Denny Zeitlin Trio

-at Yoshi's with Buster Williams on bass, Matt Wilson on drums
-2 sets; long extended improvisations on each song, lots of interplay
-showed up late for the first set, just as they were finishing up All of You.
-got his duo concert CD
-shook his hand, asked me to look him up in the phone book to discuss med school/music; leave a message, tell him we met at Yoshi's

The Brain and Music

talked to Sarah at her Halloween 'party', she told me about the professor for her Psychology of Music class, she mentioned something about him using a 'torus' to demonstrate the shifts in tonality throughout the song "Girl From Ipanema"; found some more articles on the subject of music's effects on the brain, how it processes music, tonality, melody etc here, very interesting:

http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Culdesac/Stars/funkbrothersCulture.html

http://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Music/morebrain.html

One Hour Plus

15 min tonic-based ear training (singing and/or recognition)
15 min interval-based ear training (singing and/or recognition)
30-45 min chord tone embellishments (NO singing)
10 min chord chart sight reading in time

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Helen Sung: www.helensung.com wow

Piano Tuner

Mark Stivers came by yesterday, retuned the piano and also adjusted the action, worked on the hammers. It sounds great now. My buyer's remorse is totally gone. The key feel is much more sensitive than before; so much so that I'm almost worried that if I play too much it might mess up the action again.

Interesting blog from someone who is also working hard to improve their improvising skills; This fellow also preaches the singular importance of learning to play by ear.
http://www.iwasdoingallright.com/


Keith Jarrett on "On Green Dolphin Street":
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1VqvMjdBbew

Keith Jarrett solo piano on "Solar":
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mxuAc8M25nY&mode=related&search=

Brain Stamina

Interesting site on the theory of Piano Technique and Practice:
(is printable in .pdf format)

http://members.aol.com/chang8828/contents.htm

On relaxation of the hands during practice:
"Note that relaxation applies only to the physical playing mechanism; the brain must never be shut off -- it must always be intensely focused on the music, even (or especially) when practicing. It is brain stamina that you must develop, not finger strength. Thus mindless repetitions of exercises such as the Hanon series is the worst thing you can do to develop stamina in your musical brain. If you don't develop brain stamina during practice, the brain will tire out part way through any performance and you will end up playing like a robotic zombie with no active control over the performance."

"Of course, in terms of stamina, it is not difficult (if you have the time) to put in 6 or 8 hours of practice a day by including a lot of mindless finger exercises. This is a process of self-delusion in which the student thinks that just putting in the time will get you there -- it will not. If anything, conditioning the brain is more important than conditioning the muscles because it is the brain that needs the conditioning for music. In addition, strenuous conditioning of the muscles will cause the body to convert fast muscles to slow muscles that have more endurance -- this is exactly what you do not want."

--

Will be doing more interval based ear training drills, mainly transcribing and transposing phrases, song heads/melodies-Will start off by doing three phrases a day, see where that takes my ear a month from now, need to be more precise about feeling the distance between notes.

• think of melody lines in chunks, instead of just individual notes with intervalic relationships between each other: need to start seeing the bigger shape of the line
• ie: the line begins here and then changes directions after going all the way up to the fifth and then changes again after going down to the third.
  
• recognize common patterns that seem to reoccur in a lot of melodies
  
• ie: triad arpeggios going down or up (minor and major)
• ie: 7th chord arpeggios going down or up
  

Musical Thoughts Website

Found this fellow on youtube playing a very nice solo piano version of 'Mercy Mercy Mercy'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpLzp5cm8s4&mode=related&search=

He also has his own website, full of his own transcriptions and articles on theory etc. Looks very promising. http://music.linear1.org/

Embellishments

Have decided that my current plan for practicing chord tone embellishments might be too ambitious for such an early stage in my development; instead of outlining the whole arpeggio at once, I will begin by practicing a pattern that starts on a particular degree of the chord and then transpose that pattern throughout the 12 keys. Hopefully will prevent me from getting stuck on just one key, will move on to longer patterns with multiple chord tones once I am more comfortable with embellishing just one.

