Thoughts about music, jazz, music theory, general improvisation, jazz piano, stride piano, solo jazz piano styles both historic and contemporary, research threads. Connections between Classical and Jazz and World Music. Ideas for professional and serious students of music, musical finds and insights.....thoughts about life in the professional music world. Science, tuning theory. And accordion. PLEASE SIGN UP AND FOLLOW THE BLOG!
I heard a version of the great blues standard - Night Train the other day played by a student at the U. of U. Jazz Juries, and realized that I'm not totally sure how the melody really goes --- so I did a little research. Turns out, no one else is quite sure either ---- even Jimmy Forrest, the composer, comes at it from 2 very different directions. The notes in question are right at the beginning and happen throughout the tune - whether to use Bb or B, and what to put at the end of the phrase. Check out the surprising tempo of the original recording while you're at it...
Surely, Jimmy Forrest's original 1951 release is something to use as a guide:
But wait, here's a version one and the same Jimmy Forrest playing it with the Count Basie Orchestra - pretty different notes...( notice the 2- B naturals and the E in the 3rd bar ):
But wait...... here's how James Brown's band played it:
But wait...... here's how Oscar Peterson played it ( same notes as Jimmy Forrest's second version but played with a laid-back straight eighth feel )
But wait..... here's how Buddy Morrow played it:
I think I'm going to go with #1 next time I play this tune, the original 1951 recording - I like having the Maj 3rd and the min 3rd in the same line and I like ending on the 9th of the chord - it's a nice bluesy "jazz-chord" quality to lead into the next chord, the IV chord.
O.Winston Link, famous Photographer of Trains at Night shot with 4x5 Graflex Camera using up to
60 Flash Bulbs, requiring up to 2 days setup.
More of O. Winston Link's incredible black and white images HERE.
Google "WINTER SOLSTICE MUSIC" and you will get hundreds and hundreds of current listings for festivals, concerts, recitals and recordings in small and large towns everywhere. For some, I'm sure, it's just an excuse to throw a concert or party, but....
... Winter Solstice actually is a BIG deal all over the world and has been for thousands of years. Concerts and celebrations have been going long before Christmas was placed onto December 25 back in the Fourth Century, assigned to that date expressly to COMPETE with Solstice celebrations. When you consider that 2/3 of the world population is non-Christian AND that a fair number of Christians don't really celebrate Christmas, it makes sense that this event is more pervasive than Christmas, since the physical and spiritual effects of this astronomical phenomenon affect EVERYONE directly, independent of religion and culture.
Back when we were less scientifically knowledgeable and yet more connected to the apparent motion of the sun, back when surviving the upcoming deep winter months was actually a pressing concern, the sun's reversal in the sky from it's 6 month decline was truly a monumental event and a time to reflect and celebrate, especially if you were inexperienced enough to think that it might just disappear forever. Here are some phrases from writings on the topic that paint a picture of what Winter Solstice has meant to people over the ages.
hope and celebration
rebirth and transformation
hope in the heart
peace and renewal
fertility, strength to budding life
license and revelry
inward reflection
last feast
sharing and forgiveness
Path of the Sun for One Year Photographed at the Same Clock Time Once a Week - the Analemma
Celebrating the Solstice has always been intermingled with mythology, superstition, ritual, folk tales and religion. In fact, many of the Solstice Concerts that I scanned included traditional Christmas and religious music - it is open game on how people celebrate the event and is often not intended to be an alternative to "religion", however, for many, it is can be just that - an alternative to Christmas and Consumerism, without religion. There is a perception that the Solstice Celebration is a Pagan or Atheistic ritual, but it really much more at its roots about universal human feelings and the anticipation of arriving at the shortest day of the year and heading into a replenishment of daylight - it is something anyone, regardless of their cultural overlays, mythologies and beliefs, can find reason to celebrate. Solstice Celebration has attracted, in particular, New Age, Celtic, Native American, Jazz and Classical musicians in their attempt to enhance the spiritual experience of Winter Solstice through music. But not just music----Below is a sampling of other ways people of all cultures have celebrated , and still celebrate the Solstice :
Animals freshly slaughtered for upcoming winter months provide feast.
Wine and beer fermentation is complete and ready for drinking.
Feasting and Gambling.
Fornicating ( I'm not making this stuff up!)
Dressing up.
Attending all-night plays.
Gift giving to the needy.
Performing pranks.
Visiting friends.
_______________________________________
Jazz Woodwind player Paul Winter has made a name performing music in celebration of Winter Solstice for some 32 years. Here is a sample from a Paul Winter CD with Uillean Pipes ( Irish bagpipes ) and soprano sax and pipe organ that captures the style of much of the "genre".
"A Winter Solstice" series of 5 New Age CD's is a big Windham Hill favorite. Not MY favorite, mind you, but popular nonetheless.
A refreshing and welcome flavor to any Winter Solstice program is European Renaissance music (1400-1600). Because the character of the music and timbre of early instruments, it fits right in to the introspective mood and is usually way more interesting and sophisticated than even the most adventurous New Age Music.
