Embarrassing revelations about my ear or lack thereof.

1) Apparently, I can't always tell the difference between sus2 and sus4.
2) Apparently, if I'm rushing, I sometimes confuse the sound of diminished triad and augmented triad.
3) Apparently, I need a LOT more basic ear training.

Eb major triad over C major triad: love it, love it

I'm in love with this particular bitonal tension. Here's something interesting. I could easily rearrange the notes in these two triads to make it conform to a C dominant 7 sharp nine (so-called "altered dominant") kind of thing, a very common jazz sound...and yet if I don't try to box it in like that, if I keep envisioning and playing and hearing it as two separate triads sounding simultaneously, the mood and feel is entirely different from altered dominant.

I've been playing with it this way: 'comping simply on the root position triad in my LH while noodling on the opposite triad in my RH, i.e., Eb major "over" C major for a bar, then switch to C major "over" Eb major for a bar, etc etc ad infinitum. It's fun. I highly recommend it.

Everybody's driving the bus, and to the same destination.

I wish I could remember which song John Medeski was talking about when he proposed one of the most important ideas I heard all week at camp....I'm pretty certain it was the VSOP band (Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter) but don't remember the track. In any case, Medeski made this beautiful set of gestures with his arm to convey his idea, and it stuck with me. He compared a traditional jazz standard performance by sweeping his arm up and down and up and down in small arcs, like a roller coaster's motion. This represented each soloist taking his turn to tell his own story, then stepping back to let the next soloist take his turn. A fine way of doing things, not to be belitted when it's done well in a casual setting like a jam session or informal pick-up gig, or as a step in one's development as a soloist.

But the arguably greater achievement of a band like VSOP was something Medeski represented with a single big sweeping arc of his arm. He used that gesture to emphasize that each tune is a singular journey--one in which an individual soloist doesn't just get his chance to say "his thing" and then step back...instead, each soloist uses his time to add to the overall narrative arc of the whole tune, to push the band further into the groove and higher into the specific feel and sound of the tune.

Obviously, this is exactly what MMW does so well, and to some extent it may be obvious, and yet I really appreciated John making the idea so explicit and clear.

It's something I think we manage to do fairly well in a natural way with both the bands I run, but now that I've had it illustrated and pointed out so well, I'm going to try to focus on it the next time we play. (Sandcastle actually played last night and I do remember moments of thinking, 'Wow, we're doing it, we're really achieving that collective thing.')

If anything, the goal of a single narrative arc pushed along by everyone in the band may help me from getting hung up on the "false goal" of playing a great solo. It's not supposed to be about ME so much, even if it's my turn to take over the steering wheel for a few choruses. It's still and always about US and getting us all to the other side in the same big beautiful vehicle... I like that.

"You will learn generosity toward your own work by becoming more generous with others."

This was the advice that Cary Tennis, Salon.com's longtime advice columnist, gave to a frustrated, blocked young writer. She'd been working for a small publishing house and had become so depressed and agitated by the poor quality of "slush pile" manuscripts that she was now paralyzed in her own writing. Every piece of immature or poorly edited or incompletely imagined fiction that she saw made her feel simultaneously arrogant ("how can this person possibly believe he/she is a writer!") and paranoid ("what if I'm every bit as bad and self-deluded as these would-be writers?"). As a result, over time, this woman's own creativity had come to a grinding halt as she found herself caught between impossibly high standards and a deep lack of self-confidence.

Cary Tennis said a whole lot of things in response but these were the words that jumped right out at me:

You will learn generosity toward your own work by being more generous to others.

What a beautiful thought. I wish someone had said this to me when I was a young would-be novelist caught between my impossibly high standards and my deep lack of self-confidence.

I'm a musician more than a writer now, but the sentiment still holds. I am going to try to put it into practice.

Can't get MMW "The Lover" out of my head.

I'm completely obsessed now with the tune Medeski and the boys broke down for us on the first full day of camp: "The Lover." It's the one where he's playing C blues scale in the right hand over an alternating left-hand vamp of C minor 7 to E Major 7. I know a lot of pianists who can credibly go "outside" the changes of a tune from time to time and make it work, but this usually involves taking the RIGHT HAND improvised line far away from the steady chord progression. It works especially nicely on changes that are very well known...."All the Things You Are," for example, which is one song John M. played during his talk on "The Ins of Taking It Out." But what I DON'T hear often is this concept of keeping the RH line playing the same scale (in this case, C blues) idea while the LH works alternatively "with it" (C minor) or "against it" (E Major). If I get a chance, I'll have to ask John whether he knows of other artists who've done that kind of thing, or if it's his own concoction. Maybe it's an organist's way of thinking? Please weigh in if you happen to know....

