The Touch of Your Lips

The Touch of Your Lips.mp3

Today I sat down amidst a flurry of activity next door. 

A quick peek through the living room blinds delivered the bad news: another work crew was settling in for the day. 

Unusual?

Sadly no. That is, if it weren't for the jackhammers.  jesus...jackhammers.  wtf.

But, this sonic intrusion, brutal and hardcore as it was, served to harden my resolve; screw you guys.  i gotta do what i gotta do. The chet baker project continues.

Hence, this rendition of one of the most tender pieces of music i've ever heard...chet's version of course, not necessarily my own.  but as we all know, the purpose of this project is not to recreate chet's music.  no one can do that.

Someone or something in this someone decided to tackle another emotionally charged tune of chet's.
In the inimitable words of Firesign Theatre:  "another one....just like the other one."

This time it was a ballad by Rodgers and Hart called 'The Touch of Your Lips."

The touch of your lips
Upon
my brow
Your lips that are cool
and sweet
Such tenderness
Lies in their soft caress

My Heart
Forgets
To beat

Yeah, they're killer lyrics.
How about these guys, Rodgers and Hart.  So many beautiful songs, so squandered, laid as they were on the banal breast of that most ridiculous of musical genres, the Broadway Show.

This tune has a story to it.

About ten years ago when i was living and working in ithaca, , dancing as fast i could, raising a family, snatching a gig here and there, i started listening to chet intensively.  i had heard of him before of course, being a trumpet player myself and having grown up listening to all kinds of jazz.

This was courtesy of my father's interest in music and to his weekly sunday morning hi-fi concerts ranging from Victory at Sea to Barbara Streisand (before her head got bigger than her voice) to Stan Kenton to Puccini to Maynard Ferguson.  It was wonderful.  Looking back on it i think without a doubt that this was one, if not the most salient childhood experience that helped determine my musical destiny (for better or worse--for the pleasure and exultation of musical performance or for worse, the extreme frustration of trying to make a living through its pursuit).  All the same i owe him big time.

Anyway i was listening to chet A LOT back then.  This tune 'The Touch of Your Lips' was the first of his tunes over which i would obsess.

I would put this tune on the stereo (back in the day we all used to listen to music through these big rectangular boxes so everyone could hear it; they're called speakers.  you may have heard of them) and hit 'replay.'  Then i would sit back on the sofa, toke up maybe and just listen over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again to chet breathe life into this tune one soft phrase after another.

I was so moved by this tune 'The Touch of Your Lips' that one night after putting the kids to bed, i put it on and listened to it.  The emotion of the song and the way it was orchestrated (just piano, upright bass and brushes) and the way chet exhaled the sentiment of the tune into the microphone overwhelmed me to the point that i called my best friend over to the house to share it.

it was late.  after 10 on a school night.  but i called him anyway.

"listen you gotta come over here right away."

"why?  what's up?"

"you gotta hear this tune."

All he said into the phone before showing up at my door  was " really?"  He was like that.  He'd honor anything anyone said just as long as there was some sort of authentically felt ideation behind it.

He came over and i put it on.  We listened together.  And after the last note died back into silence, we sat there quietly.

"That is the most beautiful tune i've ever heard in my life," i sighed.
And all he could say was "really?"

Again with the ' really.'

Oh well.  it was ok that it meant more to me than to him.  It was important to me then and it is still.
That's why i picked it yesterday i guess.  I wanted to experience its heavy sentimentality again.  i suppose i thought i needed it in order to draw out from my own heart/mind a sister state of emotion with which to resonate.

Turns out i did find a matching state within me sufficient to react to enough of the original feeling that chet's rendition stirred in me years before to make the effort worthwhile.

You Don't Know What Love Is

You Don't Know What Love Is.mp3


This is the only piece of music so far that I have shared with anyone on purpose.

My reaction seemed to belie the quasi-empirical vibe that has characterized much of my work on this project thus far. I cried.

Why?

Emotion. Pure and simple.

In fact if you listen closely in the second verse, my voice gets a little shaky and then trails off prematurely at the end of phrase. Human emotion meets Musical performance; a curious event.

It was the lyrics of the tune. They caught me with my pants down. hardly surprising given how little experience i've had with words in music. Most likely won't be the last time.

Lyrics like these aren't for the faint of heart.

You don't know how hearts burn
For love that cannot live
Yet never die
Until you've faced each dawn
With sleepless eyes
You don't know what love is.



Now, I've written about this phenomenon before, where the music takes on an entirely new meaning once i start singing the lyrics.

But this time....this time was different.

Because not only did my voice go limp from the emotions when i was recording, they were reconstituted when i played it for her...this time with much greater intensity.

Why?

Of course i don't know for sure but from where i sit now, some three days later, i think that the heart-wrenching sentimentality that i felt when i recorded the tune was augmented by something else as i listened to myself playing and singing an entire day later.

I think it was in fact a response to a universal human condition. Everyone with a heart has had it broken.

You Don't know how lips hurt
Until you've loved and had to pay the cost
Until you've flipped your heart and you have lost
You don't know what love is.

I think now that the tears that welled up in me were tears shed for all of us for whom love has touched. Compassion drove them to brim over my lower lids. Compassion for every man, woman and child whose heart bears the scars of living a full life.

This tune, while not being the only one that has illicited such a response, is especially suited for strong emotion.

It's the perfect cross-over tune between blues and jazz. that is, the harmony and the melody lend themselves to a rather seamless confluence of tension notes (blues melodies: flatted fifths and thirds) and harmonic complexity (unexpected cadences and major seventh tonic chords)


Do you know how a lost heart fears
The thoughts of reminiscing
And how lips that taste of tears
Lost their taste for kissing.

The lyrics of a song...

Being an instrumentalist all these years, i've not paid too much attention to the words assigned to the melody. (just the way i phrased that gives you a hint about my nonchalance heretofore; 'assigned to the melody?' Is that all lyrics are? just words tagged for a melody line?)

Thanks to this Chet Baker Project, i now know differently.

If you'll forgive a rather banal simile, they seem to me kind of like a cooking recipe's dry ingredients.
Nothing much happening; they don't reflect the intent of the dish, their appeal to the palate--at least at this stage-- is almost negligible.

But add the wet ingredients: water, milk, oil...and everything changes. the tastes come alive, the cook's original intention for the dish is reconstituted and voila! we eat. and hopefully we understand and enjoy the chef's idea of a good gastronomical experience, be it sweet or savory.

Likewise a song's lyrics. By themselves they don't have nearly the juice as does the entire song made complete by the composer's melody line, rhythm and harmony.

This one (as my mother would say) knocked me for a loop from start to finish.

It began when i was feeling pretty low this past friday morning.

It's not unusual really, for me to have some low spots these days. being out of work for months can be like that sometimes.

But this day, i actually had a lot on my plate. For one thing i had to continue preparing music (woodshedding) for a new group with which i was making my debut the following day. i was pretty wound up about it and had been working on the music all week; actually i had two gigs the next day, with two completely different groups, for both of which i was shedding big time.

About this process of preparing for a gig.

For me, it's kind of like a scene in that Robin William's film TOYS. the one where he is in a golf cart driving up and down the hills and valleys of a narrow astro-turfed hallway inside that awesomely phantasmagorical Toy factory. (Great movie btw especially if you happen to be a fan of L.L.Cool J. or Joan Cusak)

Yeah, so this up and down psychology of mine when i'm faced with a personal challenge i see as a rollercoaster of emotion and psychology.

'Man, I got this. I'm in great shape'

Oops.....

'What the hell was I thinking, i'm friggin screwed!'

that was the theme ... up to friday morning.

I was teetering on the lower of edge of that rollercoaster when a thought shouldered itself into my crowded head, muttering something about the Chet Project. i hadn't done anything on the project all week so it seemed to come from nowhere.

'Do another Chet tune. Now. Do this one right here.
"You Don't Know What Love Is." 'Do it now.'

So i did.

And as soon as I began, i knew it was exactly the right thing to do.

Yes i had all this shedding to do on these new tunes on which i was playing trumpet and flugelhorn, with lots of exposed parts, lots of solos and TONS of unfamiliar keys, but PAY ATTENTION to this little thought that had the courage and fortitude to insinuate itself into a--'we know what he should be doing right now'-- consciousness, I DID.

I think this tune picked me this day because it knew that within it lie the strong emotional content that mirrored what i was feeling inside. I needed to play this particular song because its content and original recipe had within it the requisite feelings that would allow me to process all the stuff going on inside me.