A SHORT EXPLANATION OF THE ASTRONOMY OF WINTER SOLSTICE:
Other than being the shortest day of the year ( only 9.25 hours here in salt Lake City on Dec 22) , it's most interesting to know exactly what's going on, astronomically speaking. But first, here are some other observations that we might make on the day of Winter Solstice, Dec 22:
1. It's the LONGEST day of the year if you live below the equator.
2. It's a day of 24 DARKNESS if you live anywhere above the Arctic Circle.
3. It's a day of 24 SUNSHINE if you live anywhere below the Antarctic Circle.
4. If you live anywhere along the Tropic of Capricorn, the sun will be directly overhead at noon ( true noon, not clock time, when the sun crosses the N-S Meridian)
5. The sun will rise in the SouthEast at its farthest southerly point of the year and set in the Southwest at its farthest southerly point of the year.
6. The maximum height or "altitude" of the sun at noon ( true noon) is the lowest that it will be all year.
7. The shadow from an eave onto a building is the highest from the ground that it will be all year. The shadow cast by a tree will be the longest shadow of the year ( at noon ).
The Earth, on the day of Winter Solstice, is tilted in such a way that the sun shines directly over the latitude line of -23.5º, which is about 1621 miles South of the Equator. And since the Earth is turning on its axis, the sun STAYS right over this line, or great circle around the Earth. This is such an important demarcation that we've labeled it the Tropic of Capricorn after an astrological event that used to take place that no longer does because of the Earth's changing position in the galaxy which is one of many many reasons that Astrology is a bunch of nonsense, but I digress.
The "Declination of the Sun" on Winter Solstice is -23.5º ( the angle at which the rays of the sun hit the Earth relative to it's imaginary AXIS) and can be found for any day of the year by consulting a "Declination Table" and from this, if you know your latitude ( find this on your iphone or gps, map or internet), you can calculate the "height" or "altitude of the sun at Noon
90º - Latitude + Declination = Altitude of the Sun Very handy if you are building a skylight or building overhang and want some control over where the shadows fall at specific times of year.
Here it all is graphically - notice that Mr. Red who lives on the Tropic of Capricorn, has to look straight up to see the sun at noon. Mr. Green on the Arctic Circle is in 24 hours of darkness as the Earth turns on its axis. Mr. Mauve is in 24 hours of daylight on the Antarctic Circle.
Winter Solstice Dec 22, 2011
BELOW, From a Local perspective, at noon, it is clear that the sun is low in the sky for Mr. Blue, looking South to his horizon. Mr. Blue is observing from 40.73º Latitude in salt Lake City ( 40.73º north of the Equator). Here, at noon, the sun will appear 25.8º above the horizon, on Dec 22, the bottom of its downward path, then heading back up for 6 months with a gradual lengthening the days, to replenish our souls and give us a reason to celebrate. Mr. Green will be in total darkness, in theory, but in reality, right at the Arctic Circle it is still possible to see the sun on the horizon because of the refraction of the sun's rays. Early polar explorers were somewhat surprised by this when their calculations didn't seem to be working. Happy Solstice and congratulations if you made it this far in the blog post and this far into the Winter to witness the turnaround of the Sun. (And some trivia - the original circle for these graphics were drawn with a pencil tracing along the bottom of a tuna fish can. )
Local Altitude at Winter Solstice in Salt Lake City, not exactly to scale
George Shearing - Master of Gorgeous Voice-Leading
My previous post discussed Open Voicings and the staggering number of chord voicings that are possible when you starting really looking at the various combinations and permutations of the 4 notes of a chord. Now we get serious - How many different open voicings can we practically squeeze out of a four-part chord if we look at EVERY possibility? As you gathered from the header, 28, and here they are posted below.
28 voicings of 10 different 4-part chords ( see previous post ) in 12 keys will create 3360 different open voicings. Notice that every line of 4 successive voicings represent inversions of the voicing that is shown in the 1st bar of that line.
Practicing these voicings will transform your playing if you are stuck in a rut, and most of us have plenty of ruts, and will empower you to get away from the playing ordinary "root-on-the-bottom" voicings. Harmonic progressions that are much more interesting come from this familiarity.
The example shown below uses an Em7(b5), one of 120 different basic 4-part chords (sus chords excluded for now).
I know what's on everyone's mind - "I always fall into playing the same old Boring Chord Voicings out of sheer habit - How can I possibly break out of this rut?". While it may not matter in the slightest to the general public, it matters a lot to those of us who are energized by the subtleties of harmony (a small group of us, no doubt).
Typically, on piano, we grab onto a Root and Fifth OR Root and Seventh in the left hand and put the other notes in the right hand in our standard position, maybe throw in an extension or two, and we do this on every chord we come across, for our whole lives, even longer if we pass that concept on to our students. By getting away from the root on the bottom, and spreading out the notes methodically, we see a much more interesting world of sound and voice-leading open up, filled lots of refreshing possibilities.
This study below is a way to shake your voicing world up a little and add some real musical interest to your playing or arranging. We split out the notes of a basic 4-part chord into its 16 open-voicing possibilities - a universe where any of the 4 chord tones is equally likely to fall on the bottom or top of the voicing.
I use an Em7(b5) chord for the example here, but this should be practiced with all of the basic 4 part chords in all keys - that would be: Maj7, Min7, Dim7, Min7(b5), Dominant 7, Min(maj7).
Granted, it is a daunting project, but the rewards are immensely useful for players, arrangers and composers.
Just the 6 basic chords alone, doing the 4 exercises, each with 4 voicings, in 12 keys would be
1152 new voicings ( 6x4x4x12).
