Skyscrapers

GC: Son, let's work on the alphabet. Let's take a break from TV and work on our letters, OK?
LC: Daddy, NO! I DON'T WANT TO WORK ON LETTERS! I NEVER WANT TO WORK ON LETTERS!
GC: Why not? We've watched a lot of shows, let's just take a five minute break! What's the problem?
LC: I DON'T WANT TO TAKE A BREAK TO WORK ON LETTERS!
GC: But son, you need to work on letters so you can learn to read! 
LC: I DON'T WANT TO LEARN TO READ! (sobbing)
GC: OK, OK.....what's the problem? Son, come and talk to me.
LC: Daddy, I'm only good at some of the letters! I can sing the alphabet song, but some of the letters I'm not good at....
GC: Ok, listen, daddy is going to explain. So, let's not think about letters for a minute. Let's think about construction workers for a second. Let's imagine construction workers building a skyscraper. How long do you think it takes to build a skyscraper?
LC: ....Mmmmmm, I don't know?
GC: A day? Two days?
LC: Maybe..... one hundred days!
GC: Maybe even longer than that. And, this doesn't take into account how long it takes to build the materials for the skyscraper. So, do you think that the construction workers give up if they can't finish the project in a day?
LC: No....
GC: Of course not. They work all day, and then they go home at night, and then they come back and keep working on it. Plus, during the day, they work, and they take breaks. And they know that eventually, they will finish the job. They don't get mad because it didn't get finished in a day. They didn't cry. It's what we call a LONG TERM PROJECT. Or we call it A WORK IN PROGRESS.
LC: Oh.
GC: So I'm trying to make what is called an ANALOGY.
LC: But I'll never have an analogy....
GC: No, you don't.....I mean I'm telling a story that relates to your letters. You are doing great with letters. It's a WORK IN PROGRESS. We don't get upset if you aren't perfect right away. We just do a little every day, and then eventually, you'll be able to read. How are you going to teach your little brother Ruger to read if you can't read?
LC: (laughs)....his name won't be RUGER!
GC: Ha, ha, maybe it will be....MILLARD!
LC: NO!
GC: OK, do you feel better now?
LC: Yes. We can work on letters now.
GC: Son, I'm so proud of you, and I love you so much.
LC: Can I have pumpkin pie?
GC: Yes, you can have pumpkin pie.....AFTER we do letters.
LC: (sighs)....OK, Daddy.........

Mike Clark Clinic at PSU! Success!

I'm posting some videos from the Mike Clark clinic we had here at Portland State University which took place back on October 8th. The event, as well as the performance at Jimmy Mak's in the evening, was a raging success. Clark happened to be on the West Coast, so we were able to work this into his schedule. It was great to hear a legend play the drums, but it was also informative to hear philosophizing on music, grooves, techniques, the business, and everything in between. I think the most surprising thing to many was Clark's prowess as a jazz drummer; most folks are more familiar with his substantial contribution in the funk/fusion realm on the Herbie Hancock recordings such as "Thrust" and "Flood." But don't be fooled; Clark can swing his butt off, and is probably more of a jazz drummer at heart.

I felt that this was a great opportunity for two of our top students to perform with a legend; tenor saxophonist Nicole Glover and bassist Jon Lakey did an outstanding job. We played some standard material and some McCoy Tyner tunes. I had given Lakey and Glover a chart on Hancock's "Actual Proof," although Clark had insisted that he would prefer to steer clear of those tunes. However, towards the end of the clinic, Clark asked if we could try the tune. We hadn't rehearsed it, and I don't even know if my students had practiced it on their own, but nevertheless, they did a more than respectable job. We gave it another shot during the gig at Jimmy Mak's, which was met with much acclaim.

Enjoy the videos! We hope to do more clinics throughout the year.

