AC #23 How to learn the language of jazz? Speak Like a Child!

I don’t know about you but the first word I heard as a newborn baby was probably the word “NO!” Well, maybe it was “mom” or “dad”, but “NO!” was probably very high on the list of first-heard words.

My first physical experience was probably the doctor-administered “rear-end spank” that was customarily given to newborns. Do they still do that today? That spank hurt and it made me cry, and henceforth, my connection to “blues” music was immediately solidified! (Just kidding!)

Seriously though, I chose “Speak Like a Child” to be a part this post’s title because, for me, the phrase has a special figurative significance.

When a child learns to speak English or any other spoken language, a big part of the process is spending lots of time listening to and imitating the words, phrases, and sentences being spoken by the people around them–family members in most instances. The key words here are listening and imitating.

Likewise, one of the best ways for people to learn the language of jazz is to spend lots of time listening to and imitating and even transcribing the sounds of musical ideas and phrases being played in the music you hear or by the musicians around you. The key words here are also listening and imitating.

All of the world’s best orators started off as kids learning the intricacies of speech by listening and echoing single words, short phrases, longer phrases, and sentences, etc. until eventually, the ability to compose and express their own thoughts finally took hold. The language of jazz has the same dynamic! That is to say, all of the world’s best instrumentalists and improvisers started off as beginners who could barely make a sound on their respective instrument(s). But through the long process of listening, imitating, and learning to read in many cases, the art of self-expression finally developed and they became great players.

So if you’re not already doing it, I want to encourage you to “Speak Like a Child” and add this type of listen-and-imitate approach to your practice routine. Get in there and get started by learning to imitate some short phrases first before moving on to medium length and longer phrases. Melodies and fragments of melodies are good too! I’m going to ask a couple of my students to let me post some of their work along these lines on their student page in the near future. It really is a very effective way to learn the syntax of jazz language and to build a lexicon of phrases and vocabulary. Stay tuned.

AC #22: Block Chords: What are they? How to use them?

While recording “You’re My Everything” during a recording session on October 26, 1956, Miles Davis whistled during the song’s intro to stop the recording and said to Red Garland, his pianist, “Play some block chords Red… Alright Rudy?… Block chords Red”.

This instruction was left in the mix and can be heard on the commercially released recording. What did Miles mean when he said that? What did Miles want from his pianist? The song’s intro starts at the video’s 19th second time code marker and as you’re listening, pay special attention to the difference in Red Garland’s playing before and after Miles’ instruction.

http://www.plosin.com/MilesAhead/Sessions.aspx?s=561026

“Block chords” is a harmonic device that calls for all harmony being played, during the spans-of-time that block chords are engaged, to be delivered within certain close-position voicings and rhythmic parameters. When block chords are applied to melody and/or single-note improvisation lines, a more impactful, “phatter”, richer sound results! I’ve seen Phineas Newborn draw actual gasps-of-excitement from audiences with his highly skilled block chord use!

There are several types or variations of block chords but the one on which I’m going to focus in this workshop I’ve named “book ends”. Book ends call for 5-note voicings with a numerical schematic that spells voices 1 through 5 the from top to bottom with the melody or lead always being note 1 or the top-most note. Note 5 always doubles note 1, one octave lower. Notes 2, 3, and 4 are harmony notes which must be placed in between or within the one-octave span of notes 1 and 5 (the “book ends”) at all times.

Since this is a tall order, I highly advise you to do yourself a favor before moving on to blocking melodies and improv lines. Do the prep work of making sure that you can play all Major7, Dominant7, Minor7, Minor7b5 and Diminished7 chords in all four of their positions in the 5-note block chord style! It’ll make what follows much easier!!!

As I always say, don’t hesitate to contact me if you need some assistance. I’ll be glad to hear from you and glad to help. Let’s Skype!

Where did block chords come from? Who invented them?

I recall having read somewhere in the past that pianist/organist Milt Buckner was given credit for starting or inventing block chords!

I’m not going to co-sign such an absolute statement but I will go along with acknowledging the fact that Milt Buckner is one of the first musicians to be widely noticed and recognized for bringing this style of playing to the “forefront”. George Shearing credited Milt Buckner and the big band sounds of Glenn Miller as his two major influencers along the lines of his developing the block chord “George Shearing sound”.

http://www.jazzwax.com/2009/05/milt-buckner-block-chords-parade.html

Erroll Garner also credited the sounds of big bands as his main influence in the development of his signature style which uses block chords. There are many other musicians who cite Milt Buckner as a main influencing source along these lines but as to whether or not Milt Buckner actually invented block chords, I choose to remain a non signatory.

