Listening and Memorizing

When I was a classical trombone player, I was blessed with excellent teachers. I feel equally lucky to have hooked up with a terrific jazz guitar teacher. It's been interesting to experience high level teachers in two different genres and instruments. As you might imagine, jazz guitar lessons are quite different from classical trombone lessons.

The biggest difference between classical trombone and jazz guitar lessons seems to be the emphasis on listening and memorization as a jazz player. There was certainly emphasis on listening as a classical musician, particularly in ensemble playing. In my jazz guitar lessons, however, there is a heavy emphasis in playing by ear versus reading as a classical trombonist.

Reading is still important as a jazz guitarist. We usually spend some time sight-reading lead sheets or duets, but for the most part, we aren't even looking at music. It's assumed that I will memorize my assignments, and I always have an "ear assignment": transcribing an improvised solo, learning to play it, and stealing licks to apply to my own improvisations.

I take a lesson every other week. A little while ago, I realized that by the time I start my second week of practicing, I'm no longer using music. It's all memorized. Through memorization, I'm internalizing the music more than I ever did as a classical player – which makes me wish I had spent more time memorizing when I was a trombone player! It's also fun to be able to practice anywhere, anytime, because the music is all in my head.

The heavy emphasis on listening has been an overall benefit. When playing gigs, I'm more attuned to what is going on around me, and I find it easier to interact with the other players.

Since memorizing the music for my lessons is so beneficial, the next logical step is to memorize the music in my own book, especially the Tea for Two and Godfrey and Guy repertoire. That's a lot of music, but with practice, I'm finding that it's becoming easier to memorize new songs. I would love to someday show up to a gig with one of my groups and not have to pull out a single sheet of music!

Hope

Yesterday's service at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation was about hope. The minister was away, and instead of a regular sermon, three of us gave our own personal reflections about hope. This is what I said:

I am poor. I’m better off than some. I have a roof over my head, and as you watch my weight go up and down, I obviously have enough to eat. But still, I’m poor. You’ve probably heard or read about people who are one accident or illness away from disaster. I’m one of those people. Some months I’ve had only a couple dollars left after paying rent and bills. I recently put off treating an abscess tooth because I couldn’t afford the dentist. It was a matter of getting treatment or paying my rent. I often feel embarrassed by not being able to afford certain things, and my money situation has not helped my dating life.

My finances weren’t always a mess. In the ’90s, I was at the start of a promising career as a professional trombone player. I was often hired to play in pick-up groups for touring acts like George Burns, Rosemary Clooney, and The Manhattan Transfer. I played with the Ohio Light Opera for three seasons before I won an audition to play in an Air Force band, where I quickly rose to the top of the trombone section and performed as a soloist. I was all set. I was going to put in my 20 years of service, draw a military pension, and then settle down with a college teaching job. That was the plan, anyway. This all came to a crash when I developed a muscle tear in my upper lip due to overuse. What was once effortless was now painful, both physically and emotionally. Every time I tried to play, it felt like someone was poking me with a needle on the inside of my lip. I endured the final two years of my enlistment and then received an honorable discharge.

After leaving the Air Force, I allowed myself a year to heal. I tried playing trombone again, but I still couldn’t play. Four times, I tried to get my trombone chops back, but I failed each time before I came to the conclusion that I was never going to be able to play the trombone again.

To say I was depressed is an understatement. I found solace in food, gained 140 pounds over the course of a few years, and lived a solitary life. Somewhere in the middle of that, I was married, but then was unexpectedly divorced after three years. To this day, I have never received a solid answer for why Katherine left. Maybe she had a good reason, but she never told me. So…not a happy camper.

In spite of all this, I feel hopeful. What has given me hope is music. The guitar brought it all back.

Back in 2003, when we were still married, Katherine gave me a guitar for Christmas. Within a week, even though I could barely play the thing, I was already planning my second musical career. As a trombone player, I went from stone cold beginner at age 11 to passing a college entry audition at age 17. I figured that I could do something similar with the guitar, so I set myself a goal of being able to play professional guitar gigs after six years of practice. With my professional background and training, that process was accelerated quite a bit, and I began playing gigs after 3 years…not exactly setting the world on fire, but doing a decent job.

