Monday, July 28, 2008

A jazz DVD: In review

A different version of this review is also available on amazon.com. (Check out the link to the right.)

I watched the movie " 'Round Midnight" last night. It's about a fictional jazz saxophonist who goes to Paris to rediscover his music and get his career and life back on track. Dexter Gordon, one of my favorite saxophonists, does an admirable job in the role of the main character, Dale Turner. Herbie Hancock, who plays in the backing band on screen, did the sound track, and it is awesome. Of course, when you're a Grammy winner and have Grammy winning material that you can throw in here and there at will, it is bound to make any sound track jam, and I really liked being able to catch licks of Watermelon Man and Cantaloupe Island here and there in the background. When the band plays, the likes of Freddie Hubbard and Bobby Hutcherson and Pierre Michelot, among others, play the roles of the musicians, so I assume they played on most of the sound track as well. Whatever, because they are real musicians, the band scenes come off real well. I appreciate a movie about music that sees to the details enough to get actual musicians as actors, not only for the extra dimension it gives to the artist, but also for the dose of realism it lends to the setting and action. (I hate when the drummer or pianist isn't playing what you're hearing on screen. It ruins a movie for me when something as minor as that is so sloppy, especially when there are all kinds of devices to make it look realistic, even without hiring musicians as actors.)

Really, the only thing wrong with the movie is that because it is a work of fiction based on some things that happened to a number of different musicians, it failed to engage me and I just didn't care about the tragedy that befell the characters. I mean, about halfway through, when the French guy is trying to appeal to the Dexter Gordon character to straighten up and fly right, he says, "Your music changed my life." What? "His music?" Who is he? He's played nothing but standards, and as good as the playing was and the sound track is, if that was enough to change your life, well buddy, I'd've hate to have met you before you discovered his music. To be fair, I wouldn't have appreciated a biopic of a real jazz musician, and that wasn't what I was expecting, but I think there needed to be some more story development in order to make us care about the people on screen. You know, in the '60's, famous jazz musicians were dropping like flies every other month because of being done in by their vices. (Yes, that's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean.) So what if it happens to some guy in a movie?

Still, the good outweighs the bad. Herbie's sound track is great and Dexter Gordon is the best jazz musician-actor ever to hit the big screen. He's real and intelligent, and that is just enough to make me feel like I didn't waste my time watching this movie.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

New Addition to the Yoity Tot List

Well, it's been a while since I added to or edited the Yoity Tot list. One reason is that I haven't been on much of a music buying spree lately (hard times, you know), so I haven't been listening to that much new music. Another reason is that I haven't really found any CD worthy of the list. My addition today, however, while I consider more than worthy, I have a feeling it will eventually drop off the list. But, as I've been trying to play some of the songs on this CD on the piano, it has been getting a lot of play time, so I decided it deserved to be included for now.

The CD is Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil. Four songs from it are in The Real Book. It took a while for this one to grow on me, but after I read the liner notes and listened closely, also while looking at the lead sheets, I started to sense something deeper. I couldn't tell you why I like this recording. Something about it, I don't know, "spiritual" almost. It's hard to describe the effect it has on me. But I like it, and I'm going to learn to play some songs from it.

My jazz music textbook arrived. I've started reading it, having just finished reading the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on jazz music. I also rented the movie "Round Midnight". I may report on some of that this coming week.

Speaking of next week, have an evil free one, y'all!

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Starting at the beginning

These last two nights, I've found myself in between Netflix selections (last two: Vantage Point - somewhat interesting but lacked impact; The Bank Job - starts slow, but is very well done and interesting because of being based on a true story) and the jazz styles college textbook that I bought last week still hasn't arrived, all of which leaves me in a kind of limbo when I reach the end of the day and I'm worn out from playing the piano. I like to do something with my music, and sitting and listening with the Real Book in hand is usually a good choice, but again, if I've run out of energy playing, I've usually run out of energy for listening-analysis, too. That's really why I bought the textbook. Like I've said before, learning about jazz on all facets, I feel, will really help me "narrow the jazz vacuum" (as I put it), and in my own case, picking up jazz from the ripe young age of 43 or so, I've more or less started "in the middle". It's neither bad nor good, but I feel there is much to be gained by understanding the history and flow of jazz, or at least having some idea of who's music fed who as the medium developed from slaves sing-songing to guys like Evan Parker and Roscoe Mitchell blowing their brains out willy-nilly for twenty five minutes at a time.