Add in 4 additional chords with altered 5ths: (Dom7(b5), Dom7(#5), maj7(b5), maj7(#5)) and you're now looking at
1920 new voicings (10x4x4x12)
Don't let these numbers put you off, though - the brain can handle this, as there's a lot of transferred learning that happens between the different chord types. Listen, sing along, experiment and practice to incorporate these into your aural vocabulary and always voice-lead into and out of these voicings if you want them to really work....
(contact me if you want a full-sized file of this)
Broken Open-Voicing Inversions of Em7(b5)
New York Voices - Four Part Voicing for the Harmonically Obsessed
Mike Renzi is a singer's pianist, a pianist's pianist. He has a stunning mastery of the instrument and has the uncanny ability to always play the right thing in the right spot and play it absolutely beautifully. The list of singers he has supported over the years is a Who's Who -- here's a short list: Mel Torme, Bobbi Baird, Blossom Dearie, Maureen McGovern, Peggy Lee, Lena Horne, Cleo Laine, Jack Jones, Ruth Brown, Diahann Carroll, Eartha Kitt, Grady Tate..... and the list goes on and on. And yet how many have heard of Mike Renzi? His 10 year stint as musical director for Sesame Street which won him an Emmy ( among many other Emmy's) and gained him some notoriety but generally he seems to be in the shadows of the greatest singers and a bunch that are not so great. But the important stuff is always in the shadows so I'm hoping to shine a bit of light in there....
Most of the recordings I can find find of Mike feature his trio in a supporting role for a featured vocalist, and only a very few showcase his uncanny abilities as a solo accompanist ( piano and voice ). He makes the piano sing and plays with a harmonic fluidity and pianistic tone that sets the bar extremely high for the vocalist he's accompanying and for all of us who play. If he ever puts out a solo recording I will be the first in line.
Two CD's he made with Maureen McGovern showcase his solo accompanying skills and are well worth hearing. His ability to differentiate the tunes, to bring something new and distinctive to each arrangement and to play with a fluid sophistication and finesse, tone and heart-felt interpretation are very rare.
Another Woman in Love HERE at Amazon with sound clips
The Pleasure of His Company HERE at Amazon with sound clips
Renzi with Maureen McGovern
Here is a YouTube cut of Renzi with a mature Jack Jones - listen to the shadows, there's a lot going on there that might go unnoticed. While this doesn't showcase his considerable Jazz skills, it is one of the few YouTube examples I could find to get a glimpse of his remarkable taste and finesse.
Thanks to the Utah Legislature ( my home state ), freelance musicians, as of July 2011, are required to show proof of Workmans' Comp Insurance AND Liability Insurance. This applies when performing at any hotel function, school function, wedding reception center and, well, pretty much EVERY gig. The Local Muscians' Union 104 Newletter will soon publish information about this which I will re-post on my blog. Without this insurance, you may show up at the gig and not be allowed to play.
Already, I have run into an instance ( Salt Lake Sheraton Hotel) where the venue insisted on proof of these coverages. Stay tuned to this blog for updates and more details as I learn them and be sure to raise your prices and pass them on to the client. It looks like each will run into several hundred dollars per year.
As primarily a keyboard player, I am often called on to hire bass players to fill out an upcoming duo, trio or quartet gig and have learned from experience, that my choice on this is critical to the success of whatever the project is. Bass is THE "power-position" in any band. You might think that drums would fill that role, but it would be hard to convince me of that. Bass players define the harmonic progression by their choice of notes, they define the "groove" with their time feel, articulation, sound, space and they set the dynamics of the band. When the band is lost, all ears go to the bass - conversely, if the bass player is lost, all is lost. The sound of the bass fills the air like no other instrument and is responsible for establishing the overall sound of the band and is the main instrument that is in a power position to change and vary the overall sound of the band.
Choosing a bass player, I consider the following criteria. Every bass player brings something different to the table, but, like choosing a financial planner, I want someone I can trust and who is looking out for the overall interest of the group and is genuinely concerned for the outcome and is willing to defer to the big picture.
Marc Johnson
Slam Stewart
These are the things I look for in order of importance. Notice that " Soloing Over Jazz Changes" is not even on the list ( which is, ironically, the main thing that bass players work on in the practice room)
1. STYLES - my "number one" consideration....
I want a bass player that has a huge vocabulary of styles, that knows the difference between a mambo and a merengue, a beguine and rhumba, that knows a dozen ways to play "swing" feel, a dozen distinct ways to play "bossa nova", that is willing and eager to differentiate styles from one song to the next. Does the bass player default to a "walking 4" or a "generic Latin feel" on every tune or can she bring something refreshing and different to every tune? Does the bass play vary the length of notes, the articulation of notes, the amount of space, the timbre of the lines to bring some dramatic and creative stylistic variation to the table? I want to hire a bass player that has listened and studied many styles, old and new and knows a half dozen ways to play the waltz, that plays Gypsy Jazz differently than a Broadway Two-feel, that has studied and dissected jazz and pop bass styles of the last century. In a nutshell, I want a bass player that is musically informed, has a depth of experience and can clearly differentiate styles.
