Tuning Slide #5.28- Improvising- Need to Know

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

What all my years in improvisation have taught is that - if you’re going to grow as a performer - you have to try some new things. You’ve got to be willing to take a few risks.
— Jack McBrayer

Last week I riffed on my thoughts about improvisation. It is something that I have wrestled with for years and only recently have begun to feel some very amateurish progress. For me, improvising is how I face life- or more to the point- it is really how many of us live life. We face daily diversions and things that are not part of our plans. Wing it! Take it and improvise. As I often do when working on a subject I went Googling my way around the Internet and found a post by Eric on the web site Jazz Advice: Inspiration for Innovators. It was 20 Things Every Improviser Should Know. I went through and picked out the nine things that caught my attention. My thoughts are in italics.

◆ Keep going back to the fundamentals
When it comes to improvisation, your improvement stems from the basic building blocks of musicianship…. Start by building a solid foundation of technique, ear training, and language and go from there.

I am amazed at how much going back to the fundamentals of trumpet playing has helped me. They are part of my daily routine. It is easy to skip when I want to work on something new or different. I better not. It’s almost as unhealthy as skipping the day’s practice.

◆ Talent is great, but skill and perseverance win every time
A natural affinity or ability for something is great, but to succeed at improvisation you need to tirelessly develop your skills day in and day out.

Daily practice. What a concept. And what’s more, it actually works- if done with plans and goals and direction!

◆ The process of improvisation seems like magic
It looks like divine inspiration when people are on stage creating these amazing improvised solos out of thin air. The truth is, this is all just an illusion to the untrained eye (and ear)… When you hear a great solo, you’re really hearing the result of hours upon hours in the practice room…. Anyone that sounds great has definitely put in the time.

I still remember the first time I realized that all those great solos on all the great jazz recordings were improvised. Wow!!! Then to listen to a live performance recording of one of these great numbers and find that it is significantly longer with a different solo- Double Wow!!

◆ Improvisation can be as serious or fun as you want it to be
Take a look at your musical goals. If you want to be a great improviser then practicing, transcribing, and listening to music should be at the top of your daily priorities…. However, if you just want to get enjoyment out of being creative every now and then, practicing on weekends may satisfy you. It can be whatever you want it to be! Just make sure that your practice time and commitment reflects the goals you’re setting for yourself.

Again and again, have goals. Be intentional. Have a vision for your life in music!

◆ Practicing is about notes and rhythms, improvising is about life
The things you do in the practice room are important for your playing. These practice habits and acquired skills will give you technique and knowledge, but you still need to have something personal to say when you improvise. To do this, get out of the practice room and live. Experience everything that you can and then bring this into your playing, communicate this with your audience.

It has taken me a number of years to get out of the practice room with my improvising. I have been doing it in relatively safe ways- but I’m doing it and that means it will improve.

◆ There’s always room for improvement
The musicians that we love to listen to were always looking for ways to improve and evolve. It’s as if they were never quite satisfied with themselves musically…. find a way to improve your playing on a daily basis. This becomes hard once you’ve made some progress and begin to feel confident in your abilities; you become complacent and lose your drive, but don’t stop there. Every day, strive to get to that next level.

Perhaps the most obvious bit of information in this post. When I get complacent, it is almost as unhealthy as (1) not practicing and (2) skipping the fundamentals.

◆ Quality over quantity is the name of the game
Don’t rush through the elements of your practice routine. … Rushing through your practice will only leave you in the same place where you began.

Take the time and be focused- intentional- about what you do. If all I do is put in the time without it being quality time- I will never reach quality music.

◆ Keep an open mind
Your perspective can change in an instant, your ears are continually evolving, and your goals in music will inevitably shift. That player that you couldn’t make sense of may become your new favorite improviser after a little study. You never know what can happen so be open to new experiences and keep the door open to new musical possibilities.

I have been working on digging into some of the more difficult pieces from Miles Davis. ("Bitches Brew" comes to mind.) They are in a language I have difficulty understanding. Some of Coltrane’s "A Love Supreme" fits that as well. I keep listening and am finding it very helpful. They help new connections be made in my jazz brain which leads to a better understanding of the world around me. Not an exaggeration!

◆ You gotta love it
If you don’t love this music, you’re not going to be successful – plain and simple. Every time you hear your favorite records you should be reminded of why you do this. The sound should excite you, the swing should give you hope, and it all should give you the determination to continue pursuing the music you love.

I love music. I love jazz music. I love playing music. Even long tones and scales for twenty minutes can change the way my day is going. Why would I want to stop?

(The basis of this post’s information on the things improvisers need to know- 

Copyright ©2019 Jazzadvice)

Tuning Slide 5.27- Improvising on Improvisation

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Improvisation! That’s what I’m about to do. I know that improvisation is kind of like making it up as you go along. But it isn’t built on nothing. I was trying to explain that to a non-musician the other week and it was harder than I thought it would be. (By the way- I will not edit this when I get ready to post it. That would not be true improvisation.)

But improvisation IS based on several things, as I understand it.

• Background knowledge
• A structure of some type
• Personal experiences
• The mood of the moment.

Beyond that, I am convinced that most of life is improvisation based on those four building blocks. It doesn’t matter what your profession is or what you might happen to be doing at any moment- you make it up as you go along. Or- more formally- you don’t stop and plan every step of every action of everything you do every day. You what comes naturally to you.

As a preacher I built my knowledge on my educational background. From kindergarten on I learned the basics. In college, I learned to think critically. In seminary, I learned the specifics of the faith and the roles of a pastor. I then learned from those the structure of sermons, how to do worship, pastoral care, church administration, etc. Out I went into the world to play my pastoral role. Some sermons were good; others made my wife question my approach. I would sit in a board meeting and wonder what to do next. I would try new ideas and I learned how to think on my feet. I experienced the different moods of different times- one does not sing Christmas hymns during Lent and you don’t go bouncing and smiling at people at a funeral.

Okay- you see where I’m going, I hope. By the time I retired, I didn’t have to look up how to do things. I had a readily available storehouse of knowledge, structures, experiences, and hopefully, the wisdom of doing what fits the situation.

When I first tried improvising on my trumpet, well, it was worse than my early sermons. I knew next to nothing about the theory and practice of jazz music. Sure, I knew it when I heard it, but I had no idea what or how to get there. It took more s study and listening. I discovered the different ways a jazz solo can be built- chords, modes, melodies, chromatics, silence, rhythm. But whenever a chance came up to play an improvised solo, I smiled politely, shook my head, and declined.

Until I couldn’t do that any longer. Shell Lake Adult Big Band Camp pushed me to try it; iReal Pro gave me some structure; the big bands I play in gave me some opportunities; friends gave me suggestions. I stopped being terrified of it. Although still scared I decided to add more experiences, like playing in the praise band at a church during my winter in Alabama where the music is often just the chord changes. Soon I found it was making some sense. Finally.

What then IS improvisation? To sum it up for this post, it is how we live life. It is taking the raw materials of who we are and applying them to what’s in front of us at the moment. What we have done, what we have succeeded- and failed- at, what we are feeling at the moment. These we place on the structure of our days, relationships, and lives.

In the addiction recovery world, there is one of those sayings that is often quoted-

• Do the next right thing.

That, in a nutshell, is improvisation.

I wish it was as easy as it sounds. One just has to work it!

——— [End of writing improvisation] ———

[Note: The writing was improvised as I said. I did add the formatting I generally use in this blog. That was the structure.]

Next week I will present some of the ideas I found online to add to this general review. Since I was “improvising” in the above section, I didn’t start with a quote at the top. So here’s one to end with. It’s an oldie but goodie that I’ve used before, but if it works, don’t change it.

What we play is life.
— Louis Armstrong

Tuning Slide # 5.22- Building Blocks of Creativity

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul.
— Dieter F. Uchtdorf

A few months ago I bookmarked a link I thought might be interesting to dig into:

Creativity and the Brain: What We Can Learn From Jazz Musicians (Link)

It was an NPR interview and story about Charles Limb, associate professor of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at John’s Hopkins University. It seems that Limb was studying jazz musicians and their creativity to discover the workings of the brain when we are being creative. The article said:

Creativity may even be hardwired into human brains, an essential feature that has allowed the species to adapt repeatedly over the course of history. “Very early on there’s this need for the brain to be able to come up with something that it didn't know before, that’s not being taught to it, but to find a way to figure something out that’s creative,” Limb said. “That’s always been essential for human survival.”

