A New Collaborator

I heard from a piano player this week who sounds really good. We’re supposed to get together on Wednesday. I looked him up online and I think he is also a bass player, so this could be a really fun duo experience as I get my chops back. I offered to host at my place where I have a serviceable upright piano and a Rhodes. He said “the Rhodes sounds like fun and I’d like to play it sometime, but I have a lovely Steinway...” so this is Serious Business.

He says he doesn’t want to do straight jazz but wants to “some bossas and more groove sort of jazz tunes”. I rattled off Long As You Know You’re Living Yours and also Stolen Moments (I’ve always loved the name of that album “The Blues And The Abstract Truth”) and something else I forget what. I also used to really like Cantaloupe Island and lot of other of that post-Miles groove stuff. (This live version SMOKES , I have played along on this on the fretless and I’ll probably dust it off for the upright) I think it’ll be a blast. I really hope I’m good enough at this point to hang with this guy.

(This audio definitely has a couple of unfortunate notes. I never intend for these things to be polished, they will always be just little process notes.)

I’m also still set for the beginner jazz thing with the vocalist and piano player, but I think I’m going to turn over management of the set list whatnot to the other two and just show up and play. I mentioned in the last newsletter that it’s good for me to work out with raw basics of these tunes. But I don’t want to be the music teacher for these two. I really want for them to work on a couple tunes for like a month and then show up to play them.

I am still playing ukulele for my #2 instrument and I got around to changing the strings to these new Aquila brand strings and they are AWESOME. Aquila is an Italian company known for historically accurate gut strings for ancient instruments, but they’re also dedicated to new technologies mostly for ukulele strings of all things. These “Red Series” strings they claim have different levels of metal in each string (I assume it’s iron since they’re red) and as a result they have a great bright tone but they’re far thinner than normal nylon strings and they behave to me more like steel strings on a guitar. Whatever the reason, they make it easier to play tricky things where I need the ukulele string to have a bit more body and spring but still be thin.

I mentioned playing Come Together with my anything-goes music group as an exercise in intonation and it’s really starting to take on a life of its own. I can beat the crap out of the bass on this song and as long as I keep those octaves in tune it sounds GREAT. We’re working out some percussion bits that make sense but it is so much fun to pervert a song like to my own ends.

I can’t wait for Wednesday. It has been such a long long LONG time since I’ve worked out musically with a peer at my own level of understanding of the music. I mentioned in an earlier newsletter about coming up on plateaus in my playing from time to time and I still have yet to hit one in the current practice. Everywhere I turn my attention I can improve, and the rate of that improvement is increasing.

It is definitely time to make my move and increase the level of sophistication I bring to this music .

PS the top photo is me playing in front of the night view of Santa Fe from my new place. That was definitely the right move.