2. HARMONIC KNOWLEDGE A bass player needs to understand CHORDS. Not just chord spellings, but how chords move horizontally. The bass supports vertical AND horizontal motion - this is not obvious when looking at individual chord symbols on the page, which are a gross simplification of what changing harmony does. I will always prefer hiring a bass player with piano skills for this reason. Chords connect in ways that are not clear to someone without this experience and NOTE CHOICE is critical in making sense of the flow of the song. Bass players often miss the fact, for example, that a C/D chord is a type of D chord and not a C chord, while an E/D is actually an E chord and not a D chord; or that an Ebdim7 may be actually functioning as an F7(b9) and the appropriate bass note might actually be F, or that the 6th of a min6 chord may be the best choice of notes in the context. A bass player that can see through the lead sheet abstractions and recognize what is REALLY going on, is my #2 consideration when hiring a bass player. Note choices are completely up in the air on the bass, and every single one is important and sends the band down a different harmonic path. A bass player that knows before playing it, that a chord symbol is wrong, or a poor choice, or that the root of the chord-symbol is not the note to play to make sense of the progression. A bass player with a piano-player's harmonic understanding is a huge asset.
3. TIME FEEL Every bass player has a different sense of exactly where to place the attack on the notes. Some are relaxed and laid-back, some push ahead. I generally prefer the latter or somewhere in-between, but that's just me. But time feel is also related to "groove", or just the overall feel of the rhythm. Much of that has to do with simply the NUMBER of notes coming out of the bass. I will hire a bass player that keeps it simple, but establishes a feel-good groove and knows how to leave space and vary note density. Fewer notes is my number 3.
4. TUNES The ability to play by ear combined with the wide depth and breadth of listening experience will produce a bass player that is a real asset to a band. I prefer to hire bass players that will know tunes, in any key, when called up - they acquire this skill through intentioned and connected listening. Playing jazz from lead-sheets simply doesn't look good, or sound good. Creative playing, the supposed backbone of improvisational jazz, does not happen when reading from a lead-sheet. A bass player with a huge repertoire of songs, independent of key, is my #4 in things I look for in a bass player.
5. CREATIVE ATTITUDE
One of my favorite bass players barely knew any tunes by ear and was pretty much unable to do jazz-soloing over changes, but I hired him often anyway. Why? Because he would LISTEN and bring something to the table that made the performance unique. He was attuned to dynamic and stylistic changes, and would take the performance to a new level by taking it seriously. Often I will start a song with a solo piano intro and might set some twisted and adventurous rhythmic feel in the short time afforded to me - this bass player would go WITH it and push it even farther into adventurousness where most bass players would channel the groove BACK to a comfort-zone of "walking 4" or "pseudo-bossa nova". Linear Regression in statistics, is the tendency of data to revert to the mean, or average, - I will hire a bass player that likes to skew the data away from the mean, or the normal-predictable way of playing. My #5.
6. DUO CONCEPT Many gigs end up being just bass and piano - an artform that requires a different set of skills brought to bear. I will hire a bass player that is able to leave the "trio-concept" in the drawer and play an entirely different way. There is a strong urge, apparently, to fall in to a compensatory style of playing where the musicians are making up for the missing drummer. The tendency is to play MORE notes, MORE percussively, MORE emphatically, with MORE sound effects and slapping, MORE volume . I will always hire a bass player, in this situation, that has a solid time-feel and is able to let go of all this and play LESS of all of these things instead of MORE. An implied groove between musicians with solid time, that trust each other and sense the time without having to actually play it, is much more effective and just easier to play and easier to listen to. And it's much easier to accomplish my #1 objective, which is to always differentiate styles.
7. SOUND
I personally like it when a bass player has a variety of sounds to work with, from a round-warm full sound, to a punchy-funky edgy sound to a buzz-saw fretless sound. It goes back to #1, where I really want big overall conceptual changes to be happening depending on the tune. I also prefer a bass player that is listening to balance and blend between the bass and the chordal instrument - out in front of the band stand, this is ultimately what is heard. A bass that is too loud or too soft ( that's pretty rare ) kills the blend. Bass notes that are too low may not blend or support what is going on in the chordal instrument -- a bass player that is LISTENING and cares about this issue is on my list to hire. Bass sounds have changed over the years and, like piano sounds, they have gradually become more edgey and wirey sounding. My preference is generally for a sound where the high end is EQ'd to be out of competition with the other instruments, to maintain a bit of sound-spectrum independence between the instruments. We've all heard those recordings of guitarist-singers where the pick noise and finger noise on the guitar is as much in the foreground as the voice. I prefer to hire a bass player that thinks about these ideas and brings a sound to the bandstand that supports, complements and can be heard without creating "frequency-clutter".
I sincerely hope that these ideas can help some aspiring bass players, whether you accept or reject the ideas, at least think about them....
Piano Rolls are not just about Stride Piano and cute sing-a-long-tunes. While many of the early piano rolls were incredible (see my earlier posts on Piano Roll Masters James P. Johnson and Jimmy Blythe ), Nancarrow propelled the art form to the next level using complex hand-operated and cumbersome mechanical roll punching devices, punching one hole at a time, to be played automatically on his customized acoustic player pianos.