Creating is core to the human experience throughout time, Limb says. “The brain has been hard wired to seek creative or artistic endeavors forever”…

Interestingly, the creating brain looks a lot like the dreaming brain, one of the most creative states humans can enter, but one associated with unconsciousness. Similar to what Limb observed in jazz musicians, when people dream the self-monitoring part of the brain is suppressed and the default network in the brain takes over. (Link)

While it didn’t give me any direction about how I could get more creative in my life, it did affirm two things. The first was that music, and jazz, in particular, can be a source of developing creativity. The second was that the actions of creativity, making new things happen, may actually be part of our human evolutionary survival mechanisms. Creativity is essential, if for no other reason than to keep us from being bored. Creativity makes things new, not just making new things.

Creativity, then, is one of those ideas that can apply in many different areas. I wondered what the experts of the world might say about developing creativity so I Googled the question, “How do I learn creativity?” Among the landslide of links were a number that gave specific lists.

• 9 Ways to Dramatically Improve Your Creativity | Inc.com
• 17 Ways to Develop Your Creativity - Verywell Mind
• 6 tips for building creativity and innovation | Management ...
• 3 Ways To Train Yourself To Be More Creative - Fast Company
• 5 Habits for Building Creativity Into Your Team - Brightpod

Creativity doesn't wait for that perfect moment.
It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones.
— Bruce Garrabrandt

So how then do we develop it? Looking over the web sites mentioned above, I came up with some ideas that struck me as basic. Here are some of them, with my thoughts on their importance in italics:

▪ Be Willing to Take Risks
Often the fears (see below) get in the way, or the opportunities to do something different don’t occur. When I went to my first Shell Lake Big Band Camp it was a big risk. I knew little about improvising, but I went to a safe place to try it out. It was so-so, but it was a start.

▪ Build Your Confidence
Just going to Shell Lake and playing music outside of my comfort zone did work. I found out that I might just be able to do something more with it. It was a few years before it fell into place away from the safe confines of the camp, but it has been a steady growth in confidence.

▪ Keep a Journal
Part of the way I know these things is that I have kept a journal. That is a place for me to be honest and open with no one but me! I can express what I am feeling, including my fears. I can wander in my thoughts and take note of new ideas and possibilities.

▪ Overcome Negative Attitudes that Block Creativity
By taking risks, I end up confronting that wonderfully negative inner critic that every artistic person talks about. I can document the many times that those negative attitudes have gotten in the way and then prove them wrong. This leads to new ideas and new challenges because sometimes I fail at being as creative as I want to be.

▪ Fight Your Fear of Failure
But failure is okay. If you haven’t failed, you haven’t tried- and you probably haven’t learned anything new.

▪ Ask for Advice
Be a learner, a student at all times. Other people can make a difference with a different point of view.

▪ Learn a New Skill
Sometimes it helps to find different areas to build creativity. I love photography- it is a great creativity booster since it sharpens my vision. I love putting videos together- it makes me think in a melding of sound, pictures, and motion.

Surprisingly there was very little overlap in the lists I looked at. Creativity is quite varied. But there were two items that were in more than one list. First was some variation of:

▪ Exercise.
It may be doing workouts or, as one put it, taking a walk. Exercise is a source of energy that can help boost creativity. It works with the mind to take you into new things.

The other common suggestion is even easier than that:

▪ Do nothing!
Introspection time. Be mindful. (I knew that would show up somehow to another in all this.) Take the time to let the mind wander into nothingness. Be aware, non-judgmentally of what is happening around you. In your quiet nothingness, a great deal can happen. As long as you are listening to the inner voice, the creative muse.

The word [music] derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses”)…. In classical Greece, [the term "music" refers to] any art in which the Muses presided, but especially music and lyric poetry." (Wikipedia)

Listen to your muse. Play your music. Be creative. You will come up with something that no one has ever done before. Then go ahead, and do it some more.

You can't use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.
— Maya Angelou

3.30- The Tuning Slide- The Worst Sin

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Seeking new levels of technical mastery should be a life long pursuit -
not because you want to impress, but to facilitate any direction
the great spirit inside you wants to go.
― Kenny Werner

I continue talking about goals and goal setting for the month as well as using a number of the quotes from the end of Trumpet Workshop summary. First here is what was noted from the summary board:

✓ The worst sin is feeling sorry for yourself- because it’s all about me.

What does that have to do with goal setting anyway? How does a “poor me” attitude get in the way of being a better musician and person? I know I have gotten to the point where I say to myself “Enough is enough! What’s the use?”

That usually occurs when I hit one of those regular plateaus of progress or even those days when it seems that I have gone backwards. “Damn! I played better last week!” But to achieve goals we can’t allow such self-pity to get in the way. One of the surest things that can get in the way of my goals is “poor me!” Self-pity, pure and simple, is being selfish. Everything becomes focused on me. That means that I cannot focus on the music, the audience or potential audience, or my fellow musicians. It’s me and me alone that is getting all my attention.

That is just plain counter-productive.

As I was working on this post I also started reading a book I picked up last summer. Effortless Mastery: Liberating the Master Musician Within by jazz pianist Kenny Werner (1996, Jamey Aebersold Jazz) starts right off with what I was thinking about. He says that one of the reasons that many musicians never achieve mastery is the false idea that runs around our society. He starts the Preface this way:

The realm of the gifted has always seemed to be an exclusive club. The common belief is that, “Some of us have it, some of us don’t.” Implicit in that statement is the assumption that “most of us don’t.” (p. 9)

Most of us then assume that we are in the group that doesn’t have the gift. We remain mediocre. “Poor me.” He goes on in the Preface to mention two ways we approach music. He talks about

Good players who, for some reason, have little impact when they play. Everything works fine. That are “swinging” and all that, but still, something is not landing in the hearts of the audience. They are trapped in their minds. There is no nectar because they are merely plotting and planning an approach along acceptable, “valid” lines of jazz style. (p. 10)

He is saying, in other words, that they are being controlled, “dominated” he says, by their conscious minds. Sound familiar? It is on the same track as the Inner Game approach we have talked about often on this blog. We are looking at another example of Self One and Self Two at odds with each other. What we must do, Werner says, is

Practice surrendering control to a larger, higher force. It’s scary at first, but eventually liberating…. [L]iberation is attainable through the surrender of the small self to the larger “Self.” … After one taste of [liberation] through the medium of music, one will never want to return to a life of “thinking music.” As one moves beyond the acceptable to the inevitable, creativity flows. Personal power will increase manyfold. (p. 10)

Wow! I want that, is my response as I read that. Where can I find it? The answer is obviously in the “Self” or as Inner Game refers to it, Self Two, the intuitive, natural musician within each of us. It is the movement from “Thinking Music” to “Playing or Living Music.” Thinking music can probably be seen as

• Over analyzing
• Relying on the conscious mind
• Over thinking what we are doing
• Worrying about being perfect
• Worrying about what others will think.

Playing or Living Music is deeper than that. It is

• Feeling the music
• Letting the rhythm carry you
• Channeling the music of the Self
• Trusting Self Two to guide you since Self Two knows what to do and when to ask for help.

Back to Werner’s Preface…

True musical depth is not about better playing, but about more “organic” playing…. [The] intuitive self… is very much about “forgetting” one’s self…. Music can shoot through the musician like lightning through the sky if that music is unobstructed by thoughts. Therefore, the elimination of thoughts is a very relevant issue. (p. 11)

That’s a lot of stuff from just three short pages at the beginning of the book. It does, however, sum up our problems. Many times they are of our own making because we are unwilling or unable to let go surrender to Self Two and the music. Which brings me to another of the Trumpet Camp summary ideas:

✓ Obstacles appear if we take our minds away from the goal. Therefore we must always be shooting for a trajectory.

Every time we hit an obstacle we get thrown off-track into ourselves. We lose sight of our goal, worry about ourselves, dig into the “poor me” pity pot and lose the music. We go back into “thinking” music and lose sight of the living music.

In reality this takes a lot of practice. It takes the seemingly endless hours of long tones and scales, chromatics and thirds, Clarke and Arban.

This past week I did some improvisational noodling for the first time in a few weeks. I started doing some very basic blues progressions in a couple of different keys. I went from C to F back to C then to G, F, and back to C. You know. Just the basics. I then did it in F and again in Bb and finally G. Nothing new or outstanding. I was part way through when I realized that for the first time I had stopped thinking about what I was doing. My fingers kind of knew which note was next. Self One is actually the one that noticed and told me. At which point Self Two took a bow, told me to shut up and get back to playing.