In other words, this tune, this "You Don't Know What Love Is" would give me the raw materials out of which i could deconstruct the heaviness in my breast.

You don't know what love is
Until you've learned the meaning of the blues
Until you've loved a love you've had to lose
You don't know what love is.


Right from the start it was different. different from all the other tunes i'd done in this Chet Baker Project. for one thing, i didn't record against a clic or a drum track. in fact there's no drum track at all on the finished mix.

What this means of course is that i relied on the melody and the harmony to frame the entire piece. and although it's not a new idea, I had attempted this in previous tunes, working without a net--without a time reference, aka, a rhythm track--was an entirely new experience.

What it ended up giving me was the flexibility of phrasing; i could stretch out or lay behind the lyrics as much as i wanted. i could let the emotion of the words and sentiments linger long enough to let it breathe...to give the meaning of the words time to resonate with my memories and thus affect my delivery.

and i guess that's why my voice kept breaking. the trouble is it came at unanticipated times. trouble because i'm no enough of singer to know what the hell to do when it happens.

i'd be singing along, trying to keep each note in tune, each word understandable, each line in rhythm, then a word would snag one of those memories and one by one, the wheels would come off. my voice would melt, the pitch would sag and the consonants crumble until i'd simply have to stop.

And although this has happened many times now, it still catches me by surprise because i never know what words are going to trigger a tender spot in my heart/mind.

I think this is why i decided to share it that night; because of this strong and somewhat startling sentiment.

And how does this relate to my experience with music in my life? Where do i put this information so i can find it and use it in the future?

This is the question that lies at the heart of this whole project.

After all these years of letting my curiosity drive my musical endeavors, learning new instruments, seeing what it means to be a bass player or a drummer, or a piano player or a trumpet player or a percussionist, i think that maybe now it has come to seeing what it means to sing.

Moreover, to put vocal musical expression in situ with instrumental musical expression.

What does it feel like to be the trumpet player in the band? the pianist? the percussionist? the bass player? the drummer? the singer?

What does it mean to be a musician?

That said, i have no ambition whatsoever to sing in public. i do however plan to let this strange emotional response to the lyrics of a song lead me to another experience of this connection between human emotions and the art of music.

we'll see.

Stupid-Easy Instructions for Adding Audio to Blog

I did it! Damn it. I did it!

This is how you can do it too. I have to think there is an easier way, a way with less steps, not written for the Department of Redundancy Department but i don't know of one. That's why i wrote this.

OK. Fasten your seatbelts. Here we go.

One way to add audio to specific posts on Google Blogger using zShare host site.

These directions presume an existing post to which you wish to add an audio file.

Go to http://www.zshare.net and sign up for a free account.

Go to http://www.Blogger.com

Dial up your blog.
Click 'Edit Posts' tab.

Choose post to which you wish to add audio file.

Open another window and navigate to your zShare account.
Follow directions to upload an audio file.

After file is successfully uploaded, click on the hyperlink associated with it on the page. This will play the file and (on the same page), give you an option to link the file to a blog site. Click on the Blogger logo to automatically send the audio file's Html code to the site.

On this page, (in the Html window), you will see the code string that corresponds to the audio file you just uploaded. Copy this code by selecting and copying it using the keystrokes appropriate for your specific computer (mine is a Mac so I press the command key and the letter c simultaneously to copy something on the screen. Ctrl C on PCs).

Go back to your blog and navigate to the post to which you want to add the audio file by clicking on 'Edit Post.'

In Blogger's Html Content window put your cursor at the beginning of the post (in front of all other text) and paste the information you just copied from zShare. (Command V on Macs, Ctrl V on PCs)

Click 'Preview' to see your new audio code. You should see a hyperlink.

Note: If you do not want the zShare logo to show on your blog, you can delete this in the first string of code. I wouldn't mess with much else unless you feel confident you can deal with whatever happens when you start messing with computer code language magic mumbo jumbo.

Ok. Good. Now you have time for dinner.

Close your computer and walk away. For now.

Modern Technology teaches Old Dog How to Play Dead

This post is a continuation of the previous hair-pulling extravaganza.

So there i was, at the end of a day that started out in quiet contemplation and peace and ended...well it hadn't ended yet.
This is what happened:

I was searching for a way to add the fruits of my labor--that is to say the tracks of the Chet Baker tunes I was working on to lay down to use to practice the various musical skills and sensibilities, to manifest the sounds and emotions i hear and feel when listening to and/or imagining Chet's music.

i needed to post audio to my blog.
so i set out to do just that. it turned out to be an exercise in computer technology.

if my knowledge and expertise about this sleek little white box on my lap was pudding, you'd be really pissed off if your momma gave you a bowl of it and called it dessert.

However.

I nonetheless plunged in head first. intrepid warrior that i am.

Embedding audio in a blog can go one of two ways apparently: you can stream it in or you can point the blog to another site that is hosting it. neither of these things i understand.

even if i did, it turns out that some of the sites that profess to get the job done, fall way short of delivering. this can be upsetting to the user with barely enough know-how to craft a query to use to find what they seek.

in fact, i have to say that this one thing, knowing what to ask, how and where to ask it (i guess that's three things) is a veritable trifecta in triumph. if it works. which it didn't.

So i looked on Blogger's site, Tumblr's site and Wordpress's site for answers to questions like:

'How to add audio to blogs' (seemed to me a pretty accurate statement for what i needed...turns out not)

'Add audio files' (another dud)

'Blogger audio post' (this one produced results in a nice array of rabbit holes that provided hours of amusement)

I tried many more of course but none knocked it out of the park.

Chasing down a search element is something like chasing your tail. Course i don't know for sure, not having one myself. And come to think of it, i can't really say that because of the fact that our dog used to chase his own tail; 'cept he would actually catch it. no one was more surprised then he was.

Unlike my puppy dog, i intended to catch my own tail. Trouble is, as i proceeded on my search i seem to be getting farther and farther from my original goal. this was a curious phenomenon. what was happening i think was that with each fruitless search, i'd widen the net more and more until the results would be just random bullshit.

My blind thoughts were leading my blind search. result? more blindness and less hours till dinner.

It wasn't all a vast wasteland of ignorant prodding about though. i stayed remarkably calm and tried to think of other ways to ask the question.

Some hits would offer a solution, and i'd follow it through, downloading what it said to download, type in what it said to type in, act like it said to act. only to find out at the end of it the sad truth:

It didn't work because:

it wasn't a program originally written for Mac OS
or
it was a program written for Macs but it just plain didn't fucking work
or
it works on Macs but not on the latest version of the OS
or
it works but you can only upload files in a certain oddball format
or
it works but only on Safari, not on Firefox. (this one was my personal favorite; it was the last and biggest time-invested failure of the day and of course it took place 6 hours into it)

That said, i'd have to say that aside from the platform problems and the browser sensitivity the thing that really toasted my tips was the log-in failures.

I can see how my ignorance would preclude any hopes for immediate success but when you find a site that hosts audio and the code works on your blog site and all the other ducks are in their proper rows, it should be game over: put the horses in the wagon, cuz it's all downhill from here.

but no.

I successfully posted an audio to the blog but when i went back to the host site to upload another, i couldn't log on. it didn't recognize me. even after asking for a different password (why the fuck do i need a password anyway, it's not like it's a banking site) i kept getting that irritating message:

PASSWORD DOES NOT MATCH OUR RECORDS; PLEASE TRY AGAIN


This message is second only to other, equally annoying ones. Messages like:

'File does not exist'
and
'No suitable plugins found to play this file'

I was still pretty calm.

I was introduced to the concept of CODE. Oh goodie.



First of all they don't call it 'code' for nothing. This stuff might as well be written in Cuniform characters. what is with all this mumbo jumbo <`~> vch/false/bullshit. I mean really. Like the sign says:

Speak American!

I love this code stuff though. once i got past the urge to kill, i found it sorta charming, the way if you just left off one of those curly cues, there wouldn't be a play button, or the file would all of a sudden be a photograph instead of an audio file for the interface would show up in size 50 font or the window would disappear altogether. Cool in a kind of sideways sadistic way.

Then i hooked up with a site called zShare. I don't remember how i got it. a random hit, a forum. who knows. i'm glad i did cuz it did the trick.

But i had to be resourceful to get the thing to do what i wanted it to do: post a specific audio file to a specific post. in other words i needed "I Remember You' a tune that Chet recorded and that i covered, to post alongside the written post about the recording "I Remember You.' Simple right?