John Lennon once said that if you had to rename rock and roll, you’d have to call it “Chuck Berry!” However, in Chuck Berry’s autobiography, Chuck thanked J.L. for the statement but spoke up right away saying that the whole “Chuck Berry” concept and sound was not actually his! It came directly from his being influenced by his local peers, the great boogie-woogie players, and people like the great Nat “King” Cole!

I like to think that if Milt Buckner were around today, he might thank all of his fans and “influencees” before giving the same kind of cautionary statement the C.B. gave J.L.

And so the story goes… Because of the influence factor, it’s usually inaccurate at best to try to trace and pinpoint something like a trend or a style in music down to one person. What is more important to me is finding out how to do it and how to use it in my playing.

With that said, let me draw your attention to the 7/22/13 update release of “Block Chording Short Scales” in my store. It is a rudimentary block chord drill system that focuses on block chording 3-, 4-, and 5-note scales of the major and minor varieties and it has MIDI accompaniments to help your practice move right along. If you do the work, this updated package can be very helpful to you in getting block chords “together”. Contact me if you need assistance.

See you next post.

Art

AC #21 Attention Beginner Piano Students!! First Things First!

The first thing you want to do as a beginner piano student is to thoroughly learn the names of the white keys. These names need to be so deeply imprinted and ingrained into your long-term memory and subconscious that identification and recognition of each key is instantaneous.

In the same way that your ID’ing and recognizing any member of our 16-letter alphabet takes less than a “billisecond”, your identification and recognition of the piano key names should be just as fast or faster! (:-)

The inevitable question of, “How to study and achieve this task of knowing the piano keys?”, is usually among the first questions asked by enquiring minds. In this post, I’m going to recommend cue-cards as a method of study.

Cue-cards have been used in the movies and TV since the 30s and 40s but they were also used in many walks of education for years and years and more years upon years before that!. Like wire recorders pre-dated tape recorders, cue-cards pre-date all of the modern computer study methods like Flash and Java applets. However, using computer technology to recreate the old-fashioned card study method only enhances it and makes it more efficient and fun!

I’ve brought three ready-made cue-card helpers into the blog this week to help you get started with really getting to know the piano key names. This activity is mainly for beginners but if you’re further along and you need a refresher, or if you’re just curious, then, by all means, please visit this page as often as you like.

I suggest that you thoroughly work your way through each of the three itemized applets in numerical order. Of the four on-board study modes, I found the Flashcard and Scatter modes worked best. Have fun!

Piano Key Name Practice Item #1 (White Keys aka Natural Keys)

Piano Key Name Practice Item #2 (Keys named as Sharps and/or Flats)

Piano Key Name Practice Item #3 (All Piano Key Names)

AC #20 Happy Birthday America! (2013)

I wish America and all of her citizens a very happy July 4th and holiday week!

Keep studying, practicing, and making music, and I’ll see you next post!

AC #19 Can Your Dog Learn to Play Piano? Read Music?

Click the links on the magazine cover to view the title story and other contents inside.

Well if you are expecting your dog to play some jazz, blues, classical or pop music after a few sessions with a teacher, I’ll say that it will take more than a few lessons in most cases! (Smile!) However, if your dog seems to enjoy just doodling around on the keys, I’d say encourage it! I’ve known that many animals actually like music and will listen and respond to it in their own way.

I used to have a cat named Tom-Two who loved to sit on the piano and listen to music while I practiced alone or rehearsed with a group that had drums, horns, singer(s), and everything! Tom absolutely loved it! He’d stay on the piano and listen and purr until I was done or the rehearsal was over.

Although Tom would sit still, stay present, and listen to may types of music, he couldn’t stand the sound of a marching band! As soon as any parade would pass our home, he’d run under the bed or couch and stay there with flattened ears until it had passed and the drums and music were completely out of ear shot!

The idea of trying to teach Tom or any of my previous pets to play the piano never entered my mind but when I first saw what I’m about to share with you, I didn’t know what to think or make of it! But the more I thought about it, I said, “Why not?”