When I got to the end I thought about it. What had happened? I had never before had that happen. I then realized I had added two new exercises to my daily routine over the past month. I was working ascending thirds in each key and working on a jazz pattern of triplet thirds, again in all keys. I have practiced one or both of those most days in the past month. They have become second-nature, intuitive to some extent.

I was channeling the music of my Self Two be surrendering to the music- living it instead of thinking it. Yes, I spent a month of thinking and visualizing; yes, I had to work on it daily. Although I didn’t kick myself for being slow or imperfect. I didn’t over analyze, I just let the patterns and music flow as it should- and as Self Two knew how to make it flow. And now it was real.

A short-term goal has been reached!

I was told that by Mr. Baca and others in the past. I had to trust them. It is happening because they have shown me that setting goals and moving ahead is important. Stop playing “poor me!” Stop whining and moaning about what you can’t yet do. Set the goal, let go of the selfishness and move forward. There are lightning bolts of music waiting to shoot through me- and you.

[Note: I may do a month of posts on Kenny Werner’s book on Effortless Mastery later in the spring. It looks like a good addition to the Inner Game training we have been doing.]

The Tuning Slide: 3.2- Music and Freedom

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

From folk songs to patriotic anthems, jazz to rock and roll, popular music has long expressed what it means to be American. … As a product of various traditions, talents, and techniques coming together in harmonious but also contentious ways, popular music is truly the soundtrack of the American experience.
-National Museum of American History (Smithsonian)

Music is rebellious. It is the expression of people’s greatest desires.

It can also be overbearing and reactionary; enslaving and a weapon.

Music has power. Great power. To play music is to participate in that power.

Music can be freedom.

Freedom:
1. The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
2. The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.
synonyms: liberty, liberation, release, deliverance,

Music lifted religious movements through chants, hymns, or Bach chorales. It gave slaves a moment of their own after relentless hours in the fields. Music has been the sound of revolt as portrayed in the musical, Les Miserables. It carries the voice of generations seeing injustice and speaking out through people like Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Tupac, or Eminem.

Freedom is not something to take for granted as we so often do. It is too easily revoked, sometimes for seemingly good reasons. When that does happen, music has been and will be there to stand against such reversals of freedom.

I reflect on this every year as we celebrate the Fourth of July. So for today’s Tuning Slide on the day after Independence Day, just some thoughts to reflect on- music and freedom.

The expression of freedom that is Jazz improvisation mirrors
the ethos of the best parts of society.
-Paul Kreibich

[First, from the website, Jazz in America an outline in a lesson plan for teaching about Jazz.}

Jazz is really the best music to represent America because:

a. It is partly planned and partly spontaneous; that is, as the musicians perform a pre-determined tune, they have the opportunity to create their own interpretations within that tune in response to the other musicians' performances and whatever else may occur "in the moment" -- this is called improvisation and is the defining element of jazz.

b. In everything from regular conversation, to basketball, to everyday life, Americans are constantly improvising.

c. Improvisation is the key element of jazz.

There is no better example of democracy than a jazz ensemble: individual freedom but with responsibility to the group. In other words, individual musicians have the freedom to express themselves on their instrument as long as they maintain their responsibility to the other musicians by adhering to the overall framework and structure of the tune.
Jazz in America (http://www.jazzinamerica.org/LessonPlan/5/1/242)

The genius of our country is improvisation; Jazz reflects that.
It's our great contribution to the arts.
-Ken Burns

[More thoughts from another lesson on the Jazz in America website.]

Each player has the freedom to play whatever he/she wants. But, at the same time, each player wants to play something that will not only please himself/herself, but make the whole group sound better as well, enhancing the overall sound. Musicians work together on this, supporting each other while not compromising their own artistic individuality.

Jazz musicians realize that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Each individual part is enhanced by the group, i.e., each individual player gets better and comes up with more musical ideas because of the others in the group. They need each other to accomplish their individual and collective goals. The music is better because each player is different; it brings something new to the music.
Jazz In America (http://www.jazzinamerica.org/LessonPlan/5/1/248)

Music is freedom and being free is the closest I've ever felt to being spiritual.
- Ben Harper

Having grown up in the 50s and 60s, music’s revolutionary potential was part of my own personal soundtrack. From the folk protest songs to rock anthems, Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come” to Punk Rock’s anti-establishment cries, music’s power to inspire and motivate has been seen as part of these moves toward freedom. In Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or Communist China, Western music, protest music, songs of freedom were often banned setting up even more of an interest in them. Nothing like telling a group or a whole country they can’t listen to something. It only enhances its power.

So whether it is listening or playing or improvising, let’s keep music alive- and revolutionary.

The Tuning Slide: Adding to the Music

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Why can't jazz musicians just leave a melody alone?
-Peter Capaldi

The previous two posts have dealt with improvising, what could be considered the mainstay of jazz. From small combos to big bands the music is wide open for the possibility of composing on the fly. How that improvised solo fits into the whole form of the particular song varies with styles, size of the ensemble, abilities of different members of the group. In some groups, for example, the first trumpet may not have as many improvisation skills so they tend to play the written parts while the second trumpet takes the improvised solos. In songs from the Great American Songbook of standards, the well-known melody of the song is shared around the different sections with one or two sections devoted to the improvised solo.

In most instances, though, this is built on the originally composed song. The song may be just the main theme (the head) and a closing coda of the theme. In-between the soloists go off on their own understandings of the song’s feel. The rhythm section often “comps” under the solo. (Think Dave Brubeck’s amazingly steady piano in “Take Five” under Paul Desmond’s wondrous solo.) In the beginning, then, all of the music is someone’s composition. The original song or theme or melody. Add to that the chord changes, tempo, mood, rhythmic structure, and written accompaniment and you have the song which will most likely change every time the group plays it.

That is jazz. But it requires that original song. It requires composing something on which to build. It is why jazz musicians do not leave the melody alone. They hear more than just the melody- they hear a whole composition starting with the original melody. This is not something new. Bach was known as a superb improvisor. For some of Mozart’s piano compositions, the solos are at times just a bare bones skeleton of the piece. Know one knows what Mozart played when he performed those pieces. The full score never existed.

How does all this happen? How does any one of us move into composition- either written scores or improvised solos? I have been experimenting on and off with that in the past year. I have a bluegrass medley that I would like to have our brass quintet play. I have been working on an improvisation on the folk song made famous by the Beach Boys and Kingston Trio- Sloop John B. I have some other melodies that I have heard in my imagination and would someday like to turn into a written composition, whether for jazz or brass quintet. I figured this was a good place in this jazz series to talk about that and see how it has fit together with so much else of what music is all about. So here are the essentials as I have been discovering them:

• Listening
“What jazz are you listening to? How often are you listening?” These are two important questions to ask yourself on a regular basis. In order to begin to grasp what jazz music can be you have to listen. On recordings; on the Internet; in person. Finding live, improvised jazz can be difficult in some places, but it is worth the effort. Get in there, watch the musicians, their interactions, their reactions. Listen to the phrases and get into the groove. Don’t use it as background music. It’s alive.

• Learning the language
The reason to listen is simple. Jazz music, like all music has its own unique language. I’ve talked about this before- and I will again. The learning for many of us is that initial listening. You may not understand what it’s saying at first, but as you surround yourself with the music the phrases and low of the music will begin to make sense.

• Listening
So you listen some more.

• Singing your music
For me singing along was a great start to working on composition. Sing the melody, sing a counter melody, sing a walking bass line, sing the chord changes of a 12-bar blues, sing nonsense syllables (scat singing), let the rhythm sing from within you.

• Experimenting
Then pick up your horn and play over some songs you like. Get an app like iReal Pro. Find web sites that have accompaniment tracks available. Work with the Jamie Aebersold books and CDs. Some of these will work better for you than others. For some reason I am still struggling with the Aebersold resources but iReal Pro helps me. One of my goals in the next few months is to double down on the Aebersold and see if I can move past that barrier. Your experimenting will help you get the feel of the language and you will be surprised (I have) when something happens that you never thought you would be able to do. Riff off the melody; play chord progressions; make the mistakes in your practice room and figure out how not to make the same mistakes more than once.

• Listening
Did I make it clear about the listening? By this time it may even be an idea on some of these to record and listen to yourself and your solos. But don’t stop listening to others. The language skills grow from the hearing, the imitating, the experimenting.