I thought so.

But then again, i wasn't hip to all this computer language stuff. not that i am now mind you. i'm just celebrating the fact that i was able to design a protocol all by myself that got my audio files shoulder-to-shoulder with their post-partners. Hooray for me.

How did i do it?

In the next post you will find a step-by-step knuckleheaded procedure especially designed by and for all you backyard mechanics so you too can marry your posts with their betrothed.

I remember you

I Remember you.mp3



This is how it goes.

I need/want to do something. anything. could be adding a widget. could be saving a portion of a tune or deleting a code segment.

ok. i lied. i've no idea what a widget is let alone know how to even ask the right questions to learn how to add one. where would i add it? presumably to something that has hitherto gone widgetless? yeah, right.

anyhow, this is how it begins; i need to do something. in this case it was adding the mp3 file of this tune "I Remember You" to my blog.

easy sleazy right?
well shit, you'd think so. i mean you can add a video or a picture by clicking a freakin button on any blog site you wanna name. i should know. i've made the rounds.

yeah, blogs are omnipresent these days and you'd think that on account of us not being able to swing a dead car without hitting one (i'm so sorry to have just typed that; i love kitty kats. i really do) there really should be at least one that allows even the greenhorn-wet-behind-the-ears-over 30-first-time-rodeo clown type of dude to click a button and add an audio file.

not so much. not easy. almost not even possible. or so it was seeming.

i had my expert son in my corner. (expert at Information Technology)--notice how i pay my fealty to this quasi-religion by capitalizing--you who have read any of these posts know how begrudgingly i capitalize things--it's a time thing.

he recommended Tumblr. I tried it. but the quirk (and every single damn one of these blog sites have on) for Tumblr was this annoying limit they have on the number of audio files you can upload in a twenty-four period. i mean really. jeezus, you'd think they were giving away free bath water for us all to throw the baby away in.

i tried My Space. That was just too slick and sleazy. i'm still getting sloppy seconds sex biker chick emails from this one. c'mon folks is EVERYONE you know addicted to porn? i mean don't get me wrong...i...no, let's stop the madness right here. as it is the SEO police will start pairing Sexed Up Sex Kittens on Parade with my blog. YAY!

where was i?

yeah. the blog sites i was running between in search of one that would allow me post audio on my blog. i mean this is not just a hollowy vague sort of desire. this IS a music-related blog right? and i AM putting down some originally banal renditions of some spectacular songs right?

so i tried Tumblr, Blogger, My Space and Wordpress.

This last one was particularly interesting/annoying.
It was recommended by an IT guy. that is: Information Technology THE KIND AND POPE OF ALL THINGS SHINY AND NEW. Am i getting carried away with my sarcasm or what?

What made Wordpress annoying is that it out and out wasted my time. my precious, precious, not-getting-paid-a-dime and out-of-a-paying-job, time. sick bastards!

Later i was told that their webmaster was out. out? out of what? out of a job? no...that would be me. Maybe he SHOULD be out of a job though. The webmaster...the all-knowing master of all things web-like was..."out." wtf?

i didn't wait around to find out just what that meant. time you know. bad enough i'm not getting paid for this; to then waste the time that would ordinarily be counted in my wages, if i had any, and count against the mandatory daily hourly wagery jobbery, which doesn't exist, is just anathema to a hard-working out-of-work worker such as myself.

so i went back to good ole Blogger. the mothership. the site of my first blog. my no-more-virgin-social-networking-pop culture experience. Pop!

yep, i went back to see if i could make it work. i left it, whored myself out to other sites. slept around if you will. but seeing no other legs of sufficient interest, none so long and slender, none so...oh oh...more Sex.Sex and More Sex in Your Very Own Sexed-up Sex...Sex spam.

determined to make this work for me, to figure out how to add audio to this blog of mine, i hit the keys one morning around 10am, just after sitting for a while getting all centered and calm.

turns out it was good thing, that i spent a little time meditating that is. i mean don't get me wrong; i'm no monk. but i've been doing it long enough you'd think i'd be a tad farther along in the 'peaceful grasshopper' department.

at any rate, it was a good thing i started the day out as cool, calm and collected as i did given the SHIT storm that slowly, methodically stalked my sorry ass the moment it hit the chair.

i began searching (researching, we like to call it in the biz), happily punching buttons, Googling (notice the obsequious capitalization, now THAT's RESPECT), wading through hit after hit of unrelated homonym-driven bullshit that the OS seemed to think i needed.

i ran across all manner of 'expert advice' in forums, chat rooms, company websites, blog 'HELP' files. Now this last one the "HELP" files. this one really deserves to slapped up-side the head with a friggin two-by-four.

"HELP?" Really? i thought, in my silly, over-forty sensibility meant that this is where you go when you need assistance, like,

"Don't know what you're doing? Click here and we'll HELP."
or

"Hey pal, you poor sonofabitch.
Too old?

"What's the matter Bucky? Smart-ass computer game-playing kids left you behind? Feeling dumb as a box of hammers?

Out of your element?"
"Can't find your ass with both hands today or figure out which end of the shovel to grab on to?"

Click on this: HELP button.
We'll straighten your curmudgeony ass right the hell out!

Again and again i fell for this.
Click on the HELP button. Wince. Stand back and wait for the damn thing to explode into a million tiny nuggets of wisdom. All the right pieces right there for me pick through and find just the right one.

Never happened.

But what DID happen was it contributed greatly to the growing knot in my stomach. the one that had healed over from the last bout with Information Technology. (this capitalization lip service is losing its charm fast).

Not to be deterred, i calmly navigated from stop sign to stop sign, slowing down for the occasional bright promise. Every rabbit hole eventually lead nowhere. just deeper dirt.

Wouldn't have been too bad, if it had stayed linear like that; every tutorial, every 'newly hacked' code from yet another braniac youngster with nothing better to do then jerk us older codgers'around ending in a dead end right away. but no. some actually worked....but not...wait for it...
not on Firefox.
or
not on Safari.
or
not on your mama!

and that's when the shit hit the fan for me.

5 hours of doggedly following my nose from promise to frustration, after a while it gets to a fellow.

but it's all good.

hidden among the twisted wreckage lies the rich stuff, those twinkling gems of hard-won knowledge sacrificed on the altar of ignorance.

it's all good.

Everything Happens to Me.mp3

Everything Happens to Me

First blog entry on this new host site. Tumblr.
Gotta remember to write to these folks and mention that they misspelled Tumbler. they’ll be glad someone noticed.

About this tune ‘Everything Happens to Me.’ It figured prominently in my life a few years back. still does, come to think of it.

I make a date for golf
you can bet your life it rains
i try to throw a party
and the guy upstairs complains.
i guess i’ll go through life just catching colds and missing trains
everything happens to me

you gotta love the lyrics. murtphy’s law in verse. a guy named…well i don’t recall his name. how unfortunate. don’t remember who wrote the tune either.
i had cereal for breakfast; this much i remember.
no. that was yesterday.

well the memory is not as sharp these days. i’m often apalled at the large cracks that seem to have opened up in the sinkhole that is my short term memory. is it age? is it underuse? is it the toxic fumes of the newly installed utility poles? who the fuck knows. i don’t recall why i care.

and yet.

and yet there it is. changes inside and out. changes in thinking, psychology. changes in geography. changes on top of changes, heaped high like so many sunday morning pancakes.
so.
Everything Happens to Me…today’s project. Yesterday’s actually.

i had been away from this for awhile, having spent time in Boston visiting my favorite son and his favorite girl. Wonderful time we had.

Walden Pond and Lowell Mass; visiting two of my favorite authors and thinkers. Neither had much to say; they’re still dead and all…

So i literally dove head first into Chet’s project again becuase i thought i had to . i wanted to but i had to too. tutu.

curiously, what began as a forced reentry quickly turned on a dime; i wanted to sing.

"Deep in a Dream" mp3

deep in a dream.mp3


Ok kids.

This is the next tune up for the Chet Baker Project. It's called "Deep In A Dream"

This is, incidentally, the title of Chet's exhaustive if not exhausting biography by James Gavin, the same guy who wrote the 2009 Lena Horne biography entitled: Stormy Weather, the Life of Lena Horne

It's NOT on the album "It could happen to you" for those of you sick and tired of that one. If you are one of these folks, tsk tsk tsk.
We're no longer going steady. I'm giving your ring back right now.

In the spirit of experimentation, which this entire project most certainly smells like to me, i decided to change things up a bit and try recording keys first instead of drums.

