Finally Figuring Some Things Out

Okay, so I’m new at the whole ‘writing-cohesive-pieces’ sort of thing.

I’m a jazz trained pianist, and I’ve been doing quite a lot of classical work in the last two years. This means my primary music education involves strictly technical work sitting at the piano. The most involved I got with the technology side of things was recording a couple times in my friend’s basement, using his recording equipment. This was back in 2002, and we used a Fostex tape deck. Joy.

I own four keyboards, including a Wurlitzer electric piano from the 1960’s and a Roland synth from the mid 1980’s. That’s about it though. I own no software, nor do I currently even own a computer that may run that kind of software.

I’m the nerd among the other nerds that just played lots of scales and actually did what the teacher asked. In high school, rather than occupying my time trying to imagine what “blowjob parties” would be like, I spent that time trying to figure out why a major 6th chord voiced a certain way sounded so powerful. Not to say I didn’t love blowjobs, but I’d rather miss out now and end up getting more of them while on tour doing something awesome – like playing the major 6th chords.

In a jazz setting, people get together and literally improvise over the chord structures of a tune. There is a culture, a mentality, and a set of particular methods of practicing that accompany this. I was exposed to this in high school and much more during college. As happens a lot in college, your tastes and assumptions about the world and yourself change pretty frequently. For whatever reason, they weren’t headed in the same direction as the jazz-heads, so rather than try to assimilate, I made the decision to try something different. I had no real impetus for making the decision, except that I noticed myself becoming far more frustrated than I usually did every time I left a jam session.

“We get in the room, and play a few tunes, jerk off over them, and occasionally they go somewhere. We stop, congratulate ourselves. and leave the room with nothing for posterity.”

I just got kind of tired of it. There had to be more options available musically that I could fall into and love.

After trying a bunch of other failed ideas, I came to the conclusion that maybe there wasn’t any “scene” or whatever that could make me happy enough to feel good about myself. Maybe I had to invent one.

Great. That sounds naively romantic and legendary, and like a completely fucking endless amount of work. Inventing a scene. Or genre. Or whatever.

It could SUCK for all I know, and from what I’ve produced already, it is just barely escaping the void of suck. But I don’t care. I love doing it. And I love thinking about it and thinking about getting better about it. And I love the feeling that one day I’ll be good and free enough to do precisely the things I want to do. Its just some work I have to take care of in the meantime.

Making Music with Clusters

This post is aimed particularly towards pianists, but can be applied to any chordal instrument.

Every time I sit down to play a head (a ‘head’ is the term for a piece of music with a standard melody accompanied by chord changes), especially if its bebop influenced, I don’t feel like I’m really using the instrument and all its capabilities. I used to learn heads by playing left hand Bill Evans voicings with the melody in the right hand. Then I wanted to develop my left hand, so I played the melody with both hands. Its great to do both, but there is a better way to REALLY learn a head and feel like you know the thing. I cluster my melodies.

Take “Blues for Alice” by Charlie Parker – the first 26 notes, all within the span of four bars. If you were to play this melody regularly, it would go [F...C.A.E...C.A.D.E.B.C.C#.Bb.G.G#.A...F.D.G.A.F.E.EbGBbD.C#....]. Instead, using a slow tempo, play the notes stacked, using a half note for each row [read:dyad or triad].

F E D C# A G G D

C C B G F F Eb C#

A A

(If you have no idea how the tune goes, the way I’ve laid out the melody and example is atrocious) If you were able to intuit what I’ve done, or are familiar enough with the tune to guess correctly, you’ll notice that I’ve skipped notes in the example. This is okay, and I’m going to explain why:

As long as the piece is rhythmically humming along, no matter how slow, the ear will pick up the general movement of the melody. So you’ve missed notes – that’s fine – as long as there is some consistency in what rhythms you choose to play the clusters, those notes will take care of themselves after you do this exercise enough.

Play the clusters on the downbeat of 1 and 3.

Play clusters on each quarter note, encompassing all those missing notes that you were concerned about before.

Play the first and last notes of each bar – all while keeping time. Count 1,2,3,4 when this gets easy.

As long as you’re establishing some rhythmic ‘checkpoint’ for each set of notes, it could be just two notes of your choosing per bar, the piece will begin to come alive and the ear will respond to these checkpoints. Get the gist of what the melody is doing in a harmonic sense – the passing notes will end up taking care of themselves.

Its actually a pretty simple concept, but you’ll find that if you work out melodies this way you’ll really get a deeper appreciation and understanding of where the composer was trying to go with his developing ideas. When you play a melody in clusters, more tonal realities are represented, and helps to establish in the ear real meaning and emotion behind the notes. Suddenly a linear and jagged piece like Blues for Alice can become a thick impressionistic piece – all using the same notes. Being able to play these different ways with the same starting point makes the prospect of vigorously incorporating different styles profoundly simple. It makes learning melodies extremely fast. Do it in different keys too, the transposition process using this approach makes a HUGE difference. It still takes a lot of work but there is an awesome emotional impact in this. You’ll acquire a level of depth and meaning that goes way beyond note-by-note practicing.

(If any real jazz heads are reading this and get pissed off because the notes I used in the Blues for Alice example are different from the new Real Book edition – I know they are different. No one cares but you.)