Ray Brown Tribute Concert

10/13/06
-at Yoshi's
-went with Ravi, had nice chat about his work with Al Chinn at Guidant (now called Boston Medical Devices or something like that)
-Benny Green on piano, Marlena Shaw vocals, Jeff Hamilton on Drums, John Clayton on Bass (Ray Brown's bass)
-first set, kind of slow; Benny Green only allowed one chorus per solo; once she cut him off
-second set, awesome; Green played Milestones, Jeff Hamilton did a drum solo of Caravan; Everyone kicked ass on this set
-Benny Green was high the whole time, stuttering, slurring, cracking up, sloppy smiling at the soloist, knocking over his water glasses-couple next to us argued about it.
-very cute blonde waitress; Ravi: "He only drinks whites."

Attacking Bebop

Had a mini-revelation last night; it was getting late, maybe 1.30am and I was practicing licks over a ii chord when a phrase that I had practiced more than a 3 months ago from Joe Gilman's practice sheet sort of lept into my head. I had only practiced this phrase a few times, hadn't even transposed it over all 12 keys but for some reason I felt my fingers pulling in a certain direction and as they played the notes, my mind was following-I didn't hit the phrase perfectly on the first try, it took me 3 or 4 run-throughs before I was satisfied that I was playing it correctly, but it's amazing how my ear could still feel out the phrase well enough to tell whether or not I was on. At certain moments, I could almost hear it. Current strategies for attacking improvising and improving my ear to build a foundation for playing in the bebop idiom are as follows:

-Ear training: (sing and playing)

• -arpeggios (major7th, minor7th, dominant7th, halfdiminished, diminished)
• -arpeggios with chromatic approach (above and below)
• -arpeggios with diatonic approach (above and below)
• -partner ear training exercises
• -diatonic and chromatic tone recognition

-Licks:

• -transcribe and transpose one chord/bar phrases from recordings
• -transpose selected licks from phrase books

-Modal:

• -transpose 2- note patterns chromatically, singing along when possible

-Songs:

• -learn melody and bass lines first, sing them
• -improvise over bass notes
• -listen in time

Jazz Combo Auditions Oct 1st 9pm

Attended rhythm section auditions held by Mike McMullen in Music 105, didn't participate. Lots of drummers, only one guitarist (T), one pianist (Nick couldn't make that time). The drummers were great, the first kid, (Benny) still in high school was very tight and on top of his game, no hesitation with any of Mike's requests. Got a lot of phone numbers that night from drummers. T played Blue Bossa, it was nice. The pianist, Terry something or other, was this older guy maybe in his 40's, he was kicking ass, I didn't think it was fair that he was allowed to audition, him being a professional gigging musician/teacher and all but he was good and I know I'm still not ready to get with an ensemble like that. Maybe next year my ear will be good enough.

Performances Attended

A few recent performances attended, am missing quite a few I think, these are the ones that I can recall off the top of my head; no dates provided: (mostly in reverse chronological order)

Karrin Allyson with Jon Hendricks and Nancy King - at Yoshi's

• -stayed for both sets; great performance! a scatfest; Hendricks showed up in a gold tux and a sailor captain's cap, King was very sweet, very cool and sophisticated voice, Allyson was everywhere-an awesome show.

Elvin Jones Birthday Salute - at Yoshi's

• -"With the sons of Ellis Marsalis drummer Jason and older brother Delfeayo on trombone, Nicholas Payton on trumpet, Anthony Wonsey on piano, Dave Liebman on saxophone, and Delbert Felix on bass, this show is sure to be filled with music that celebrates the spirit of one of Jazz’s greatest, generous hearted and most spirited musicians."
• -A great show; raw, powerful, Dave Liebman is an animal-he played his heart out on every song and it was nuts. The pianist was clean, cool, bluesy bebop flavor with a lot of octaves sustained.

Joe Gilman - Sacramento at Pete Escovedo's House

• -my piano teacher is a monster; played songs from his new Stevie Wonder tribute album;

Ricardo Peixoto and Marcos Silva Duo - at the JazzSchool in Berkeley

• -lush, swingin' Brazilian music. Marcos was great and his female friend sitting next to me in the audience was also very attractive; great duo performance.

Frank Morgan - at Yoshi's

• -went with Dellea
• -the guy was old, had to sit on a chair the whole time but he was good, old, sweet, sentimental very melodic; his trumpet player Sean Jones was a MONSTER, that guy is going to be big, played the whole time his fingers a blur! when he wasn't soloing, he stood there on stage with this giant grin on his face like he was laughing at the drummer, Akira Tana whose daughter also attends Davis, we talked briefly, snapped a few photos with Frank and Akira and the bassist. It's cool to see a Japanese guy hanging in the jazz scene with all these hipsters. But I loved Jone's tone on the trumpet, absolutely loved it loved it loved it, his performance was electrifying. I won't soon forget it.
  

