Pat Metheny on the Short Short Form

Here's a tidbit from an article in the March 2005 JazzTimes on Pat Metheny's latest release, which consists of one 68-minute-long composition.

"The new form is ring-tones!" Metheny says, all but agape. "It went from a symphony to an album, then to singles, then edit your single, then four-bar loops, and now it's down to one or two seconds." The Way Up, he continues, "is a reaction to a world where things are getting shorter, dumber, less interesting, less detailed, more predictable."

Here's Lyle Mays, Metheny's pianist and cowriter, on the same topic:

"I'm hyperaware of what I consider the artificial lack of time that's been imposed on life. You turn on the TV and within a few seconds you're going to hear, 'Well, that's all the time we have.' I don't know why time is in such short supply. Where did it go? Who's keeping all the time from us?"

That reminds me of a great essay I found on living in the now rather than past or future as it relates to music (can't remember if I've mentioned this before--too busy living in the moment?):

"We do not live in time, time lives in us. We create time with the mind. We might say time is the way the mind organizes experience. Whether you believe it or not, it is true. As Einstein proved, time is a relative phenomenon, and it is relative to motion. Truly understanding this, and developing the capacity to function on the basis of this understanding, (at least some of the "time") will not only enrich your life, but is one of the vital attributes of a true artist, and necessary to the creation of true art."

Teaching My Outer Child to Play

Yesterday I bought two Bastien Method piano books for my son. At the Jazz School gig, I asked Mary Fettig how she had gotten her sons so interested in music, and she suggested this series, saying that she had taught them piano herself. The other thing she said was that exposure was everything: When the kids are exposed to the music early on, they just know how it sounds. She said the first time her son played the trumpet, it sounded right, whereas she had never heard jazz and saxes before she learned it.

I took the books home and we went through the first lesson. It will be interesting to see if we can stick with it. I know we need to keep it very short so that he doesn't get bored. I'm hoping the upside of it being dedicated Mommy time will outweigh any tedium of repetition. I do think the books are good--lots of pictures, and as Mary said, you start out with songs and rhythms and notation right away, so that makes it more entertaining.

I also saw an Aebersold book at the music store: How to Learn Tunes. I flipped through it and would like to buy--or borrow--it. The author had some excellent points:
--Trust your memory, because if you don't, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
--Too many people depend on fake books now rather than memorizing tunes.
--Make lists of tunes organized by form, key, style.
--Know how many bars are in each section (A section is 8 bars, followed by 16 in the B section, followed by a 4 bar coda).

I can't remember the trick for memorizing the chord changes. My only problem with the book is that it did have a lot of tunes in it, but they were mostly instrumentals I was unfamiliar with. I'm either going to have to buy it or speed read it in the store, I guess.

Martha Graham on Divine Dissatisfaction

I was reading some jazz criticism yesterday and began to feel inadequate. There is a certain type of jazz pedagogy that hinges on negativity, I think. I suppose in that way I might be lucky I never went to music school (other than my brief, gloriously positive experience in Cuba). Just now I found the antidote. I first saw it in an inspirational booklet Madeline Eastman composed for vocalists:

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all time,
this expression is unique.

If you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium
and be lost.
The world will not have it.

It is not yours to determine how good it is;
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open.
No artist is ever pleased.
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.
There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction;
a blessed unrest that keeps us marching
and makes us more alive than the others."

--Martha Graham to Agnes De Mille

Gigs Don't Grow on Trees

I've been in scrounge mode these past few days, schmoozing and trying to scare up gigs as part of the usual feast-or-famine cycle. Today, it all paid off! I probably shouldn't jinx 'em since no contracts have been signed yet, but it looks like two very prominent venues want us, one for a Friday-Saturday two-night combo!!! I am so thrilled. So we're thinking about how to put that together--we'll probably add 2 backup singers to that. As soon as contracts are signed, I'll put 'em on my calendar.