• Learn solos by ear- transcribe them
This is the most difficult for me. This is just like ear-training in any language learning. It is just as essential in learning jazz. Even if we never plan on doing much improvisation, to learn the solos, to improve our ear for the language, will help make us better musicians overall and will help the written scores become more identifiable and musical.

• Repeat
Go back to the top and start over.

As we do these things we are composing. We are making our own music. I know that none of this is all that earth-shattering- or new. I used to think and hope that if I bought the right book, read the right information, watched the right YouTube video that this would all fall into place. It won’t. Aebersold books could line my shelves, but if I don’t take the steps into the new and different, I won’t improve.

What this does is get me in touch with me- my music, my songs, my soul. As I express that music I am composing a whole new story to add to the greater story around me. That is important. This is what we do every day in our daily lives- we compose something new out of what has been around us. That something new can only come from us. I can’t leave life alone in the same old rut. Jazz teaches me how to take the risks to tell my story in a new language.

Last year musician John Raymond had this to say after he had spent some time focusing on composing. It is what it’s all about:

At the end of the day, so much of composing (to me at least)
is about trusting who you are, what you love,
and about trusting the music that YOU hear.
Just like improvising, it's an incredibly personal process and your goal is
ultimately to be as honest as you can be.
(John Raymond, email, September 2016)

The Tuning Slide: More About Composing

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Life is a lot like jazz.
It’s best when you improvise.
-George Gershwin

I’m going to start today with some thoughts from the book, Improvisation for the Spirit: Live a More Creative, Spontaneous, and Courageous Life Using the Tools of Improv Comedy by Katie Goodman. (Sourcebooks, Inc. 2008.) It is NOT about jazz, but rather a book on living a spontaneous life based on improv comedy. But, hey, improvisation is improvisation. So here are her suggestions for skills needed in living a spontaneous life.

1. Be Present and Aware
2. Be Open and Flexible
3. Take Risks
4. Trust
5. Surrender and Non-Attachment
6. Gag Your Inner Critic
7. Get Creative
8. Effortlessness
9. Desire and Discovering What You Want
10. Authenticity
11. Allowing Imperfection and Practice, Practice, Practice

As I look at these I see a number of the themes that I have covered in the past here on the Tuning Slide.

• The “be present and aware” touches easily on the mindfulness we have talked about.
•  “Gag your inner critic” is certainly a variation of the discussions of Self 1 and Self 2 in the Inner Game of Music posts.
• “Desire and discovering what you want” and “authenticity” tie in with finding your story and song.

But as I pointed out last week with my improvisation stories, it is all easier said- or thought- and done. It takes work and determination to do it. It takes hours of practice. (That’s another whole series to think about for the next year!) One cannot want instant gratification - or instant expertise in improvisation or in life as a whole. So as I look at those 11 suggestions I want to simplify it. I want to make it sound easier than it is, live in my fantasy world that it is easy, or just throw my hands up in surrender. Which is NOT what surrender and non-attachment above mean. So maybe there is more to be learned in that skill than I am giving it credit for.

Surrender and non-attachment, as Goodman defines it on page 92 is about

…learning to let go of your attachments to expectations, goals, and perfectionism. … to cultivate a sense of humor, and to lighten up. [We] surrender the controls and allow life to unfold in a more joyful, free-flowing, and perhaps, unexpected way.

This does not mean giving up and going home. I have heard several times in the past few weeks that the #1 rule for improv comedy is the “Yes, and…” rule. That means you affirm what has come before you, the line or theme that has preceded the hand-off to you. Never negate it- that brings everything to a stop. Instead, accept it as an important bit of information or an unfinished sentence. What do you have to add to it? How can you give added value to the “musical conversation”? In order to do that use those skills of mindfulness, creativity, and giving Self Two the direction to go ahead and play.

Now, in order to do that you have to believe you have something to say. At first, all it may be in your improvisation is to hit the note of the chord with a certain rhythm. Remember, jazz is about rhythm. Then you might want to think about the structure of the song, blues, classic standard, funk. Keep those same chord notes and rhythm but give them a little something extra here and there. Don’t be shy. That doesn’t mean play fortissimo when the song is a nice quiet ballad. Remember, you are adding to the conversation, not stopping it or hijacking it. There are then legato and staccato passages, slurs and marcato. How do they fit together?

Now, don’t expect to go onstage in a public performance and know how to do this. Improv comedy troupes practice. Then they practice some more. Improv does not mean off-the-cuff with no thought or training. It means learning the words and sounds of jazz and making conversation with other musicians. I wish I was able to do this as easily as I write about it. But I am a slow-learner. I still have an inner critic that freezes when he hears that “sour” note. I still have the perfectionist that says he has to do it right or don’t do it at all. I still have the ADD dude who gets distracted by a a lot more than squirrels and then loses mindfulness, flow, rhythm and creativity.

So I go back to the practice room. I pull out the scales or find a song on iReal Pro and try to get the feel for it. I listen to Miles Davis’ solo on “So What” and feel the movement of an easy-flowing improvisation. I take a walk and refocus my mindfulness skills. I do some breathing meditation that gets me back in touch with me. Then I work on it some more. It is a much slower process than I want it to be. I can tend to get too busy. I have too many things to write or too many concerts or gigs to prepare for. So the hard stuff, like learning to talk jazz with my trumpet is set aside.

In other words I am writing these posts as much for me as for you. I am working on my Inner Game. I am reminding myself that I have a story and a song. It is mine and I have been writing it for many years. Back at that very first jazz camp I went to in the 90s one thing did become clear to me. I improvise all the time in my daily life. Things happen that I have to react to. As a preacher for years I would regularly “ad lib” in the middle of a sermon. All that was was just improvising. I pulled in all my knowledge and experiences, all the sermons I had written and preached, all the people I had talked to, all the books I had read. Then came the inspiration and I shared it when it happened. I can still do that. It is almost as easy as falling off a bike for me. I couldn’t do that when I started, of course. I wrote down every word of every sermon. I still work from a manuscript (the score of the music?) and take off when and where appropriate.

That’s all I need to learn to do with my trumpet. It is getting better. I am learning. I don’t believe I will ever be done.

Kind of like life!

You have to practice improvisation,
Let no one kid you about it.
-Art Tatum

The Tuning Slide: Creating Something New

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

There's a way of playing safe and

then there's where you create something

you haven't created before.

-Dave Brubeck

Many have called it “mysterious.” Some will say there’s magic in it. Others might criticize it for being “too far out” or “odd.” No matter what is said about it, it is undeniably the center point around which jazz congregates.

Improvisation.

I had been listening to jazz for a number of years before I realized that so much of what I was listening to only existed once in the studio or venue where it was performed. In that moment jazz went from being a great form of music that I loved to something far more profound. It was alive in a way that no other music could claim in my awareness. Sure there have been many great improvised solos in other genres; even the classical greats like Bach were known to be excellent improvisers. But no other music called forth improvising; no other music seemed to breathe the life of the music in the moment.

I was in awe.

About 20 years ago, I had my first jazz camp experience. I knew very little music theory and couldn’t have played in many of the keys if my life depended on it. But the time came to improvise. As I sat down that evening I wrote in my journal:

My first solo. Just the basics of course, but an improv solo on the simple concert B-flat scale.

"Play a melody. Write a song with it, Barry."

And I did.

It fit, too. It made some sense. You have to try to listen to what is going on around you. Hear the rhythm, devise the melody, watch the harmony. It wasn't polished. It was kind of stiff and boring, but no one started out as a virtuoso.

The instructors this morning emphasized that. The scales are to the instrumentalist what the gym is to Michael Jordan.

The same could have been said about my solo at my first Shell Lake Adult Big Band Camp. It wasn’t polished; it was kind of stiff and boring. One of my problems is that I get stuck on “bad” notes. A “bad note” is one that could be a great “blue note,” a note moving from one place to another. But it turns into dissonance and discord because I stop for too long. No movement, more like a crash into a brick wall. My mind blanks, I forget what I’m thinking and nothing of interest comes from the instrument. It made some sense for a little bit, a few measures, but that’s about it.

What a challenge then in this past year when, following the Big Band Camp and then Trumpet Camp in 2015, I decided I was going to do an improv solo this year. And not get stuck! It was one of several goals I set for myself, and the one that looked most challenging. Wikipedia’s entry on improvisation in jazz points out some of the problems.

