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.