I'm on cloud 9! I feel like jumping up and down without stopping for 20 minutes. Well, when I consider actually doing that I get lazy. It would be great to go out dancing. But since I'm a mom I probably won't be doing that either. Anyway, "I feel pretty, oh so pretty, I feel pretty and witty and briiiiiight"... :-) (I'm just joking, folks--picture Adam Sandler in "Anger Management".)

Yesterday I saw Ernie Rideout, editor in chief of Keyboard Magazine, and he asked how the gig with Stephanie Ozer went and said he wanted to know more about her, they had a lot in common (same university, among other things). So I hooked 'em up. It's nice to have some sort of sway that's useful to someone, if not myself. I mentioned that she plays some killer Hermeto Pascoal Brazilian jazz, and he said they'd just profiled Hermeto in the magazine!

Day Job Drama

It occurred to me yesterday that there is actually more drama in my day job--politics, personality conflicts, medical problems, blame, sloth, poor communication--than in my musical career. That's not to say that the negatives outweigh the positives in my day job, just that there are more of them, ironically, in a so-called professional environment, classic corporate America, than in dealing with musicians and bookers. I don't know if it's because I spend more hours per day working in an office so just statistically speaking there's going to be more of that. But it would be interesting to ask other musicians if they find that to be true as well. Or is it because musicians are working at something they love, while office workers usually aren't? And yet, I do love my day job and I think many of my coworkers do as well.

It's also ironic because musicians are perceived to be flakey and bohemian--yet as I've said before everyone I deal with is incredibly dedicated, responsible and easy to work with. But, there are tremendous advantages to having worked as long as I have in an office. First, I've learned a certain resourcefulness and ability to manage projects that served me very well in doing my CD. And then, due to the aforementioned drama, over time I have learned that "this too shall pass" and "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger" (absent the corollary "though I will piss and moan about it forever" and a hilarious version someone told me, "what doesn't kill me makes me stronger, except what maims me.")

So I guess the general ability to
a. Get s--t done
b. Deal with s--t
has applicability in something as unpredictable as a music career.

Stranger than Fiction?

From http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/dailydish/

NAS PAYS TWO MILLION DOLLARS FOR A BEAT

Rap star Nas reportedly has paid a staggering $2 million for a mystery new beat created by hip hop producers the Neptunes.
A number of artists were reported to be in competition for the beat, including Sean "P. Diddy" Combs.

It's so groundbreaking, rap veteran Busta Rhymes is convinced it will make hip-hip history.

He says, "Those drums man. Those drums are fire! If Nas is gonna rap to this beat, it's going to be over. This will be the biggest hit in the history of hip hop."

The Jazzschool with Stephanie

The gig yesterday afternoon went quite well. I only sang two songs, but I love them both. The band was really great. I enjoyed talking to Mary Fettig, who was the first woman to join the Stan Kenton band. She told me what it was like to tour Brazil with Flora Purim and Airto almost 20 years ago. She had her son (Scott Thompson, an awesome bassist who played with us yesterday) and was still breastfeeding him, but the tour was really tricky because nothing ever happened on schedule. She'd be checked out from the room, no place to clean up her baby's dirty diaper, and the rest of the band would have disappeared. She quit the band during that tour (though she finished the tour--and rejoined later). She said, by comparison, when she had joined the Stan Kenton band some years before, everything went like clockwork--you had half an hour to get on the bus in the morning, and then you drove all day to the next town, had a gig, stayed the night, rinse and repeat.

It was marvelous to play with her and trade fours on the tag of Ave Rara, my new favorite song. She knows perfectly how to shine as a soloist but also make horn and/or flute complement a voice without covering it or conflicting with it.

After the gig I talked with Phil Thompson, and we shared war stories from producing our CDs. "When I was in the studio, it was so stressful--you can feel the money just being spent by the minute," he said. "Yeah, I remember I was chatting and I looked up and the horn section was recording some parts to one of my tunes and I was like 'wait, this song doesn't have horns!' But it was too late--there goes $500." He laughed. "Do you want to do another?" I asked. He smiled sheepishly and said he did. "It's addictive," I said. He complimented me on my CD, said he liked it because it has an organic feel to it, it's real. I said that that was my most important criterion in making it, that it be soulful above all else.