Salsa Basics

Although I've played in a few "Latin" situations, I'm actually fairly ignorant about Latin music. I did play timbales, drum set, and later piano with a Baltimore based group called Rumba Club, and I did work with Don Byron's 6 musicians, which was Latin-tinged originals and featured the great conguero Milton Cardona.( I did also live in the same building as Eddie Palmieri in Queens, but that's another story. And that certainly doesn't make me know anything more about Latin music.) I also don't think "Latin" is really the most proper nomenclature. "Latin" could imply almost any music from the South American vicinity. "Afro-Cuban", "Afro-Caribbean," even "Salsa" is more appropriate. "Latin Jazz" will do just fine. In terms of the origins of the music, you have to remember that African slaves brought their rhythms to Cuba and other islands, and the rhythms blended with the music of the Spanish settlers. The son clave is derived from the 6/8 African clave. Here's a short video explaining:

We have a salsa band at Portland State University. David Valdez recently took over the ensemble from Farnell Newton. I worked with the group one day last week; it seems as though the two pianists in the group were having trouble with the montuno, which is the basic piano part for salsa music. I explained and demonstrated some things, and then one of the students made a video of a second run through of the explanation. Obviously, I didn't know about this video; otherwise, I would have had my hair, makeup, and wardrobe guy on the premises. Anyway, I hope that you'll find this to be informative and entertaining.

HIgh Intensity Practice

I remember back in the early 90's when I was just a lad; my only responsibilities were show up to my gigs and make rent. It wasn't any more complex than that. I had 4 to 8 hours a day for heavy practicing, and I was play constant gigs, so I always had a chance to try out the stuff I was working on at home. I was writing a lot, and listening, and transcribing. I was very methodical. I barely ever missed a day. If I wasn't practicing, I was thinking about practicing, much to the dismay of my girlfriend at the time! Even before that, I was into practicing in middle and high school(although I was mostly practicing trumpet). 

Cut to twenty some odd years later; I barely remember what it's like to touch a musical instrument for longer than a few minutes. But when I do get the chance to actually play a gig or a concert or even a rehearsal, I'm expected to perform as if I've been shedding and playing all the time. Well, maybe more of the expectations are coming from me, but even so, you always want to sound as if you are at the top of your game.

So, the dilemma is as follows: how do I maintain my responsibilities as an educator, administrator,

father, husband, and homeowner while still growing as a musician? It's really not easy. In fact, it's darn near impossible. If I get two minutes of practicing a day, it seems like a lot. Ten whole minutes of practice is an occasional luxury. And a free hour of solid practice? Wow, that would be amazing! and unfortunately, quite rare to occur.

One of the issues is that now, with such limited time, when I do finally sit down to play an instrument, I don't really want to play anything REALLY challenging. I want to just PLAY; play tunes I know and play stuff I know. Well, this is most definitely NOT practicing, it's just playing my instrument for fun. Even though it might just help to maintain a touch on an instrument, it's still not going to push you enough. You have to force yourself to practice something hard, something that you will NOT sound good on, or even feel good playing it. I would call this HIP(groan....), or High Intensity Practice. (I'm sort of joking with this....but hey, if it catches on....then I'm not. Anyway, it's an analogy.)

Yes, I believe that this type of approach is much like the difference between doing LONG SLOW CARDIO and HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING. Yes, going out for a long run on a beautiful day can be relaxing, but it's the fast, shorter sprints and hard running alternating with slow running that will boost your fitness and burn more fat. (Hey, at least that's what Men's Health Magazine says. And they say it every month. In fact, every month is almost the same magazine. "Flatten Your Abs" is the cover story almost every or every other month. What a racket.) My point is that intervals, while difficult and unpleasant, really do your training a lot of good. What's great about them is that you don't have to slog about for hours; you should be done your workout in 30 minutes or less. (This is why I like the analogy, because Interval training, like short bursts of practicing, both appeal to people like me with very little free time.)