Basically, improvisation is composing on the spot, in which a singer or instrumentalist invents solo melodies and lines over top of a chord progression played by rhythm section instruments (piano, electric guitar double bass, etc.) and also accompanied by drum kit. While blues, rock and other genres also use improvisation, the improvisation in these non-jazz genres typically is done over relatively simple chord progressions which often stay in one key (or closely related keys.) …Jazz improvisation is distinguished from other genres use of this approach by the high level of chordal complexity…

Problem #1: Composing on the fly.
Saxophonist and composer Steve Lacy once said,

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

It takes time to learn how to do that. A lot more than a year. It takes a certain amount of courage to do it in public. It takes a certain amount of insanity to even want to do it in the first place.

Problem #2: Chordal complexity
Most of us want to sound professional when we do our improvising. That means the complexity of chords and chord changes. We don’t want to sound like some newbie just playing the blues scale over the changes. It may fit, but that’s baby stuff. To think that one can get to that point in one year would be the height of grandiosity- or blindness.

Problem #3: Learning the language
This is all about a language and developing an understanding of its meanings. It is no different than having a conversation with a friend- except we have all learned how to use words in conversations one little bit at a time. We didn’t do that in any great way until we developed a vocabulary, the experience of talking with others, and the experiences of our lives to have something to talk about. If you have 15 seconds to say something, you better have the language ready to be accessed at the right time and place.

A daunting task, to be sure. But I did have a few things in my favor.

• I have a rudimentary understanding of the language. I have a decent ear for jazz, jazz forms, and jazz licks. I have been an intense jazz listener for 50+ years. It’s kind of like being somewhat able to understand, say Spanish, when it is spoken, even though my brain trips over itself when I try to speak it.

• I am also a decent musician. I understand a lot more about music from simply playing it than I realized before this year. That means I have a basic understanding of chord progressions and the blues scale.

• And, I now have the time, in my semi-retirement, to spend time learning.

While I didn’t have a set plan for learning jazz, I first spent a lot of time really getting to know my musical skills- the basics, just the basics. Day in and day out there were those long notes and chromatics. Then there was Arban (always good old Arban!) and Concone and others. Finally I decided I would learn the 12 major keys. Yes, after 50+ years I was doing one of those basic things.

The result was I got to Big Band Camp and I was ready. No getting stuck this year. Let it happen!

It did! No it wasn’t a great solo, but it didn’t get stuck, it didn’t suck, and it wasn’t stiff. I even think there might have been some swing it it. At least I was swinging. Since then I have done some more improvising with the one big band I play in. Nothing fancy. But I now have the courage to at least try. I have done it and I know I can do it again. Since then I have done a couple improvisation solos with the one big band I play in. One was good, the other so-so. But I am learning that it is okay to make mistakes. That's how we learn.

What then does all this mean?

#1. It takes time and effort. Just a year of work doesn’t do it. But it’s a start.

#2. Appreciate jazz when other people do it. Listen. Then listen some more. Finally, listen again.

#3. Have courage. Take the opportunity to improvise. In the privacy of your practice room and in public.

#4. Be good to yourself and appreciate what you have done and what you can do.

#5. Push yourself. Don’t stop where you’ve been. Look at where you still want to go.

Now that I have more of the basics down, it is time to move into the advanced beginning stage. (Trying to keep that trumpet ego in check!) That means more of the 5 things above. It means enjoying the practice and challenge. And it means seeing how improvisation has already made and can make a difference in my life.

That will be next week.

The genius of our country is improvisation,

and jazz reflects that.

It's our great contribution to the arts.

-Ken Burns

The Tuning Slide: What Makes Jazz, Jazz?

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Jazz does not belong to one race or culture,
but is a gift that America has given the world.
-Ahmad Alaadeen

I remember a discussion I had with a teenager in my church youth group some 30+ years ago. We had been listening to some live rock song that had a great guitar solo. We started talking about different styles of music and came up with a question.

What makes jazz jazz? Why isn’t it rock or vice versa?

Neither of us had an answer, although we did, in general, agree that we knew it when we heard it. Here, then, decades later, I am going to attempt to answer that question from my experiences. As I said in the previous post, I have been enthralled by jazz in all its forms for over 50 years. I’m not out to give an in-depth analysis of jazz and what makes it what it is. There are countless books that do that. Some are history like Ted Gioia’s History of Jazz, a remarkable story of how jazz got to be what it is. Some are on video like Ken Burns’ mini-series documentary, Jazz, from PBS. Barry Kernfeld’s What to Listen For in Jazz has informed this particular post. All three of these are 16 - 20 years old, but capture the story that has become jazz.

Since one of my goals is to relate the music and the experience of jazz to my life and experience, musicology is not my goal. Living jazz is. So, I found in Kernfeld’s book seven things that are essential ingredients to understand about jazz. These, I think, give a little more to work with than just saying “I know it when I hear it.” While all of them can be found in most other musical genres, how they apply to this genre begins to answer the greater question of what makes this music what it is.

First comes rhythm. This should come as no surprise. Jazz started as music for movement. It was street music, dance music, walking and marching music. The power of the “beat” is unmistakable. It is almost impossible to call it “jazz” if it doesn’t have rhythm. It must constantly be supported and carried by the rhythm section- drums or bass, piano or guitar. I know that sometimes that rhythm is pretty hard to find, especially in more free-form jazz, but if you ask the musicians they will say there is something there. It will go nowhere without a living, breathing pulse.

All music breathes. The rise and fall of dynamics, crescendo and decrescendo, are the active elements that make it something more than a one-level sound. In jazz, that breath becomes a rhythm. Some of this is what is called articulation. When you emphasize what note, how you flow from one section to another. But it is always alive, always moving.

When jazz musicians say the music is “in the groove” this is part of what they mean. It is alive and moving. The two most common rhythms can be described as

• Swing and
• Duple.

Swing is a movement of triplets enhanced or bounded by accentuations. Duple is doubles, also enhanced and defined by accentuations. While recognizing that there are numerous variations and exceptions, we can take Dixieland and “big band” traditional jazz as the best examples of “swing.” Duple is more straightforward and can be seen in Latin jazz. I will talk more about rhythm, especially swing, in the next post.

The connection of rhythm and breathing with living is obvious. Drumming has been one of those human endeavors most likely since the first time an ancient relative hit a hollow log with a stick. In so doing they were mimicking the action at the center of our lives- the heartbeat. Rhythm is more than primitive in its origins. It is primal. It is basic, essential. A heart arrhythmia can be fatal- it is out of rhythm.

Second is form. With tens of thousands of possible songs to play, a jazz group and its musicians would be hard pressed to memorize everything out there. That would clearly limit their repertoire and challenge the skill of even the greatest among them. What has developed to make this job relatively easy is the form of jazz music. The most common of these was adapted from the basic “song” form- the music of the Great American Songbook. Very simply this form is the beginning theme, the “head”, the first description of which is usually done twice, the chorus in the middle and then closing with the theme. This often referred to as the AABA form.

There can be many variations on how long these individual sections can be. The song form would, in general, be 32 bars, 8 in each section. Other variations can have a repeating pattern of measures and chord changes such as the 12-bar blues which can be adapted to 8- or 16-bars. Chord changes are often sort of standardized with the 12-bar blues being the grandaddy of them and the progression of the chords of I’ve Got Rhythm (referred to as “rhythm changes”) being another.

One other form is the march and ragtime form. These are usually 16-bar phrases with two, three, or four themes as the song progresses.

Now, in general, a jazz musician can pick up a book of songs and all it might have are the head, chord changes, and the closing. When you understand the basic form of these songs, you have the greater possibility of playing more music and not being completely lost.

Third is arrangement. This is the first of three elements of jazz that are about “writing” the music. Arrangement is taking something that already exists and adapting it. Arrangers can do it note-for-note adding embellishments with their group playing as close to the original as possible. They can also take the original and add embellishments to it to change the patterns around the original. The third is to orchestrate the song differently. Having a saxophone-based combo play a song will give a very different experience from a piano-based one. For example taking a Lennon-McCartney song and arranging it for a big band would take all these into account. What instruments do you want to play when? How close to the original will it be? Will you divide it into sections that build on or riff on the theme?

Fourth is composition. Simply put this is basically writing new music. You are composing a new song. It can be based on the chord progressions from another song, such as the many on the changes of I’ve Got Rhythm or the 12-bar blues. It will be a new melody, a new song.

Fifth is improvisation. Improvisation is so essential to what call jazz in all its forms, I will take at least two posts to deal with that. Suffice it to say here, that being able to improvise is what can help all of us succeed in the ups and downs of life. It is not simply flying by the seat of ones pants. It is the ability to call on our knowledge, experiences, hard work, and creativity to solve problems and enhance our lives. Kernfeld called improvisation the “most fascinating and mysterious” element of jazz. It will be featured prominently in all that we do in jazz.

