Tuning Slide 5.1- The Important Moods of Music

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

This will be our reply to violence:
to make music more intensely,
more beautifully,
more devotedly than ever before.
— Leonard Bernstein

I had already started this week’s post, the first of year 5 of The Tuning Slide. I wanted to look back and see what I’ve learned over the first four years of the blog and where music is taking me. When I woke up Sunday morning and checked the morning news on Google I was forced to face another day of mass killings, the third in a week. I decided I needed to do something else. I needed to search my own soul and find a place of peace and hope in this endless news stream of senseless violence and death.

My first thought was the quote above from Maestro Leonard Bernstein. They were part of words he spoke a few days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. It was a difficult time. Bernstein, like the nation, was in shock and mourning. He said it was made worse by the violence involved. He asked..

And where does this violence spring from? From ignorance and hatred…

By saying that, Bernstein knew that the response to such violence can often be calls to even more violence. The anger and sadness of a mourning and shocked people can lead to finding ways to make the situation worse instead of better. The Maestro knew that was not the way of people of music and art!

But this sorrow and rage will not inflame us to seek retribution; rather they will inflame our art…. This must be the mission of every man of goodwill: to insist, unflaggingly, at risk of becoming a repetitive bore, but to insist on the achievement of a world in which the mind will have triumphed over violence.

Our reply to violence, he ended with the top quote, will be to devote ourselves more fully and more deeply to our music! By making beauty in music and art perhaps we can move the world a little more distant from the feelings and actions of hatred and violence. Music may be unique among the arts, it can touch us without words, move us without saying anything, surround us with hope with a depth and intensity unknown in other ways. Again, from Bernstein:

Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

Music’s connection with life is at the level of experience. Music causes synapses to fire in our brain and nervous system; it starts a process that can flood us with important neurochemicals that change our mood. It prompts awareness of things we never can explain and inspires us to actions of hope. Yes, there is angry music that can do the opposite, that can incite violence and fuel rage. There is also music that can be used as a sedative, numbing us to the world around us. It is the responsibility of the musician/artist to be wise and mindful of all the consequences of what we produce.

A few years after Bernstein’s words at John Kennedy’s death, the group The Rascals were in a similar situation when Robert Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles. They penned their immortal words- "All the world over, people got to be free." Many were inspired. At the same time singer Dion reflected on this history of violence in Abraham, Martin, and John. These gave voice to people’s emotions and allowed people to both grieve and move forward.

Bono, of U2 understood this when he said:

Music can change the world because it can change people.

Will your music or mine change the world? Yes, it can. If we are willing to be devoted to the music, seek to make it as beautiful as possible. We may only start with changing ourselves when we pick up our instrument and play. But isn’t that where all change must start- within each of us as we dare to think and act differently? We then learn to live with the promise of peace and the reduction of violence. As we live it, as it becomes part of us, others can be touched, if only momentarily, but it is a start.

Musicians and artists are important. Don’t lose sight of your gift- and use it well.

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree,
there will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is still a chance that they will see,
there will be an answer. let it be.

Let it be, let it be, .....

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light, that shines on me,
shine until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music, mother Mary comes to me,
speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be, .....”
― Paul McCartney

Tuning Slide 4.4- It's in the Basics

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Success is neither magical nor mysterious.
Success is the natural consequence of consistently
applying the basic fundamentals.
—Jim Rohn

I had already decided on this week’s theme before this year’s Shell Lake Trumpet Workshop. But right from the beginning of the week I realized that this was no coincidence. I return every year to Shell Lake to be reminded and renewed in the basics of being a trumpet player, musician, and human. Success is always in the basics- and working on the basics every day.

My thinking on this started a month or so ago when I had a trumpet lesson with a local musician. I knew that he would help me in a number of areas and I knew it would be about some of the fundamentals. I just didn’t know which ones- and what to do about it. That, of course, is why we need to have a teacher and take lessons. We don’t know what we don’t know, and we can’t be entirely objective about what we are doing. It takes someone outside of my own head to hear what I am doing and what I need to do about it.

It is always about the basics. First and always and forever, it’s about the sound. It is making the best sound, the sound that resonates with myself and others, the sound that “plays well with others,” the sound that I am hearing in my head and wants to come out through the horn. As my mentors at Shell Lake emphasize over and over, the sound is what we focus on. It is learning to listen to the rich harmonics possible in any given note for each note, as they tell me, is the whole universe in and of itself.

Second, and as essential as the first, is the rhythm. How do I work on rhythm? Articulation comes to mind. So does singing the part or exercise. Catching the rhythm is basic to sight reading I am finding out.

