Monthly Livestream #55!
Thanks for tuning in to this afternoon's livestream! Here's the recording.
I'm just back from a two week tour in Europe with the great Melissa Aldana, and having her music in mind I decided to play a few tunes from her book. First was a tune of mine called "The Path" (formerly titled "Homestead" and recorded on my album "Fellowship"), and a new tune of Melissa's called "Time Revealed".
I mentioned that I memorized some of Melissa's in hotel rooms practicing on a fold-up keyboard. I've talked about it here before, but again I really recommend it if you travel a lot. Here's the one that I have, the brand is NikoMaku, (but there are many others that are basically the same thing): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0923L5FCS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Then into some questions:
Is there a difference between comping in a two-feel vs. walking? Basically no, I said, but this led to a discussion of comping over a Bb blues, and cool voicing trick I like to use.
About composing - do you wait for inspiration, or do you just write as an exercise? For me - I don't wait for inspiration, and generally I wouldn't advise anybody to wait. Otherwise you'll wait forever and never do anything. When I need to write new music, I get in the habit of writing something everyday, and after a period of regular "brain dumps" I have some material to work with.
And for this, I demonstrated a bit on the live stream, and started to write a little tune live, so you could see the process. It's not too glamorous, and it's best just to start and get anything on the page!
A question about overcoming hurdles in playing. Personally I feel like there are always hurdles in my playing, and even things that I know very well I could always know better. But a few ideas that always work are to be sure I really understand the rhythm of what I'm playing at the micro level, and to be sure I'm always hearing the melody of what I'm playing. And I demonstrated this great exercise that really embodies that: Ari Hoenig Rhythm Exercise This one would help too: Aaron Parks Melody Exercise
And one last question about playing in 6/8
Thanks again for all of the great questions, and see you next month!
Glenn
