Ernesto Nazareth -

Ernesto Nazareth -  a "must hear" for  pianists interested in studying jazz, latin and folk solo styles, or anyone else who just likes good music.  Brazilian composer (1863 - 1934)  lived in Rio de Janeiro and was a product of the local culture. Fortunately, the local culture was the product of a number of outside musical forces - European art music, jazz, ragtime, tango, Brazilian folk music, African music and western classical music.   Many of his 300 or so relatively short but inspired piano compositions are clearly influenced by the music of Chopin, but threads of choro and tango and ragtime are intertwined.   For jazz pianists studying the art of solo playing, his music contains a wealth of ideas for working out left-hand stylistic differentiation.  His many beautiful waltzes suggest Strauss and Chopin but with an ethnic twist and lovely harmonic surprises.  He often uses minor keys to create a refreshing introspective and contemplative quality that is so different from most of the music we hear these days.  The melodic phrases seem at first transparent in the way that they develop but then they always take a left turn and pleasantly foil your expectations.   His most famous piece is the tango "Odeon", later adapted for the guitar - he had been hired to play in the waiting room of the Odeon Theater and the name likely derives from that gig.   I think I'll entitle my next composition "Little America".
    Here are a few links to printed music collections of Ernesto Nazareth:

http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/A-Collection-Of-His-Finest-Piano-Works/3859469
http://www.sheetmusicplus.com/title/Brazilian-Tangos-and-Dances/3672547
http://www.freehandmusic.com/sheet-music/ernesto-nazareth-brazilian-tangos-311400

Jazz Piano: Duo vs. Trio

   The jazz trio typically includes a bass player laying down low-end walking lines or ongoing riffs or some repeated pattern, and a drummer laying down some sort of rhythmic groove or pattern spelling out the main beats and filling the holes.  There is a full, round and on-going sound density that is created and  expected in a trio setting that becomes the defacto standard for all group playing.  In contrast, a piano duo, usually consists of piano with either guitar, sax, bass, voice, flute or trumpet.  When musicians attempt to recreate the defacto standard no matter what the instrumentation, there is tension in the air.  Everyone is trying to recapture the feeling and sound quality that they remember from all the thousands of trios that they've played with.   But, good luck. The duo is simply not physically capable of producing the big room filling sound density like the trio, not for lack of trying, so it is helpful and certainly easier to just let go of the underlying feeling that one should try to compensate for what's "missing".  The pianist feels the uncomfortable need to walk bass lines or pound out a chordal riff and try to sound like the missing bass and drums , or the bassist feels the need to slap offbeats and play lots of extra notes or to walk 4 with an extra intensity to rival the feeling of missing drums,  or the sax player feels the need to play many more notes-per-second  then jangle a tambourine during the piano solo, or the singer feels the need to add a snapping finger, close to the mic. 

    An easier and, in my opinion, much more musically effective approach in a duo setting, is to just let go and let the time be "in the air".  Let the time tick away, steadily, but separate from having to actually PLAY the time.   Play against the time, playing the holes, playing contrapuntally to the time that both musicians naturally hear in their heads.  It is very freeing to play this way - in a duo, every part is precious ( since there aren't very many parts!), so it seems a shame to waste a hand pounding out the time, when, in fact, time never goes away, whether or not it's being played.  It frees up the musicians to interact musically and makes for many more opportunities to be inventive and playful.  It takes some trust in the other musician to do this, and it also takes musicians that have the time skills to play this way, musicians that know the music inside and out, memorized, and have the stylistic common ground and a rich stylistic experience to have an idea of what is in the other person's head.

   There are a thousand options for what to play in the duo that go beyond the simple walking bass line, or the strumming Freddie Green chords or the stock piano riffs for musicians willing to go out on a limb and embrace rather than fight  the inventive.
  

James (Jimmy) Blythe - Where have you been hiding?

Jimmy Blythe  lived a short life. He was 30 when he died from meningitis in his home town of Chicago in 1931.   In that short span he recorded hundreds of piano rolls - several you tube links are listed below - most are recordings of player pianos, one is a midi playback, sadly, but you'll get the general idea. He was an amazing pianist and composer yet his name is very rarely mentioned in the "jazz piano" circles!  He accompanied Ma Rainey (blues song and dance), Johnny Dodds (clairinetist ) and Blind Blake (singer, guitarist) in blues, boogie and ragtime styles and brought a really refreshing and inventive quality to the styles.   His band, the Blythe Washboard Ragamuffins captured some serious grooves that are a pleasure to hear.  I have included a link to this below.   He recorded his Chicago Stomp in 1924, considered to be the first recorded example of Boogie Woogie.  He also led a series of recordings by various Chicago musicians known as the State Street Ramblers. They recorded in Richmond, Indiana which is about 66 miles from Indianapolis.  This is of interest because I located a meningitis epidemic in Indianapolis that began in 1929 with somewhere around 10 deaths.  Could be the connection....

