suited to jazz singing. Listening to her in my car, though, I thought I heard something funny. I listened more closely, and I noticed her pronunciation sounded foreign, maybe Japanese. Of course, with a name like Eliane Elias, I knew she wasn't Japanese (at least not pure Japanese), but what unusual pronunciation. I chalked it up to a bad recording. But then she got to Detour Ahead and I swear, I thought she'd turned into Elmer Fudd: "No twouble on the woad, no de-too...wah head." I started laughing out loud. Man, I felt sorry for the girl. Such talent. A decent voice. Not bad looking. Great piano chops. But, oh man, the lame English. Yikes. If I ever learn to compose jazz tunes, I promise to write her a song that contains no r's and only limited consonants. Maybe my Eliane vehicle can make her a true star...

Anyway, if you're new to jazz, take a trip to your library. They are likely to have a lot of standards by mainstream jazz musicians – what most people want to hear – and it is easy enough to steer clear of the popular stream stuff you might not (or might) be interested in (Kenny G, Michael Buble, that lot). You may even be able to find some Eliane.

Another beginner’s revelation.

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal published two articles about Marian McPartland. She hosts a radio show on NPR called “Piano Jazz”, which itself has been running for thirty years, where she interviews and plays with most (if not all) of the greatest jazz musicians of our time. She turns 90 years old tomorrow, March 20, and there’s going to be a big tribute concert or something in New York City. She was married to a famous jazz musician and has been playing jazz professionally for more than 60 years. Many of the best episodes of her “Piano Jazz” programs have been turned into CD’s. (I noticed for example the Bill Evans episode is #4,300 or so on amazon.com today, no doubt due to The Wall Street Journal articles and the buying power of its readers. I think I’ll wait until some of those readers sell theirs before I buy it.) And if you, like me, are truly new to jazz and you’ve never heard of her, you too will be surprised to learn how prolific she was. Something tells me the CD’s of her radio show are really worth pursuing. A sampling of interviewees: Bill Evans, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, Oscar Peterson, Bruce Hornsby, Keith Jarrett, Teddy Wilson, Ray Charles. (Not all are available on CD. Recent episodes can be listened to, and maybe even downloaded (I’m not sure), at )

When I was traveling recently, my rent-a-car had satellite radio, and I was tuned into a jazz channel, and as I faced a longish ride to the airport, I was perturbed when there was, not music, but some guy interviewing another guy, a drummer no less, of whom I knew very little. I don’t know who the interviewer was, but the interviewee was Max Roach. For lack of attractive alternatives, I listened to the interview. I found it completely fascinating. I was sort of shocked by how much I enjoyed the program. One thing I took away from that program was that drummers, or as Max said, “good” drummers, don’t tune their set to a song – they know how to hit the drum so that it sounds in key. I thought that was pretty interesting, and it certainly was something I’d never thought about. It made me understand that jazz musicians achieve the sound or effect they want through various different ways, and I’d never considered that before. It made me think about my music, about achieving a certain sound, or certain effect, or certain feeling (call it) by ways other than just hitting notes (like playing ahead of the beat, or behind the beat, or softening some phrases and accenting others, or any number of things). There were other, less noteworthy points I took away from the interview; please don’t think I was enamored of the jazz interview just because of that one nugget. If nothing else, I learned who Max Roach is and that he is famous.

The point is: interviews of jazz musicians are a valuable resource to learning jazz, so I believe that an octogenarian or nonagenarian who’s been playing jazz for sixty years conducting an interview of a famous, respected jazz musician probably has a “plus alpha” factor to its value for a beginning jazz musician like myself. And, to find out that there really is a 90-year old woman, still performing, still doing a radio show after 30 years, still considered by many to be a living legacy of 20th century jazz piano virtuosity, who meets with, performs with, interviews, and is esteemed by, virtually every major jazz musician of the last 50 years, and I had never even heard of her… well…

I still have a long way to go.

De-cidedly good, but de-finitely not great.