I thought, what the heck, this is not an up-tempo number; i should be able to stay on top of the changes well enough to deliver a serviceable track using only a clic.

Hmmm. Yeah.
Turns out not.

I tried but the clic (remember that this infernal yet indispensable tool, if you don't happen to have access to drum loops, is an electronic metronome that sounds like, well....CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK and maybe,
Click click click CLACK, Click click click CLACK to emphasize the beat sequence.
Annoying and musically violent.

So i went back to my original technique, that of laying down a VSTi drum track using a Clic as metronomic (is that a word?) reference.

Well this worked fine UNTIL i laid down a keys track.
Cuz this is when i discovered that i hadn't drawn out the drum track long enough. And the result was that i ran out of drum track during my fucking chord changes track. Shit. it's always something man.
Hey wait a minute. Now THIS would be an acronym i could get behind. an acronym for 'it's always something man'

what would that be...IASM...hmmmm.
Naw, that still sucks.

ANd besides, that would go against the bylaws of my yet-to-be-formed political action committee:

People for an Acronym-Free Earth or PAFE. Yeah!

Rock on PAFE!!!

Yeah so anyway, i really need to figure out how to make a drum loop so i can just plug it in to my tracks. But maybe by not having one, it is somehow more organic.
Organic Virtual Instruments?
Oh dear.

SO what i came away with during the process of recording "Deep in a Dream" is that it behooves me to keep the tracks as long as possible. To make as long a pass at a track as possible.

In other words, record a part over the entire form of the tune instead of just running 16 bars of something, copying it and pasting it along the entire track. The less carved up the tracks are, the less hassle when arranging the tune.

This becomes wildly apparent in situations where the parts i've recorded have been punched in and sliced up and moved around over segments of tracks that do not always correspond to full measures and phrases.

Man that there is hair-pulling, feet stomping elementary school style, i tell you what...

The tracks themselves, the musical aspects i mean, are getting better. Little by little i'm able to stay in tune with my voice for longer periods. Sometimes i can play entire tracks without screwing up every other measure.

A few times i've actually thought it sounded pretty good. these days i am satisfied with my efforts.

in fact, there is one thing that is happening fairly regularly that to tell you the truth, has me baffled.

when i sing sometimes, a note will hit me just right and i'll puddle up. i know it sounds wacky but there it is. i almost have to stop. i feel like i have to sometimes. but i never do. i swallow hard and try to make the next note. i don't understand but then, what makes me think i would?

I'm paying attention to the phenomenon though and i'll let you know if i start going through handkerchiefs by the dozens.


That said, another part of this whole crazy thing, the practice aspect of this project is grinding its way closer to fruition. At some point I'll be able to dial up any of these Chet tunes and use them to practice solos on horn, piano, voice, spoons, didgeridoo, washboard....

Ahhhhh... washboard.

Nothing like thumping on a hundred-year-old laundry aid to get the blood moving. warms the cockles of a dyed-in-the-wool jazz hound, pioneer style.

Yepper

Back from not here

Chet, shmet. This blog entry is about me and where i was.

All the names are changed to protect the innocent.

The plane was full. These days, this is always the case.
We took off from Austin. It was hot. Of course it was.
Couple of hours later we landed in Orlando. Disney World is there and it's apparent; you can't swing a dead roadrunner without hitting some sort of cartoon figure.

A short six hours later we landed at Logan in Boston. Not a new airport. Grey walls, grey air and dirty windows.
Half hour later, i was sitting in the front seat of my son's car. God it was nice to see him. Too too long. Too long. He looked great.

Another half hour later we are sitting in his kitchen. I'm drinking the one beer that was in the fridge and the three of us are chatting. His favorite girl is making a dinner of tofu and beans and greens and garlic and quinoa. It was 11:30 PM. They eat late apparently. It was good to see her. She looked good too. Maybe we all looked good.

It was the first of many late nights. I got to bed after 2 but slept better than i do at home. Go figure.

Next morning Z drove me over to Brighton Ave to pick up my rental car: a 2009 PT Cruiser...with no cruise control. Go figure.

I love to drive and the day was spectacular, one of those clear crisp early Fall days you get up in the Northeast, just before it gets cold and everything goes to shit.
The first person i meet on this trip turns out to be an old gnarled-hand farmer somewhere between Albany and Cazenovia on old Route 20 west. I got off the thruway because that's what i do: i explore new things.

A roadside sign talking about farm fruits and vegetables caught my eye. and although i passed it one way, i decided to break with tradition and turn around and go back. I was glad i did.

He was just coming in from the fields when i pulled in the U-shaped gravel driveway in front of his ramshackle farm house. the place was a mess. peeling paint, sagging foundation, bulging walls.

He looked to be about 65, his tan face showed the deep furrows of an 80-year-old. he spoke with an even tone, and he smiled readily.

but it was his hands that struck me. workingman hands. dark, shrunken skin belying their massive size. dirty. real dirty hands, fingernails chipped, black under the leading edges. grease on his sleeves.

his teeth were brown and pointy. i think he used to have more of them as there were gaps between the ones that showed when he smiled.

i bought some of his apples (which turned out to be crisp and tart empires) and some of his grape tomatoes (which i snacked on for the next 800 miles or so)
Neither of these he actually grew himself. He confessed that he buys them somewhere else. Yep.

Next person up on my little voyage upstate was my brother. he's my older brother but just barely; he's one year ahead of me, chronologically that is. In other ways, he's miles in front. He's very driven and very successful in the business world. More power to him. He's a nice guy dedicated to making good.

I didn't see him for very long, just a few hours while watching a television show about the guy who is really smart yet very physically fucked. Poor guy. Not really poor though. Very rich in many ways other than physical. I bet he's a great guy too, in addition to being touted as the smartest astrophysicist in the world. Man he's a challenge to look at though.

Anyway, my bro and i talked some talk and then hit the hay, me to my second garret above the garage, he to his front bedroom where his best girl was already snoring. She wasn't up when i got there at 9 although i think i heard her banging around back there from time to time. They get up so early.


So i got up next day and took off for ithaca. i went to my friend's place and we spoke of elemental psychological emotional spiritual things. Our usual. It was good, it always is. he hadn't been at all communicative despite my best email and phone efforts so i made sure to let him know i wasn't pleased. i just asked him how is job was going. had he received any of my emails or phone calls. his responses and mild admittance of culpability satisfied me and we moved on.

I asked him how he spends his days. He told me. I described my days and we moved on. I love talking to him. i wish we could do it more often. i invited him once again to austin. he won't come. for a hip committed to awareness-kind-of-man, he's pretty well set in his ways.

I went to Jim's. I found him outdoors reading and studying his Hellenistic Astrology. it was a warm day and i was gratified to find him clothed, albeit shirtless. we shared some very interesting conversation as always. very interesting.

he is convinced after hearing what i've been up to and after catching me up on his work situation and the kids etc., that i need to put more energy into recollecting feelings of joy that live in my soul.

Apparently in our souls there exists a warehouse full of all the feelings we've ever experienced. so my job is to recollect and collect again all the feelings of joy i can in my life. those times when everything was so positive and good and easy and happy and peaceful (a la Billy Pilgrim in Vonnegut's 'slaughterhouse five.'

The other thing i have to do is to ask the universe to show me my next 'right' place in the world. my next right thing, the next thing that is just right for my next step in the world.

he said that if i am experiencing success in music then i should by all means keep going in that direction.

so this felt right. this felt good and sensible and doable. we spent a few minutes in the house going over my chart in terms of his new Hellenistic Astrological viewpoint. He played through a few pieces on his beautiful Mason. he is an incredible pianist. amazing. he shared some techniques with me.
I asked him about fingering patterns for scales and tension in my arms and hands and whatnot. he explained that one of the first things he learned as a young piano student, was to immediately tuck his thumb under when his index finger was on the keyboard.

finger/thumb under.
finger/thumb under.
finger/thumb under.

so when i start playing again, i'll practice that.

He also described the difference between pushing down on the keys as opposed to pulling. you stroke the keys. that's another thing i'll pick up on when i start playing again.

it was getting late and i still had to go up to the storage unit to pick up my congas and make the drive to Syracuse so we said our goodbyes.