       Jimmy Blythe  you tube piano rolls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkgdFqdxoYo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed962JM9ysY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z90U_O5YLBg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYVrohXbE-o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL_6pm-uo_g

Washboard Ragamuffins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJNIiflX0Qo&feature=related

Some of the best recordings on this compilation:  (these are amazing! - I have been able to find these on Rhapsody.com  and on  iTunes)

  Piano Boogie Woogie Volumes 1 and 2: 
      Hard Luck Blues
      Chicago Stomp
      Boogie Woogie Blues
      Society Blues
Various links including Chicago Stomp
http://www.redhotjazz.com/blythe.html

Escaping the Paper Jungle

     As professional musicians we are constantly bombarded from the outside world with piles of paper - in the form of printed music, lead sheets, song lists, liner notes, programs, schedules, tech manuals, spec sheets, warranties and wiring diagrams, etc.  We also create our own small forest of notes and lists - things we have to do, music we'd like to check out, compositional ideas, technical studies, assignments for students, worksheets, etc.   In short, we quickly become seriously buried in our own work.  It can be distracting and overwhelming, and utterly disorganized. When it comes time to find something specific ... well, good luck with that.
  A new generation of relational databases ( often referred to as "notes" programs ) can provide a way out.   These programs enable you to type in notes, ideas, scan in music and documents,  even archive photos and music in such a way as to be accessible from any computer or mobile device.  All entries are searchable by key word, or ANY word, for that matter and all information is stored in cyberspace, and can be backed up at home.   In the past Lotus Notes and Entourage Notes were around and worked well,  but now the options are more plentiful.
   Below is a list of just a few of the programs available, most are free in their basic form.  I am using Ubernotes, for the most part and am currently exploring Evernote, which has been particularly easy to set up and get running on computer and iphone.  For dealing with music scores and leadsheets,  I usually scan and save jpgs to two separate hard-drives, planning on the day when one of them crashes.   The amount of paper put into the recycling bin is astounding - but every day brings a new pile of paper into the house that needs to be dispersed.  These are some of the most visible notes programs - all have slightly different features and are heavily reviewed:
Ubernote
Evernote
Microsoft  OneNote
Springpad
Cinta Notes
Simple Notes

Online Music-Listening Changing the World

 Access to all the world's music with just a few mouse clicks - this is what it's all coming to.   Lack of liner text notes and questionable copyright/royalty issues aside, for now, a plethora of online services, some free and all very inexpensive, is transforming the music education and listening experience.  The advantages that students and professionals have as a direct result of this new streaming world are astounding, albeit sometimes overwhelming.   I list some of the main online music services below.
        Personally, I use Rhapsody for listening and researching, Pandora for making new connections and getting ideas.  Rhapsody streams through my computer to a high quality audio amp and speaker system, while Pandora streams by way of my BlueRay player and TV to another high quality audio system but there are many other ways to set it up.  ( none is particularly difficult)  If I need a hard copy I just either stream directly to an external CD burner or to Apple Logic then burn a CD using iTunes.  When I'm out and about I stream Rhapsody to my iPhone.    Rhapsody costs  about $13 per month for unlimited listening and Pandora is free.     Below are the some of the most visible online music services to check out.  Some are music databases, while some behave more like radio stations. YouTube is also a remarkable source when researching music though you have to wade through a lot of swampland.

  Rhapsody
  Pandora
  Grooveshark
  YouTube
  Playlist
  Mindawn
  Napster
  Rdio
  Jango
  Mog