Kanal von Schlauwauwau, who I feature in the virtual magazine’s title article links, makes very serious efforts at teaching her dogs something about music. I agree with a point she made to one of her responders that “dogs really need new challenges like all intelligent creatures”. Her dogs have really taken to their lessons in ear training and note reading! She also has some birds that seem to be interested in music too!

Speaking of birds, check out this parrot dancing to Gangnam-Style. It might do well at piano!

I think that Ms. Schlauwauwau, her dogs, and her birds are awesome! Her work is very interesting to me and I’ll continue to follow her by visiting her YouTube channel. I would love to see this kind of work done with dolphins and other animals known to possess exceptional intelligence. Personally, however, all of my teaching activities will remain focused on working with people of all ages.

See you next post.

Practice well!

AC #18: |: Repeating Two Things I Said In AC#15 :|

Regarding improvisation:

1: Anyone who is fluent in any spoken language can learn to improvise and play jazz.
2: People who say, “I can”, and people who say, “I can’t”, are both right!!

I have a great group of students who frequently bring music to class in which they’re interested and who’ll periodically introduce me to musicians of whom I was not aware. Recently, on such an instance, I was introduced to a superbly wonderful Ukrainian musician and I am now his newest fan!

While researching this person, I came across a specific statement he made, and that same statement was echoed verbatim by two of his followers, both of whom are amazingly gifted and extremely accomplished young musicians in their own right! The ages of the two young musicians are 12 and 20-something!

The statement, with which I could not disagree more, originates from an assumption they’ve all made that they “can’t improvise”. All three of these fantastic musicians say they love jazz and they all believe and say they “can’t improvise”. They say have to “read everything”!

To all three of these beautiful people I say, if you love jazz and you really want to play jazz, please discard the “I can’t” phrase from your vocabulary forever! Then find your way to a person like me who can help you because teachers and players of this music may be found in just about every country throughout the world! Art Hodes (1904-1993) was a great jazz pianist from Mykolaiv, Ukraine.

I never played in Ukraine but I did play in several communist countries before the “Iron Curtain” was brought down and I’ll tell you that in every country I played, I met some pretty awesome jazz musicians who could improvise very well. Jazz music is really appreciated and loved around the world.

Remember. Art Tatum said, “You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!”

So it’s going to take some serious work and it won’t happen overnight but if playing jazz is something that you really want, then don’t let some hard work stand between you and your goal and get out of your own way by ridding yourself of the “I can’t” affliction if you have it! Get a coach and get busy! The positive effects it’ll have on your life is well worth the time and investment.

See you next post.

Practice well!

Art

AC #17: How to make your own bed then play on it!

In this post, I’ll show you a brief video of one way I make my own bed then play on it.

20 push-ups right now private!

Now I’m not talking about an Army bunk kind of bed where a mean looking drill sergeant might demand twenty forearm push-ups if he or she is not able bounce a quarter off of your bed or discovers that your sheets and blankets are not “cornered” according to Army regulation specifications.

In my office right now private!

The sergeant on the right might send you to solitary confinement if she ever caught you playing on a bed while under her command!

Beds that don’t meet code and playing on beds are bad in the Army.

So don’t play on Army beds! I’m talking about music beds!

No! I’m not talking about beds that play music like either of these!

Bask In Surround Sound

OK! All kidding aside! I’ll explain.

“Music bed” is advertising industry jargon for background music (usually instrumental) that an announcer talks over in a commercial. From Coca-Cola to Pepsi-Cola, Chevrolet to Ford, Burger King to McDonalds, music beds have been used in commercials since the 1920s.

I’m borrowing the term as it’s used in that context and applying it to the practice room where you would either play or sing your part over the background music. Think of karaoke or the music-minus-one records of decades past.

Although there are literally hundreds of sources on the Internet where you can find free and commercially available pre-made music beds, many times I find it easier, less time consuming, and very often necessary–not to mention more fun– to make my own.

There are several ways to make these types of beds and I believe that one of the easiest ways is to use MIDI technology to sequence your tracks. Then it’s time to play on your homemade bed!

For this video, I’ll use a couple of phrases from my Improv 101 class to illustrate how I have my students take a phrase and conjugate it and use it in musical sentences. This music bed is titled, “Take The I-Train“. The “Improvisation Train” is about to leave the station. Climb on board!