Sixth is sound. This is where orchestration comes in. Different instruments sound different. Different combinations sound different. How you put them together can make a huge difference in what you hear- or don’t hear. It is also the tuning of the notes and how they fit together. Miles Davis famously said that “there are no wrong notes in jazz: only notes in the wrong places.” Thelonius Monk added to that sentiment. "There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.”

The ultimate in the jazz sound is what has been called the “blue note.” Simply put the “blue note” is a note that is played or sung a half-step off from what would be expected. Blue notes add a sense of tension, surprise, or worry to the sound. It comes from its use in the blues progression. The “sound” of jazz is what has led many to say they may not know what jazz is, but they know when they hear it.

Finally, the seventh element of jazz is style. Jazz is not one style of music- it is a genre made up of these elements and then flowing into numerous styles. Kernfeld, in What to Listen for in Jazz, leaves the idea of style to an epilogue. That way he could look at the elements that can be found in one way or another in different styles. Here are some of the styles that have developed in jazz, and are still breathing life into the genre:

• New Orleans Jazz
• Big Band
• Bebop
• Hard Bop
• Fusion
• Free Jazz
• Latin Jazz
• Acid Jazz
• Jazz Rock
• Kansas City Jazz
• Modal Jazz
• West Coast Jazz

And Wikipedia goes on to list another 30 sub-genres.

Talk about diversity. Talk about having an abundance of opportunities. Talk about a perfect music to have developed in a little more than only 100 years in the United States.

That’s jazz. That’s all there is to it. In 2000 words or less.
The details, are in the hands of the musicians- and of you and me as listeners. That’s where we will go in the next six posts, seeing how these are good metaphors for life and how, when we learn jazz, we are also learning how to live.

Jazz is the type of music
that can absorb so many things
and still be jazz.
-Sonny Rollins

The Tuning Slide: 2.25- Goals!!

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

I forget where I recently saw this, so I can’t give attribution, although a Google search turns up lots of others who use it. But this was quite a wake-up when I saw it:

I don’t know about you, but I don’t wake up in the morning with aspirations for mediocrity.

Maybe some mornings I wake up and don’t want to do what is needed to avoid mediocrity, and other days I'm just fine with being average as days go. Yet when it comes to a lot of different aspects of life, mediocrity is not what most of us want to settle for. So why do we?

Some of it goes back to what I said about grit a few weeks ago.

• We lose interest,
• don’t have the energy, or
• believe we can’t be anything but mediocre.
  
  • Since I can’t be as great as Miles or Maynard why bother at all?

I will end up being satisfied to be as mediocre as… well, as mediocre as me.

I return to something Bill Bergren emailed me a few months ago that I didn’t use at the time:

Tiger Woods tells us we should never have to use more than 80% of our capacity when striking the golf ball. The same goes for playing the trumpet. This means your ability must be at a very high level to allow for that 20% buffer.

When I read that I realized why I had been stuck for so many years at what I am today calling “mediocre.” My capacity, let’s call it overall ability wasn’t that great. I never practiced regularly. That began to change when I started playing in three different groups and was playing more often. I was still mediocre, but less so. I was on the right track. I had no buffer like Tiger talks about because all I ever did was play when I needed to. My ability and endurance both ran out before the end of the rehearsal or gig.

Which fits what Bill said in the paragraph following the one above.

Tiger also tells us that the number of hours at the practice range or playing practice rounds far exceeds the time actually playing golf. This is true of any sport...........and music.

Makes sense, of course. If I can’t play more than 25 or 30 minutes, I’m not going to make it through a sixty- or ninety-minute gig. Fitting in just enough time to sort of work on the tougher passages won’t help a great deal. I remember the years in the summertime municipal band. At the start of the season I was lucky to get through the rehearsal. With a few days a week of working on those tough passages I could soon move up to at least getting through rehearsal. (The breaks when the director worked with the woodwinds helped.) By the end of the summer I could play through the whole concert, but I didn’t have a lot left over. There was improvement (in endurance) but I didn’t know that it was still just mediocre. In order to get that 20% buffer I needed to practice far more than playing the gig.

How much time is needed? Perhaps 20% more? But I have no answer to that. I did notice something in the book on Zen and the Art of Archery that I mentioned last week. Eugen Herrigal reports simply being told by the archery Master,

“Don’t ask- practice.”

There are aspects of practice that are important like singing the piece, playing it slow enough to know what the notes feel and sound like, recording yourself, listening to other recordings. All of these are not a prescription to zen and music, they are simply part of the practice. A classic zen idea is to realize that you will know it’s happening when it is time. Until then wait with patience- and keep practicing.

Again, last fall I adapted some of what Bill Bergren wrote to me with the deliberate practice ideas from from the book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool.

• Deliberate practice is focused. Students must give it their full attention.
• Deliberate practice involves feedback. Immediate, specific feedback on where students are falling short is vital.
• Deliberate practice requires a teacher
• Deliberate practice requires leaving one’s comfort zone. If students aren’t pushing themselves beyond what is comfortable and familiar, they will not advance.
• Deliberate practice requires specific goals aimed at target performances
• Deliberate practice builds on mental representations.

I have paid little attention to #5 on the list:
Deliberate practice requires specific goals aimed at target performances.

Last year in the first year of the Tuning Slide I took a shot at this idea. I have never been good at that type of planning in my practice regimen. Since reading the ideas in Peak and its explanation of deliberate practice I have spent some time thinking more about the idea of goals and plans. I’m still growing in that area, but I have learned some things. Well, one thing is for sure:

Figure out what you want to do (the target performance) and then plan ways to do it (specific goals).

What I have discovered over the past two years of this head-long leap into becoming a trumpet player that isn’t mediocre is to have a routine. Do it regularly. Daily is the goal. That’s where we have to start. When I made that a goal, it actually happened. Doh!

But then we have to be deliberate about it. We don’t just pick up the horn and start playing anything we feel like playing. A routine of long-tones, scales, Clarke studies, etc. Those remain the basics. Doing them daily is a key goal. I didn't even know I needed to do them or that if I did I would improve as much as I have.

Ask questions of your teachers and/or mentors about what you need to be doing. Then do what they suggest. Get a mentor or teacher and pay attention. That is the goal. That's where the goal begins to get specific, about you and what you need.

Read, research, and listen. In so doing you can find out what you want to improve. That's the goal. Then put it into practice. That's the goal. For example, I have always (!) wanted to be better at jazz improvising. I bought several of the Aebersold books, messed around with them for a very short period and then set them aside. "I guess that won't happen," was my response. What I didn't realize was that before I in particular would be able to do that I needed the basics. After the first goals above became reality I started reading more, researching more, listening more. I achieved a decent basic mastery of the 12 major keys. Now I had learned more of the language I needed. Goal!

Recently I came across a simple exercise on basic licks that can help get the feel of jazz under my fingers. Simple goal Practice one of these a day for six-days, in all 12 major keys. (Right there I would have set it aside if I hadn't had the other goals earlier.) Then on the seventh day- don’t rest- but play through all of them. Doing that is a goal. Today is the seventh day and I am looking forward to seeing how well this fits together. (See Learn Jazz Standards.) And- I am doing all this without written music, which was another goal in this past six-months- to work on my listening- and translating what I hear into music.

I am amazed some days at how long it has taken me (55 years?) to learn this about my trumpet playing. Fortunately I knew some of this from my vocation outside of music. I would have starved to death a long time ago if I hadn't. Applying it to my music has been the extra added value!

Again, this isn’t rocket science:
Set goals- figure out what you want to do and then plan ways to do it.

Of course,
then do it!

The Tuning Slide: 2.24- The Magic in the Music

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

I said last week that, as usual, Bill Bergren had opened a new thought pattern for me in my post on his teaching a non-trumpet player how to play. Here, again, is his response from last week:

Everything I did was in reaction to the student. It's all about understanding the concept then articulating/communicating in your own words and style. IMO this can't be expressed in the written word and is the reason Mr. Adam never wrote a book. Imagine the master in Zen In The Art of Archery writing a book on his methods. I don't think so.

I bolded the part I want to talk about this week. It is, in essence, a challenge to the written word as the sole way of learning how to do something. He mentioned an older book: Zen in the Art of Archery that was written in the early 1930s and updated in the late 1940s. It is the first of many books that have taken the teachings of Zen and applied them to any number of other activities. The classic from the 1970s, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was one of the more famous. Such books, to oversimplify them, are philosophical discussions based on or around particular subjects. They take “Zen” ideas and apply them to life.

