Poseur to Composer

Today's revised practice regiment was constructive. First I practiced the Cm Pentatonic Blues Scale (vanilla version), right hand ascending. I'm comfortably at 80 bmp.

After approximately 10 minutes I moved on to So What (the bass part by Paul Chambers) at 40 bmp, with beats 2 and 4 on 4/4 time. This setting gives my playing a swing feel and has brought my practice to life! Where the road gets bumpy though is when the bass line goes from D minor to E flat minor. That raised part of the melody hasn't been ingrained into my muscle memory enough. I'll work on that tomorrow.

Last was improvisation. For now, I'm focused on left hand comping using the 2-5-1 chord progression on the C major scale. Keeping it nice and easy, using this video by Kent Hewitt as a guide. I find the finger transition from the 2-chord to the 5-chord second inversion to be difficult, but then again my overall technique is lousy.

Note to self: sit up straight and play the keys as if the palms of my hands were holding a ball.

This entry was probably boring to read, so I'll make it up to you with a cool website I found this morning. It's called Note Kitchen. Type in a chord and it'll show you the keys on the keyboard.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 20 minutes Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 27 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 7

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Creamy improv soup. Photo by Geoff Peters

I posted a question about applying the 2-5-1 chord progression to the secret blues scale on the musictheory subreddit, and the comments were informative. No, it doesn't work. Yes, you'll go mad if you try.

Still, I yearn to learn improvisation on the keyboard. It's the creator/maker/composer side of my personality that craves it. Playing my own music is a more compelling proposition than playing someone else's song, even a timeless masterpiece like So What. Improvisation is also expressive and may be of value for psychoanalysis, a topic I've been interested in for many years.

There's a humorous quote by Miles Davis in The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece. Speaking of Ornette Coleman and his chaotic group improvisations, Miles Davis said “Hell, just listen to the way he writes and how he plays. If you’re talking psychologically, the man is all screwed-up inside.”

If you have any interest at all interested in this subject, read the paper Playing off the beat: Applying the jazz paradigm to psychotherapy by David Johnson.

One more thing about improvisation. I signed up for Willie Myette's free 30 Day Playbook and went right to his improvisation lesson. Willie says improvisation is the act of taking things learned over time (i.e. jazz licks, altered chords etc) and putting them together in a way that is new. I guess it's like making soup. You start with a base of broth and add ingredients available to you and that will hopefully taste delicious together.

In my case, I'm still searching for the cooking pot :/

One more item to cover. My “hands on” keyboard practice has been an unfocused mess this week, and playing So What has gotten sloppier. To remedy this I'm going to practice the song at 40 bpm (it's supposed to be played at 136) until I can play it perfectly four times in a row. Only then will I proceed to the next part (the transcribed solo by Miles).

I've barely practiced the Cm Blues scale this past week either. I'll do so next week.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 27 minutes Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 5 minutes (rounding up again) Quality of practice (out of 10): 2

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The 2-5-1 chords I laboured over like algebra yesterday don't harmonize nicely. That's the acid test. Do the chords actually sound good? Perhaps I should experiment by inverting them into rootless chord voicings. It's a practice exercise for another day.

Another alternative for left-hand comping are shells (or shell voicings). They are simple two note chords comprised of the root and the 3rd or 7th of the chord. My first exposure to them were in Learn to Play Piano in Six Weeks or Less and was reminded of them in Peter Martin's emailer this morning (recommended!). Thing is I don't particularly like shell voicings. They sound too minimalist. They are good for right hands that have a lot of interesting things to say, but mine don't yet. I'd rather comp with lush Bill Evans-esque chords.

As an aside, I saw the Miles Davis documentary film last night. I enjoyed it, but there were no new insights for me... except one regarding the award-winning, fast selling experimental Bitches Brew. Apparently, Miles was surprised at the wild success of the album, and when he received his first royalty check from its sales he said it felt dishonest to take the money. I'm under the impression Miles didn't think much of Bitches Brew.

I don't think much of the album either, but at least it escapes the sameness of most Jazz out there.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 0 minutes... I'll be back on track tomorrow. Quality of meditation (out of 10): 0

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 3 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 5 (rounded up)

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Thinking aloud here...

I'm trying to apply the 2-5-1 chord progression to the Cm Pentatonic Blues scale (the notes are the exact same as Peter shows in his informative video How to Play Jazz With One Easy Scale). I want to use the 2-5-1 chords for left hand comping instead of the chords Peter Martin uses. As I said yesterday, the chords Peter makes with his left hand are too much of a stretch for my hands.