To review the process if you've never seen one of these, player pianos use air, or more correctly, vacuum, to trigger notes based on a punched paper template that runs over a brass plate with 88 holes in it, and some more for pedal and dynamic functions and a couple more to keep the track running down the center of the tracker bar. The force of vacuum powered the tracking of the roll, the playing of the individual notes AND the operation of the pedals. The vacuum is created initially using electric motors or foot pumps. At the very beginning of the video below you will see a photo of the underside of the Ampico Grand Player Piano to get a sense of the complexity of the mechanism. The motor is visible off to the right with a belt connecting it to the pump.
The process of creating the rolls for Nancarrow was extremely slow and the results were somewhat expressively limited by the nature of the technology but the compositions are nonetheless compelling. In the commercial world of piano rolls, masters were creating through actual artist-performance and embellished by hand, a considerably faster process.
Having studied with some of the masters ( Walter Piston, Nicolas Slonimsky and Roger Sessions ) and having played jazz trumpet out in the real world, Nancarrow was intellectually well equipped to produce some of the most innovative and important 20th century music to come along in some time.
Nancarrow lived in Mexico City most of his life - he was raised in Arkansas and at one point, joined the Socialist Party when that was not particularly popular among politicians - his US passport was denied after fighting in the Spanish war against Franco. He moved to Mexico to avoid the harassment that he experienced in the U.S. In relative isolation it was impossible to find musicians with the skills to play his extremely complex and polyrhythmic music - he naturally gravitated to the player piano to realize his vision.
Conlon Nancarrow in 1983
Study for Player Piano #21 - note the constantly changing tempo and multiple layers each at a different tempo. Check out YouTube - just type in Conlon Nancarrow - there is a wide stylistic variation in his compositions - some are undeniably Jazz influenced.
There are 305 hits on YouTube for Conlon Nancarrow to explore further and a number of CD's available to purchase. All of the Studies for Player Piano are on Rhapsody as well as some of his instrumental compositions.
RESOURCES FOR MORE DETAILED STUDY - some very well-written articles here:
I remember an early album by Roger Williams where he admitted that " Cookies Made Me Practice". ( Back when albums were 12" square and had several pages of pics and reading material inside ). It certainly worked for him! While cookies are powerful motivators for kids AND adults, they are also useful for other reasons as I hope to explain in this post.
Aspiring jazz players are sometimes held hostage by the paradigms (ways of thinking, thinking styles) of their upbringing. Following rules, learning the proper scales, studying the standard exercises, following the methods, diving into theory, doing the painstaking transcriptions and diligent memorizations. Not that those things are bad in and of themselves, but they can cause you to get sidetracked to the point that it becomes paralyzing. It's tempting to postpone creativity and playfulness and natural improvisation until all of those things are in place, thinking that if you follow the linear paradigm long and hard enough, and THINK hard enough, that will just happen. Deep down you know something needs to be happening right away, but it's so difficult to even define what that is. You hear other great players having such a great time, skillfully and playfully throwing out brilliant improvisations seemingly on a whim and wonder why your own playing seems so stiff and calculated.
Here's a cooking exercise that will help to reset these early imprinted paradigms. It is a great way to practice ENGAGING the creative instincts, BEING in the moment, GROWING by merely paying attention, NARROWING focus, DISCOVERING through experimentation, CREATING from nothing, CREATING from something , EVOLVING from happy accident, DISCONNECTING the ego from creative process. Just follow this recipe for homemade cookies, observe, understand and ACCEPT the outcome. I suggest ACTUALLY doing this, going into the kitchen and making it happen - reading about the idea ONLY will not work. It is a way of thinking that requires retraining and hands-on practice. If you live here in my home town of Salt Lake City, I would love to sample your cookies. I bet they're amazing and like no other cookies either of us have ever tasted.
Preheat oven to whatever temperature might work for cookies.
Cream together:
INGREDIENT AMOUNT
Something sweet a bunch
Salt to taste
Egg as many as you think. Or not.
Fat ( butter, oil, whatever) some ( use texture as a guide)
Liquid ( anything ) if needed for texture or flavor
Flavor source ( anything) as much as you want
Flour ( any kind ) a bunch ( use texture as a guide )
Nuts ( any kind ) a bunch
Rolled Oats ( maybe) a bunch
Leavening ( any kind) a little bit
Raisins ( maybe) some or none
Chips (maybe) some or none
Dried Fruit ( maybe) some or none
Seeds and Grains ( maybe) some or none
Surprise Ingredient ( something crazy) some
BAKE until done.
EAT, OBSERVE and LEARN something for the next batch.
YouTube is not just for pet tricks, Palin-bashing and self-promotion. Of course it's an incredible resource for the self-directed musicologist and music historian, but creative people are coming out of the woodwork and pushing it to a new level. For example...
There is an amazing inner-world of YouTube videos that exist solely to combine great Music withgreat Art. It has become a bit of an artform in itself, a sort of fine-art-world "remixing". The music can open your mind to really seeing the artwork more clearly, and the visual art can shed great insights into the music, when it's done well. I don't know where people find the time to do this, but one Italian "YouTube artist", shivabel, has nearly 600 of these music/art-pairings uploaded to the site, and they are generally brilliantly combined - and there are many others doing similar projects. But, as in wine and food, the pairings are a matter of personal taste.
It is an illuminating experience and a serious education to peruse these videos. I post a few examples below as an easy introduction. To find your own within YouTube, you can search for an artist's name or start out and search for "shivabel" (all samples below are his doing) and you will be tapped into an amazing world...