Piano and Guitar Tuning

  I have tuned pianos by ear since I was in high-school and did it as a career for a number of years back in the 80's and 90's.  To be able to do that it was necessary to understand equal temperament, inharmonicity, octave stretching and a whole host of issues that challenge the most careful and obsessive music-geek.   I often see guitarists struggle with tuning who haven't had the benefit of this experience so I thought I would post a couple ideas that might help.
  Fortunately, guitarists generally don't have to deal with inharmonicity ( overtones that are out of tune with the string ) as that is a quirk of high tension strings found in pianos, unless the strings are old or defective.   Nor do they have to deal with octave stretching in the tuning process though that may be designed in to the scale.  But, equal temperament, on the other hand, is the backbone of guitar tuning.  The main feature of equal temperament is that all intervals, with the exception of octaves, are slightly out of tune.   Trying to tune by "ear" using randomly selected chords, major, seventh and the like is just an exercise in frustration. .  This will NEVER work.  The ear cannot discriminate pitch and subjective chord quality to the degree that is necessary to achieve equal temperament ( equally out of tune ) - it's just physically impossible for anyone's ear to do that.  Another thing that never works is trying to make use of "pitch memory" - the process where you hit a note on the piano then walk over and tune the first pitch based on your memory of that note.  Studies have been done to show that this is extremely unreliable.  Simultaneous sounding of the pitches or beat-rate comparison is the only way to get enough accuracy to establish a starting reference pitch.
      The net result of a good tuning is that all of the triads and like intervals are equally out of tune and this is virtually impossible if you're listening only to "chord quality" because in ET the best "chord quality" is not the goal.   We need something much more accurate that can achieve "equally out of tune chord quality".  Tuning adjacent strings to an interval of a 4th won't work either, because in ET 4ths are slightly out of tune to the wide side.  Furthermore, the major third interval between the G and B string can be a  real pitfall in subjective ear tuning because, in Equal Temperament,  this interval is extremely wide of perfect - it is impossible to judge aurally with any accuracy.  In aural piano tuning, thirds are always verified with reference tones and beat-rate comparisons, but that is a whole other post someday.
  Tuning success of course requires that the bridge, nut and frets are perfectly adjusted and that the scale design is good.  I once sat through a workshop for an hour by famed guitarist Johnny Smith that was entirely about tuning the guitar and realized the complexity of tuning and the many different approaches that a person could use.   The bottom line is that the best tuning ( perfectly consistent out of tune chords) is achieved using octaves or harmonics, comparing same pitches or octaves, never using the other smaller tempered intervals.  Or use a good electronic tuner - on a well adjusted guitar, the results are excellent.  The new generation of electronic devices for pianos are sensitive to 1/100 of a cent or more - the ear cannot detect that small amount, but it CAN detect the effect that such a small change has on the subjective quality of an interval.  Consider that when purchasing an electronic device for tuning.

Gratis Gigging

There are clearly times and places to perform for free.  Funerals for friends, AIDS benefit concerts, humanitarian and environmental causes, community fund-raising or  causes that you personally believe in,  performing for friends and family or an organization that you wish to help get off the ground fit the bill for free-gigs.  When musicians perform for free within the for-profit world because, well, they haven't got a paying gig, or just for the fun of it, they should consider that many of us make a living playing music, and when musicians stand in line to play for free, the going price for live music drops to $0.  Of course. Why would anyone pay more?   I am a firm believer in the importance of playing music simply for the fun of it. In fact, I think it's an essential part of learning, even more important than diligent study,  but why not just do that at someone's home or backyard?  If a business owner is reaping financial benefit from live music, they should be willing to pay for the benefit.  Musicians devote the major part of their lives and thousands of unpaid hours honing their skills - they deserve remuneration for their hard-won accomplishments when they're out there making money for somebody else. Working for free hurts everyone and it's almost never a valuable "investment in the future".    Imagine hiring a plumber and suggesting that he do the work because he will likely get some referrals if he does a good job.  Try hiring someone to paint the front sign on your coffee shop and offering him a free cup of coffee for the effort.  Those are of course, unthinkable, but that's exactly what we do as musicians.      

Infinite Possibilities, As Time Goes By

The chord changes to 1931 Herman Hupfeld's "As Time Goes By" are still up for grabs in 2011.  Usually, for the modern-day free lance musician trying to navigate the tune by ear, there is a frightening series of crash and burn situations given that there are dozens of ways to convincingly navigate the song  -- the first crash usually occurs in bar 2 which is where I begin and end with this little study.  The music was prominent in the 1942 movie Casablanca but was initially released some 11 years before in the movie "Everybody's Welcome" and was released most notably as a single recording by Rudy Vallee that same year and re-released after Casablanca.   To look at how arrangers have dealt with the song, I go back to that Rudy Vallee recording and a number of recordings after 1931 to get a clear picture of the song's evolution, and more importantly, the origins.
  The original 1931 Rudy Vallee recording ( the one in the image above is 1944 or so) is surprisingly odd:
                  Fm7      Bb7       Gm7(b5)        Bb7/F
  The original version from Casablanca (see graphic) is surprisingly simple, but effective - I'm still unclear on Hupfeld's original intent.  My favorite version above is the Jimmy Durante - good bass motion and interesting inner motion.  The progression I often use on gigs, though it tends to take bass players by surprise, is:
               Fm7       Bb7       Abm6/Cb        Bb7
This progression also has good bass motion and internal motion and sounds a bit more contemporary than many of the others.
  The song begins with a beautiful verse in some of the older versions, particularly Vallee which people generally don't sing these days.
 Here's a disco version    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKoE37p64hw

Of the dozens of versions I listened to ( there are hundreds!) these stand out and are definitely worth hearing:
Margie Day
Nancy Wilson
Harry Nilsson  ( yes, you read that right)
Chet Baker
Jessica Williams
Billie Holiday
Andre Previn
Jimmy Durante
     these are all available to hear on Rhapsody.com       enjoy.