Mrs. S had watched it once before, but having been on a classic song kick of late, we borrowed the DVD De-Lovely from the library and watched it together last night. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s a movie about the life of Cole Porter starring Kevin Cline and Ashley Judd. I didn’t know much at all about Porter, so the movie was pretty interesting. The music is, of course, wonderful, and the producers got a bunch of big names – Robbie Williams, Alannis Morrisette, Natalie Cole, Sheryl Crow, etc. – to sing some of his signature tunes so we didn’t have to listen to Kevin sing/talk/whisper/warble his way through them (although there are plenty of other songs where we do). This movie makes a bit of a to do about Porter’s bi-sexuality, but thankfully, it’s handled tastefully and as Porter (apparently) did during his life, it isn’t treated as a major issue. My only gripe, and it is a small one, is that the movie seemed a little too surreal. The sets were all really bright and lavish, obviously trying to evoke “the jazz age”, but I think they could have done it better by hiring musicians instead of actors to play in the background (I get a little irritated when I hear the piano going down the scale and the pianist on the screen’s hands are going up, up, UP, or the drummer’s hitting the snare while the high-hat is going “tss-t-t-tss”). Then if they subdued the tone a little, made it just a little rough around the edges, I would have enjoyed the movie more. In retrospect, there was nothing wrong with the way the movie was shot. I just think the mood the director was trying to evoke was not the right one, especially when you consider part of the movie took place during the Depression and part also took place during WWII. Could be I was just in the mood for a slightly darker, “film noir-ish” experience. And I’m no big fan of Ashley Judd, and Morrisette’s solo was pretty grating, if you ask me. All in all, these are minor complaints, so, if you have any interest in Cole Porter and his music at all, this movie is worth renting/borrowing to check it out.

The Sidewinder: Deeper...deeeeeper...deeeeeeeeeper...

Wasn't sure what I was in the mood for music-wise last night, but having left Miles Davis in the car and sort of feeling trumpety, I put on some Lee Morgan. Since The Sidewinder also appears in the Real Book, I listened as I watched the music for a bit, then I just listened. I made up my mind to try and play the song before going to bed.

It's not easy. The song looks pretty simple, but it's deceptively difficult, at least at the start. Just playing the melody line, it doesn't even sound like the song. I couldn't get it going at all. I think part of the difficulty lies in it not being a standard blues riff, in that the brain wants you to go I-IV-V-I, but there is no IV (per se) to lead you there. I wonder if that isn't what makes the song so genius, so classic, so timeless, and all the superlatives that are attached to it as one of the greatest jazz songs of all time.

Listening to it in the car this morning, I sense that the song really cannot be played by solo piano. I mean, of course it can be played, but I don't think I have the chops to keep that bass line going at the right tempo through those eighth note runs. The piano solo portion is out of the question in any event. Maybe I'll have better luck on my second try tonight. Maybe, like Coltrane's Giant Steps, I'll have to abandon it for now.

Hector's "Barely O's" Jazz Club: Opening ... Never

Had the pleasure of attending the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra last night (March 15). It's something that for the price of late season fill-in tickets ($20), I find quite enjoyable. When I went last month (OK, tix were 2 for $40), pianist Yakov Kasman playing Rachmaninoff was the big attraction, so I didn't go there for any other reason than to listen and enjoy the music. Last night, being vaguely familiar with Bartok (the first session), Ravel (also the first session), and better than vaguely familiar with Berlioz (the second session, Symphonie Fantastique), I attended the concert, first, to enjoy the music, and second, to find some kernel of linkage to jazz music which I could apply to my music. And while I know from my introduction to music course in college that all western music shares similar roots and structures due to being based on the diatonic and chromatic scales, other than an occasional distracting dissonance put in (what I thought were) obvious places specifically to upset the emotions of the listener (don't forget: we're hanging a guy in the fourth movement), I don't think I learned much about jazz last night. This morning, I spent some time thinking about it more, going over the notes, both literal and allegorical, and really, I can't come up with anything. I don't know. For me, having been brought up listening to a lot of choral and liturgical works, then pops, and much later a steady diet of classical work, all eventually leading me to jazz, personally, I find jazz just too different from other types of music. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure it's not all that different. Just for me, at this stage in my learning about jazz, I only learn about jazz when I'm playing, listening, thinking, or talking about jazz.

I read somewhere that when learning jazz, one should listen to only jazz, and listen to it continuously. And, in my zealousness to become a jazz musician, I followed that for a time. Now, I disagree with that. I think, if anything, jazz benefits from having modern and classical influences, pop and traditional influences, and finding those influences is easier if one is listening to a broad range of music with an open mind, looking for applications, variations, and "cross pollination".

But I'm still a big Berlioz fan. One can't help but wonder what the audience thought back when this symphony was first performed and the oboe player stood up, walked off stage, and then, began the third movement, the oboe echoing in the distance, being answered by the rest of the orchestra. It's echoes (sorry) of an avant garde musician in the jazz tradition, so I guess I can take that as my kernel. Nonetheless, Hector is no longer with us, though I'm sure he's jamming somewhere, just not here. The Barely O's jazz club is not to be.