San Jose Jazz Festival

I took my little guy down to San Jose on Saturday to catch some jazz. Of course, we spent 80% of our time in the jumpers with other kids (I think the festival should add just one or two more attractions for kids) and doing the rock climbing wall, but that investment paid off when my 4-year-old sat quietly through 6 songs in the Karrin Allison concert in the Rep auditorium. I was quite proud of him. I like how she does "Moanin'" (with Jon Hendricks lyrics)--I want to do that tune. I also like how she plays shaker. She sang a Jobim tune I'd never heard of, but her Portuguese, while not bad, is just not too clear either. I couldn't really pick out the words she was singing. I believe she's a very good pianist, but she didn't play piano. She dances around a bit, which I dig.

I caught a few songs at the salsa stage, and then managed to say hi to Mike Spiro and Wayne and Murray and Frank Martin and the guys over at the latin jazz stage, even though I missed the performance. I said hi to Paul VW and he said my CD was really nice. I think I forgot to tell him that he was a major reason why--he is an awesome, creative drummer, and singlehandedly responsible for the basic groove on I Did It, I Live It, since that was a blank slate coming in to the studio.

I said, "Sorry I missed you guys playing, how did it go?" "Oh, it was extraordinary! We made musical history," Paul joked. "Man, how come I always just miss the historic sets?"

A few more trips to the jumper ensued, and then we caught the last song at the salsa stage. It was Anthony Blea y Su Charanga, and Orlando was singing! I waved to him and he saw me and waved back. I had just bought Sebastian an ice cream and he was sitting on the curb eating it and a guy asks me to dance, so I say OK, so long as I can watch my kid.

We do a few turns and right away he starts with the dance lesson, trying to show me some stupid out-of-time jump that he does (not like a cool move Emilio and I learned in Cuba called "pancake"). He barks that I should never look at the ground, only at him. I point out in Spanish that I'm looking at my kid, and hey, let's just partner dance, ok? A few more spins and it's back to the stupid dance lesson. Then the song is over. What a jerk.

I always hate it when you have one dance and it's a dud. But it's also a perfect example of how people see what they want to see--this guy thinks he's God's gift to dance instruction even though he's not, and he snags a victim like me. And instead of letting the experience happen, see if we can dance together, he keeps interrupting the flow and stopping our dance to confirm his belief that he's going to teach me something. I mean, I'm not a professional salsa dancer, but I do pretty well. So it goes. I only hope Orlando didn't happen to look over and see me trying to follow this guy's ridiculous hops! I do have my reputation to protect, after all. ;-)

Bad Gigs by Tuck Andress

I've seen this posted all over the place, so I guess with some trepidation I'll copy it here--it's hilarious!

