More Collaborators

I haven’t heard from the bass teacher but I did get together with the piano player and the singer for some jazz standards, and I also revived my free form music night that I’ve been doing a couple times a month for I guess almost a year now.

It was pretty basic. In the long term I really want to find a piano player that knows this music well enough to carry the songs so that I can exercise unobvious arpeggios and walking lines and play outside the chords a bit, that sort of thing.

On the other hand, I can’t deny that practicing fundamental concepts is good for me. Outlining chords simply and keeping time and such is still good practice. And just injecting a bit of music stuff, arranging a song a little was fun. It kind of blew everyone’s mind when I asked them to play a two-bar phrase three times as a little tag on the last time through the vocal on A Foggy Day— “And in foggy London Town, in foggy London Town, in foggy London Town the sun was shining everywhere…” and then we’re off walking over the changes. I spent rather more time on this tune than it deserved but it is a really good basic workout.

Speaking of which, I accidentally ran into a 30 minute TV special with Tony Bennett and Bill Evans(!!!) from maybe 1977. It’s pretty great, recommended if you like vocal jazz dialed in really really tight.

But I also did my free form music night with Claudia and my friend Diana where we do pop songs and a little bit of jazz and also play instruments we don’t know very well and work with weird arrangements and funny combinations of instruments. I’ve been fascinated by the song I’m Only Happy When It Rains by Garbage. I think Shirley Manson is an under-appreciated vocalist and songwriter. Here’s a taste of it with two ukuleles(!!) It’s a great song because it works regardless of how you play it or what you play it on. I have thought for years that I want to arrange IOHWIR as a Latin jazz tune, it would absolutely smoke.

(I have a ukulele take on Stupid Girl too but I’ll spare y’all. This time.)

And lastly I was listening to a bunch of Oscar Peterson trio stuff and remembered I used to play Scrapple From The Apple as a full-band unison take with my old quartet, like the jazz version of a power trio. I can’t play it at speed any more but I can play it. Speed is coming, as is everything else.

Every artist I know, musical or otherwise, talks about hitting plateaus. Where you practice and practice and practice the same thing over and over until suddenly you break through and all of a sudden you’re playing (or painting, or writing, or dancing) on a whole new level. I know it’s coming but I haven’t hit a plateau anywhere yet. Every bit of technique that I focus on needs improvement, and giving things like speed and intonation that focus results in fast improvement. On one hand that’s a good thing because it’s nice to make noticeable progress. On the other hand good lord I have so much more work to do.

I still haven’t made my move too soon…