So i drove off in the breezy sunshine heading north. i decided to give my sneaker shopping a try so i stopped in to the Pyramid Mall. Good ole pyramid mall. Good ole Mall...came up short though. no problem. gosh it was a beautiful day.

next up...Dane. Damn what a long time it had been since last we were together. so long. so much had happened during that time. so much. i was interested to see what he looked like.

when i got there he was sleeping on the couch. anticlimax? a little. but it was fine. We had a little time till we needed to fetch Chris at the train station so we decided to take a walk.

we talked as we walked. his dog rita was on a leash until we got to the school playground. as we strolled on the damp grass we took turns answering each other's questions about our respective lives and the twists and turns they had taken during the 15 years since we were together.

he told me that he had given up on finding a companion. that he had been with many during the last 20 years but none stuck. i felt bad for him. but i totally understand the sentiment.

it takes just as much emotionally imbued thought to seek a relationship as it does to maintain one. the logistics alone is enough to be all right with staying in on Friday night despite the wretched feeling of being alone when no one else is.

life lived alone is an acquired taste for most of us. I found out i haven't the stomach for it. at least not now.

chet baker FORGETFUL

Forgetful.mp3

FORGETFUL

Lately, you've been so forgetful
a kind of a
stop and go forgetful
that bothers me

That's how this tune starts. Forgetful.
i picked this one to do first because i'm lazy and i trust in things like visual cues and happenstance.

what the hell does that mean? beats me. 'cept it happens to be the truth.

i chose this one to be the first cuz something had to be first, otherwise there would be no second. or third. or 43rd for that matter.

i chose it monday morning. it seemed like a good time to begin something. and besides, i have been working on solo piano recordings for a few weeks and i happen to be in the neighborhood.

anyway, so this tune, my rendition, sucks. hard.
and what does actually make up the lion's share of the suckage?

well, there's so much to choose from. where to begin?
how about if i start with the methodology...

this is my first attempt. so let's be fair.


i'm not a singer. i've sung exactly twice in my life. one was just last month when i entered a jingle contest. another story. one for a later post. glad, right?

So....this tune 'Forgetful', my first chet tune in this project.

i began by finding the chart for the tune.

A chart, for those not familiar with us very hip musicians, is the piece of music we like to call a 'head chart' aka, 'leadsheet' aka 'chart.' this is the piece of paper on which is written the tune's title, the composer and the music.

the music on these charts, chart out the changes (the chords), the melody, the time signature and key. Also on these charts is everything else you would expect to see in a piece of music...everything except things like orchestral cues, dynamic markings. harmony parts and explicit solo manuscript.

so in this case ('FORGETFUL') i began by learning the changes (the chords) for the tune.

this is not as easy it sounds because apparently, learning the changes is not enough; one needs to put them in the right place...and at the right time.

who knew?

just kidding of course. i know all of this. but sadly, the doing is not made that much easier for the knowing.

so after the chords and the placement of the chords along the timeline of the tune (oh yeah, i forgot to say that before any of this, i needed to come up with a tempo, i.e., the speed of the tune. the tempo for FORGETFUL is 100 bpm (beats per minute) just so you know.


anyway, after the tempo and the chords, i began making recording passes. and this is where things get interesting.

To play music is one thing. to record yourself playing music is quite another. it demands a whole lot of shit. a whole lot of 'non-musical' shit. and if you don't know it, you can't record. and if your goal is to record...well you know where i'm going with this.

it's a bit of a juggling act, recording. especially if you are the musician as well as the recordist. not complaining. just fact. hard, cold ugly fact.

don't get me wrong. recording is fun...well, sometimes. to hear yourself playing can be both exhilarating and demoralizing, sometimes both and at the same time. which doesn't help my ambivalence with regard to my musicianship.

what you do is this:

make a new track, then click on about six buttons each choosing things like: monitoring system setting, midi patches, mono/stereo input, output device selection, recording level, monitoring level and routing matrix.

yeah. i know. all fun and intuitive choices...clearly intuitive. yeah, we were all born with this kind of technological background knowledge. uh huh.

suffice it to say it took me months to get so i could make these adjustments and settings in less than 5 seconds. i know. i'm fucking awesome. i know it.

with all these settings...uh...set, i can punch the little red bullseye in the transport bar of the editor window and we're off to the races. yep. off to the races.

except for the times i forget to arm the metronome, or set the other tracks to "not record" or un-solo the dummy tracks (if any).

if i haven't screwed the pooch on any of these parameters, it is indeed time to record, to 'lay down the snoopy and shred' as my good friend Woodstock Peef says.

In the case of 'FORGETFUL', this was less than smooth. i think i ended up recording and deleting about a dozen piano tracks before i decided to go ahead and lay down a drum track instead.

this'll get easier right?

well, perhaps.

Except when I need to lay down a drum track.

Drums are big. And because i don't want to drag my drum set into the living room, on account of that's where we eat and whatnot, i dialed up the fx editor and chose a MIDI patch from a music library (sadly the only music library) i have tucked away in the bowels of REAPER.

These VSti's--the virtual instruments available to use when recording a song is a much longer story than i care to relate right now. maybe later, over a beer or three.

Suffice it to say that they are digital samples of real instruments. Yeah, i know. what the hell?

Considering the Connection between Emotion and Melody

I took a bike ride.

I was forced to on account of there was so much noise and disruption outside.

Utility crews are fixing some broken dirt. They must be using really dull tools. Either that or they're just plain having fun; little big boys playing together, with big ass equipment. Fun for the entire family. Loud fun.

Anyway i wrote the following while sitting on my favorite pedestrian bridge in Austin. It's one of several bridges spanning the Colorado River as it meanders thru the Capitol City. the bridge does a little meandering itself as its not straight; it undulates, wiggles its way across the green fast-moving water.

Trouble is, the city insists on calling it a lake. Which is puzzling because it's not. Not really.

When i first visited Austin i remember wondering why they named it Town Lake. It's clearly not a lake; it's clearly a river. Lakes are big and somewhat entire--monolithic like a pond or something, not straight and narrow like a...a river. Lakes are supposed to have an inlet and an outlet, at least that's what my Earth Science book claims.

Anyway they changed the name. It's not Town Lake anymore (although why they went with something as prosaic as Town Lake i've no idea). Now it's Lady Bird Lake (which you might find head-scratcher as well, that is,if you didn't happen to know that Lady Bird, silly sounding name as it is, happens to be the dead wife of one of our dead presidents: a Texan by the name of Lyndon Johnson. .

Yeah, so i sat down in the sunshine on this serpentine bridge that connects North with South and i wrote this: It concerns the mystery of Music.

After slugging my way through 'It Could Happen to You' this afternoon it occurs to me that perhaps the thing that eludes me--the element that remains missing--that has been missing all these years--is not so much an element at all but an attitude.

Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl Rast tells a story. He says that we have sometimes a grasping, clutching attitude towards life.

Says that we're all born with this 'monkey brain'-sort-0f-deal. I can totally see what he means. I mean it seems most of us are walking around with a fair amount of caution., some would say uncertainty, maybe even dread. And our response to this tenuous planetary life we got going here can sometimes be to hold on to what we DO have lest it too slips from our grasp.

Think about it:

What is the first thing a doctor does when we are born? He or she shakes the table or slaps the bottom of our feet, or cuffs our butt, to see if we are alive and well. And what is our response? we reach out for something to hold. like a monkey trying desperately to hold on to its mother as she swings from branch to branch.

This response to life extends past diapers, touching even the most basic of human needs: the quest of the human heart for meaning.

Br. David talks about the dilemma we so often face in life: whether to play it safe, take no risks, keep everything on an even keel so as to avoid the oftentimes troublesome unknown or do we venture past our comfort zones, test the boundaries set by inertia, and run the risk of tribulation?

until we discover that the truth is something that HOLDS US, that we give ourselves to it and then it holds US.

Not something that we hold onto, that we grasp and clutch to our breasts like the monkey clinging to its mother.

This becomes an attitude held in us, by us.

And this is what i am wondering about as i sit here on this breezy sun-drenched wavy gravy bridge.

This 'element', this 'attitude' about what it means to create music, to play 'good,' is it something i can give myself to and then let it hold me

or is it something that i must struggle to acquire then maintain and rigidly hold, wielding it like some Medieval knight crashing into battle?

Is this idle curiosity? NO.

This project, this all-inclusive resort for the high-minded that i've begun, has put me touch with all the elements of music that have baffled me since i first remembered that i wanted to play something 'good.'

Part of the project is me acting like i know how to do this shit. i know how to come up with changes, i know how to comp, i know how to engineer, i know how to improvise, i know how to operate instruments and on and on. Really?