As I began performing more often, other opportunities began to appear. I realized that I was at least as good a singer as the people I was backing up, so I started singing. Now, I find myself teamed up with an amazing singer who shares similar musical goals. I’ve started teaching guitar lessons. More gigs are coming my way, and I have a quarter time job at this crazy church that allows a secular humanist to run their music program! So, while I’m still poor, things are looking up, and I’m very hopeful about the future.

Aside from the upward career momentum, music itself gives me hope on many different levels. I am absolutely driven by music. I can’t imagine what I would do without it. I’m involved in some aspect of music all day, every day…practicing alone, rehearsing with others, arranging music, typesetting music, and performing. I love the art of it, and I love the challenge of it. I love the fact that I will never have a perfect performance, no matter how good I become. There’s always going to be something to improve, and I plan to continue working on my craft the rest of my days. I’d like to leave this world with a guitar in my hands, trying to learn just one more lick.

Music also gives me hope by helping me connect with others. To put it mildly, I am socially awkward. There’s just something in my makeup that makes it difficult for me to connect with people. I feel uncomfortable making light conversation, and even though I’m a staff member, after a service, I’m usually out the door and gone before most of the congregation. I don’t have any problem standing in front of a crowd, but I’m extremely uncomfortable being in it. If you look up the word “introvert” on Wikipedia…that’s my picture. But music has helped me some wonderful people. I’m not exactly a social butterfly yet, but at least it gets me out of the house.

Now, I started off by telling you that I’m poor. But I don’t usually feel poor, because my days are filled with something that I love. I have discovered my purpose in life, and I’m following the dream. And because things are beginning to come into place, I feel hopeful about my future as a professional musician and life in general.

So…Are you hopeful…Or is something missing? If there is a hole in your life, I won’t presume to tell you how to fill it, but it couldn’t hurt to search – to find out what it is that fulfills you. I’m not saying you need to follow my path and go as far as making a career of it, but whatever it is, just do it. There is never going to be a perfect time to start. If you wait for just the right time to begin, you’ll be waiting for the rest of your life, so you might as well start now.

I hope that you’ll think about what fulfills you, and that you’ll follow your path. I hope that someday you’ll feel as rich as I do.

Learn Tunes

Joe Pass is one of my all-time favorite jazz guitarists. He was best known as a solo guitarist. His "Virtuoso" recordings are jaw dropping. My favorite recordings of Joe Pass are his duos with Ella Fitzgerald. I love the mix of solo guitar and understated, "just right" comping for Ella's singing.

Joe Pass' most famous advice for learning to be a good jazz guitarist was to "learn tunes." Many guitarists search for "secrets" of the master players. The big secret is that there is no secret. It all comes down to practice. The more you practice, the more you develop whatever talent you were born with.

While it's necessary to put in the hours, the quality of those hours is also important. This is where Joe's "learn tunes" advice comes into play. You can play technical exercises and develop fast fingers, but nobody wants to hear you play a bunch of scales. When you spend a lot of time learning tunes, you not only develop your technique, but you learn how to use your technique to serve the music and not the other way around. Joe Pass had astounding technique, but at the same time, his improvisation was approachable and melodic.

Last year, I spent too much time working on technical exercises when I should have been learning tunes. I was approaching jazz in guitar in the way I approached classical trombone. Most classical trombonists are ensemble players. They spend most of their time sitting with a handful of other trombonists in the back of a large orchestra or concert band, rarely playing solos. Back then, my job was to be able to sight-read anything you put in front of me. I spent a good portion of my practice time working on very difficult music that you would never hear outside the practice room. My philosophy was that because the exercises I was playing were so difficult, I would rarely encounter a trombone part that I couldn't read perfectly on sight.

It's different with jazz guitar. First of all, I'm a soloist. Even when I'm sitting in as a back-up player, I usually get the nod to play a solo here and there. Second, as a jazz player, I have to improvise. When you learn a lot of tunes, you gradually learn the language of jazz. If you spend a lot of time playing exercises, your improvisation will probably come out sounding like an exercise. If you spend a lot of time playing melodies, your improvisation will come out sounding more melodic.

I'm still practicing my core warm-up exercises of scales, arpeggios, fingerpicking exercises, and licks. I've scaled it back, though, sticking to just the basic exercises so that I have more time to work on tunes and increase my repertoire. It's just the first week of January, and I've already had time to write a guitar arrangement and learn a couple new vocals. I'm discovering that there's another good reason to spend less time on exercises and more time playing tunes: It's more fun!