Bassist Amy Shook told me, "Listen harder than you play."

Amy Shook is this amazing DC-area bassist with whom I've had the pleasure of recording and performing from time to time. (She's several leagues above me in terms of accomplishment and experience; I call her when I've got a gig or a session date, but she would never really need to call me for one of her projects, there being many, many great pianists in this area...)

In a classroom setting I once heard Amy say, "Always listen harder than you play." During camp, Medeski and Martin and Wood (along with their friends Ribot and Bernstein and Scofield) continually reinforced that message, explicitly in what they taught, and implicitly in how they played and interacted with each other.

I figure listening is both an attitude and a skill set. I think I can rearrange my attitude readily to become a better listener, but it sure would help if I knew and thoroughly understood what I'm hearing. In that spirit, I've decided to start spending serious time again in ear training studies. I've got a great software tool for this but have been neglecting lately. I'd really recommend this program to anyone who wants to grow bigger ears: Ear Master Pro 5. Check it out.

I've got other tools--some of jazz educator David Baker's materials, as well as the relative pitch course from that guy who also advertises his "perfect pitch" course in all the music magazines--but for now I'll stick with Ear Master and try (slowly, steadily) to live up to its title....

piano practice, post-camp Week One

Following John Medeski's interpretation of Ran Blake's polytonality exercise, I've been calmly, patiently checking out the sound of C# major triad over C major triad all week, so much so that I can now accurately sing the C# triad while sounding C major...and it feels "tense" but not "wrong." Cool stuff indeed.

Next week I will briefly sit with D major triad over C major, but not too long since that's just Lydian mode and I hear that pretty readily. Eb major over C major will be fun, I'm certain....

Mance Lipscomb says religion is love

I grew up with the kind of people who use the Bible as a bludgeon--a blunt force instrument to keep curious young minds from asking too many questions or thinking too independently. So I can perhaps be excused for my allergy to religion.

But I couldn't help but me moved while watching "A Well Spent Life," director Les Blank's documentary about bluesman Mance Lipscomb, and hearing the sweet old man talk about religion (shortly after talking about how many parentless or might-as-well-be-parentless children he has helped to raise over the years). "Religion is just love," says Mance Lipscomb. If only more people thought that way, the world would be a different place...

Meanwhile, those of us without organized religion take our spiritual sustenance where we can find it. We build private virtual churches deep within ourselves.

During one week in the Catskill Mountains with the jazz/funk/free trio Medeski Martin & Wood at their first annual music camp, I sort of felt like we were all embarked on building a new religion...but specifically one in praise of music itself, without any particular creed, code, or body of legend that needed to be adhered to. Watching the Mance Lipscomb film late at night, after hour upon hour and day upon day of workshops and ensembles and performances from MMW, was like hearing a really great heartfelt sermon from the one preacher in childhood you could actually trust. Here's a guy with a resilience and good humor and gratitude about life even when it's grindingly difficult. A person who's learned to sing his blues rather than get bogged down by them. We would all wish for such grace.

Speaking of grace...after 17 years making music together, it turns out that John Medeski, Billy Martin, and Chris Wood are also graced with a gift for teaching. I could not get over how much they gave us and kept giving us during this weeklong musical adventure: their advice and ideas and musical philosophies; their cool stories; their innovative practice suggestions; their incredible, intimate performances in that beautiful little space at the Full Moon Resort; the extensive, eclectic, but very concrete songlist of music that had influenced and informed them...it went on and on.

Sure, this camp was a savvy business move for them. I am certain that with their kids growing up and they themselves reaching middle age, M and M and W are all looking for ways to make a living in music without being on the road constantly. And besides, they're just human beings. For all I know, John Medeski never pays his taxes on time, Billy Martin is mean to his mother's cat, and Chris Wood once did or said something that made his junior high school prom date cry in the girl's bathroom. None of us is a saint.

But for one week in early August in the Catskills, these fine gentlemen built us a little church of music and welcomed us in. It was a savvy business move but also an act of service, humility, and love.