That was quick.

That was quick: Well, I had pretty much made up my mind I was going to go ahead and buy the Ella Fitzgerald complete songbooks. My logic, most of which I outlined before in the "dilemma" entry, was reinforced by 30-out-of-30 5-star reviews on amazon and Mrs. S's general attitude that collectible sets of music and movies are worth having, if it's really what we want. The more I looked through The Real Book and the more I thought about my piano playing, the more I thought how useful it would be to have at least one version of every song written by guys like Cole Porter, Duke Ellington, Johnny Mercer, Jerome Kern, etc. I had basically resolved to buy it, and being able to get the set brand new for $112 on a music web-site, I thought the price was right, especially knowing that most of the amazon reviewers who gave the set 5-stars mentioned it was worth what they paid, even when they probably paid $200 or more for it. So, it was incredibly coincidental to find a brand new set on ebay, that when I found it, was at $51 with only about a half day left. It being a weekday, and the CD set not being exactly mainstream, I felt pretty confident I could get the new set at a price that would even be discounted compared to the club price. Well, I was right, and I ended up spending only $83 for the set, including shipping (just a little over $5 per disc). I couldn't be happier. Now, I'm just going to go through my real book and figure out how many songs I don't have a recorded version of yet but will have after the set arrives. Then I can chart a course for building my repertoire.

Eldar vs. Tyner: Clash of the Block Chord Titans - A Potential Experiment

Mrs. S, who if pressed to pick a favorite jazz pianist would pick Billy Taylor, often says she also likes McCoy Tyner, but every time I put on a Tyner CD, she goes, "Oh, sounds like Eldar!" Now I must admit that by the simple fact that both of these guys use all ten of their fingers practically all the time, they share some degree of similarity, but personally, I can tell right away when I'm listening to Tyner and when I'm listening to Eldar. Maybe it's familiarity or expectation, but I wonder if there isn't something fundamental in the selection of the chord or the inversion or the voicing that I'm picking up on subconsciously in order to know whether I'm listening to Tyner or listening to Eldar. It's a classic philosophical conundrum that could probably be solved with some transcriptions and/or heavy listening. I'm just not really sure it is worth pursuing. I usually pick the music we listen to in the evenings, so I always know what we are listening to. It may be as simple as that. Maybe I can use the iPod shuffle function to produce a listening experiment, but again, I have too much familiarity with the music. Maybe when my next club CD (Time for Tyner) comes, I'll pick up the Eldar CD that's been on my Amazon wish list forever and ever and let Mrs. S load them up before I listen to them or learn the track names, then let her play some songs at random and see if I can tell the difference just by listening to their playing styles. The results might be noteworthy.

Worked on So What with my instructor last night. Still have some rhythmic challenges to overcome on the bass line, but as Newt pointed out, we don't have to worry about that too much, since if I ever perform the song (someday), the bass player will have that line anyway. We did a run through of Easy to Love as well. The only revelation I had last night: A flatted fifth is a whole tone above the third. (Never thought of it that way before.) That should make it easier to pull those chords out in the middle of songs, I think.

Added May 23:
Controls for the experiment
Results
Analysis

Hot on the heels of my music buying tip, a dilemma.

I've been playing a lot of standards lately, mostly Duke Ellington and Cole Porter. I'm not terribly familiar with either of them, my exposure being pretty much limited to TV commercials, classic movies, doctor's offices and elevators. (I mean seriously, you're in the mood for Sophisticated Lady or Take the "A" Train, where would you go to hear it played?) Anyway, as I said yesterday, I've been working on accumulating the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings core collection. The only core collection selection in the latest edition for Ella Fitzgerald is the Cole Porter songbook. What a treat that would be, I think. I get to listen to a famous jazz singer, singing some of the greatest jazz hits of the pre-bop era, learning a bunch of new (to me) songs and being able to get some insight into phrasing and rhythm at the same time. So, I'm all signed on and ready to rush out and buy that multi-CD set, when I find that Ella has also sung a bunch of other people's songbooks and they have all been collected into a massive (and expensive) 16-CD set. This set can be had for anywhere between $120 and $200, but even at the low end, that's a pretty significant chunk of change. So, as one of my acquaintances from Tokyo would say, you have to choose between two kinds of (possible) regret: You buy just the Cole Porter songbook, find out it really is great, and regret that you didn't buy the massive 16-CD set, or you buy the massive 16-CD set and regret it later because it's just not as good as you thought it might be and you're stuck with 10, or 12, or God forbid 16 CD's you're not going to listen to that often. Well, my friend back in Tokyo said the regret of not doing is always worse than the regret of doing, so I'm probably going to end up buying the massive 16-CD set, probably, pretty soon. Check back here. I'll let you know what I decide, when I decide it, plus any regrets that result. You can always e-mail me your ideas and opinions too, which are most welcome.