The harmonic roots of Jazz are firmly planted in the POPULAR Song. For a hundred years or more, musicians have borrowed the popular songs of the day and embellished, altered, twisted and morphed the harmonies and melodies in whatever bizarre and creative directions their imaginations took them. They still do. Even contemporary Jazz that is NOT based on a popular songs, is almost always based on the kinds of chord progressions and forms that came FROM popular songs.
To apply "jazz interpretation" effectively requires, at a bare minimum, the ability to hear and actually play JUST the basic structure of the songs. I am often surprised at students that study advanced jazz theory and composition, that would have a very difficult time simply hearing and playing a song, by ear. Just melody and chords. By ear. It seems such a fundamental and absolutely essential skill, to hear the Key-Chords, the Secondary Dominant Chords and the underlying Chord Progressions with basic chord extensions, before even considering "jazz interpretation". I promise that if you get this together, your musical life in jazz and improvisation will be seriously empowered. And you will enjoy the process as an added bonus as a musicological journey.
As a basic Jazz Piano Lesson I suggest going back in time, as far back as the 1890's and listening to the Popular Songs of the day ( Rhapsody.com is a terrific resource ) and learn to play songs by ear - just the song, without concern for interpretation, style, jazz-soloing, altered chords, etc. . I'm not advocating the wholesale LEARNING of pop songs ( though that can be immensely helpful and will happen in the process ) but to LEARN the general skill required to play songs by ear. To recognize the progressions
( there aren't really all that many variations) and be able to play melodies and chords in all keys is a necessary skill if one wishes to be an improviser. This FOUNDATION will support any efforts to interpret and improvise in any style but without it, all efforts are labored and cumbersome. Improvisation will be unnatural and forced if this foundation skill is not in place.
How to actually do that?
1. Find songs that are simple enough for you to play by ear that still challenge your abilities a bit --- everybody's at a different level on this. Listen to early popular music, early folk music and find a few songs to play - pay attention to the sound of the chords, sing the melody. If something confuses you, look it up to check the chord. Play in other keys. Do simple songs at first that match your level. It might be Mary Had a Little Lamb or it might be Do That To Me One More Time or Take Me Out To The Ballgame. If you have trouble hearing a certain chord progression - practice it. Learn the art of designing your own exercises - there will not always be a teacher there telling you what to practice. You know where your weaknesses are. Learn the words to songs, be inspired by the songs and engage in the process and the sound.
2. Learn all the Key-Chords in each key and experiment with all of the Secondary Dominants ( see below if you don't know what those are )
Play SONGS a lot, and make it a top PRIORITY because if you can't do this, the other stuff just never really makes any sense.
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Crash course in Secondary Dominants
These are harmonic landmarks or signposts in popular songs - they are very common in these chord progressions and are important to recognize every time you hear one. A red flag should go up in your head - on it should read "Wow - THAT was a secondary dominant!". They stand out from the crowd and are distinctive moments in chord progressions because they are NOT in the key of the song or of the surrounding phrase. A secondary dominant chord is usually a V7 OF a key chord other than the V7 chord that occurs naturally in the key. It is a 7th chord that is a Fifth UP from the key chord.
For example A7 is a 5th up from Dm, which is a Key-Chord in the key of C ( it is the ii chord ).
The key chords in C are:
C Dm Em F G Am Bdim ( they are all white keys, all derived from the C major scale )
The secondary dominant chords LEAD to the key chords but are NOT in the key of C. Learn to recognize these. Each key, of course, has its own set of secondary dominants.
D7 ( resolves to G)
E7 ( resolves to Am)
A7 ( resolves to Dm)
B7 ( resolves to Em)
C7 ( resolves to F)
Putting music styles in discrete categories is always a challenge - styles all interact and comingle, combine and morph. Imagine describing, to a Martian, a seemingly simple concept like.."pizza". You might say it's round (except when it's square or rectangle), it is smeared with tomato sauce (except when it's not), it's covered with mozzarella ( unless it's not) and baked on a thin crispy crust ( or a thick soft crust ) and may or may not be baked at all. Categories and verbal descriptions are really not very clear or descriptive most of the time. YouTube is a great way to get a more holistic sense of what these styles actually are, so this post is loaded with them.
The only thing Polka and Polska have in common are 5 of the letters in their spelling. Well... they are both traditional DANCE styles, but after that, they are 2 different creatures altogether.
Polka - from the Czech word "pulka" meaning "little-half" - a reference to the small half'steps in the dance. While there IS a Polish-style polka, the style does not actual have a Polish origin, as many people presume it does. The style was actually common in central Europe ( Bohemia now Czech Republic) BEFORE it became known as Polka. Almost always it is a 2/4 beat, fast duple groove that is very familiar in the U.S. and around the world. There a so many styles of polka it'll make your head spin. Notice that several of the styles come by way of Mexico, attributable to the German and European immigration to South America and Mexico. Here are just a few of the different styles:
Chicago Honky
Chicago Push
Slovenian
Cleveland Style
Polish Style
Dutchman Style
Oberkreiner
Conjunto
Norteno
Tejano
Alternative
Peruvian Curucaon
Irish
Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish
German and European
Maria Kalaniemi (Fin.) is well known in Scandinavia, here playing a Finnish polka on solo chromatic button accordion ( see previous post Chromatic Button Accordion for a description of this amazing system ).