Bad Gigs
By Tuck Andress (Tuck & Patti)
Borrowed guitar, different string spacing, bridge or nut sliding during string bending or vibrato, wrong strap length or strap breaking during solo, unwound guitar string used as backup strap gradually cutting through shirt and shoulder, sleeve snagging on bridge suddenly locking up hand, wrong pick, dropped pick, broken pick, no pick, pick stuck between strings, finger caught between strings, wrong strings, dead strings, sticky strings, blood on strings, broken strings, no extra strings, jar of honey spilled all over strings, vintage L-5's gig bag shoulder strap breaking immediately before album release concert for 5,000 people causing guitar to fall on concrete and creating crack from tailpiece to neck which gradually splits apart during performance with action getting higher and higher, amp too far away, amp too close, amp broken so play through bass amp or P.A., tone all wrong, overdrive bypass switch broken, cymbal in ear, band too loud, audience too loud, band downstairs too loud, bad monitors, no monitors, in-ear monitors broken so Patti is heard acoustically but Tuck is heard only through house PA 50 yards away resulting in Tuck being unavoidably out of sync with Patti by 1/6 second for whole show, guitar buzz, RF from nearby transmitter louder than the music itself, brownouts making organ pitch fluctuate randomly over an octave range, power outage, equipment plugged into 230 volts immediately before show, earthquake during show in high-rise, outdoor desert performance at 131 degrees with sand-blasting winds, sub-freezing outdoor mountaintop performance with snow storms and 40 mph winds, high altitude dizziness, no sleep, no food, too much food, wrong food, food poisoning, fever, locked bathrooms, way too many liquids before long show, nagging suspicion that zipper is down, contact lens falling out during moment of peak concentration, compromised hand position due to repeatedly sliding full width of stage while trying to keep playing but not collide with Patti on yacht in rough Finnish Gulf of Bothnia, charts blown away by wind, charts on thermal fax paper, charts in wrong key, charts without bar lines, charts with bar lines all displaced by two beats, charts in bass clef or C clef, chord charts with do/re/mi (France) instead of C/D/E and everything else in Portuguese, realization that Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Pass, George Benson, Chaka Khan, Bobby McFerrin or Steve Gadd just walked in, drunks falling on stage, drunks disrobing on stage, drunks grabbing instruments or band members, band members falling asleep during song, pigs frolicking in sawdust-covered frat house knocking over band equipment, thinly veiled animosity between bride's and groom's families erupting into violence during heartfelt version of My Romance, nightly juggling of playing and operating the lighting console/footswitches and talking to audience members and trying to reign in tempos and egos of various fellow top-40 band members, arrival at duo gig with unbelievably loud, aggressive fuzz-wah hard rock bass player to discover that assignment is to back up elderly white-haired and white- suited gentleman singing unfamiliar country songs to unforgiving patrons, crowded upscale happy hour dance floor unraveling into pandemonium as normal-looking customers all collapse to the floor and writhe around on each other while astonished saxophone-playing duo partner walks out leaving helpless solo guitarist playing The Hustle for 25 minutes, funk bass player imprisoned in lounge band insisting on popping strings throughout sensitive ballads, accidental imprisonment of Patti in wine cellar out of earshot during guitar instrumentals, onstage and on- instrument living creatures with varying numbers of legs, belligerent drunken bowling alley lounge customer demanding that funk band play Debussy's Clair de Lune while remainder of band looks expectantly at guitarist, drummer watching ball game on portable TV with headphones throughout performance, guest singer repeatedly changing keys at random moments, realization that the people who have just boldly picked up instruments and are unexpectedly sitting in are Herbie Hancock and Wah Wah Watson, guns drawn at rehearsals to settle disputes about form of song, marginally famous singer resorting to the dreaded "Do you know who I am" line, drummer and delusional would-be front man jumping off the drums in the middle of a song and mistakenly chanting "we don't need no drummer to keep that funky beat" to a dance floor packed with suddenly hostile former dancers, unstable band member deciding that it is his responsibility to educate the audience over the microphone, bass player playing random notes and rhythms because he is not a bass player at all but nonetheless booked the gig, drummer announcing that he killed somebody just before the show, swimming pool party turning into orgy with splashing on inexperienced solo electric guitarist sitting beside pool doing his first solo gig and fielding endless requests for the same song he had just played yet again, bride's and groom's special song evaporating from mortified solo musician's mind at the crucial moment, band member disappearing suddenly when his chair falls backwards off riser, unstable enormous man peaking on LSD brandishing artificial limb removed from his companion at audience and threatening band to "sing with this", mirrors on back wall of club causing introspective young guitarist to question meaning of his life at early stage in career.