And I have my weekly piano lesson tonight. Maybe I'll have a revelation to tell you about tomorrow.

A tip or two on buying jazz music.

Here's the tip: Find somebody who is knowledgeable about jazz music and who shares similar tastes as you and ask them what they are listening to. Buy their recommendations for starters as you continue to build confidence in your own knowledge and familiarity with your own tastes. If you can't find such a person or don't trust their musical sensibilities to be close to yours, I suggest picking up a book like the The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings and working on their recommended albums, of in the Penguin case, the "Core Collection". (That's mostly what I am doing now.) Also, either of Levine's jazz books, "The Jazz Piano Book" or "The Jazz Theory Book" have extensive discographies in the back. Reading through those should give you some idea of where to look and what to buy.

Here's the logic behind the tip: Did you know that two of the four CD's in the Clifford Brown complete set are the same as Art Blakey at Birdland Volumes 1 & 2? If you did, good for you. If you didn't, you should read up before you make your purchase. I didn't and ended up getting Art Blakey Vol. 1 and the Clifford Brown set in the same weekend. Fortunately, I realized my mistake at volume 1 and did not repeat it with volume 2, but had I just done a little research beforehand, I could have saved myself the ignominy of buying two of the same recordings under different guises. Another example: If you heard the name "Sun Ra" and that he claimed to be from Saturn and that his band was called "Arkestra", would you expect straight up, original, basically timeless big band type swing music, or something else, maybe something more esoteric involving African drums, gongs, ethnic chanting and such? Well, if you knew it was both, again, good for you. But if you had no idea that something that has all that "esoteric" stuff by a guy from Saturn named Sun Ra could sound so much like classic swing, well, don't you think you should have studied up?

My basic point is, there is no bad way to discover new music, artists, and styles. Music is all about experimentation, and jazz is the embodiment of musical experimentation. But when spending money on music, I prefer some guidance.

What I've been listening to this week

About two weeks ago, I ordered seven CD's from half.com. All were musicians I didn't have in my collection yet, except for Miles Davis. All of them are also on the Penguin Jazz recordings core collection (which is the single main driver behind my jazz music purchases, for now). Here's the list:

Pithecanthropus Erectus - Charles Mingus
Saxophone Colossus - Sonny Rollins
Have a Little Faith - Bill Frisell
Kind of Blue - Miles Davis
Point of Departure - Andrew Hill
The Big Gundown - John Zorn
Jazz in Silhouette - Sun Ra

Since they arrived one or two a day over about a week, I had a chance to give all but one a good listen last week. John Zorn is certainly the farest out there, with Mingus and Hill not far behind with their avant garde approach and some very weird sounding stuff. So, I was getting my jazz guitar fix (which doesn't take long and lasts a long time, especially after trying out two Pat Metheny CD's from the library the week before) listening to Frisell when Miles arrived. As luck would have it, I've been working on So What for the last two weeks, analyzing and breaking down the So What chords, and playing the song pretty regularly in each practice session. Anyway, after listening to Kind of Blue, I haven't been able to put any other CD in my player since. I just can't stop listening to it. I don't really remember the last time I got an album and couldn't turn it off for the longest time. (It's probably something like Propeller Heads or Fat Boy Slim back when I was on my electro-dance-pop music bender six or seven years ago.) What a simply amazing album Kind of Blue is. So much depth! It's just stunning. And of course, now I can actually play So What and make it sound like it was intended to sound, sort of. To all beginning jazz fans and musicians: If you do not have Kind of Blue in your CD collection, make sure you get a copy. Make it a priority to add that to your collection before you add any other album. I wish somebody had told me as much when I was starting out on my own jazz journey.

By the way, you can see my reviews of the above albums (and many more) on amazon.com. Just go to <http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3QS4WWC1LCA6H/ref=cm_aya_pdp_home>.