The notes of the Cm Pentatonic Blues scale are C (root), Eb (minor third), F (fourth), F# (flattened fifth), G (fifth), Bb (dominant seventh) and C (root). Peter says to add in a major 3rd. That would be E. So the revised “secret version” is C, Eb, E, F, F#, G, Bb and C.

Back to the 2-5-1 chord progression. The 2 of the 2-5-1 is the second note of the secret version (and the first chord of the chord progression – a Minor Seventh chord). In this case it's Fb or E because Fb and E are the same. With that second note I'm to make a Minor Seventh chord. The formula for the a Minor Seventh chord is 1 (root) – b3 – 5 – b7.

The first chord of the 2-5-1 chord progression is Eb, E, G, Cb. Amirite?

The 5 of 2-5-1 is the fifth note of the secret version Pentatonic Blues scale in Cm: F#. This chord is a Dominant Seventh and the formula is 1- 3 – 5 – b7. So the second chord of the 2-5-1 chord progression is F#, Bb, Eb, Fb.

The 1 in the 2-5-1 is, you guessed it, the first note of the scale: C. We make a Major Seventh chord out of that C, so the third chord is C, E, F#, Bb.

That's all I have time to figure out today. Hope it's not just psychobabble and I've lost my marbles like John Nash of A Beautiful Mind.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 0 minutes... yes, again Quality of meditation (out of 10): 0

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 10 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 3... Totally consumed by this 2-5-1 thing

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Jazz master Peter Martin's left-hand comping has opened up a pandora box of rabbit holes.

First, his left-hand “voicings” – I'm not 100 percent confident I'm using the term correctly here – require tenth interval hand stretches. My hands, while not small by most definitions, cannot play these chords. I need alternatives. The book Adaptive Strategies for Small-Handed Pianists should help.

Also, I don't know the name of the chords he's playing. Are they rootless 2-5-1 chord progressions (a technique I've had some exposure to) or something else?

I'll look into that tomorrow.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 0 minutes Quality of meditation (out of 10): 0

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 20 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 4

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The last few days I've been grasping for ideas on how to start learning jazz improvisation on keyboard. Today, thanks to a video by Peter Martin of 2 Minute Jazz, I found a foothold. Peter teaches how to improvise with the right hand using only the C minor Blues scale and comp with the left.

When I saw the video for the first time it was like the skies parted and, well, you get the picture. It's an answer to my prayers.

So starting tomorrow my practice sessions are going to be a lot more structured. I'll start by practicing the Cm blues scale using Zach Evan's system, then practice left hand comping like Peter does. Last but not least is to continue with So What.

Looking forward to it.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 40 minutes Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 15 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 6

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“Simultaneous Counter Composition” by Theo Van Doesburg

I'm only a few pages into the book Abstract Painting: Fifty Years of Accomplishment, from Kandinsky to the Present, but I see interesting parallels between abstract art and jazz improvisation, as defined by Free Jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman (in an interview with French philosopher Jacque Derrida).

Ornette Coleman says Jazz musicians are hard to surprise. Playing precomposed music isn't interesting to them because it's already been done. Instead of playing what they are told, they prefer to “destroy” a composition and re-create something more “democratic”.

Likewise, to the practiced eye, abstract art contains few surprises because

everything is related, nothing manifests itself which has not been foreshadowed
(pg. 7). And

as early as 1909, the Cubists painters destroyed the object and reconstructed it in a different way, improvising freely with pictorial means and without taking objective reality into account. In doing so, the implicitly discovered the uselessness of the object and, in fact, proved themselves to be the first creators of abstract painting
(pg. 10).

I had the idea to learn about improvisation through other mediums other than music. It seems that abstract art may provide a meta-framework or mindset. I also had the idea of creating musical improvisations based on paintings from Pollock, Schwitters etc, but any paint or instrumentation in unskilled hands like mine can only create a mess.

Miles Davis was quoted saying: “Ideas are a dime a dozen; I can just look at a picture on the wall and come up with all kinds of ideas. But finding a sound is hard.”

Sound advice.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 40 minutes Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 10 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 5

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This morning I woke up in existential angst. I tried to meditate but could only muster 20 minutes before giving up. That gave me extra time to get to work but was late anyway.

As the day went on, I wondered if this Poseur to Composer project will be of worth to anyone but myself. It's not the first time. As a Christian, I try to keep an eternal perspective, to make a positive contribution in the world, but I've been going through a faith crisis. My late nights and frantic days have only exacerbated my feelings of negativity and hopelessness.