Here’s Wikipedia’s description of the archery book:

[German philosophy professor Eugen] Herrigel has an accepting spirit towards and about unconscious control of outer activity Westerners heretofore considered wholly to be under conscious-waking control and direction. For example, a central idea in the book is how through years of practice, a physical activity becomes effortless both mentally and physically, as if our habit body executes complex and difficult movements without conscious control from the mind.

Herrigel describes Zen in archery as follows:
"(...) The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art (...)"

It is a short book and an easy read, unless you want to allow it to work on you. Then slow down and listen to it. I could do a number of posts on what I wrote down, but let me take a few ideas.

Part of what this boils down to is that learning “technique” is not always enough. For the archery master Herrigel studied under to have given him a step-by-step description of the way to become proficient at archery, would not have produced a master. For us to simply know that pressing a certain valve or combination of valves produces a certain note does not make a good trumpet player. The “inner game” books by Timothy Gallwey and others present the same ideas in a different form. But I want to stick with the “Zen” idea for this post to give a slightly different perspective from the inner game. This perspective may actually prod us further into being less conscious about our playing and more in-tune (intentional phrase!) with ourselves, our playing, and our fellow musicians.

So what might “Zen and the Art of Music” be like? I found this description from David Michael Wolff, founder and conductor of the Carolina Philharmonic with that very title:

Music has a certain magic to it, a magic infused with zen. If you start to see the energy underneath music instead of dwelling on the surface emotion, you see that lines of energy and rhythm guide the architecture… How can you work with the flow of energy instead of against it? Just as a great martial artist can defeat the opponent using his own energy, so a zen music master learns to bend musical energy to his will, or better, ride it effortlessly by bending himself to the will of music. -Link

Bend yourself as the musician to the will of music. But in order to do that you must also “see” the energy in the music and that there is a structure, an architecture to the energy and rhythm. Somewhat like the inner game except this clearly says that there is more to being a good musician than getting “self one” to be quite so “self two” can get in the flow. It is saying that together, self one and self two can get in the low with that is already in the music waiting to be released. Yes, self one will attempt to shoe-horn and pressure the music to fit its ideas, but sooner or later self two will say “Relax! Hear and feel the power underneath!

Personally I love the idea in this. I know there is “magic” in the music that is waiting for the musician to share it. The technical notes on the page or the strategies we learned in Arban’s or Clarke are the starting points, but they only work on the surface. They help us feel familiar with the technical aspects of playing, but if they don’t move us to hear the music energy, we will simply be playing the notes and not the music itself. I find that exciting. That means for me that in each piece of music I am working on, whether an etude in Charlier or an old band favorite for a concert, there is something more than meets the eye. We can call it the architecture, but that is made up of the rhythms and energy connecting with us.

Bach is one of the best examples in this for me. It is precise, almost mathematically correct. It is some of the most “logical” music ever written. But that isn’t why Bach’s music remains as unique as it is. Logic and precision can get pretty boring. If you hear the “metronome” in the performer’s head, you know the performer has missed the point of the music. But listen… there’s the amazing love of Anna Magdelena in the notes or the soaring craving for God that sings like heaven in Bach’s variations on what we know as “The Passion Chorale.” Yes, it can take technical skill (i.e. years of practice) to get that into a performance, but it’s the emotions that make it a real musical event.

How do we achieve this zen-like attitude?

Many of these are what you would expect.
You have to know your instrument, its feel, its balance in your hands, the way it centers your sound. Think playing the lead pipe along for this. That’s one of the ways we begin to connect with our instrument.

You have to build your strength or endurance. Think long tones centered and improving as you feel the center.

You have to breathe with your instrument and the music. Think long tones and the Clarke exercises.

You have to practice. Herrigel is told by the Master, “Don’t ask- practice.” There are aspects of practice that are important like singing the piece, playing it slow enough to know what the notes feel and sound like, recording yourself, listening to other recordings. All of these are not a prescription to zen and music, they are simply part of the practice. A classic zen idea is to realize that you will know it’s happening when it is time. Until then wait with patience- and keep practicing.

One way I have found that seems to be working for me is moving beyond simply playing scales to improvising on them. I have never been able to improvise, except when singing along with a song, alone, in my car. I am a jazz lover and am empowered by listening to it. Since Shell Lake’s Adult Big Band Workshop two years ago I have been moving toward experiencing what improvising is life. I went through the technical stuff of scales- major, seventh, and minor. They began to feel familiar under my fingers. I was accomplishing several of the things I mentioned above- the instrument, endurance, breathing- technical skills. I just kept practicing. I had difficulty playing with the Aebersold CDs, so I stopped trying. It wasn’t time. I did slightly better with the iReal Pro app on my iPhone, but still struggled.

Then, one day, it was time. As I finished playing through my scales one afternoon I decided to play around with the scale. I started improvising. By ear. (It’s amazing how much faster we can play a scale or a riff if we don’t have to look at the music. I was flabbergasted!) I played with scales and chord arpeggios. I then added a structure of rhythm. Finally I started adding structure of chord changes. I started working on 8- and 16-bar blues changes, then some ii-V7-I changes. I started playing them in different keys. I wanted to look in a mirror to make sure that it was still me playing the horn. The freedom that gave me was nothing short of miraculous. I started composing melodies across the changes. Sure, they were very elementary and quite dull, but I was doing something different.

I was experiencing the zen.

I then started applying all this to a song I have been wanting to arrange for our quintet- the folk song Sloop John B. I worked it out by ear, then I started playing with it, checking different rhythms and chord changes, descants and the like. All by ear. I began to experience the zen of this song. I then heard new things that I could play and ways to truly move beyond simple improvisation to some slightly more interesting variations. As I did this the power and energy of the song became apparent. I could feel it in my horn and embouchure. (I know that anyone who loves technical stuff will probably give up at this point. That’s okay. It is working for me!)

Each time I play through the song now, I get a different insight into its structure and energy. I am almost ready to be getting the composing part going. Because I know the music, the song’s zen, it will be more interesting than if I had simply done some technical study and fit that to the song.

Be careful, of course, that you don't get into some bad habits. It could be easy to get used to doing things some incorrect ways. More on that in another post. For this week, Zen works. Go with the musical flow- it's energy and rhythm, its architecture and texture.

Bill, as usual, you’ve done it again.

And as usual, thanks.

The Tuning Slide: Jazz 5- Adding to the Music

Life is a lot like jazz.

It’s best when you improvise.

-George Gershwin

I’m going to start today with some thoughts from the book, Improvisation for the Spirit: Live a More Creative, Spontaneous, and Courageous Life Using the Tools of Improv Comedy by Katie Goodman. (Sourcebooks, Inc. 2008.) It is NOT about jazz, but rather a book on living a spontaneous life based on improv comedy. But, hey, improvisation is improvisation. So here are her suggestions for skills needed in living a spontaneous life.

1. Be Present and Aware
2. Be Open and Flexible
3. Take Risks
4. Trust
5. Surrender and Non-Attachment
6. Gag Your Inner Critic
7. Get Creative
8. Effortlessness
9. Desire and Discovering What You Want
10. Authenticity
11. Allowing Imperfection and Practice, Practice, Practice

As I look at these I see a number of the themes that I have covered in the past here on the Tuning Slide.

• The “be present and aware” touches easily on the mindfulness we have talked about. 
• “Gag your inner critic” is certainly a variation of the discussions of Self 1 and Self 2 in the Inner Game of Music posts. 
• “Desire and discovering what you want” and “authenticity” tie in with finding your story and song.

But as I pointed out last week with my improvisation stories, it is all easier said- or thought- and done. It takes work and determination to do it. It takes hours of practice. (That’s another whole series to think about for the next year!) One cannot want instant gratification - or instant expertise in improvisation or in life as a whole. So as I look at those 11 suggestions I want to simplify it. I want to make it sound easier than it is, live in my fantasy world that it is easy, or just throw my hands up in surrender. Which is NOT what surrender and non-attachment above mean. So maybe there is more to be learned in that skill than I am giving it credit for.

Surrender and non-attachment, as Goodman defines it on page 92 is about

…learning to let go of your attachments to expectations, goals, and perfectionism. … to cultivate a sense of humor, and to lighten up. [We] surrender the controls and allow life to unfold in a more joyful, free-flowing, and perhaps, unexpected way.