Lots of practice - March 2

Practiced a lot today. Went through Falling Grace, Gloria’s Step, Girl from Ipanema, and I Love You, looking at the chords, making sure I picked out the right notes, making sure everything was correct as far as the notation was concerned. I still can’t figure out I Love You, however. I’ve got some messed up chords here and there, like, I don’t know, maybe a C7b9 with two sharps and a flat, or some crap like that. I’m going to have to get Newt to help me with it, because I just can’t make it work on my own.

After a short break, I worked on scales and arpeggios some more, as well as some four note voicings from the Jazz Chord Hanon book. I’m going to keep working from the Berklee book for now, because I feel that is more necessary at this point. They want everything played in all twelve keys (just like Levine), and I’ve been working on doing that. I only have trouble with a few keys (E, Gb, B, C#, such as those), but I’ve noticed I’m getting better, slowly, at actually finding and hitting the right notes depending on the key. It’s tedious, but important, I feel. I listened to Ella Fitzgerald last night, but I’m going to listen to something strictly piano tonight, probably Wynton Kelly.

Music and Practice - March 1

March 1, 2008 – Picked up The Art of the Trio Volume 1 by Brad Mehldau. Also got the 1938 Carnegie Hall concert of Benny Goodman last week. Listened to those and Freddy Cole almost exclusively this week. Spent the majority of practice time messing with Beatles songs, a few Christmas songs (I just got the Christmas fake book and I couldn't resist trying a few of my faves), and practicing scales. Lots and lots of scales. I managed to go through all modes in all keys, including arpeggiating and playing triads and inversions up and down. I need to start working from my jazz drill books again, as I’ve not even looked at those in the last month and I’m obviously not making any progress in them. I do, however, want to focus on working those exercises in time, because my counting and rhythm still are pretty rough. I did spend some time this week with the drum machine, so I’m getting a little better, but that really needs work.

I’ve listened to Sinatra and Wynton Kelly in the evenings. Sinatra really helps with phrasing, which I think would get better if my timing was better too. Lots to work on and consider. I ordered seven CD’s from half.com. I’m trying to fill up the Penguin core collection, starting by getting the crown editions that are less than $10 each. We’ll go from there for the more esoteric, hard to find, expensive stuff. In I Love You, I put a lot of quartal voicings and some esoteric rootless chords, but a lot of them don’t work, as usual. I’ll have to go back and look at that before tomorrow.

Notes on Freddy Cole Concert from February 23

Attended the Freddy Cole concert at the Huntsville Museum of Art. (Freddy is the brother of the late Nat "King" Cole.) Picked up his CD, Music Maestro Please, with the Bill Charlap trio, which was nominated for a Grammy. Mrs. S and I sat right in front, not four feet from Freddy and his piano. The concert was great and a lot of fun. I was smiling and tapping my foot all night. Freddy did a medley of Nat's songs toward the end of the second set, which set the (relatively older) crowd to jumping and hootin' and hollerin'. Right after he played that, he did his signature song, "I'm Not My Brother, I'm Me". It's a clever little piece. One of the phrases I remembered was "I'm not tryin'/To fill his shoes/He has lots of money/I sing the blues". He signed the CD and program for me, and I had my picture taken with him. It was the kind of concert that made me glad to be a jazz music fan and musician.

What I worked on today: My lesson this morning with Newt (my instructor) covered the first few topics in the Post Bop jazz book. We’re going to try and play So What and I Love You this week, working especially on quartal voicings, and playing inversions and arpeggios when there are bars with whole notes and not much going on (like in I Love You).

New to Jazz begins

Like any good business needs a plan, any endeavor worth pursuing, such as becoming a jazz musician, also needs a plan. This blog is part of my plan. I set out to become a jazz pianist having only the barest knowledge of jazz, jazz musicians, and great jazz works. Looking back, I see how little I really knew when I began, how much I've learned since then, and of course, how much more I have yet to learn. I began to keep a jazz diary to help me remember where I was at any given point in time in my study of jazz and I realized sharing of this information might be a good thing to help others who are new to jazz. Obviously, that’s where I came up with the title of my blog.
The goal of New to Jazz is not to suggest that this is the only way or the best way to learn about jazz. In fact, it probably is neither. But it will document the way that I have learned, and continue to learn, about jazz music. So, assuming I’m not a complete idiot and that others might gain just a smidgeon of insight from something I discovered on the road to becoming a jazz pianist, I am assembling this blog.
When I don’t have any exciting new discovery to share with new to jazz readers, I will delve into my diary and try to relate something that has passed which others might find of interest.