If you want to call yourself a musician, this is the minimum that I ask: Be able to play a few songs at a party without any music. Someone asks you to play and you don’t have to dig out a book of songs and read something from it, you can just pull something out of your head, or make something up on the spot. (I think quite a few college students studying music and classical musicians would be disqualified) I really don’t think that is asking very much at all!
Check this out, I think Bireli Lagrene qualifies (watch this all the way through, you’ll be glad you did!):
David
PS Thanks to Beau Sample for sending me this video…
When someone is out car shopping, what is it that makes them decide that they need a Yukon XL versus the regular Yukon??
“I was really hoping I could find an SUV that seats 15…”
I am so happy to see that these vehicles are slowly coming out of style. I know I live in TX, the world of big trucks and big SUVs, but I think gas prices are finally forcing these things off of the road.
David
PS Nothing personal to all you yukon drivers… It could have been suburbans or tahoes or denalis or escalades or hummers or anything else…
When I play with different people, everyone has their own idea of the way a song should be played. Some people learn the song from a fakebook, some from the original sheet music, others from a recording.
Every once in a while, though, I meet someone who will try to tell others that they are playing the wrong chords. To me, this makes no sense, especially when dealing with an old jazz standard.
With certain songs, there is a more absolute way of playing the chords (a song like “Recordame” by Joe Henderson or “Giant Steps” by John Coltrane). With older songs, a lot of times they have been played and recorded so many ways that right and wrong is subjective. A good example of this is “Honeysuckle Rose”. Many people play this tune in slightly different ways (particularly in the 2nd half of the A section). I-I7-IV-#IVdim? I-VI-ii-V7? I will say that I respect the folks that seek out the original sheet music to those types of tunes in order to try to find out what the composer intended (though I can’t say I have ever done that myself).
Check out Anita O’day doing this tune (I-I7-IV-IVmin):
Or check out this other Anita version, with different changes (I-I7-IV-#IVdim):
Anyway, it is always good to be open to different interpretations of music. As soon as you start seeing music in absolutes, you start sounding like a curmudgeon and close yourself off to things which you may learn from or appreciate…
That being said, a lot of people play weird chord changes because they haven’t taken the time to learn the song from a good source other than a fakebook (which often has mistakes). A good example of this is the song “Footprints” by Wayne Shorter. In the illegal fakebook, the changes are definitely not from the recordings I have heard…
It seems like a lot of people coming out of music schools with a jazz degree are all learning the same songs, transcribing the same solos and listening to jazz from the same era. Are there programs out there that encourage people to learn stuff from before Charlie Parker? Don’t get me wrong, as a saxophonist, I love Bird:
Wayne Shorter, Cannonball, Sonny Rollins and all the usual suspects.
Why aren’t students told to start with learning Don Byas, Lester Young, Benny Goodman or even earlier guys? I think that it would have helped my ear develop more quickly and I would have had a stronger harmonic foundation if I had done that sooner. Plus, those players from that era had such a beautiful sense of melody (What happened to playing melodically in jazz these days??).
How is it even possible that I would learn the tune “Donna Lee” by Charlie Parker without having ever heard the song “Back Home Again in Indiana” which it is based on? Also, the older jazz seems to be less focused on virtuosity and and more focused on just making nice music. (That doesn’t mean that guys didn’t have the technique… Check out Art Tatum or Benny Goodman…)
I wish when I was in college trying to learn how to play Giant Steps
or some Joe Henderson tune that someone wiser would have smacked me and told me to learn how to play V7-I first.
Also, it seems like so many jazz guys these days have access to all sorts of great tools for learning how to improvise. We now have countless books and playalongs and ways to slow down recordings… Is this making the learning process easier? In some ways yes… On the other hand, it is almost a handicap. We are so overwhelmed with information, that we don’t know where to start. I bet Charlie Parker had a small handful of records that he would listen to over and over again and really internalize. Nowadays, we have countless mp3s and CDs and we don’t even remember what we have and don’t have. Do you have a recording of this song? I don’t know, let me check…
And once again, people all look to the same fake book to learn a song, instead of finding a good recording and learning it from that. I don’t know how many times I have played with people who have learned a song from a fakebook and have never heard the original or a good version of the tune (I am sure that I have been guilty of that as well… but I don’t do that anymore).
On top of that, we are all learning from the same source books, learning the same licks and learning the same tunes. And then jazz musicians have the audacity to complain about the fact that no one comes to hear them play… (More on that some other time!)
That being said, I think it is great that we have access to so much music, so many books and so much information. It can just be a bit overwhelming …
This weekend, I participated in the Urban Assault Race, which is an event hosted by New Belgium Brewing Company. It was a pretty incredible event. Over 1300 cyclists of all shapes, sizes, speeds, and ages descended upon Austin on Sunday morning. We had to stop at 12 checkpoints, four of which were mystery checkpoints with no specific order or route. There were bikers riding all over town and it was great. The whole event was a way to encourage people to commute by bike and to have a good time. At each checkpoint, there was a fun activity or obstacle that the teams of two had to do. It was a blast and I highly recommend it. It really helps you realize how things that you always thought were far away really aren’t… Plus, there was beer and fajitas at the end… Anyway, below is a video by the folks at New Belgium Brewing.
This is my first attempt at a blog. Hopefully I will write something interesting that will make you want to come back and maybe you will learn something about me (other than you never want to visit this site again) or just something cool in general…