Bobby Hutcherson - at Yoshi's

• -went with Evan, Kassenia, Paul, Dernie, Cindy, Matt, Misay, Jenny Oldham and her bf, Allison from Chn and the next night attended again with Jenny.
• -It was a great show, he was amazing, plus his piano player also knocked me out: Renee Rosnes! She can play harder than any other female pianist I've seen and in fact she played better than lots of male pianists, she has definitely changed my mind about female jazz pianists; her second performance the next day was totally different, her solos had a fugue like quality to them, I thought it was cool but Jenny being a classically trained pianist, was anticipating something else and understandibly thought it was a little boring. The sax player Miguel Zenon was amazing too, each of his solos reached a climax that felt like he was going to blow a hole through the roof.

Javon Jackson and Benny Green - at Yoshi's

• -went with Margot and Mary and Dex, Tim and Marc; Marc paid for dinner!
• -good show, Benny Green tore it up like I knew he would, him being the reason I went.

Anton Schwartz - under the overhang at Safeway in N. Davis

• -good show; went with Dellea and Cindy; Mary and Lucas showed up a bit later
• -he was awesome, came over to my place later for a private lesson, we chatted in the car-cool guy, into Vipassana as well; also into Mary haha.
• -looking forward to seeing him play with Joe Gilman

Dianne Reeves:

• -went with Misay, Kyle, Rawi, Cindy, Jenny, Laura
• -amazing amazing show; second time seeing her, was not disappointed. Her version of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" was sweet; Her pianist Peter Martin is a badass it was great seeing them up so close, especially compared to the last time at the Mondavi; got some amusing footage of people trying to dance to the music; everyone in the audience loved the show, they played an encore and played all sorts tunes: funk, standards, jazz standards, christmas etc. Very accessible but amazing music, I love seeing the people around me being touched by jazz

E.S.T. Esbjorn Svensson Trio

• at Yoshi's, went with Nancy; very cool show-the upright bass sounded like an electric guitar at times; he stuck a piece of paper under the piano strings to make it sound distorted; encore played 'Round Midnight. awesome show.

Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, Wayne Shorter, Brian Blade

• SF Jazz; went with Blake, Ravi (and Sean?)
• very crazy, very cool

Herbie Hancock, Roy Hargrove, Michael Brecker

• Mondavi Center, went with Evan;
  

Bill Charlap

• Mondavi Center; they didn't really let loose, cool version of Westside Story song.
  

Stefon Harris

• Mondavi Center
  
• his version of 'Until' taken from the movie 'Kate and Leopald' was very haunting, beautiful on the vibraphones
  

Sonny Rollins

• Mondavi Center
• some of his solos went on longer than 20 minutes! Amazing! "See you all in the next life!"

Chick Corea

• Mondavi Center
• played Spain for his encore; mostly acoustic jazz
• had flamenco dancer!
  

Lynne Arrialle

• Yoshi's; with Nick
  

Uri Caine

• at Yoshi's; met Nick there
• one of the most exciting piano trios I've ever seen in my life; can't wait to see him again
  

Terence Blanchard

• at Yoshi's
  
• went with Margot, Mom, Dad; Dad loved it, surpisingly. Mom wasn't so impressed
• solo guitar perfomance lead-in to 'wadagbe'
  

Gonzalo Rubalcaba

• at Yoshi's, went with Margot
• a little boring for some reason, Nick said that he played the same thing on both sets; disappointing
  

McCoy Tyner, Joshua Redman, Brian Blade

• SF Jazz, went with Nick and his friend
• awesome show, played music of John Coltrane
  

First post, long overdue

This blog will serve as an account of my journey through the experience of listening to and playing jazz music. Here I will try my best to record any and all happenings in my life that I feel are of relative importance to my personal growth as a jazz listener/performer. This will include, but is not limited to: my attendance at live performances, educational encounters with teachers/mentors/etc., personal discoveries, goals, challenges, difficulties, successes, jam sessions, transcriptions, etc etc etc.

Should have started this 2 years ago but I'll find some way to bring it up to date.