So as i struggle to play what i hear, to sing the notes i hear in my head, to sound like a musician that has something meaningful to say, this one thought remains: what's it take to translate emotion into music?

I know this question yet its answer continues to elude me. But maybe this concept of attitude, once thoroughly adopted, is the same kind of deal: Brother David's deal.

Maybe this attitude about playing a melody--any melody--be it my own, the head of a tune, a solo line--maybe the element that is missing in me is not something that is studied and acquired and held on to and hauled out when the time is right.

Maybe it's an attitude that simply needs to be accepted and manifested.

Doubts come immediately of course.

But maybe that's part of it too. Maybe doubts are just indications of an immature attitude; one not yet fully formed and adopted. So does this mean that we can simply sidestep these doubts and continue to strive for this all-inclusive attitude?

An attitude that has at its core an unshakeable belief (trust) that there are notes to be played and i can find them.

It's a mystery.

But could it be, that i have yet to spend the requisite time in discovering the connections between these elements? Do i just need to keep going?

By sitting, by contemplating, by paying attention, is it possible to discover and make my own, this connection between an attitude about life and music that sustains me instead of drains me?

If i stumble upon one will it bend to the other?

If i'm able to discover the truth that holds me with respect to the essential life-giving elements, i.e., love, trust, courage, will the musical elements of melody, harmony and emotion follow suit?

Or vice versa. If through this project, i am able to discover precisely the connection between emotion and melody, emotion and harmony, will the truth that holds me up in times of uncertainty and despair come as well?

'It Could Happen To You"

It Could Happen To You.mp3




Ok. this is cheating but it's my blog right?

I'm beginning this blog, on this particular tune after i worked on it a little yesterday. which in and of itself, isn't really cheating.

but i think i have to do the whole thing over.

why?

there had better be a good reason. you're talking to a guy who HATES...Hates to turn around to go back to the house to retrieve something he forgot.

Hates to retrace his steps looking for an article he 'put in a safe place.'

Hates to go back to anything once he puts it to bed.

that said, i think i have to redo this whole tune.

because it doesn't sound good. doesn't feel right. doesn't work.

i keep hearing the way Chet did it.

that lyrical, round-edges tempo

those leisurely pursued changes

that sweet sweet melodic movement

yeah my version (even the practice version mind you...for practice purposes only kind of a thing) doesn't have any of these things. in fact these elements represent pretty much a diametric opposition to the way Chet did the tune. Not good. Not good.

Ok, so let's dive back into it and see if i can fix it.

Later....that same day.....

Turns out i didn't try to fix it. instead i decided to go with what i had in terms of tempo, drum part, keys and bass. I didn't have a vox or a horn part down yet.

i decided this based on a spur-of-the-moment reaction: i know. it doesn't make much sense. don't worry. turns out, it doesn't have to.

I figured, given what i already had down, i had nothing to lose by going ahead and fleshing it out. i could always build out a brand new version of the same tune, one more aligned with Chet's version.

First order of business: figure out why Reaper wasn't showing up in the version that preceded the new one that they told me to download: the one whose major updated feature seemed to be to fuck everything up: Firefox, Itunes, Safari, Word. The friggin OS for chrissakes!

Finally, i got it and it worked. So i hit out to see what i could do with the tracks i had in the can. They sounded ok and appeared to be in sync with each other which meant i had done a decent job copying and pasting the parts i laid down yesterday.

So i set up the mic to roll on a vocal track. Got the lyric sheet in front of me and tapped 'record.' it felt really good to sing the tune. i noticed it was easier to stay in tune. this was good.

But still, i have trouble hearing the bed when i'm singing. there must be a technique involved when recording . i wouldn't know. but i guess i'm going to find out, most likely by trial and error, the last refuge of an idiot.

one thing i did differently: i recorded my voice through several verses, only bailing if i really fucked up bad, i.e., forgotten lyrics, bad intonation, bad timing or rhythm. this is not different from any other tune i had done thus far.

but instead of moving on to the trumpet part, i had a thought about the arrangement. this meant leaving a hole where a vocal solo or a trumpet line would go. this worked out surprisingly well, arrangement-wise, that is.

The trumpet part threw me for a loop. it always does. i need to remember why i am doing this in the first place. it's not ready-to-wear, more like second-hand sportswear.

so the trumpet part went down but not without some moments of a shitstorm. mostly about the piece of crap i'm playing, the difficult playing the good stuff while the tape is running etc.

All this will no doubt continue through the project, through the process.

'You Make Me Feel So Young'

You Make Me Feel So Young.mp3






You make me feel so young

you make me feel like there's songs to be sung

bells to rung and a wonderful

a wonderful what?

a wonderful race to be run?

a wonderful man to be hung?

a wonderful crap that is dung?

no...

the lyric is:

you make me feel like there's songs to be sung

bells to be rung

and a wonder fling to be flung.

yes.

and why do i bring this up, other than to be a clever sot?

cuz lyrics, like changes, can take on an extra layer, deeper than first thought.

the first pass through a tune is nothing to take for granted. i'm thinking here about my own process yes, but also the process i imagine when the writer is creating it in the first place.

don't get me wrong; i think i'm creating something as well, maybe not worthy of quite the originality of the ...er...original, but i am creating something right. I mean i'm not simply dotting the i's and crossing the t's here right?

well, i guess that's arguable. my point is that lyrics, like other elements of a tune, have to be just right in order for the song to fly...to be believable.

we've all heard songs that are all right but somehow don't quite hit it, you know? they miss kind of...they don't exactly make sense, don't compel us, don't draw us in, don't make us buy into the song's deal....

lyrics like those above: they need to be good. and yes there is such a thing as good and bad in this craft. i mean music is subjective (at least the individual enjoyment/appreciation of it) but as the Duke himself said:

"there are only two kinds of music in the world: Good and Bad."

anyhow, i'd love to expound more on this but i gotta move; there are multiple pieces of heavy equipment not thirty feet from where i am sitting in my living room here on 5th street in austin, texas and they are making music that i subjectively can't FUCKING STAND!

Well, turns out, i can't really leave. gotta finish this. i blame it on my puritan ancestry. never mind that i'm 100% Italian.

so, i just listened to the tune again. and this is what i think.

value judgement, value judgement. value judgement.

yeah, i think it pretty well sucks. the vocal is too strained, the tempo too quick (both over my head) and the keys are, well that track suffers from the same sickness as do the ones i laid before; just too much. too crowded. too....tooo.

I laid a trumpet track and what can i say? it's me playing trumpet the best i can. which leaves a territory of space between that and GOOD.

in all fairness though, the horn. let's talk about the horn for a minute.

First off, the trumpet: it has only three valves. three things to push down. three chances to change the pitch to reflect GOOD. hmmm.

can you understand how impossible this instrument is?

Don't worry, I'll wait.

yeah, three valves. to play what...something like 50 possible notes? wtf....seriously.......wtf.

yeah, and that's 50 notes on a good horn; one on which the valves behave themselves., i.e., that don't stick, bind, get stuck or leak? right.

and speaking of leaking....holy shit man. i have been trying to play this damn piece of plumbing for what, like a hundred years...since 6th grade right?

and i've never...ever heard of a horn that leaks. i mean leaks, as in spit, water, you know?

but this one, this broken down ancient student model Bach 1001 series with its tired valves and its bent and hammered and soldered bell, and its misshapen lead pipe and its wide ass clearance slides...

which brings me to the leakage.

now you'd expect a horn, if it's gonna leak, to spew from a faulty cork, perhaps on the spit valve. right? right.

no

this one leaks from the tuning slide. yeah, the tuning slide. that huge crook that comes off the lead pipe and connects the mouthpiece to the valves and eventually the bell. damn. i mean i never heard of this let alone saw it before let alone had a freakin horn that exhibited it...for God's sake.

anyway, on top of not being able to play a convincing solo on "you make me feel so young" the fucking horn is leaking spit on my feet!

and as a consequence, sounds like crap. all breathy and out of tune.

yeah man. some day. some day. some day i'm either gonna stop dicking around with shitty horns, or throw the thing under a bus.

and thus, you have my rant-o-the-day.

yay for you.

incidentally, i did get a decent trumpet track down for this tune and keeping in mind the reason i'm doing this in the first place (to develop a practice vehicle for Chet's tunes) it's all good.

i can move on to the next tune taking with me, dragging behind me, my ever growing sack of musical updates: piano fingering, chord placement, harmonic rhythm, trumpet technique and bass-on-a-piano chops.

yeah good luck with that.