Grammy Award winner Flaco Jimenez is the king of Tejano polka accordion. He plays a diatonic ( major scale ) accordion with push-pull system - push for one note, pull for another. (video and audio not particularly synched up very well on this one!)
Irish Polka set played in a pub in Ennis, Ireland. There's that strong 2 beat feel again....( turn your volume down a bit on this one- it's recorded a little hot)
Polska - literally means " Poland" in Swedish, this form likely has its roots in music and dances of the Polish courts and evolved after it filtered into popular middle class culture. The Polska is mostly associated with Norway, Sweden and Finland, is almost always in 3/4, tend to be slower than "waltzes" but tend to have more notes and don't seem so slow on the surface, and can contain quite asymmetrical phrases that are sometimes pleasantly confusing. Some of the more interesting Polskas have long phrases and are almost better described as 6/4. The style has evolved musically and geographically over hundreds of years and the current state of the art is pretty complex. Wikipedia has a great entry on Polska for more in-depth information.
A quintessential polska would be in 3, mixed 1/8th-note and 16th-note melodies, with the player pulsing on 1 and 3 - notice his foot tapping on those beats in this video of Magnus Holmstrum on the Nyckelharpa. ( See my previous post about the Nyckelharpa to learn more about the instrument ):
A brilliantly played Swedish polska for Guitar and Percussion by Ottelid and Jarl with a bit of contemporary flair:
Below is Marku Lepisto performing a Polska with more asymmetrical phrases and long 6 beat phrases of 16th notes. ( Count the beats at a slow waltz time with the quarter note about 108 bpm if you have trouble hearing the 6 beat phrase ).
It's just too cold in October for an outdoor festival - especially here in the Utah Wasatch Mountains where the world-renowned Snowbird Ski Resort opens their Oktoberfest on August 20th, 2011. Most Oktoberfests around the U.S. tend to take place in September, and a few as late as October, in warmer climates, while indoor festivals circumvent the weather issues altogether.
Today's worldwide Oktoberfest tradition originated in 1810 (200 hundred years ago!) with a gala outdoor party intended to celebrate the marriage of Prince Ludwig I of Bavaria to Princess Therese of Saxony-Hildburghausen - the event too place just outside Munich and was open to the general public ( a very unusual gesture ) - forty thousand people showed up and a yearly tradition had begun. The early years centered around horse-racing and an agricultural show until beer and food stands were introduced in 1818. Remarkably, it is still held in the same location!
The festivals are world-wide now and center around music, dancing, food and beer. To people who have never attended one, Oktoberfests are sometimes thought of as "public-intoxication-parties" but, in my experiences with a number of festivals, that is not the case. Sure, in some isolated venues with the heavier pop-rock-polka bands and lots of college-aged attendees testing their newly discovered alcohol-consumption skills, things can get a little rowdy but, for the most part, the festivals are family oriented and civilized events and disorderly conduct is not tolerated.
Oktoberfest in Munich attracts over 6 million visitors, dispenses over 7 million liters of beer, requiring 1800 restrooms, serving 505,000 chicken servings, 69,000 pork knuckles. In a highly debated move, they will be instituting a festival-wide smoking ban this year as a trial-run for a permanent ban starting next year. . These festivals in general employ thousands of musicians and entertainers donning traditional festival garb as well as vendors and artists selling their wares. If you request the Chicken Dance, any of the bands will know it, but be sure to tip well because they have likely already played it 50 times that day.
Be sure to read my previous post about the perennial favorite instrument of the Oktoberfest, the Alphorn.
As musicians we are skilled at hearing intervals - if we hear 2 notes, separately, we can tell you how far apart they are and we can name the interval ( 5th, minor 3rd, half step etc. ) At least we should be able to do that! With that skill comes great power ( not so much responsibility) - it will enable us to semi-accurately judge the speed of a passing car or airplane! At the very least, it will impress your friends.
To review the Doppler effect from Junior High days, recall that the pitch of an oncoming object will suddenly decrease as it begins to go away from us. As the object is heading towards us, the sound is effectively "pushed" along by an amount equal to the speed of the object. The sound does not actually travel any faster, but the individual sound waves are created to be closer together. As the object retreats, the opposite happen and the pitch goes down as the object passes and the sound waves that are created are farther apart.
This is all pretty straightforward, but the part they never teach you is that the amount that the pitch drops can tell you the actual speed of, in this case, the car. This can work for airplanes as well but the math is a little more complicated because of the fact that we are pretty far removed from the flight path of the airplane - there's a way to deal with this, but LATER. For now, cars...
Recall, from a previous post on "temperament" that I listed the frequency ratios of all the common musical intervals. Knowing the speed of sound (1126 feet/sec) and the musical interval that we hear as the car goes by, we have enough to calculate the speed of the car. We assume, in this example, that we are very near the path of the car but not so close as to create a medical problem.
To review the musical-interval frequency-ratios:
octave 2:1 = 2
fifth 3:2 = 1.5
aug 4th = 1.41
4th 4:3 = 1.33
major 3rd 5:4 = 1.25
minor 3rd 6:5 = 1.2
whole tone 1.12/1 = 1.12
half step 1.059/1 = 1.059
Let's ASSUME for an example, that we hear the pitch drop by a WHOLE-STEP as the car passes.
