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barrymclark

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Blog Entries posted by barrymclark

  1. barrymclark
    Ok, got back into the groove of things with last night's meeting with Sal.
     
    The week leading up to last night wasn't much better in terms of practicing. I was prepared to go in there and honestly show no movement from the last time we met. I got there way early as I have to leave early to get there on time. I will either get there an hour early or a half hour late with how Atlanta traffic is between my work and where I take the lessons.
     
    I ended up getting there about an hour and a half early this time. So, I spent that time in the truck playing and trying to get something to show.
     
    Funny enough, all we did was just jam on the changes of Beyond the Sea with him playing the melody, then me on the melody, then me singing over it. It was VERY relaxed. In the end, he said he saw a marked improvement in my conviction of playing since the last time we played. That was a welcome but unexpected compliment.
     
    Anyways, I am going to start moving Beyond the Sea into different keys and I will be picking out the melody for Everything I've Got as sung by Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Corea (on the Verve Jazz Masters Volume 20). It is a new one for Sal it would seem as well. So, this could be fun for the both of us!
     
    For those who have never heard it, Everything I've Got is a delightfully dark song. I encourage a listen especially if it is the version I mentioned previously.
  2. barrymclark
    Sort of a bummer of a week on a couple of fronts. Mainly because the boy - 6 month old son- got an eye infection which babies are prone to get but also, and leastly, I had to cancel my meeting with Sal to tend to his needs. Don't regret it, just a bummer.
     
    Anyways, the upside on both counts is that the boy is better and the week off from Sal I have seen as HUGELY beneficial.
     
    How? Well, it gave me a couple of weeks to practice what I have picked up and not having more piled on every week. Also, I found an awesome tool for jamming with Autumn Leaves on line. There is a Jam Track on YouTube and you can find it
    . Very cool stuff. 
    Jamming along with this I can hear better what Sal is talking about. I started with just the chord changes. Then start doing the chord subs. Then, I practiced running chord tones instead of chords. Then a mix of the two.
  3. barrymclark
    Well, today is a sad day in my studies, but I stand by it for the reasons I have are good. There isn't much in this world that will come between me and music, but my children are 3 of those handful of possible interferences. I don't know if I have mentioned it much on here, but both of my daughters have Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis and, although they are responding well to their treatments, those treatments are coming at a cost. That cost coupled with the cost of my time with Sal have had a noticeable impact on my household finances. So much so that we are watching our bank accounts with more fear than we ought to at then end of every pay period. We have savings, but we are trying to avoid using them. To that end, I had to cancel my lessons with Sal. Although he gave me a great rate, that is just $85 per month I need in my pocket.
     
    To that end, I am not stopping. I have the lessons I have received up until this point and I have my books that I can work with by Jody Fisher. Nothing will replace having Sal there guiding me into Jazz, but I will make the most of what I have to work with.
     
    When money loosens up for me, I plan on returning. I only hope he is still teaching then.
     
    What I have been doing this past week is just running scales and chord tones.
     
    In the 6/1 position (Root on the sixth string at the index finger), I ran C maj. I then ran the same scale but in the 5/1 position (Root on the fifth string at the index finger).
     
    In the same scale, I ran the pentatonic scale in the 6/1, 6/2 and 6/4. Pretty much did this daily until I couldn't keep my eyes open any more.
     
    Just as a drill, I took the C major scale in the 6/1 position and did the following ascending in pitch:
     
    C D E F D E F G E F G A and take that pattern and extend it on up the scale.
  4. barrymclark
    Tomorrow is my first day learning from Sal. I know very little will happen tomorrow as I imagine it will be more of an orientation of sorts. Him getting a feel for what it is I am looking to get out of it and figuring out how best to get to that point.
     
    All the same, I am absolutely pumped about the experience I am about to have learning from a person I consider to be a true master of his craft.
  5. barrymclark
    Having navigated the waters of Beyond the Sea (pun intended) numerous times... enough to be comfortable with the changes, I went into this week's lesson ready to go with it.
     
    It was fun being able to jam with Sal on another song. Having him pick up a melody line on top of the backing chords and embellish some.
     
    His challenge to me this week is expanding the backing chords into utilizing the melody in the chord changes. That is to allow the melody to dictate to me the chords I use as opposed to the chords dictating the melody. So, my quest this week is to take the F-Dm-Gm-C7 vamp and go about choosing the F chord but the 'right' F chord in my ears so as to support the melody. Do more active counting as opposed to feeling the beat by tapping my toes. Play the single line notes and fit chords in over dead space between the melody notes and, where fitting in chords over 'dead space' pick some sub chords to push the song along.
     
    As short as this post is, the above is easily a heavy workload for me over the next week. Let's just see how it goes for me.
     
    I think the next song I want to tackle is Ev'rything I've Got. I love that song. Just dark, humorous and all over a nice bouncy, happy sounding song.
  6. barrymclark
    Alright, I am back meeting with Sal after a couple if missed weeks.
     
