Monthly Livestream #41!

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

I started off with a few tunes - first an arrangement of I Wish I Knew by my friend and great saxophonist Adam Kolker. Then into a request for "I Remember You" - also had a request to play a tune in an odd meter, so I did this one in 5.

Then had a bunch of great questions - first we addressed odd meters, and I talked about an amazing exercise that I learned from Ari Hoenig that is one of the best ways to explore, internalize, and feel rhythm. I also talked about this in an earlier video here on Patreon that you can see here: My favorite rhythm exercise (from Ari Hoenig) 

Then had a question about what makes something jazz vs. not jazz - really a difficult question, because everything from Count Basie to Cecil Taylor is under the jazz umbrella. To me, just being improvised doesn't make it jazz - a lot of definitive jazz music doesn't have a lot of improvisation (the example I gave being Ahmad Jamal's "Live at the Pershing", but there are of course more). I think that in the end it's a rhythmic quality, if the rhythm comes from the player in a substantial way, and not a sheet of paper, it's more likely to qualify as jazz.

Then back to odd meters quickly, and composing a bass line in an odd meter. We composed a few a basslines on the spot, and talked about how you can use composing to come up with a longer phrase than you could just improvise.

Then had a question about nerves right before playing. Everyone is nervous before they play! It's good to be somewhat nervous actually, because that means you care. And although they never will go away entirely, preparation helps. The more prepared you are, the less likely you are to be nervous. So in jazz music, it helps a lot to have the music memorized, to start. Then over time, you can learn some reliable ways of playing your instrument, devices that you know you can use, and that can help reduce nervousness as well.

Then a question about piano technique, and how to play chords with our LH. This is a big discussion, but basically with chords it's important to place every chord - you have to be on the chord and ready to play it before you actually play it! So much so that there's never any "jumping" in piano playing. Some things sound like jumps, but they're not, they fully prepared. So you're never "throwing darts" when you play - you actually are walking right up to the dartboard and placing every dart right on the bullseye.

Then one last question about our left hands - and how our left hands really have more power over our overall sound than our right hands. I demonstrated a bit on the tune "Celia".

We covered a lot as always! Thanks for all of your great questions, and see you all next month!

Glenn