Learning/unlearning

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.

I’m fortunate enough to live in a major metropolitan area. Though we don’t have a huge Gypsy jazz scene, I can go see various members of the Hot Club of San Francisco play around town. I am also fortunate in that I was able to take a private lesson from Paul Mehling, founder of the Hot Club of San Francisco. He is not only an amazing guitarist, but as far as I know, he was the very first person to popularize Gypsy jazz in the U.S. I look forward to my next lesson with him, but it’s taking me quite a while to digest all he taught me in the first lesson.

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