Next Up.......the title track for one of my favorite Chet albums: "It Could Happen to You."

You Make Me Feel So Young

This tune is called 'You Make Me Feel So Young' and it is from the album...

Wait for it..............Yep...

It Could happen to You. Kenny Drew was the piano player on this August afternoon date in New York City in 1958.

I sat down to work on this tune Monday September 14th. I remember the date because it was the day after we got home from our trip out West. Man, what a trip. Colorado

Rocky Mountains

Two panhandles: Texas and Oklahoma

and...

Wyoming. Big deal? You bet. Know why?

Cuz before i got there, i seriously doubted its existence. I know it sounds goofy. But it's true. I figured i hadn't been there, so what the hell do i know. I mean i hadn't been anywhere out West for years and years, well into my fifth decade. And what the hell do i know about anything that i haven't seen with my own eyes? Hence, Wyoming, a big hunk of a cattle-driving state, without benefit of my senses, who knows?

But now i know. i know because i've sat at a table in Cheyenne. I drank a Wyoming beer. I drove down a road with a big sign on its grey shoulder that read WELCOME TO WYOMING.

So there you have it.

all right so i went to wyoming. good for me. what matters here is: i came back to austin and took up this project where i left off.

again. good for me.

But it wasn't easy. really. Predictably it was a slow day. i felt deflated. i was quiet. i was lonely.

I meditated for awhile, not because i thought i should. but because i was taking care of myself. i knew what i wanted, what was going to make myself feel better. so i sat for a while (in the garage on account of it wasn't hot, which was absolutely euphoric) then did two loads of laundry because it needed to be done and doing so made me feel like i was doing something useful, then i opened the computer...and nearly lost it.

Bullshit. Just Bullshit. That's what the computer had for me yesterday.

Bullshit comes in many flavors: financial, relationships, work, not-work, business and business-related. Especially this last one. Business.

Bullshit tasted like business yesterday. Bills, returns not credited, emails not answered and on and on and on. The bullshit supply is inexhaustible. The list stretches from the tip of one's nose to the top of the Eiffel Tower. And back.

Yeah so enough about this non-music mental paraphernalia.

I decided to run this particular tune because, well because it was the first one that came to mind as i made my way to the piano. yeah. that's how it happens. i wish i could say it was something else, a well-thought-out design borne of Conservatory-trained mental prowess perhaps. But no, not so much.

I just pick these tunes out of a hat so to speak. Oh well.

So i picked 'You Make Me Feel So Young.' And i thought, "i know this tune; i've listened to it a zillion times. i know it sounds trite. but you gotta understand; these tunes, all of them, are like my little cousins; i know how they wipe their noses on their sleeves, what kind of candy they hide in the cuffs of their bluejeans.

But once again, i am surprised at my inability to translate this intimacy to musical language. music is a mystery. the more i learn the more i don't know.

Jesus I hate that.

But i digress.

I begin. I read the chart. I see the changes. I see the chord changes and try to envision how this all works. How does Kenny Drew work this shit? How does he comp in such a way as to compliment Chet. How does he outline the chords rhythmically as well as harmonically? How the hell?

So what the hell. So i practice the changes, moving through them, figuring out inversions that permit fluid movement from one to the next.

I play through the changes, fingering each one and the best i can. I try to make sense out of the three or four notes in each one as they pass by at 165 MM.

It's not easy. At all. But after maybe half a dozen passes they start coming easier. I begin knowing what's coming next. And so i keep trying. Time after time i train wreck. Train wreck. A musical yard sale.

But i keep setting it up. And getting back up when it knocks me down. Such is life right?

And now that i've talked about everything BUT the tune, I feel myself too tired to continue this tonight. It's almost 11 and i gotta get some shut-eye.

Cheers.

Point of Indulgence

Ok sportsfans, this is not strictly a post about the project; in fact it will have pretty much nothing to do with it.

well maybe not totally nothing, perhaps it will obliquely touch on what i've been doing with this chetbaker project thing.

I only say this out front to help those of you who don't have time.

Go ahead and skip over it. head on out to something more fitting...say, fly-fishing or extreme fighting.

But those of you who feel that little twine of connection between kindred souls (and that's everyone), read on.

It's just that i feel a little off kilter. Scared maybe.

The obvious question: Scared of what?

Well let's see now.

I've been away.

Went out west for a little over a week. Drove. It was wonderful. K and I drove in her red convertible; a pretty snazzy little number. The weather was fine the entire two days it took us to get from Austin to Denver.

Warm weather, bright sun, audacious storms, impressive sights. I could do that forever i think.
No i couldn't. not really. cuz you know why?
At some point necessity would collide with adventure. and then...

the vortex would open up and....

The vortex? huh...

Maybe i mean that feeling i can get when my thoughts run over the speedbumps.

Speedbumps...wtf?

Uh, yeah. those little considerations of the rational mind that, when considered seriously, derail whatever else is going on.

I know you know what i'm talking about. it's a universal experience. albeit unique to each of us...which is why i won't go into it right now; not sure it would resonate with anyone else.

i'm compassionate that way.

But back to why i'm feeling so...strange.

i'm home...that is, i'm in my new home. another one. Yet another one.

After fifty years, i find myself bouncing around like one of those crazy super balls i used to get down at Crayton's Drugstore, on Fall St.

It started about five years ago.

Right after i blew my family up.

Apparently thirty years was long enough. long enough to be married, to live a householder's life, to raise two children, to play in the same bands with different rotations of musicians, going to the same workplace, talking to the same people about the same things in the same place at the same time.

It put into motion this thing...this different thing..this new, different thing.

Predictability morphed. Maybe 'morphed' is too gentle a term; perhaps a word that better fits the violence that this next phase in my life took on would be more appropriate.

Jarred, shook, jostled, spasmatically exploded? I don't know...suffice it to say that since my life took an abrupt left turn, i've found myself...well, that's the thing...i've NOT found myself.

No, this is not just a middle-aged guy crying in his beer, although i've been known to do that too. This is more like a guy trying to make sense out of something that seems resistant to the process. It resists being found out.

And if this sounds like just more sour grapes, well I can't help that. I really don't feel a victim. How could i really? I mean, it was my decision to light the fuse.

I watched as it burned evenly and then not so, steadily and then fitfully, until it sparked and sputtered toward the motherlode...and blew everything to hell.

it was all me. nobody held a gun to my head. it was me...pure and simple.

so why is it that i feel scared?

well shit, if i knew that, i wouldn't be pulling on your coat, now would i?

Course by 'you' i don't think i really know what or who i mean. No one is reading this blog, cept me. and i happen to be writing it, so what's the point?

Right. What's the point.

The smile dissolves, the compassion bounces back from the surface of the self-reflected mind. i recede within. again.

..............................................................
............................................................
.................................................................................................
But wait. I'm not gone. turns out i can't go. turns out i have to stay now.
Till i let myself know. Till i know where i am and where i'm headed.

And this project, this Chet project is part of that process. in some less-than-explicit way, it's part of remembering who i am.

And to this i say:

Ladies and gentlemen
Here's my advice.

Pull down your pants

And slide on the ice.

"Do it the Hard Way"

Do it the Hard Way.mp3



Life is surprising sometimes.

Like when i found out that i really didn't know Chet's music as well as i thought.

Yeah that'd be today.

I've listened to every one of Chet's recordings. That's gotta be like 4 million or something.


I've listened to them in the living room,
the bathroom,
out-of-doors,
the bedroom,
the kitchen,
the dining room,
in the car,
on the bus,
while walking,
while running,
on the way to the dentist,
to my folks' house,
to work,
to graduate school,
to church,
to the grocery store,
to the gym,
to concerts,
to the store,
to the park and
to the woods.

I thought i would know his music by now.

Today i got a surprise.

It happened while i was working on "Do it the Hard Way," a tune from Rodgers and Hart's Broadway play Pal Joey."

Now let me say up front that I find Broadway music in Broadway shows, uh...distasteful.
I avoid it like a cowboy avoids a Saturday night bath.

Like a visit to the dentist.

Like a colonoscopy.

Like going to bed when i'm all sofa-snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug watching a 1950s film in glorious Black and White

But i love this tune. despite its origin and so i chose it for my work today. I thought it was going to be a relatively docile activity. Ha!

All right then. Sometimes things don't go the way we think they will. Amen.

I started by thinking i'd change things up, try something new and different; a departure from my usual procedure.

