Monthly Livestream #60!

Thanks for tuning into today's livestream! Here's the recording.

I am just coming back from about 5 weeks on the road: first a week in the US with Cecile McLorinSalvant, then a week in NY at the Village Vanguard with Melissa Aldana, then about 3 weeks in Europe again with Cecile. It's a really been a dream, wow! So I started things off with a few of the tunes I had played with Melissa and Cecile. First, a new tune of Melissa's called "Ethereal Light". Then a tune that I had played in Spain a few times with Cecile called "Un Vestido y un Amor". We learned it from this Caetano Veloso recording, but the song is by an Argentian rock star named Fito Paez. It's a beautiful song that everybody sang along to when we played it in Spain.

Then into some great questions. First one about arranging for three horns, and some different things to think about. Like anything with harmony - remember, always melody first! Then, went over some different ways to use rhythm, and different ways to think about voice movement.

Then had a question about something Brad Mehldau brought up in his fantastic interview with Rick Beato (this is a must see if you haven't yet!). Around 52 minutes into the interview, Bead talks about "playing over a pedal point", particularly about John Coltrane's transition from the highly technical changes of Giant Steps to more open solo sections with less changes. This led to a discussion of modal playing in general, how it works, how it can help to free us up, and how it really co-exists with more "normal", "V-I", "functional" harmony. And how you can hear both brilliantly co-existing in a recording like "Kind Of Blue".

We talked about ideas that you can check out in more detail in this video here on my Patreon page, called "Hearing Colors".

Then a question about how this can be used to change the quality of chords when we are soloing - an interesting possibility that exists for us pianists! If we can hear different harmonies from above the bassline, we can open up some cool possibilities. Here I mentioned a crazy exercise I learned from Geoffrey Keezer over the tune Moment's Notice, and also a famous example on Brad Mehldau's "It Might As Well Be Spring".

Thank you again for a great livestream - and see you all next month!

Glenn