Animal Singers

On our way up to Reno last week, I told Wayne and Murray my theory about humans singing, how we're the only apes who sing. We started thinking of all the animals that do sing: whales, birds, wolves and dogs (maybe, if you count howls), cats (again, if you count their calls), frogs, perhaps some monkeys (howler monkeys?). Part of the question is defining what singing is. My definition would be sounds, melodies, that have enough variation and length so that it's not just a single hoot or call or even sequence of such that the animal does. Rather, it's a complex, ever-changing series of pitches of varying length. Of course, as far as we know no animal combines words and music as we do--but who knows, maybe they do and we just don't know it. I've been meaning to look up Native American singing--I can't tell if they're singing words or just making sounds. If indeed they are words, than that would be an argument in favor of saying we can't tell if certain animals speak language, since we have enough trouble telling when certain tribes of humans speak another language.

But back to animal singing. I just found an article on this topic: "Music without Borders," Science News Online, April 2000! Apparently, a pianist in Greensboro, N.C. named Patricia Gray, with the National Musical Arts program, has formed a BioMusic Project with a dozen scientists and musicians to explore the "musical sounds of all species."

Turns out I was right about apes--only a few primates are considered singers:

"Although primates are closer to Pavarotti than a whale is, they aren't particularly musical, notes Thomas Geissmann of the Institute of Zoology in Hannover, Germany. In his work on evolution, he accepts as a song a string of notes, usually of more than one type, that form a recognizable pattern in time. Some 26, or 11 percent, of primate species sing by this definition, he reports in The Origins of Music (2000, N.L. Wallin et al., eds., MIT Press). The chanteurs include some of the indris, tarsiers, titis, and gibbons. The behavior seems to have evolved independently four times within primates, he says."

As I thought, whales also sing, with repetition and rhyme, over seven octaves! But really, birds are the closest to us in this respect. Apparently, Mozart had a pet starling, a bird that passes musical traditions from generation to generation and is also a talented mimic:

"One of his notebooks records a passage from the last movement of the Piano Concerto in G Major and the same passage as the starling revised it. The bird imitated it closely but changed the sharps to flats. 'Das war schön'—That was beautiful!,— reads the comment in Mozart's hand.

When the starling died, Mozart held graveside ceremonies, singing hymns and reciting a poem he'd written for the fallen songster. Baptista agrees with two other ornithologists who have argued that Mozart's next composition, an odd sextet for strings and two horns, known as 'A Musical Joke,' shows starling style. Mozart wrote it only 8 days after the death of his bird, and it includes such starling-like bits as intertwined tunes, off-key recapitulations, and an abrupt ending."

Another cool fact: Starlings have a two-part voice organ and can sing two songs simultaneously! Among human singers, only Bobby McFerrin has mastered that trick (and only by faking it, of course, switching quickly between a bass line and a melody line.)

Singing While Sick

The cold is fully in force now. I took some Nyquil last night, which let me sleep but I think I finally see the light and agree with those who say it dries you out too much. Woke up this morning with no voice. I was resigning myself to cancelling my two appearances today but in Runner's World I read about this marathoner who pulled a muscle while trying to get away from a dog during a training run, and that cost him several victories though ultimately he won the silver this past Olympics. The point? S@#$ happens--winners find a way around it. I got on the Web and looked up "singing with a cold" and actually found a wealth of information, which I've been following. There's a great article here by a vocal coach, Mark Baxter. I'm going to follow his guidelines, warming up very very slowly over the next few hours (and not taking any more antihistamines). And then I'm going to religiously avoid getting another cold. I have so many more gigs than ever before, so this is an issue I have to deal with. Of course, it's not the first time, and it could have been worse--I could have been like this just before the Reno Jazz Orchestra performance or something. But as he says, colds are inevitable, so you've got to learn to sing with them and avoid most of them, not only by washing hands/not touching eyes-nose-mouth/not touching other people/avoiding sick people but also through diet, exercise, sleep, stress reduction and avoiding abrupt temperature changes. All this is advice that I would scoff at in the past, but there will be no more scoffing, mark my words!

When Yoga Isn't Worth It

On Tuesday, I did my yoga class at noon, but our teacher--bless her--was quite sick. The only available space was practically opposite her. The whole time I was practicing yoga I was fighting a vision of clouds of germs emanating from her powerful breath and heading straight for the foolish singer whose face was less than two feet away. I am just so damn susceptible--this past winter, I had to stop training for my second marathon because I got something like six colds in a row. I generally get them from my four-year-old, but in this case, our teacher was the first sick person I'd been in contact with for several months. Afterwards, I tried not to think about getting sick. My husband loves to tell me it's all in my head.

