Learning/unlearning

I’ve been listening to two of my (semi-childhood) heroes: Robert Fripp and Bill Nelson. I’ve been a fan of these two guitarists since the mid-70′s. Bill Nelson I heard on the local “underground” radio station (from Milwaukee), because they kept playing Be Bop Deluxe. The first time I heard “Maid in Heaven”, I though “Wow…I didn’t know you could do that….” although I’m not sure exactly what the specifics of that thought were. What I mean…I don’t remember what the “that” that I thought you couldn’t do was. Was that last sentence even English?

The Fripp story is more interesting. I and my friends (this was my senior year of high school) were fans of the band Mark-Almond, because Jon Mark and Johnny Almond were a major part of John Mayall’s band on the “Turning Point” album. (If you don’t remember that record, it’s where the FM radio hit “Room To Move” came from. If you still don’t remember it, I can’t really think of any way to tell you what was so great about these guys…).

Anyway…the Mark-Almond band was playing in Milwaukee as the opening act (I think) for King Crimson. Mark-Almond were late, and so King Crimson came on first, and I had another one of those “I didn’t know you could do that” moments. I was aware of King Crimson from their In The Court of the Crimson King album, but I thought of them as a “classical rock” band and sort of lumped them with The Moody Blues (and what I was thinking when I did that, I’ll never know…)

That night King Crimson had what I think of as the classic lineup: Fripp, David Cross, John Wetton, and Bill Bruford. They were touring for the Starless and Bible Black album, part of a series (or at least that’s how I think of it) that also included Red and Lark’s Tongue in Aspic. And it was really a revelation:  instead of jamming like most of the rock bands I was familiar with, they played very strict compositions (though with room for improvisation in sections). Fripp was playing either giant chords or snakey-sounding lead lines, sometimes in unison or harmony with David Cross’ violin. The big revelation of the night was Bill Bruford. The percussionist who had played with King Crimson on the Larks Tongue in Aspic album had just quit — and so Bruford was handling both the standard drum set and all the exotic percussion. And it was my first exposure (in rock music, at least) to exotic percussion. Also, keep in mind that, apart from Ginger Baker, the rock drummers I had heard up to that point were pretty much “hit the snare on two and four” guys. And Bruford was an accomplished jazz drummer.

When my friends and I left the show, the first thing I said was “I’ve got to get a current album by these guys! That was amazing!” My friends’ response, by and large, was “That didn’t make any sense….what where those guys doing?” What can I say? I was ahead of my time…at least for the small town I came from.

And so…

Both Nelson and Fripp are running their own independent record labels, sold mostly through their web sites. They’ve both continued to work in the veins that I’m familiar with, but both have grown. Nelson is still doing the ambient stuff he did after Be Bop Deluxe broke up, but it’s more mature now, and more interesting. He also puts out more “composed” records and “rock” records — so there’s a lot of listening that can be done if you’re willing to go where Nelson is going.

Nelson has two labels going: “Sonoluxe” and “Discs of Ancient Odeon”. The “Discs of Ancient Odeon” label seems to be exclusively for re-issuing the recordings he makes for the yearly “Nelsonica” conventions (a gathering of fans for which Nelson puts together a band and does a couple of live shows).

And Nelson continues to explore different ways of presenting music: he’s done projects ranging from incidental music for theater to background music for art installations. His next record is called “Last of the Neon Cynics” — it’s a sound track for a comic book by Matt Howarth (which is included on the CD).

Fripp has remained interesting as well. He’s done a series of performances called “Soundscapes”; they’re an extension of Frippertronics (setting up layers of sound and then soloing over them [or not]), but with very sophisticated digital equipment in the place of the Revox tape recorders. (I can’t really explain Frippertronics very well — read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frippertronics). I have not been as big a fan of the Soundscapes as I have been of Frippertronics; I think it’s that with the Soundscapes I’ve heard,  I’ve only heard the final product and not the process; and process is a large part of what makes the Frippertronics so attractive to me.

Also, Fripp has continued with King Crimson (nice, but not as fun for me as his more experimental work), and done improvised music with The Slow Music Project and various ProjeKct configurations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProjeKcts).

Fripp has also made quite a few of his live shows downloadable at http://dgmlive.com — some of the shows just lately made available are Frippertronics from the late 70′s/early 80′s. This, I think, is wonderful — of all Fripp’s work, I have always thought that Frippertronics were the most under-represented as far as available recordings.

And who knows? If I listen to more Frippertronics, maybe I’ll start to understand the Soundscapes more completely.

And Mr. Nelson? If you’re reading this, you might consider making some of your output downloadable in a lossless format. Then all of us could hear those out-of-print Sonoluxe and Discs of Ancient Odeon albums.

To the occasional reader (i.e., the person who actually reads these posts): it’s been a great year for learning, but the focus of my learning has shifted a bit. I still play guitar (though some tendonitis is making this a little problematic), but most of my learning has been focused on language. I’ve been taking two Italian classes, which has also made me think a lot about parts of language in English.

