Jazz Arranging Part I: FSM

  Believe it or not this post is about music and arranging jazz. For me it is a way to think about solo jazz piano. Read on:

              I do fruit smoothies...pretty much everyday and even more often than that.  OK, I'm obsessed, I admit it.    The concoctions are always improvised and are almost always successful, always a surprise, always a science experiment...but I  always discover something radically new when the drink is NOT particularly successful.  Mistakes are really successes.   I don't like to follow recipes though I will look at recipes to trigger ideas and to kick myself into different ways of thinking.  At first, I would go down to Costco and pick up a bulk container of everything they had to offer.... well, I still do that.  The first smoothies contained a representation of all of those different fruits and they were good, but every batch ended up tasting more or less the same, and would all have the same color ( the color of blackberries) and virtually the same texture.  The results from one batch to the next were not easily differentiated.   I realized that to achieve some flavor differentiation I would have to narrow down the number of ingredients.  And deep down I just know that differentiation is the goal in the art of FSM ( fruit smoothie making).  Having all of those beautiful Costco fresh fruits sitting there, I would have to make  painful decisions on what to leave out.  Simplifying the ingredient list in each batch empowered each batch to have a much more distinctive and memorable character.  This allowed the unique flavors to come to the surface and it became much more important to use fresh, robust, flavorful individual ingredients, never old tasteless, bland, characterless fruit, because now,  the fruit variety, ripeness, texture, is allowed to shine through in a way that was completely obscured before.
             The choices made in combining fruits became the primary decision to be made. I started with unexpected combinations - I would typically combine a couple different fruits like raspberries and oranges and add some white grape juice ( because I had a bunch of it sitting around)  to provide a liquid base and soon realized that all of the drinks were starting to taste like Grape Nehi.  The juice base was an overpowering flavor that wiped out all of the advantages of simplifying the ingredient list.  It became necessary to pay attention ( there's a recurrent phrase! ) to ingredients can hijack the flavor - certainly grape juice is one, bananas, lemons, cranberries, nutmeg.  Combining ingredient that are similar,  turns out to be remarkable effective when you pay attention to leaving out ingredients.  Simply orange juice, tangerines, and carrot juice make an amazing smoothie in color, taste and texture.
            As summer approaches, ice becomes an obvious choice, but has a couple effects on the drink.  First, of course, it makes it colder, which dulls the tastes senses and demands that we use stronger flavors to compensate for the conditions. Secondly, it dilutes the taste because effectively watering down the taste. Thirdly, it adds a gritty texture.  These should all be factored in when choosing ingredients - the concentration of flavor in each taste, or the flavor-density is important to consider while packing ingredients into the blender.
             Sometimes, an ingredient added in extremely small amounts can make a huge difference - salt for example if added on the level of just a few grains can completely change the flavor effect. Or, for special occasions, vodka. At other times, adding an ingredient may not actually affect the taste, but knowing that it's there can trick you into thinking that it does.  This self-deception is an easy trap to fall in, especially if the ingredient is expensive or exotic where you could easily convince yourself how great it is. 
            Certain ingredients function to add an "edge" to the drink, maybe it's acidity as from vitamin C ( ascorbic acid) , lime juice, lemon juice or cider. In moderation this will add a layer of interest without masking the basic flavor combination. A range of spices like cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, citrus rind or ginger used judiciously, usually just one at a time can create a new layer. One consideration is the concentration of this added layer - sometimes it is very effective to just keep it extremely subtle to the point where it is not actually identifiable, other times you can lay it on thick - as long as the foundation flavors remain intact.  Ultimately, if the foundation-flavor combination is weak, the whole drink is weak.
          The effects of textural combinations are important to the final product. Overuse of a texture can thicken the drink to the point that the taste becomes secondary.  Grapes and melon together, for example, can really produce an overly slimy thick concoction that is not pleasant at all.  A little slime goes a long way.  But every drink can still have it's own distinctive texture created by paying attention to choices. 
           In the end, a fruit smoothie is here today and gone tomorrow. It is just a science experiment preceded by one and followed by another.  Nobody cares about your fruit smoothie as much as you do but that doesn't take the art out of it - it just makes it more important to do it well, for the moment, for it's own sake, for the taste of it, to nourish your body and for the lessons to be learned.