    We jumped right in with learning All of Me and then later in the lesson picking up on Beyond the Sea. These were songs of my request as they are in constant play in the ol' iPod.
     
    I got a bit of a jump on the lesson as I get there early. He gave me the sheet music for All of Me and let me use a teaching room not in use to get familiar while I wait.
     
    This song is another great example of how chord tones can make the lion share of the melody.
     
    Song starts in Cmaj. From there, the melody is pretty simple. It is, in Cmaj, descending root ©, fifth (G), third (E) for the words "All of me...". The use of the root, 3rd and 5th for the melody keeps up through the A section as the chords change. There are notes outside of the chord tones to be sure as well as some passing tones, but this pattern will get you most of the way there.
     
    Beyond the Sea is more of a homework assignment than All of Me as we just went over it quickly. I will have more on this song next week I am sure.
  7. barrymclark
    I started this week figuring I would have to cancel the next two lessons because money is just too tight right now. I called Sal up on Monday to let him know and he insisted I come anyway. "Don't worry about the bread," he said. "It's more important to me that we keep this going."
     
    That meant more to me than anything I could put on here. That definitely signaled to me that I wasn't just a half-hourly pay.
     
    That coolness aside, we immediately dug into Beyond the Sea. That song really moves through the chords! The changes to me are a bit awkward but I am getting it slowly but surely.
     
    I think what makes this one so much fun to learn is my familiarity with it. That presents its own obstacle for me since I tend to do what I want to hear as opposed to what I should be doing for the sake of learning. I have to pay attention to when I wander off and reign it in.
     
    It still amazes me how fast he can make changes to a song. In utter awe of it. He often leaves me in the dust but quickly notices I am not with him anymore and comes back for me.
     
    He won't be there next week so I will spend the next two weeks on All of Me, Beyond the Sea and Autumn Leaves.
  8. barrymclark
    This past week has really been something! It is amazing what even a little time with a teacher can do! Before I was merely understanding what my theory and practice books were saying. Now, they have context! THAT IS HUGE! Since I discovered this, I went back to the beginning. Going through simple chords and drills.
     
    Before I mentioned that I was going through the C Major scale with the root starting on different fingers such as 6/1, 6/4 and so on. For the past week, I have been playing the C scale RELENTLESSLY from the 6/1, 6/2, 6/4, 5/1, 5/2, open and 5/4 positions (this one is a bit hard on a dreadnaught).
     
    A few days a go, I started connecting the different scale positions. Starting in the 6/4 position, I would go up the scale until I hit the highest C in that position and then went down in 6/2 until I get to the lowest C in that position and then go up the scale again but in the 6/1 position. I do this until I get sick or the wife finds something for me to do. haha.
     
    A baby step was also taken! With my growing familiarity to the C scale, I started playing the positions with my eyes closed and noticing when I hit a wrong note in the scale simply by sound. From there, I would just noodle around in the scale over Cmaj. It was improv but EXTREMELY simplistic. Baby steps. I know the basic feel I want as I go through it and do something along those lines.
  9. barrymclark
    This one was less of a blur, but still a blur. It all made sense, but the time I was there seemed to shoot by just wayyyyy too fast.
     
    This time, it was more focused as well.
     
    We started and ended on Autumn Leaves. To a powerchord heaving, heavy-metal expatriate, this was just mind blowing. A simple thing to you long time jazzers, but the door into a new world for me.
     
    Learned about the Jazz or Real Harmonic minor where I had only met the regular harmonic minor in passing at a bar once in Florida. Can't remember the name of the place. Anyways... it was just something.
     
    What is to be accomplished more immediately with Autumn Leaves in these lessons for me is:
     
    1: Learn the progression and melody first and foremost (of course)
     
    2: Understand how the melody and progression work together.
     
    3: Understand how a chord may seem to suggest one scale but the melody will say another.
     
    4. Forget about 1 through 3 as it is all bullshit (basically his statement), have fun and make it sound good to you. Worry about the hows and whats of it later. haha.
     
    Having just gotten back home, I am comfortable up through E rhm (real harmonic minor) so far. From there, I keep finding myself wandering off the written song instead of doing what is there. I am skipping to step 4 too fast. Possibly cause I have been playing for hours now since the beginning of my lesson.
     
    Pick up there tomorrow where I started to wander.
  10. barrymclark
    Today still had a touch of that blur that I have experienced in previous weeks, but there was notably less of it and the lesson was even more focused than it was last week.
     
    We started on Autumn Leaves where we left off last week. It was in this that he introduced me to tritone subs. "You can actually use those things?" Yep. Made a different animal of Autumn Leaves right there on the fly. Just amazing. It was this week that really drove home to the both of us just how musically illiterate I am. No worries, it just better defined the path we need to take.
     
    Besides Autumn Leaves and the quick tritone lesson, there were chromatic scales and their common usage between chord tones. Backtracking (looking way ahead so you can change the chording coming up to resolve to a certain chord) which involved more lesson in tritone subs. Quick brief on turnarounds and more Jazz Philosophy 101.
     