Then yesterday, suddenly, I realized that I didn't have to wait for the arrival of the textbook I bought to start studying jazz history. I could just go online. In fact, having already read my share of jazz theory online, history would be a good next step, and it could be very general, since I'm really just beginning. (Strictly speaking, the textbook I bought isn't a jazz history book, either. More on that some other time - after I get the damn thing.) So, I used Encyclopedia Britannica (EB) online and read their entire introduction to jazz. It was just a bit shallow, I thought, and while it did tell me a few things I didn't know, it didn't enlighten me all that much. (Only two years ago, I took a music course through the University of Alabama in order to fulfill my degree requirements at University of Alabama in Huntsville, so my study of music, music theory, music history, styles, etc. is relatively fresh.) Since I own a copy of the print EB - purchased in England when I lived there in 1995 - I decided to have a look at it to see if it covered more ground than the electronic version.

Bingo! Man, the jazz entry is awesome. It is longer, more detailed, and much better written. I've only read the first few paragraphs, but it has been very informative. Two things that struck me so far:
-Thomas Edison was arguably the most influential man in the history of jazz, because jazz songs were never played the same way twice until they began to be recorded. (Some would argue they are still never played the same way twice - and I would tend to agree.)
-White evangelists' attempts to Presbyterianize the freed slaves in the late 1800's resulted in the "Africanization" of the Presbyterians' hymnbooks. (They put it a little more eloquently than that, but you get the drift.)

My Wall Street Journal didn't show up this morning before I had to leave the house for work, so I picked up volume 24 of EB (Metaphysics to Norway) to read at lunch. This is going to be a great way to prep for the arrival of my textbook.

Final note: I'm thinking about taking classes at school to study music. I recall, however, that all the liberal arts courses happen during the daytime, so I'm not sure I'll be able to make that idea work for me. We'll see.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

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?

Monday, July 14, 2008

The jazz vacuum

I've been thinking lately about my jazz journey to this point, mainly because now that I have some (what I consider to be) preliminary knowledge about the world of jazz, I'm in what I'm calling the "jazz vacuum". It's that certain, dangerous area where you know enough to know that you still don't know very much, but when you talk jazz with non-aficionados, they sometimes get that glossy-eyed look and don't have any idea what you're talking about. Although I've always thought of this blog as a blog for jazz beginners, I've recently had people tell me that it is "too advanced" or that they "don't know any of the songs" I'm talking about. And here, let me interject that I do not consider myself all that knowledgeable about jazz...yet. I know a lot more than I knew a year ago, but even one year of full immersion only scratches the surface of the jazz universe. Maybe I do know more about jazz than your average person (I hope so), but I'd be embarassed to compare my knowledge with, say, a 50 year old musician who's recently converted all his vinyl jazz records to MP3's and has been playing in a jazz band for 15 years.

The other thing I'm finding in the jazz vacuum is the variety of what constitutes jazz, or what people think constitutes jazz. Take my mother, for instance. She told me that she listens to the jazz station in the car "all the time", but she'd never heard of Miles Davis, Bill Evans, or Helen Merrill. She did know Dave Koz and Boney James, though, two names who I could recollect but whose music I've never heard. (And we could argue about the definition of jazz, and what constitutes smooth jazz, contemporary jazz, "classic" jazz, and all that, but we're not going to here. At least, not today.) That's part of the vacuum. Even if you talk about jazz, with a "jazz fan", you might not be talking about the same thing. (And again, you could argue who is in the vacuum and who isn't, but why bother?)

My point is I'm not real sure it is a bad thing to be in the jazz vacuum, or that there is a way out of it. Maybe it just is. Still, I've come up with some ideas for narrowing the width of the vacuum:
-Buy and read some books on jazz, maybe even college textbooks. (I like getting the second latest editions - you can get $125 books for like five bucks.)
-Sort my record collection by issue date instead of artist name. (This would probably be one of the single most productive and visual things I could do, but I haven't quite figured out what to do with boxed sets and compendiums, which I have a pretty good amount of.)
-Start hanging out in jazz clubs. (We don't have many good ones around here, and that takes a lot of time and money. I like a drink if I'm in a bar, you know.)

Or, I could just keep playing, listening and blogging. It's served me pretty well so far.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

The G# minor scale - under duress

Okay. G# minor. Okay, that's the melodic minor of B major...five sharps. Only two white keys, B and E. Let's see, though, we have an E#, which is an F. (Cough, cough, cough.) and a...crap. Is that a double sharp F? (Hack, wheeze.) Yeah, it is. So three white keys. (Cough, cough.)