Third, and often overlooked by most of us in practice, is patient slowness. We want to play it up to speed as soon as possible. We want to sound like Clifford Brown in one of his incredible be-bop licks or take that whole Clarke etude in one breath like it indicates. But if I haven’t discovered the sound (tone) or rhythm (articulation and phrasing) it will be just a bunch of notes with no life in them. In order to get to that point, I have to take it slow! I can’t help but think of the lyrics of one of the songs in West Side Story when I hear this:

Boy, boy, crazy boy
Stay loose, boy!
Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it
Turn off the juice, boy!

So, in my lesson, what did the teacher do? He took me back to the basics, of course. Since he, like my Shell Lake mentors, was a student of the great trumpet instructor Bill Adam at Indiana University, he had me pull out the tuning slide and just “play the tube.” Breathe and let the air vibrate. Find the center of the tube- and the sound. Listen to it. Improve it. Breathe it. I could feel my sound relax and center. I could feel the tension decrease. It’s the basics, man, just the basics.

Next, still on sound, we started on long tones and long scale tones. Because of what I was hoping for, part of it was to make the sound as soft as possible. Pianissimo. Soft. Quiet. Breathe it soft. Keep the sound centered. Keep the breath moving. (Last week one of my teachers there noticed I needed to do some work on that as well. Another piece of my puzzle added.)

Now it’s the to add some rhythm work- articulation. He had me turn to one of the basic rhythm exercises in the Arban’s book (the ultimate basics of trumpet playing!) and play them keeping the sound and notes connected. After over 56 years of playing trumpet, I had never really ever worked on this before. (Amazing what happens when your last lesson before a few years ago was when Lyndon Johnson was president!) Listen to the sound! Keep the breath moving. Keep the notes connected as I articulate.

Finally, the overall basic for this lesson- take it slow! Don’t rush through it. Do the long tones- slowly. Do the scales and chromatics- slowly. Do the rhythm and articulation exercises- slowly. Find the way to do them slowly but with purpose and energy. Slow can be dull and boring, or it can be filled with potential energy being released.

Two weeks after that lesson I went to the Brass Festival in North Carolina- and I was knocked over by the change in my sound and breath. I do not need to be convinced of the importance of the basics. I see the results in my playing. I hear and feel the results in my playing.

The basics. Now as much as ever. Perhaps even more so now. It is easy to get the feeling that one has learned all the simple stuff. That is for beginners. No. The trumpet, as many trumpet players have said, is a very unforgiving instrument. It will be putty in your hands one day and a piece of ice unwilling to bend the next. It is always in the basics that I learn to keep moving forward. If I do nothing else with my trumpet on any given day, I must always do the basics.

It is just as true in my own daily life. I can get complacent about what I am doing or what is happening around me. I can lose the center of my life, moving into the out-of-tune sections that can lead me to boredom, fear, or just plain laziness. Each day I need to work on my own basics.

• Sound- the tone of my life. Is my tone happy or sad, accepting or judging, willing to work with or working against others? That is the internal. It is my mood, my feelings, my inner reactions to what is happening around me. Mindfulness to these is basic.
• Articulation- how I show it. Do I act out my internal struggles or feelings, taking it out on others, blaming others for my stuff, ignore what is my responsibility? This is the external. How I respond to others is important for it can and will impact all my relationships.
• Patience- Stay loose and keep moving. I have to know I can’t be perfect, so don’t try to rush things in order to get past them and ignore them. Turn down the juice and keep cool.

Every day, in whatever ways I can, it is all about the basics. They are, after all, the only way to get where I want to be.

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: Keep Tapping Your Feet

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

This will be our reply to violence:
to make music more intensely,
more beautifully,
more devotedly than ever before.
-Leonard Bernstein

A few weeks before writing this post I was listening to one of the jazz programs on Sirius XM channel 67, Real Jazz. Award-winning bassist Christian McBride was hosting his talk and music program The Lowdown: Conversations With Christian. Talking to the audience at the beginning of the show he encouraged them to be involved in the show. The gist of what he said was that too often we think jazz is something that only scholars and music specialists listen to with some kind of academic distance or in some indescribable mystical trance. (My words and interpretation!) This is “party music” he said. It is not dull and dead. It is alive- and has been alive for over 100 years now.

• You don’t have to be able to discern all the ins-and-outs of the music.
  
  • You just let the groove grab you where you are.
• You don’t have to know the chords and structure of the music.
  
  • You just let the melody move you with is rhythm
• You don’t have to be a musician to know that this can be sung and played and enjoyed.
  
  • You just celebrate those who make the music.
• You don’t have to be able to put into words what the music does to you.
  
  • You just have to let it do it.