In this way, practicing REALLY HARD, at a sort of all out intensity, for a short period of time,

followed by rest periods of varying degrees, will be more beneficial than having a general sort of "play" for 6 hours. Not to say that even just playing anything for 6 hours wouldn't have benefits; hey, if you played the Enya Songbook on trumpet for 6 hours a day, you might have an embouchure of steel!(Actually, trumpet is perhaps a different issue, and honestly, because I play trumpet even just on occasion, I find myself looking for time "just to get the horn on my face." Maintenance is a huge part of trumpet playing. If you don't play trumpet everyday, you are kind of screwed. Which is maybe why trumpet can be so unmusical; we spend so much time with long tones and lip slurs and exercises that we forget how to make music. No offense.)

We always have to ask ourselves, "Is this really practice or just playing?" Believe me, there is nothing wrong with just playing. Much of being on the bandstand on a jazz setting is about that. However, if you only had 10 minutes a day to practice and grow as a musician, what would you do? Play a song you know, or work on something really difficult which would stretch your capacity? For example, working on "Freedom Jazz Dance" in every key is something which will be difficult. That's not the easiest thing in the world. 10 minutes of that will not be fun at first. BUT, if you worked on that for

10 minutes a day for 2 weeks.....you might be having more fun with it at that point. 

Sight-reading is something we can all stand to work on. If I decided to spend my 10 minutes on sight-reading, I would pick something either moderately difficult and try to read it in tempo, OR I would pick something extremely difficult just to stretch the brain. The good news is you're only doing it for 10 minutes! As with High Intensity Interval Training, you don't do it for hours on end. You do it in short bursts. 

If you are young and have lots of time, try practicing high intensity for 10 minute intervals and then either rest or do something else; watch TV, mess with your phone, etc....then do another 10 minutes. Unfortunately, I probably wouldn't have another 10 at this point in my life....although when this school term is over......ah, please make it be over......oh, sorry, what was I saying? 

See how it works for you. Whether you have endless time or a tight schedule, try to ramp up your intensity. And by the way, you aren't going to sound good during those 10 minutes. You shouldn't! This is something which prevents us from getting better: worrying about sounding good! 

It's fascinating watching the Ken Burns documentary on Jazz and watching Artie Shaw talk about the Glen Miller Band during the Swing Era.

And I didn't like Miller's band, I didn't

like what he did. Miller was, he had what you'd call a Republican band. It

was, you know, very straight laced, middle of the road. And Miller was that

kind of guy, he was a businessman. And he was sort of the Lawrence Welk of

jazz. And that's one of the reasons he was so big, people could identify with

what he did, they perceived what he was doing. But the biggest problem, his

band never made a mistake. And it's one of the things wrong, because if you

don't ever make a mistake, you're not trying, you're not playing at the edge

of your ability. You're playing safely, within limits, and you know what you

can do and it sounds after a while extremely boring.

 

Artie Shaw

Excuses

Best excuses for not practicing:

1. Fell asleep at 4:30 in the afternoon
2. Watched a Gilligan's Island Marathon, followed by a Three's Company Marathon
3. Had to make sourdough bread
4.  Couldn't find my instrument
5.  Left my instrument in my other pants
6.  My dog ate my instrument
7.  Sold my instrument for crack
8. Had uncontrollable diarrhea
9.  Had uncontrollable diarrhea AGAIN
10. Couldn't find my fingering chart
11. Teacher didn't tell me I have to practice more than once a year!
12. Thought that too much practicing would make me go blind, but I think that's something else…..
13. Got married and had children

14. Have neighbors who hate music. They also hate me.
15. Left my instrument at a vegan strip club
16. Wanted to take it easy after the New York Marathon. I watched the whole thing on TV!
17. Had to go to the Portland Farmer's Market, since there's no other place in Portland to buy fruit
18. Couldn't sit still after 7 Starbucks Grande Lattes!
19. Had uncontrollable diarrhea after 8 Starbucks Grande Lattes!
20.Thought Practice Makes Perfect, and yet, Nobody's Perfect, so that contradiction really threw me off for a while…
21. Don't need to practice because somebody told me to "work it out on the bandstand"
22. Don't need to practice because I don't want to "play licks"
23. Don't need to practice because I want to be "in the moment"
24. Don't want to have "too much technique" and be a show-off, like that guy, what's his name, who's so busy working because he "shows off" by being able to read and knowing tunes and sounding great. What a darn show-off!
25. Had to put cover sheets on the TPS reports