Let's try it.

G sharp - A sharp - (hack) - B natural - (suppressed hack) C sharp - D sharp - E sharp (F) - (hack) - (wheeze) - (invective) - F double-sharp - (invective, hack, invective) - G sharp - A sharp - (cough) - B natural - (suppressed cough, hack) C sharp - D sharp - E sharp (F) - (cough, cough, invective) - F double-sharp - (invective, wheeze) - G sharp.

OK, great, let's try E major then C# minor, and go from there. (Hack, cough, wheeze.)

That's been basically my whole weekend, folks. How's yours going?

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Through sickness and in health...

Man, catching a cold in the middle of summer is no fun. I felt this one coming on as early as Sunday, and have been fighting it with Listerine and aspirin. Yesterday (Tuesday), it just started taking over at three in the afternoon, and by the time I took Mrs. S to dinner for her birthday, I was reeling. I used all my energy then, but knowing I have a lesson tonight, I wasn't going to blow off the piano entirely. I sat and played for about a half hour, surprised at my dexterity with the melody line of Ornithology, disappointed with everything on Maiden Voyage. I decided there would be no point in working on any drills in the state I was in, so I just watched the weather before going to bed.

I slept fitfully, if at all, last night, sweating bullets even with the thermostat turned down an extra degree. I used Helen Merrill's CD to lull me to sleep, but that only succeeded in making me have nightmares about trying to find new Helen Merrill CD's and finding there to be so many and most of them priced at $35, that I became despondent. No surprise then this morning when I woke up and felt like a dirty dish rag, if a dirty dish rag can feel like much of anything. I summoned the energy to shower, dress and take various sundry cold medicines in large quantities. I succeeded in driving myself to work, even stopping to get gas on the way. ($55 for a tank full - a new record for my G6).

My goals for tonight's piano lesson are simple:
-Work on and talk about mechanics, especially the scales and drills I've been fussing with.
-At least take a look at Ornithology and Maiden Voyage, even though (I've no doubt) I won't be able to play them
-Keep the lesson short and don't give the instructor my cold.

Modest goals, modest but steady improvement, and damn my virus weakened body.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Drilling, but not for oil

I'm drilling for skill, baby!

I've been a fiend for piano practice over the last four days. It's those lazy days of summer and with nothing much else to do, I spent the mornings over the holidays doing yardwork and the afternoons beating the daylights out of my piano. I've been working from my jazz chord book and from Hanon. In the latter, I made it all the way to the scales, and I have been working pretty hard on them for two days. I'm a little confused about the utilization of the melodic minor and "ancient" (I think that's what it's called) scales, so I sort of let that taper off for now until after Wednesday when I can ask my instructor about them. (I'm also going to ask him about the practicality of my current drill routine - though I don't think he'll say anything one way or the other.) In the jazz chord book, for now, I'm not trying to make any sense out of anything, just playing. And playing. I figure, this stuff has to become second nature to me, somehow, so for now, I don't need to analyze too much, just get the muscle memory going.

Of course, I also play a few tunes, and I can almost make Ornithology go, but I can't play the left hand parts yet. I've also managed to put a skeletal version of Maiden Voyage together, which is something. It's just good to feel my hands bending to the task. Now, if I could just get my back to do the same...

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Maybe the secret is DON'T relax...

I'm off work from today. With the customers our company's factory supplies mostly shut down this week and next, the two days I did work this week were slow and uneventful. I guess you could say, I went into shut down mode as of last week.

And I think that's why I haven't been able to wring a single decent tune out of my piano in two days.

I tell you, I have really sucked playing since Sunday afternoon. I can't make anything swing. I can't put Maiden Voyage together, still haven't gotten halfway through the Ornithology licks, just...nothing. I can't play any songs from memory all the way through. Can't even make a simple tune like It Don't Mean a Thing sound straight up. Just...nothing. The only thing I can figure is that, since I play the piano mostly for relaxation, if I'm already mentally and physically relaxed, the playing doesn't go for me. Maybe that's it. I don't know. I know there are waves and that every musician will go through a phase where they can play well and then a phase where not so, and then a phase where they play poorly. I'm just wondering: why now? "Over relaxation", or call it, an altered mental state, is the only reason I can think of.

Anyway, my folks will be arriving in Alabama today to spend the Independence Day holidays with me and Mrs. S, so today I've got to focus on straightening the guest bedroom, vacuuming the house, and sundry details such as those. Maybe I'll play better this evening.