Monthly Livestream #20!

Had a great livestream this afternoon, thanks again for tuning in! Just getting back from the road with the most amazing Cecile McLorin Salvant, I started things off with a few tunes from her book as they were fresh on my mind. First was her great tune "Monday" (it was Monday after all), then I played Djavan's "Flor de Lis " (aka "Upside Down"), which we played most nights of the tour.

Then had some great questions,: first was about arranging, so similar to the composing demonstration from a few livestreams ago, I took a request for a tune and started to arrange it live on the stream. The tune was "Giant Steps", and I broke down some of the devices I might use if I was coming up with an arrangement of a tune.

Then had a question about using voicings to create lines in solos - which is key in in piano playing! So had fun talking about that. And anyone that has had a lesson knows that I'm always talking about "skeletons" or "shells" of chords and different ways to orchestrate or "break them up".

Then had a question about fingerings, which the more I play the more I think that fingerings really don't matter, and "traditional" fingerings for scales are borderline useless.

And wrapped up with a conceptual question about the paradox of perfection in music - how when we learn something we often strive for perfection, but often times music that we really love is not perfect at all. If we are learning someone's music, or a solo, is perfection really the goal, especially if the original material is not perfect at all? I'm not really sure of the answer to that - but that's one of those great questions that itself is probably more important than its potential answers.

Thanks again everyone, and look forward to seeing you all again next month!

Glenn