26. Watched a Star Trek Marathon, followed by a Charles in Charge Marathon
27. Had to read " Atlas Shrugged" for a second time. Ha Ha, Now I get all the jokes!
28. Too busy blogging
29. Very busy reading blogs about how to practice
30. Sold instrument for heroin
31. Sold instrument for a Starbucks Card
32. Sold instrument to pay for music school
33. Sold Starbucks gift card to pay for music school
34. Got arrested for selling heroin to pay for music school

35. I figure I know about 17 tunes, so I should be cool
36. Camped out all night for Justin Beiber tickets
37. Too busy watching Ken Burns "Jazz" documentary
38. Got married and had children….AGAIN
39. Left my instrument at a vegan Satanic Church
40. Why practice when it's so sunny, rainy, snowy, dark, cold, or warm outside?

Sus Chords?

One of my advanced students asked me a question recently, via the electronic mail:

Dear Great and Magnanimous Professor and Exalted Wise Master, Seer of All Things Jazz Related, Knower of All Things Jazz Edumacational:

I was wondering - do you have alternative ways of approaching sus chords other than the obvious?
-your most humble saxophone student

Dear humble saxophonist,

Please! No need for such pomp and circumstance. "O Great One" is all that's necessary.....or simply, "My Lord"......

I don't know, approaching them sideways? Or just get right in their face.......

So we are talking about how to improvise jazz lines over sus chords. The thing about "sus" is that it implies a 4th in the chord(sus stands for suspended....). So that
would lead one to believe that you can never play the third. It
actually can make the third sound like an extension. If it's just a
Sus, Like

C7sus4
You can play E and it's cool.

But I would think that the "sus" implication would depend a lot on the
types of voicings played by the pianist or guitarist. If the pianist
is playing

C F Bb(straight fourths)

then you might lean towards 4ths or some pentatonics or some McCoy stuff.

If the pianist plays

C in the bass  Bb D F A(like Bbmaj7 over C)

Then maybe you might play Mixolydian or bebop(think Gminor 7, which is
probably what Herbie Hancock would do.....)

However, all of that being said, I think at this stage of the game for
you, you need to go past conventional thinking for this type of thing.
For example, Sus chords voiced in 4ths imply what I said above. Why
not find something more chromatic just to take it in another
direction? And if it's voiced in thirds, why not find a 4 note scale that
uses some unexpected notes?

(For example: C7sus4-which I would
probably write as C7sus11-but sometimes Sibelius gets weird when I do
that-Why not play C EF A Bb? something like that. I was surprised that
Steve Coleman actually used a lot of things like that. THAT combined
with stark chromaticism might yield some interesting results.)

(Hopefully, we(or you at home reading this) can look at some of Gary Thomas' stuff and you might
find that simply ONE of his licks will open up your mind in terms of
possibilities. You should look at his intro solo on Angel Eyes. I have
most of it on paper, and somebody else did a transcription. Maybe at
least listen to it.)

Did we talk about triad pairings? Sometimes I like to use three
triads. For example, over F7sus4(there it is again) McCoy will do F Eb
on and on. But what if you add a D triad to that? what if you added a
B triad to that? Or Ab minor triad? That could open up an entire world
of experimentation.

I think the problem with being in a program where most of the
students, and even some of the professionals, are thinking
"Here's some chord-scales that work. Ta Da!" Which is totally fine. But the MUSIC is beyond
that. At least I think so. If we are all playing the same chord scales
and so forth then at a certain point all of this stuff starts to sound
the same. This is why coming up with your own ideas is so important.

That's why you need to compose-so you can sit down and say: "A bunch
of stuff has been done. What HASN'T been done?" And you do that, and
even if it has been done, at least you are using your noggin- rather then letting
Jamey Aebersold tell you how to play. Or even let ME tell you how to
play!

Why don't you write a tune with sus chords and then make it somehow
unconventional?

Sincerely,

 Lord Colligan, Esq.