Then at last work break I happened to read the far-out yet edifying Grammy speech by Ornette Coleman, iconoclast and founder of Free Jazz. Coleman had just won the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Here it is:

It is really very, very real to be here tonight, in relationship to life and death and I’m sure they both love each other.
I really don’t have any present thoughts about why I’m standing here other than trying to figure out something to say that could be useful to someone that believes.
One of the things I am experiencing is very important and that is: You don’t have to die to kill and you don’t have to kill to die. And above all, nothing exists that is not in the form of life because life is eternal with or without people so we are grateful for life to be here at this very moment.
For myself, I’d rather be human than to be dead. And I would also die to be human. So you can’t die, you can’t die to be neither one, regardless of what you say or think so that’s why I believe that music itself is eternal in relationship to sound, meaning, intelligence…all the things that have to have something to do with being alive because you were born and because someone else made it possible for you to be here, which we call our parents etc. etc.
For me, the most eternal thing is that I would like to live until I learn what it is and what it isn’t…that is, how do we kill death since it kills everything?
And it’s hard to realize that being in the human form is not as easy as wondering what is going to happen to you even if you do know what it is and it doesn’t depend on if you know what is going to happen to you.
No one can know anything that life creates since no one is life itself. And it’s obvious, at least I believe, it’s obvious the one reason why we as human beings get there and do things that seem to be valuable to us in relationship to intelligence… uh, what is it called…creativity and love and all the things that have to do with waking up every morning believing it’s going to be a better day today or tomorrow and yet at the same time death, life, sadness, anger, fear, all of those things are present at the same time as we are living and breathing.
It is really, really eternal, this that we are constantly being created as human beings to know that exists and it’s really, really unbelievable to know that nothing that’s alive can die unless it’s been killed. So what we should try to realize is to remove that part of what it is so that whatever we are, life is all there is and I thank you very much.

In the same way Coleman and his cohorts disperses sounds (“unstructured” might be the right word), he says in his speech that his music will live on forever. He reminds us that music and creativity is eternal. It's part of the human condition; essential to human existence. It's worth waking up for, suffering for, because it endures.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 20 minutes Quality of meditation (out of 10): 4

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 10 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 4

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Today was ridiculously busy and I was only able to eke out 5(!) minutes of practice. Still, I read this gem on my travels. It's from The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece:

I believe that artist and audience are, in a sense, collaborators. We not only receive what the artist has to give, but we also bring our own interior worlds, our feelings and memories, to the experience. For each member of the audience, then, something new is created.

Marshall McLuhan defined art as “anything you can get away with” but I think the above passage provides a better definition: Art is something you experience and collaborate with.

Certainly So What is art of the highest order.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 40 minutes Quality of meditation (out of 10): 5

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 5 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 3

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For the past few days I’ve entertained the idea of learning a dozen or so instantly recognizable chords and stringing them together into a medley. For example Jump by Van Halen, Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Chim Chim Cher-ee from Mary Poppins, Good Thing by Fine Young Cannibals and so on.

I’d arrange these wonder chords in a way that would flow. Hard work for sure, but doable. Learning So What will continue to be my number one priority – this would be a side project.

However as side-projects go, it may not be the most constructive thing I can do. Ultimately, I want to compose my own music, not play gimmicky tunes.

Learning the skill of Jazz improvisation will take me a lot farther, but it'll take longer and require a better grasp of chords, melodic phrasing and so on.

If time and energy was in abundant supply, I’d practice all three, but it’s not. On some days it’s hard to muster 15 minutes of focused practice time after work before I start fading out and making copious mistakes.

So I'll stay the course and try to add some improvisation into So What, as previously planned.

Speaking of So What, I was listening to it closely this afternoon and notice that my timing is off significantly compared to the song. I’m hitting the right chords, but in the wrong way. I’ll continue refining what I’ve already learned before adding new parts.

If you want the straight goods on how to sight-read musical notation, I just finished Becoming a Great Sight-Reader — or Not! Learn from my Quest for Piano Sight-Reading Nirvana by Al Macy and highly recommend it.

Another book I’m currently enjoying, almost to the point of it being a quasi-spiritual experience, is The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece by Eric Nisenson. If you get it, be sure to listen to the songs he mentions while you read. It will heighten the experience.

Meditation Time bookstanding today: 40 minutes Quality of meditation (out of 10): 3

Practice Minutes on the keyboard today (out of 40): 25 minutes Quality of practice (out of 10): 5

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