On Wednesday morning, I got a call to sing at a funeral at 3 pm that same day. "I don't have any shoes," I objected. I was wearing silver tennis shoes and wouldn't have time to go back home and change them. "That's OK," the music director said, "we'll find some for you." When I got there he handed me a pair of silver pumps. "You want me to wear these?" I said. "Just kidding, try these," he said, handing me some black shoes. Organist humor, I guess. I sang two songs, Ave Maria and Amazing Grace, for the service, which was for an elderly woman who had passed. On Amazing Grace, the director said, "Just do your usual 'thing' to it, singing the first verse a capella." So I embellished it. It didn't occur to me until just now that the reason I sang that song was because the deceased's name was Grace.

Wednesday evening, I spent an hour photocopying music and then drove to Richmond for another rehearsal at Michael's awesome studio. It was long, but good. It's so interesting how when you add a new person to a group, it can take a few tunes before you all find the groove. I've noticed that with musicians of all calibers. In this case, the percussionist hadn't been at the previous rehearsal so it was an adjustment but it all worked out.

Thursday, I skipped "sick yoga" and left in the afternoon for the gig in Benicia. What a long haul! It took an hour and a half to get there, but at least during the stop-and-go traffic I could do my makeup, endangering the lives of thousands of innocent commuters. Once we got there, though, it was nice. Well attended, great interaction with the audience, I got lots of names for my mailing list and sold a few more CDs, we made good tips, the food was excellent and the band was in sync. Oh, and Michael not only played great vibes but also set up a sound system that was far superior to anything I could have come up with, so I couldn't in good conscience not pay him extra for that.

I got home and as I sat and watched Fear Factor with Sebastian, I started to feel that tell-tale tickle in my throat. Sure enough, Friday morning I was sick. The drag is that I have to rehearse today at 3 pm for a short recital tomorrow that I'm singing as a guest in. And then I have the regular Grace Cathedral service tomorrow night. Then, so long as my voice holds out--and if my yoga teacher was any indication, this cold can kill your voice--I have the gig on Sunday the 14th at the Jazz School. I remember reading a long time ago about a famous singer who at some point in her career stopped shaking hands or touching people because she just decided that she couldn't afford to keep getting colds that would attack her means of making a living. At this moment, I wish I'd run the opposite direction rather than take that yoga class!

Michael's Place

I went over to Michael Gold's yesterday to rehearse for a few hours for our gig in Benicia. I really like the sound he brings with vibes. And his studio setup is state of the art. Understandably so, since he's a sound man as well as a musician and teacher. I walked in and everything was perfectly arranged, my mic just waiting for me. We started playing Ave Rara, my new favorite song, and the sound was breathtakingly clear. When we finished, I said, "This is the best rehearsal space I've ever been in. My voice is almost disconcertingly clear--I can hear the good and the bad, perfectly!" Then a train careened by and everything vibrated and I jumped out the front door to look and sure enough, there were the tracks, not 15 feet behind us. "That," Michael said when I came back in, "is the sound of low rent!"

Ave Rara was tricky for Michael and Dean, the bass player, as I've taken it up a half step and so they had to discard 15 years of playing it in the other key. They have an excellent Brazilian sound, not surprising since they've spent years studying with Marcos Silva and Jovino Santos Neto.

We didn't have trouble with the key on my gig the other day, because none of those cats had ever heard it before. But it is such a gorgeous song. Several people came up at the gig to ask what the name of the song was. And the words! Roughly translated from Portuguese: "My life's a pilgrimage in search of you... rare bird of Islam... ah, such thirst is my destiny, this love is Bedouin, your sheets are an oasis. But always at the end of the voyage, you turn back into a mirage, sand and sun."