That’s it! If you want to see a slightly longer version of the same video, click here. However, the short clip just above effectively and quickly summarizes the process of how I start making many of my basic music beds before I move them into other programs to enhance and fine-tune.

Although Army drill sergeants won’t encourage you to play on Army beds, I highly encourage you to play on music beds in my classes and at home because it’s an effective and fun way to practice. It’s nice to make your own beds but I often make them for my students and I can make them for you too! Check out Jeff DeLangie playing on some beds I made for the Muzio Clementi Opus36 package from my “Fun with the Classics” series.

See you next post. Practice well!

Art

AC #16: Two Guarantees. Which One Is For You?

One sure way to guarantee that you will never get any better or improve is to not practice!
On the other hand…
One sure way to guarantee that you will definitely get better and improve is to practice! Daily!
It’s that simple!

If you need some ideas about things on which you might work in your “practice room”, bookmark this post so you can easily return to “The Virtual Lecture Hall” from time to time to jot down a couple of suggested practice items you’ll see me “write” on the chalkboard.

Now without knowing your current level of musical development or your specific needs, I won’t be able to coach you as effectively as if you were one of my online or in-office students. Nonetheless, I think it’s a good idea to focus and practice on one or a few items at a time.

The “talking points” I brought with me in this version are appropriate for beginner to advanced students. So, each time you click my picture, I’ll go over to the chalkboard and write something that may or may not be appropriate for you. I’ll trust you to know which points speak to you. Have fun!

The Virtual Lecture Hall

If you need some assistance with any of the suggested VLH practice items, contact me anytime. I’m always glad to hear from you.

See you next post… practice well!

Art

AC #15: Improvising: Can You Improvise? Can You Learn How To Do It?

My short answer is yes! Definitely! I feel that anyone who is fluent in a spoken language, has the capacity to learn how to improvise. The way I see it, every time you engage someone in conversation, you are using a specific type of improvisation at which you are already very skilled! You might not even give this whole idea much thought because you do it so well on a daily basis. As you learn new things throughout your life and communicate with others about the new things you’re learning, you continue to grow, develop, and fine-tune your skills of improvisation!

Consider Dictionary.com’s first two definitions of the word “improvise”.

1. to compose and perform or deliver without previous preparation;
2. to compose, play, recite, or sing (verse, music, etc.) on the spur of the moment.

You don’t know exactly what you’re going to say throughout the day to each person you encounter, because in conversation, what you say is usually dependent on and relevant to what the other conversationalists say to you.

Although you may have excellent reading skills in your native language, you are not going to “read” everything you say to people in any given conversation, are you? Of course not!

You’re going to express yourself by tapping into and drawing upon the language data you’ve been storing in your own personal lexicon for years to organize and assemble your thoughts in a split second. Instantaneously, you express your thoughts by constructing words, phrases, and sentences–all within the confines of your current topic of discussion. In the context of music, the confines and current topic of discussion would be the song you’re playing at the moment. But again, you’ve been doing this for years with speaking and this all happens so fast that you don’t even think about the complexity of the process that takes place every time you speak. It is so “second nature” to us that we often take it for granted! But what you’re doing is spontaneously using all of the language data that you’ve stored in your brain to compose speech in real-time… IMPROVISING ! And you’re already very good at it! Now, all you have to do is to use those same improvisational principles and techniques and apply them to the language of music.

That’s right! I think of music as a language and my approach to teaching musical improvisation centers around many of the same processes that you used when you were first learning to speak and improvise with your growing vocabulary and speech data. For example: in English, you have to accumulate vocabulary and do things like conjugating verbs through all of the tenses. In music, you have to accumulate vocabulary and do things like conjugating many rudimentary items through all 12-keys. Do you remember, in elementary English class, that when you learned a new word or phrase, you had to use it in a sentence in order to fully understand it? Well, that concept is alive and well in my improvisation classes. Whenever you learn a new motif or phrase, I ask you to use it in a musical sentence–preferably after you’ve done your 12-key conjugations.