    Expanding on last week's statement about learning it so you can forget about it, it is even more clear today what he meant: like you don't have to think about the words and letters that make up the words that you make your sentence out of, you want to get where you don't have to pay much mind to the chords and notes you choose. You just want to get your point across.
     
    Another philosophical point: You are going to make mistakes, the trick is to spin the lemon (mistake) into lemonade (something great). For that you need sugar (knowledge) and water (experience). Without it, you still just have a lemon (mistake). Like a good politician, you, in the end, can turn something wrong into something that sounds right... even if it is wrong because you did it and got out of it with conviction.
     
    This week I am to practice the things mentioned above and start on Georgia on my Mind.
  11. barrymclark
    This one had hardly any blur to it at all. That was nice. Still a boatload more info than I can take in for a session, but still very productive. Some of it was reinforcing what I knew already but tons of new info and things I can do for study and practice.
     
    Lots of sub work. Dim7/7b9 and I/III sub'ing.
     
    We used Georgia on my Mind for working lead melody into chords and sub practicing.
     
    At the end of it, I as looking at his Super 400. He has owned it since about '78 and, from what I saw, it is a '66 made in Kalamazoo. When we got talking about used market values, I mentioned that models like his easily go for over 10k and run around 15k to 20k. He said, "I'd drop it in a heartbeat if someone offered me that kind of money for it. The guitar isn't as important as the player. There is this kid in his 20's and he plays on a $300 Ibanez and he sounds incredible." In a nutshell, the old adage that it's a poor workman who blames his tools (Thanks for the adage, Ben). Of course, I knew this to be true already that a top quality guitar in the hands of a novice will always sound rudimentary and cheap, beat up, old jazz box in the hands of a master will make it sing.
     
    Sorry for the late entry. I came home to a baby with a fever last night so the wife and I were taken up with caring for him. He is fine now. Just needed a day.
     
    So, off to a week of practice.
  12. barrymclark
    As posted last week, Sal and I weren't getting together this week. Still thought I would post anyways as I am still working on it regardless. This time without a get together with Sal has proven helpful too. I am able to really play around with what I have learned and beat it into my head a bit more as opposed to learning it just a little before I get a mess more crammed in there.
     
    So, it is more of the same. Autumn Leaves played all kinds of ways. Doing some minor improv stuff. Very, very minor. Nothing to get excited about. I would, say, play Autumn Leaves with every other chord rushed a half beat. For instance, I would play the Amin on time, but play D7 a half beat early. Gmaj on time then Cmaj early and so on. Gives it a neat groove.
     
    From there, I would tool around with the 'vocal melody' part. Making it have as many notes as syllables at first. Then adding a flavorful extra note here and there. Nothing crazy.
     
    Again, I would, outside of the 'vocal melody' part, play single note stuff. Playing just the 3's. Playing just the 5's. Playing just 5's over the Amin and D7 then just 3's over the Gmaj and Cmaj. Do that in a few octaves. Then I would find ways to 'dress up' the boring single notes. A quick and easy way I found to add class to a note all by its lonesome is a simple slide up from a half step down nice and quick like. For the sake of argument, over the Amin, the third is a C. Slide up to the C from B. Don't linger on B or it just sounds like you screwed up.
     
    Other than that, I finished learning the basics of Autumn Leaves. I have found some fun in going on YouTube and playing along with other people's versions of it. This morning, it was Nat King Cole's turn!
     
    I have been discussing with a friend over the past few weeks of the rather Zen nature of learning jazz. He sent me this quote from Bill Evans' liner notes in Kind of Blue:
     
    "There is a Japanese visual art in which the artist is forced to be spontaneous. He must paint on a thin stretched parchment with a special brush and black water paint in such a way that an unnatural or interrupted stroke will destroy the line or break through the parchment. Erasures or changes are impossible. These artists must practice a particular discipline, that of allowing the idea to express itself in communication with their hands in such a direct way that deliberation cannot interfere.
     
    The resulting pictures lack the complex composition and textures of ordinary painting, but it is said that those who see will find something captured that escapes explanation.
     
    This conviction that direct deed is the most meaningful of reflections, I believe, has prompted the evolution of the extremely severe and unique disciplines of the jazz or improvising musician.
     
    Group improvisation is a further challenge. Aside from the weighty technical problem of collective coherent thinking, there is the very human, even social need for sympathy from all members to bend for the common result. This most difficult problem, I think, is beautifully met and solved on this recording.
     
    As the painter needs his framework of parchment, the improvising musical group needs its framework in time. Miles Davis presents here frameworks which are exquisite in their simplicity and yet contain all that is necessary to stimulate performance with sure reference to the primary conception.
     
    Miles conceived these settings only hours before the recording dates and arrived with sketches which indicated to the group what was to be played. Therefore, you will hear something close to pure spontaneity in these performances. The group had never played these pieces prior to the recordings and I think without exception the first complete performance of each was a take."
     
    Thanks again, Ben!
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