I hope that is what I leave you with after these posts on jazz. Jazz is remarkable music. It is simple and complex. It is the blues and jumping dance music. It is chordless or as strictly structured as any other music can be. It can turn a Broadway-standard song or old country song into a new musical invention. It is freedom expressed without words; resistance without slogans; revolution without arms.

I recently had the pleasure and honor of being part of the University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire jazz festival. I had the opportunity to listen to a number of amazing high school big bands compete for recognition. High school students stood up and played improvised solos for the judges. Some schools had as many as three or more bands competing at different levels. These students get up and show up at school at 7:00 in the morning or stay after school to rehearse. They do it for the love of the music! It shows. It also shows that the music is still growing and still making people dance, even in the intimacy of their own soul.

That’s what Christian McBride was talking about. In general, we make music so that on some level we can dance. Jazz is as close to perfecting that as any other music. It can be a dirge-like dance of the blues or the second-line dance as the Dixieland band leaves the cemetery. It can be a ballad dance of love or the soul-dance of having been touched by a musician who has shared their spirituality through their horn. It can be the driving rhythm of Latin culture, the cool movement of the west coast, the funk of the urban culture, or … take you pick. It goes on and on and hasn’t stopped for a moment. The best of jazz encompasses all of these and much more. I see and hear jazz in the best of bluegrass (which is, of course, the jazz of country music), the roots of rock and soul, even in the music now called “Americana” and folk.

We are a nation of jazz musicians seeking to make melody and harmony with a groove and rhythm. In the earlier post on the “bandstand” being a sacred place I talked about the importance of the big band (i.e. jazz) music in the 1930s and ’40s. Many gave it its own place in keeping us strong in the midst of World War II. After the war it went into “hiding.” It is our music- who we are and who we can be. That is why Len Weinstock on the website Red Hot Jazz (http://www.redhotjazz.com/index.htm) said:

Millions await its return. Believe me, we need it badly!

After fifty years of listening and ten of playing jazz, I am only now beginning to understand what it means for me.
These ten posts come nowhere near even scratching the surface. There will be more in the next year.
There is more to learn, more to experience, more to hear-
and more dances to be danced.

Keep on listening- and tapping your feet.
- Count Basie

The Tuning Slide: Intertwined with Society

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

The bandstand is a sacred place.

--Wynton Marsalis

Big Band- a musical group of 16 - 20 musicians

• Built in many ways on the unique soulful sound of saxophones.
• Set solidly on the bass foundation of the trombone
• Trumpets soaring over the top taking the group to new heights
• Held together by the rhythm section of piano, bass, guitar and drums.
  (Len Weinstock in an article on the website Red Hot Jazz said: No big band that hoped to swing could succeed without a great drummer. Essential for a solid solo to build on top of.)

Behind it all were those genius composers and arrangers. Bassist Marcus Miller commented on his Miller Time show on Sirius XM that the arranger is the mastermind. They took simple leads or complex melodies and put them into a form that the Big Bands could use. Big band history is the story of great arrangers- Billy Strayhorn, Sammy Nestico, Neal Hefti, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Carter, Joe Garland, Jerry Gray, Gil Evans. Without these gifted arrangers, big band music would probably never have made it.

By the late 1930s and into World War II, Big Band jazz was THE popular music. Live radio broadcasts, local, regional and national, brought the music into people’s homes like none before had quite experienced. At the beginning of the war, Weinstock says there were at least fifty nationally famous big dance bands in the US and hundred of others with local reputation. Weinstock says that big band music “was such a positive morale booster that it is arguable whether we could have won the war without it!” Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” has often be called the “song that won World War II.”

Big Band music went into hiding after the war. It lost it’s widespread popularity as radio and then television began to showcase rock and roll and country to wider and wider audiences. Jazz became more of a combo music. It was more and more expensive to maintain a working national big band. Even the great ones struggled and found themselves having to scrape. A revival did occur in the 1990s but it has never reached the level of popularity of the original movement. As that was happening, Weinstock wrote

Millions await its return. Believe me, we need it badly!

It is amazing that the popular music of an era has lost its popularity. As a musician in a couple big bands I have had the joy of seeing people energized by the music. We play many gigs at senior housing and nursing home facilities. This was the music of their generation- and they are fading away. To see the late 80 and 90 year olds swaying to the music, or even getting up and dancing is one of my thrills. We start playing “In the Mood” and a happy response comes back at us. The drummer kicks off “Sing, Sing, Sing” and eyes light up. Even more recent pop songs from the 60s and 70s get positive responses, partly from the power of the big band style.

Fortunately many schools do have jazz bands that are helping to keep the music alive. There are dance venues that will have the “swing” bands do live music dances. Many of the people on the floor when we play these are not the older generation. Music moves people, and for those who like to dance, swing is as much a dancing art as any other.