My friend, the late Sammy Price, once told me that Willie “The Lion” Smith said he “would not take a musician seriously unless he or she knew at least 100 songs”. I believe in the wisdom of that statement. Imagine a person going into a foreign country equipped with only a few words and phrases from a “handy-phrase” tourist book. He or she will never be taken seriously as a speaker of that country’s language until they build up a serious vocabulary and demonstrate that they can hold a real conversation. So learn lots of tunes as you go about the business of learning to improvise.

If you practice your lessons well every day, your improvisation skills will improve and you will begin to witness your own growth as a musician. Stay on it!

“You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!” – Art Tatum

By the way, Jeff DeLangie, a very wonderful player and student of mine from several years ago, has found his way back to me and he’s asked that we center our work around jazz theory and improvisation. Jeff has agreed to let me share his journey with you as periodic video posts. So check in from time to time and type his name into any search box on my site to view his progress on various homework assignments, songs, and special projects.

Now if you need some help and you’d like to have some fun while we go about the serious business of working on your musicianship, don’t hesitate to contact me so we can get busy!

Here’s a quick recap of what Ray Charles once said about practice…

See you next post… practice well!

Art

AC #14: Reading Piano Music – Need Help? – Read This!

Learning to read piano music can be one of the most challenging tasks that faces every piano student.

Although one person might find this task to be less difficult than the next person, the fact remains that in order to learn to read music, you have to actually spend some time reading lots of it. It’s like you’ll never learn how to swim if you never get in the water!

Short Story

My first car was a 1955 Chevy that looked very much like the one pictured just below.

It eventually developed transmission trouble and it wouldn’t move. James Ballard and Emmett Kendall, two mechanics who’d given me a job as a teenager in their gas station / car repair business, came to my house and towed the Chevy back to their garage, which was only a half-block away from my home. While I was working hard at tending to the pump customers that day, they disassembled the transmission, then they showed me the malfunctioning parts that had caused my car to break-down. By the time I got off work, they’d fixed my car and I was “back in business” cruizin’ and playin’ the radio with no particular place to go!

End of Story

Now you might ask, “What does that short story have to do with reading piano music?!”

Well, the lesson I took from that experience was that if there is a problem that has caused or is causing a break-down of any sort, somewhere in the mix of my life, deal with it by “towing” the problem into my figurative garage (my mind), take it apart, analyze it, identify the source of the problem, fix it, put it back together and move on!

By applying that very simple methodology to my teaching techniques, I’ve been able to help lots of people improve their music reading abilities for years and I can help you too.

During the course of my teaching career, I’ve found, more often than not, a major cause of my students’ music reading problems stemmed from their inability to read and play rhythms fluently!

Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm, rhythm!

Reading rhythm is the sole focus of a class I teach titled, “Rhythm-a-ning”. Understanding rhythms and developing the coordination to execute them with either hand is the center-stage activity in this class. There’s a reason why the piano is considered a percussion instrument and sits in the percussion section of an orchestra and not the string section.

Reading music, even at its most elementary level, involves decoding information from two main streams of data synthesis, the rhythm stream and the pitch stream. If you’re having trouble deciphering and executing the data from both streams, your work on effecting a solution will be twice as difficult if your approach is to work on solving the problems you’re having with both streams simultaneously.

So the basic idea behind rhythm-a-ning and pitch-a-ma-ning is to separate and isolate the two main component processes of music reading, rhythm execution, and pitch placement, then reintegrate the two skills at a later point in time after thoroughly working on each of the areas of concentration. The separation and isolation approach allows you to then focus 100% of your attention on working to improve and strengthen your weaknesses in each one of those two main problem areas independently.

I feel it is a lot easier to work on one problem at a time than it is to work on two or more problems simultaneously. This is a less stressful strategy and with this approach, your probability of success tables are tilted more in your favor and the odds of your success rates are increased exponentially.

Watch this sample video of Jason reading and playing the rhythms of a piece by one of my favorite classical music composer/pianists.

With patience, determination and hard work, Jason is now doing a pretty good job of rhythm-only reading through many musical genres like classical music, ragtime, hymns, pop, and jazz. He can see and appreciate his own improvement in this area which, in and of itself, is a very powerful factor in keeping him self-motivated to continue his work in this area.

Now there’s no reason why the same thing can’t be happening for you too! So get in touch if you need assistance in this area. I can help you! The main provisory is that it is you who has to practice and do the work! This is not about me! It’s about you! So contact me so we can get busy.

See you next post.