Let S = the speed of the Car (mph) Speed of sound = 768mph or 1126 fps The Ratio: Speed of Sound + Speed of Car equals 1.12 ( the whole-step ratio, R)
Speed of Sound - Speed of Car
or
768mph + S = 1.12
768mph -S 1
Solve for S , recalling some of that basic algebra, S= 43.5 mph HAPPILY, the calculation can be condensed down to this simple formula if you wish do it yourself: S = 768(R-1)/(R+1)
where S = SPEED OF CAR
R = RATIO OF THE PERCEIVED MUSICAL INTERVAL CREATED BY THE DOPPLER EFFECT (listed in chart above)
Here are the computed results for the various intervals. pitch-drop interval speed of car mph
HALF STEP 22.0
WHOLE STEP 43.5
MINOR THIRD 69.8
MAJOR THIRD 85.33
FOURTH 108.8
AUGMENTED 4TH 130.7
FIFTH 153.6
OCTAVE 256
Clearly this will work better on a race track than on a neighborhood street. Measuring the speed of cars is inherently difficult -
1. Usually there are more cars than just one and the sounds are confusing
2. Cars have an annoying tendency to speed up and slow down. Go figure.
3. Cars don't produce a clear single pitch - the sound of the tire friction on the road overwhelms engine pitches.
4. People don't like you standing in their front yard waiting for cars to go by.
5. Motorcycles have a clear pitch but they're prone to wild accelerations.
That is why I prefer.... AIRPLANES The thing about airplanes is that they are high up in the air, but the plane is traveling TOWARD its destination, not toward me. Well, it is traveling toward me but not as fast, and the rate that it's traveling toward me is constantly CHANGING! This suggests pulling out that High School Calculus book, but not to worry, we can do it with simple Junior High Trigonometry. There is one point in the airplane's relationship to me where the airplane is traveling exactly HALF as fast toward me as it is toward its destination. ( Remember that 1, 2 , sq root of 3 triangle; 30, 60, 90? ) That point, when the plane is seen at a 60 degree angle to the horizon, is diagrammed below. We could calculate a speed ratio for any angle using trig, but this angle seems to work well for a specific-case calculation. It would be pretty hard to hear the plane anyway if the angle were much less than 60 degrees, because it would be so far away, and this 60 degree angle does make the math pretty simple.
We just do the same calculation as before, solving for S, then multiply S by 2 to get the actual speed of the plane.
See the chart below for the AIRPLANE version of intervals and speeds. It would be necessary to have some way to judge when the plane is at the 60 degree point - a piece of cardboard that you level with the horizon, for example Doppler Pitch ShiftSpeed of Airplane
HALF STEP 44.0
WHOLE STEP 87.0
MINOR THIRD 139.6
MAJOR THIRD 170.7
FOURTH 217.6
AUGMENTED 4TH 261.3
FIFTH 307.2
OCTAVE 512
This method should work even if the plane were not passing directly overhead. Just visualize a tilted geometric plane that cuts through the observer and the flight path - estimate when the plane hits the 60 degree points ( that's the hard part).
Airplanes produce a pitch that is easy to hear, there is usually only one plane at a time, there's no risk of being run over, they tend to travel at a consistent speed, and the range of Doppler pitche-changes fits nicely into the musical scale within an octave. So much easier than cars.
.... but not very much, as it turns out.
Jazz students often have trouble with swing feel, and while I'm not going to solve that problem here, I was curious how much difference there really is between playing STRAIGHT and playing SWING. Of course, there are different DEGREES of swing - lines can be heavily swung or lightly swung, but for now let's assume that swing is this -- the 1st and last notes of the underlying triplet --this would be a fairly heavy swing feel. Notice that in swing feel, the second half of every beat is slightly later than it would be if played straight ( swing feel is "stems down", straight feel is "stems up", X is the difference between the placement of the 2nd notes, the "offbeats" - in this case eighth- notes that fall between the beats)
Swing Feel as the 1st and last notes of a triplet
What is the value of X? That is my interest here, out of mere curiosity to get a sense of the subtlety that's required to differentiate straight playing from swing playing. Here is a single beat expanded to make the puzzle clearer:
Let's assume a tempo of quarter-note = 240 beats per minute ( a common swing jazz tempo, though a pretty good clip). I'll give you the answer here and show the number-crunching below.
It turns out that X = 1/24 sec or .041 seconds
Jazz players are expected to be THAT accurate when placing in time the 2nd half of every beat. Think about subdividing 1 second into 24 parts - pretty well impossible to do consciously! For comparison, lowest string on the piano vibrates at 27.5 vibrations per second! It's no surprise that people have trouble learning the placement of the off-beats in Swing. And some technical skill is required just to play THAT accurately.
Here are the numbers if you want to follow the calculations.
At 240 beats/minute, each beat spans 1/4 second 240 beats/60 seconds = 4 beats/sec
or, 1 beat = 1/4 sec
Therefore a+a = 1/4 sec and b+b+b = 1/4 sec
or a = 1/8 sec and b = 1/12 sec
x = b + b - a = 1/12 + 1/12 - 1/8
or x = 4/24 - 3/24 = 1/24 sec
To really learn Swing feel - Listen to the Count Basie Orchestra