One of my memories from the 60s, when the big band era was not doing well, was Lionel Hampton. I guess many groups were struggling and it was not unusual to have someone of Hampton’s stature to play in small venues- like high school gyms in rural north-central Pennsylvania. I don’t remember the specifics of the dance, but I didn’t go to dance, I went to hear Hampton and his band. It is now a subliminal memory, perhaps having influenced me in my own love for big band jazz.

For jazz musicians, big band can be quite a challenge. Some might say that is even more of a challenge than combo work- or at least as important. Again, bassist Marcus Miller had a whole 2-hour episode of his Miller Time program on Sirius XM’s Real Jazz devoted to big band music. He referred to the classic and the new. He didn’t like the word “old” applied to the music. He commented that every jazz musician should spend time playing in a big band. There, he said, you learn a great deal.

• You learn to blend your sound with the sound of the group.
• You have to be more aware of the dynamics because it isn’t helpful to have one part stand out from the others.
• You have to be conscious of being in-tune. In a small combo you can get away with it. In a big band, Miller said, you have “twenty other cats looking at you” wondering when you’re going to get it and tune up.

Even more than that, he added, you begin to absorb the music itself. You become a different musician. It changes you and how you approach music. I have told the story before of how when I joined my first big band I realized how underwhelming I could be. I knew and loved jazz, but not as a jazz musician. I was a listener- an educated listener, but a listener nonetheless. Big band jazz speaks the language of jazz and I was a more “classical” trumpet player. I was comfortable in a concert band- wind ensemble- because that language had become ingrained. Jazz was new, even down on that fourth part. The sound and rhythm, the two essentials of great music, were different from what I was used to playing. I knew them when I heard them but I didn’t know how to play them.

That was over eight years ago now. I still play fourth, for reasons to be talked about in other posts. But now I know the language. The music isn’t as strange to play as it was. I hear the changes, feel the rhythm, listen to the others in the group and can actually even adjust my sound once in a while.

One other thing about big band music- it is essential to the ability to speak the jazz language. Classic music of the 30s to the 50s is part of who we are as musicians and as people. If I want to be able to be a jazz musician- or even a jazz fan- in the 21st Century, I cannot, must not, forget the roots of this amazing music. Yes, it is more than big band and I will talk about that next week. But to understand why be bop and hard bop became what they did, you have to know where they came from. To understand Miles’ and Coltrane’s place in music history and how they changed history, you have to know what they built on, and that was the big band sound.

It was swing at its most basic and most exciting.

Jazz is such a powerful cultural statement that

it's almost as if it's intertwined with society.

-Tom Harrell

Guilt and Frustration

It has happened with my daughter. I tell her a "live" sports score or comment on a game's final score. Then she says something to the effect of

Thanks, Dad! I was recording it.

It happened again last evening with a friend. We were at band practice and I checked the score of Monday Night Football and told him.

Yep, he got upset at me because he was recording it. He says he never watches live anymore. Too many commercials.

Guilt flowed around me as I was sorry I had spoiled his football enjoyment.

Frustration then came along. Now I can't even talk about scores when I check them. I might be ruining someone's enjoyment.

Oh well. Just be quiet, keep a poker face and refuse to talk. Let them enjoy themselves. After all, I'm a nice guy and considerate of others.

The Times Keep Changing- Thankfully!

Two scenes from the last week for me have shown how great a change continues to be happening in our society.

Scene One: Saturday evening, "Independent Lens" on PBS, the Academy-Award nominated documentary, How to Survive a Plague. It took me back to a time over 25 years ago when AIDS was a terrifying plague, when my friend Donald was dying, his partner already gone. Political inaction was the word in Washington; judgement and fear were the words in many parts of the country. Homosexuality was still ghetto-ized and many Americans could claim they knew no gay people. The documentary gave a painful, in-depth view of what was a painful, paranoid, even hate-filled time.

Scene Two: Four days earlier, Mall of America, Minneapolis, MN. As we walked along the east entrance two young men walk by us and, moving together, held hands as they walked into the main mall area. If they hadn't walked right in front of us, we would never have noticed. They were just another couple, showing caring for each other by simply holding hands. What a joyous sight for someone who would never have believed that would be possible in my lifetime.

Much has been written about the incredibly quick change in perspective and acceptance of same-sex marriage in the past several years. The difference between the story of the movie and a couple in Minneapolis 25 years later speaks the same seismic shift. There are still those who are arguing for Old Testament-style handling of gay people in general. There are those who believe that this is a sign of how low and sinful the society of the 21st Century has become.

But perhaps it is more a sign of how compassion and love can win the hearts and minds of a nation.