This does not mean giving up and going home. I have heard several times in the past few weeks that the #1 rule for improv comedy is the “Yes, and…” rule. That means you affirm what has come before you, the line or theme that has preceded the hand-off to you. Never negate it- that brings everything to a stop. Instead, accept it as an important bit of information or an unfinished sentence. What do you have to add to it? How can you give added value to the “musical conversation”? In order to do that use those skills of mindfulness, creativity, and giving Self Two the direction to go ahead and play.

Now, in order to do that you have to believe you have something to say. At first, all it may be in your improvisation is to hit the note of the chord with a certain rhythm. Remember, jazz is about rhythm. Then you might want to think about the structure of the song, blues, classic standard, funk. Keep those same chord notes and rhythm but give them a little something extra here and there. Don’t be shy. That doesn’t mean play fortissimo when the song is a nice quiet ballad. Remember, you are adding to the conversation, not stopping it or hijacking it. There are then legato and staccato passages, slurs and marcato. How do they fit together?

Now, don’t expect to go onstage in a public performance and know how to do this. Improv comedy troupes practice. Then they practice some more. Improv does not mean off-the-cuff with no thought or training. It means learning the words and sounds of jazz and making conversation with other musicians. I wish I was able to do this as easily as I write about it. But I am a slow-learner. I still have an inner critic that freezes when he hears that “sour” note. I still have the perfectionist that says he has to do it right or don’t do it at all. I still have the ADD dude who gets distracted by a a lot more than squirrels and then loses mindfulness, flow, rhythm and creativity.

So I go back to the practice room. I pull out the scales or find a song on iReal Pro and try to get the feel for it. I listen to Miles Davis’ solo on “So What” and feel the movement of an easy-flowing improvisation. I take a walk and refocus my mindfulness skills. I do some breathing meditation that gets me back in touch with me. Then I work on it some more. It is a much slower process than I want it to be. I can tend to get too busy. I have too many things to write or too many concerts or gigs to prepare for. So the hard stuff, like learning to talk jazz with my trumpet is set aside.

In other words I am writing these posts as much for me as for you. I am working on my Inner Game. I am reminding myself that I have a story and a song. It is mine and I have been writing it for many years. Back at that very first jazz camp I went to in the 90s one thing did become clear to me. I improvise all the time in my daily life. Things happen that I have to react to. As a preacher for years I would regularly “ad lib” in the middle of a sermon. All that was was just improvising. I pulled in all my knowledge and experiences, all the sermons I had written and preached, all the people I had talked to, all the books I had read. Then came the inspiration and I shared it when it happened. I can still do that. It is almost as easy as falling off a bike for me. I couldn’t do that when I started, of course. I wrote down every word of every sermon. I still work from a manuscript (the score of the music?) and take off when and where appropriate.

That’s all I need to learn to do with my trumpet. It is getting better. I am learning. I don’t believe I will ever be done.

Kind of like life!

You have to practice improvisation,
Let no one kid you about it.
-Art Tatum

The Tuning Slide: Jazz 4- Creating Something New

There's a way of playing safe and 

then there's where you create something 

you haven't created before.

-Dave Brubeck

Many have called it “mysterious.” Some will say there’s magic in it. Others might criticize it for being “too far out” or “odd.” No matter what is said about it, it is undeniably the center point around which jazz congregates.

Improvisation.

I had been listening to jazz for a number of years before I realized that so much of what I was listening to only existed once in the studio or venue where it was performed. In that moment jazz went from being a great form of music that I loved to something far more profound. It was alive in a way that no other music could claim in my awareness. Sure there have been many great improvised solos in other genres; even the classical greats like Bach were known to be excellent improvisers. But no other music called forth improvising; no other music seemed to breathe the life of the music in the moment.

I was in awe.

About 20 years ago, I had my first jazz camp experience. I knew very little music theory and couldn’t have played in many of the keys if my life depended on it. But the time came to improvise. As I sat down that evening I wrote in my journal:

My first solo. Just the basics of course, but an improv solo on the simple concert B-flat scale.

"Play a melody. Write a song with it, Barry."

And I did.

It fit, too. It made some sense. You have to try to listen to what is going on around you. Hear the rhythm, devise the melody, watch the harmony. It wasn't polished. It was kind of stiff and boring, but no one started out as a virtuoso.

The instructors this morning emphasized that. The scales are to the instrumentalist what the gym is to Michael Jordan.

The same could have been said about my solo at last summer’s Big Band Camp. It wasn’t polished; it was kind of stiff and boring. One of my problems is that I get stuck on “bad” notes. A “bad note” is one that could be a great “blue note,” a note moving from one place to another. But it turns into dissonance and discord because I stop for too long. No movement, more like a crash into a brick wall. My mind blanks, I forget what I’m thinking and nothing of interest comes from the instrument. It made some sense for a little bit, a few measures, but that’s about it.

What a challenge then in this past year when, following the Big Band Camp and then Trumpet Camp in 2015, I decided I was going to do an improv solo this year. And not get stuck! It was one of several goals I set for myself, and the one that looked most challenging. Wikipedia’s entry on improvisation in jazz points out some of the problems.

Basically, improvisation is composing on the spot, in which a singer or instrumentalist invents solo melodies and lines over top of a chord progression played by rhythm section instruments (piano, electric guitar double bass, etc.) and also accompanied by drum kit. While blues, rock and other genres also use improvisation, the improvisation in these non-jazz genres typically is done over relatively simple chord progressions which often stay in one key (or closely related keys.) …Jazz improvisation is distinguished from other genres use of this approach by the high level of chordal complexity…

Problem #1: Composing on the fly.
Saxophonist and composer Steve Lacy once said,

In composition you have all the time you want to decide what to say in 15 seconds, in improvisation you have 15 seconds.

It takes time to learn how to do that. A lot more than a year. It takes a certain amount of courage to do it in public. It takes a certain amount of insanity to even want to do it in the first place.

Problem #2: Chordal complexity
Most of us want to sound professional when we do our improvising. That means the complexity of chords and chord changes. We don’t want to sound like some newbie just playing the blues scale over the changes. It may fit, but that’s baby stuff. To think that one can get to that point in one year would be the height of grandiosity- or blindness.

Problem #3: Learning the language
This is all about a language and developing an understanding of its meanings. It is no different than having a conversation with a friend- except we have all learned how to use words in conversations one little bit at a time. We didn’t do that in any great way until we developed a vocabulary, the experience of talking with others, and the experiences of our lives to have something to talk about. If you have 15 seconds to say something, you better have the language ready to be accessed at the right time and place.

A daunting task, to be sure. But I did have a few things in my favor.

• I have a rudimentary understanding of the language. I have a decent ear for jazz, jazz forms, and jazz licks. I have been an intense jazz listener for 50+ years. It’s kind of like being somewhat able to understand, say Spanish, when it is spoken, even though my brain trips over itself when I try to speak it.

• I am also a decent musician. I understand a lot more about music from simply playing it than I realized before this year. That means I have a basic understanding of chord progressions and the blues scale.

• And, I now have the time, in my semi-retirement, to spend time learning.

While I didn’t have a set plan for learning jazz, I first spent a lot of time really getting to know my musical skills- the basics, just the basics. Day in and day out there were those long notes and chromatics. Then there was Arban (always good old Arban!) and Concone and others. Finally I decided I would learn the 12 major keys. Yes, after 50+ years I was doing one of those basic things.

The result was I got to Big Band Camp and I was ready. No getting stuck this year. Let it happen!

It did! No it wasn’t a great solo, but it didn’t get stuck, it didn’t suck, and it wasn’t stiff. I even think there might have been some swing it it. At least I was swinging. Since then I have done some more improvising with the one big band I play in. Nothing fancy. But I now have the courage to at least try. I have done it and I know I can do it again.

What then does all this mean?

#1. It takes time and effort. Just a year of work doesn’t do it. But it’s a start.

#2. Appreciate jazz when other people do it. Listen. Then listen some more. Finally, listen again.

#3. Have courage. Take the opportunity to improvise. In the privacy of your practice room and in public.

#4. Be good to yourself and appreciate what you have done and what you can do.

#5. Push yourself. Don’t stop where you’ve been. Look at where you still want to go.

Now that I have more of the basics down, it is time to move into the advanced beginning stage. (Trying to keep that trumpet ego in check!) That means more of the 5 things above. It means enjoying the practice and challenge. And it means seeing how improvisation has already made and can make a difference in my life.

That will be next week.

The genius of our country is improvisation,

and jazz reflects that.

It's our great contribution to the arts.

-Ken Burns