Not that what i've been doing represents anything more than a rather incipient method of learning the skills and techniques pertinent to this project. I love the music, i love what it does and i want to learn what i can from the musicians, the composers, the lyricists.

I want to be a musician able to translate what i feel, what i hear through whatever instrument i am holding. yeah that's what i want and this is the attitude i bring to each session. and indeed to the project's session today.

So, today, working with this very familiar tune, i was not in any way prepared for what happened.

I began today pretty late in the day, having spent a good part of the middle of this hot summer day recording with a musician friend in his home studio.

And this is how it began.

I knew i knew this tune, especially the vocal. especially the melody. i could hear chet's voice even before i started.

turns out i was wrong.

i decided to lay a piano track first. i looked at the chart. it looked pretty simple. mostly ii V I in the key of Eb major. Easy capeasy.

So i practiced a few times through, set the tempo at 170mm and off i went.

jeez, it really didn't go that well.

First of all, the tempo proved to be WAY-too ambitious. Even after a half dozen times through, i was still making lots of mistakes.

I managed to get three or four choruses down on tape though.

So i moved on to laying a drum track. that went pretty well and taking what i had learned previously about keeping the track passes as long as possible. so that was the good news.

The not-so-good news?

After listening to the two tracks i laid, i noticed something: it didn't sound right. the chords. something wasn't gelling.

It dawned on my when i began singing the vocal. Something was pretty wrong with the way the melody was laying inside the changes. the harmony bed was off.

So i looked a little bit deeper. I played--slowly now-- through the changes, playing attention to how the melody fit with the harmony i'd laid down.

Shit. there it was. it didn't take very long. it was pretty immediate. the melody was clashing so violently with a certain segment of the form that i completely lost the line. i didn't know the melody anymore

I didn't know the melody anymore. This tune I had heard and sang in my head countless times, even going so far as to transcribe Chet's vocal solo on it, had flown right out of my head.

holy shit.
My stunned disbelief slowly receded and melded with a plan of action. a distasteful plan, but a plan.

i had to redo the whole harmony bed.

that was an easy conclusion to reach. a much harder task to carry out. i mean before i could fix it i had to figure out what to fix it with...the correct chords. this was much harder than you'd think, given my history with this tune. oh well.

surprises sometimes are fun. this one was not. i was disappointed with myself. i was pissed off too.

but persevere i did. at first i thought i could just listen to the harmony and fit the melody that i had know so well (before today that is) right in where it needed to go.
shit

not so easy. surprisingly not so easy. surprisingly frustratingly difficult.

the first thing i did was burn what i had laid down previously. gone. flushed down the fucking drain.

so next, i had to see about recording a new keys track, this time with the right changes; those that fit properly with the melody.
first thing: slow the tempo down. give myself a fighting chance eh?

that helped immediately. i set about figuring out the correct changes and laying them down. ok. right.

well, an hour later i was still flailing about looking for the correct chords for the turnaround in the B section. Not easy.

Dealing with the negativity foisted upon me by this void of melodic memory i worked my way slowly through the process of trying to get the tune down.

I couldn't yet hear the changes. so i decided what i should do is listen to the tune. i mean how sad is this? i actually have to listen to the song again to hear the changes and melody? my god, what a travesty. surprise.

so that's what i did. i dialed it up on itunes and listened. i wish i could say that this is what brought it all home for me. alas. another surprise.

The 1958 recording of "Do it the Hard Way" as it appeared on Chet's album It Could Happen to You turned out not to be what the doctor ordered to hear the chords that Kenny Drew was laying down. i just couldn't make them out as clearly as i had hoped. so the search continued.

i wish i could say that it went lots faster after that but it really didn't.

To make a long story short, i still have to record the melody line. I did figure out the changes though. I'm not at all convinced that they are the same chords that Russ Freeman plays on the recording. This is upsetting to me.

But i will go at it again. TOmorrow i hope but i'm not sure. tomorrow we leave on a fabulous road trip up through the Texas panhandle, across that little sliver of land called--oddly enough--the panhandle (this time in Oklahoma) and up toward the Colorado mountains.

So..........more later.

Remind me if i forget. I need to blog about comping. Russ Freeman has it down man. Where my comping seems hard, clumpy, sloppy and angular and less than accurate not to mention eloquent, Freeman's is all of this and more. I find it a little daunting but i am going to do it. I am going to do it. I am going to do it. Goddamn it.

"Dancing on the Ceiling" con't

So having 'nailed' in the intro after only, what, a half an hour dicking around with it, trying to make it sound like it WASN'T played by a 12-year-old Suzuki Piano student (no offense), i proceeded to lay a drum track.

But before i could do that, Reaper pulled some of its delightful snafu for no reason bullshit. today's flavor was Reaper saying

'you know what, let's screw with this poor bastard. it's late at night, he's tired, he won't know what the fuck to do. c'mon waddya say...let's fuck with him.'

Yeah, and fuck with me it did.

The problem was it didn't 'see' any MIDI inputs. Now for the uninitiated, this might not sound like anything you'd need to care about. but you'd be wrong. you see, if Reaper doesn't recognize that there is something coming in, nothing will come out.

In other other other words, you can't record something from nothing. So because Reaper refused to allow for the reality that yes, there is a MIDI instrument connected to the computer thru the USB port that is running through a USB MIDI interface (that would be my Edirol UA 25-EX for those keeping tabs on such things, it wouldn't allow any recording to take place.

Which of course meant that i was up the creek without a paddle (pronounced crick, me being from a land east of the Mississippi and all).

So wah wah wah, piss and moan and throw myself down feet and arms flailing about like some goddamn hooked fish

Finally i just shut the damn thing down and rebooted. that did the trick.

But THIS IS A TEST now: what did i do just before i killed Reaper? C'mon now, you should know this.

Again., what did i do just before shutting down my recording program, (my music editor as charlie insists i call it).

Yes. the little guy in the back. good for you. someone's been paying attention.
Yes. i went to FILE and chose Save Project.

And (this is for you charlie) i saved it in a place where i know i can find it...just where it belongs: in the folder i made called 'Chet's practice tunes' right there in plain sight on my beautiful (uncluttered) desktop.

all right then.

So when Reaper reincarnated and got all populated with the correct tracks and files etc., i made a few passes at a drum track for reference. it's not what i would call stellar but it is serviceable, in a 'this is only for my ears, not for anybody whose opinion i remotely hold in any kind of esteem' sort of way.

But before i moved on, i decided to copy and paste the short drum phrase i just recorded. this was a mistake.

It was a mistake because i ended up dicking around with it for way too long. it proved too much for me i guess, to try to get all the areas lined up and accounted for and smoothly transitioned. sheesh what a hassle.

I used this experience to inform my next efforts: to wit: (whatever the hell that means) i recorded the entire drum track across the anticipated length of the tune. but more about this later as that too changed.

The changes i put down in a new track took a few times to get right; i had to punch in a spot but only one, which is actually pretty impressive given the length of the form. i ran a few dry verses and choruses (passes through the form without recording them) before going live.

Then i laid a bass track using the same technique; making a few empty passes then recording it and going back to punch in for the few spots that i fucked up.

one thing i realized during this segment of the project.

When playing a bass line on piano (instead of a bass) it's a little easier to make it through without screwing up if you leave your hand in one position, say in 'first position.'

First position i think is where your pinky finger is on the root of the tonic while the thumb is on the fifth.

Ok, so for those whom i just left in the musical dust, what i mean is:
Your thumb stays on the tonic, the first scalar step in the key you're playing in.
for example:

Say the tune you're playing is in Cmajor. The first scalar step would be.....C...right.
The next step would.....D....very good.
The next step....E
The next...F
The next...G.

Notice the names of the scalar steps: have you seen these somewhere before...in precisely that order?

Yes, the good ole alphabet. uh huh. i always feel bad for those folks in places like Egypt and Mongolia when i think of this coincidental arrangement between music theory and literacy.

anyway.

I discovered that you can use this arrangement: this root (the first step) through the fifth to your advantage when playing a bass line on piano. I mean it's not a cure-all for making mistakes; for one thing, as soon as the changes (the chords, remember?) diverge away from I-V and chords in between, you're pretty much screwed.

Oh, one thing before i get too far afield from laying the rhythm tracks for this tune "Dancing on the Ceiling."

The introduction of the tune i designed to be played without bass or drums but i added a little snare and kick snap just before the first verse. it made it sound much less stilted and more live. gotta remember that for future recordings.

On to "Deep in a Dream"