So…this will probably be my last post of the year. There should be more guitar stuff later, and I’ll probably start writing in Italian a bit more than I should.

If you’re reading this: buona giornata e buon fine di settimana.

I realized today that I haven’t posted here in months. My reasons:

• My failure to “get” the Gypsy rhythm. I know this will just require more work.
• I’ve been obsessively studying the Italian language, and that seems to block out all other studying.

So…going to change my strings today, and get back to it.

I recently got a Squeezebox; that’s a music streaming device that allows one to stream music from various online sources. The online source I’m getting really stuck on is Pandora.  For those who don’t know, Pandora is a service that allows you to create custom “stations” that can be shaped to play only music you like.

Here’s my advice: If you have a Pandora account (which you should), do yourself a favor and create a Gonzalo Bergara station. I created one yesterday, but just really started listening today. What I’m hearing is an incredible assortment of music that rivals the assortment I get with my Django Reinhardt station. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

Haven’t posted in a while, so I thought I’d just post this nice ii-V-I progression. The m7b5 can be gotten to from a straight m7 if you like to keep voices moving a lot.

I fit this into the end of “Hungaria” when I was messing around the other day.

A while back, I went out and bought new stereo speakers. That’s not the big deal. The big deal is this: the owner of the store where I bought them had the best jazz collection I’ve ever seen. He introduced me to some things I considered curious, like a Swedish jazz label. Ok, maybe not that weird, but…

But he also had the best jazz collection I’ve ever seen, most of it on vinyl. To sell me on the speakers I was considering, he put on Green Street by Grant Green, a prolific jazz guitarist who recorded largely for Blue Note. Here I have to admit I know very little about jazz. To me, Django Reinhardt is the man. I’m also pretty fond of Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke. In the past few years I’ve even started to like the bop of Charlie Parker. And I’m more than fond of Duke Ellington and Count Basie.

But that Grant Green record was a revelation. It was jazz guitar played without the soporific feel and tone that most of the jazz guitarists I’ve heard seem to have. It had bite and it was really, really funky. And then the guy dropped this bomb on me: there are hundreds of records on the Blue Note label, and they’re all this good. He later took that back and told me there were a few clunkers, but by and large: good.

A short list of some of my current favorite Blue Note releases:

• Hank Mobley, Soul Station and Workout
• Grant Green, Matador
• Kenny Dorham, everything I’ve heard, but especially Una Mas and Whistle Stop
  
• Booker Little, Booker Little 4 and Max Roach

Note: Kenny Dorham’s Whistle Stop is especially nice to listen to on the mono vinyl reissue.

This blog is largely about my struggle with jazz rhythm playing. But I’m going to digress here, because what I have to say is really about learning/unlearning.

I’ve taken about four semesters of Italian in the past few years. But I’ve realized that while entertaining, it will be largely useless in my day-to-day life. So I’m dropping Italian to concentrate on Spanish – because while it is unlikely that I will ever live in a place where I can converse with native Italian speakers on a day-to-day basis, I already live in a place where I can converse with native Spanish speakers with some regularity.

I discussed this with la mia moglie…no, no, sorry, con mi esposa, and she agrees that it’s a good idea. So…here I go.

I just picked up Echoes of Mallorca by Biel Ballester. There are a few tunes where he is playing very slowly (well, relative to Angelo Debarre…). And in those few tunes it is amply demonstrated that it is better to play a slow lick perfectly in time than to play fast, sloppy, and with bad time.

That’s the thing about Ballester — besides having interesting melodic ideas, he plays in time. And it’s really interesting to hear this. I don’t hear much slow playing on Gypsy Jazz records, and playing like this makes me want to hear more.

Every guitar player has weaknesses. Even the pros we admire have weaknesses, and they’re most likely very aware of them. They know, and we should, that improving  is simply a matter of practicing those things where youre weak over and over again.

So — this is just a record of two places in my repertoire where I mess up because I don’t quite have it. I’m practicing these things over and over — and if you’re interested in the Gypsy jazz style, you can profit from practicing these also, because they’re very much cliches in the style.

The first is a run from “Coquette” the way it’s played by the Gonzalo Bergara Quartet. It’s just a nice way to get from the I to the V.

The second is a chord run from “All Of Me” the way Paul Mehling showed it to me. A lot of chord charts go from C6 directly to A7. I like the descending chromatic run, though.

Basically, you’ve just looked at two nice chord runs that are applicable in a number of places. The second is fairly specific to “All Of Me”, but the run from the C6 to the A7 is pretty cool.

Sometimes I wonder  how I could play guitar for so long and know so little about chords. Here’s a G7 to C6 resolution that I use to get back to the 7th position to start off the whole “All Of Me” cycle again.

It’s obvious, yes. But nice.