Trombone Again?

Recently, I reestablished contact with Pete Jirousek, a good friend from my undergrad days at the University of Illinois. We exchanged emails last week, and last night I spoke with him on the phone. It was wonderful to be catch up with Pete again. Not only is Pete an all around good guy, but he's an excellent horn player based in Chicago. He teaches at VanderCook College of Music and has degrees from two top tier music schools, the University of Illinois and Northwestern University. Pete's played in several orchestras and has performed in numerous Broadway in Chicago productions. Although Pete is doing quite well for himself as a horn player, there was a time when he thought his career might be over. He didn't have all the same problems I did with trombone, but his story was pretty similar to mine.

After speaking with Pete, I suddenly have hope that I could be a trombone player again. I won't go into much detail here about the mechanics of playing a brass instrument. For now, suffice it to say that I can still buzz my lips into a trombone mouthpiece, and if I can buzz my lips, I should be able to play the trombone. The overuse injury I incurred in the Air Force has long since healed, and the problem is more mental than physical. I can buzz a trombone mouthpiece, but when I put the entire instrument up to my face, my lips lock up, and I feel like I'm fighting myself. In the Air Force, I was pressured to play on an overuse injury for nearly three years. Whenever I played a note, it felt like someone was poking the inside of my upper lip with a hot needle. Three years is a long time to experience that kind of pain, and as a consequence, I eventually developed a strong negative reaction whenever I held the instrument to my face.

The challenge will be to unlearn that negative reaction and substitute it with positive experiences. As I mentioned earlier, if I can buzz, I can play. The plan is to simply buzz a trombone mouthpiece for a few weeks to rebuild my embouchure. (An embouchure is what you form with your lips and teeth to buzz or blow into an instrument.) After I've regained some embouchure strength, I'll gradually add the trombone, but I'll still focus more on buzzing than on playing the entire instrument. The success I experience buzzing the mouthpiece should transfer to the full instrument, and I'll eventually be able to replace all those negative responses with positive ones.

Although I haven't played trombone in years, I still think like a trombone player. If I'm sight singing or trying to learn a melody by ear, I'll mentally use trombone positions to find the notes. Sometimes I'll wake up with trombone scales rattling around in my head, and I can still remember the melodies from etudes and solos that I played fifteen years ago. As Pete put it, the knowledge is all there. I'm still a trombone player…I've simply taken a really long break!

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I can't help imagining what it would be like to be able to play the trombone again and add it to what I'm already doing as a guitarist and singer. I was a classical trombonist back in the day, but I suspect I would have fun exploring jazz trombone. I don't know exactly where I would fit in the Atlanta scene. Not to brag, but I was awfully good back when I had my chops, and if I reach that level again, I'll be able to carve out a place for myself. It would be really cool to be flexible enough to be called for gigs or studio work as a guitarist, singer, or trombonist.

First things first, though. It's time to get a trombone mouthpiece and start buzzing!

How Did I Get Here?

This is crazy. How did I get here? Tomorrow I'm going to be standing in front of a choir as the latest music director at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation. If things had gone as originally planned, right now I would have either been the band director at a college or a really big high school. Instead, 25 years later, I somehow I wound up a freelance guitarist, music engraver, and brand new music director. Here's the chain of events that have led up to this point.

1. I entered the University of Illinois one year early, majoring in music education, where I was consistently praised for my teaching and conducting ability by a notoriously difficult teacher. Student teaching was a dream. I was on my way.
2. After two dismal jobs as a school band director, I realized that I wasn't cut out for public school teaching, or possibly I found myself in two impossible situations. Either way, I gave up my aspirations as a band director and went back to school to study trombone with Elliot Chasanov at Kent State University.
3. While studying with Elliot at KSU, and again at the University of Illinois, my trombone playing improved immensely. I won an audition and began a performance career in the Air Force.
4. The Air Force gig started off well. I really enjoyed it. The plan was to put in my 20 years and then seek out a college teaching job. Then I developed an overuse injury that halted my trombone career. Suddenly, the Air Force wasn't quite so fun. So much for that.
5. While in the Air Force, I learned how to use Finale to prepare printed music. I loved it so much that I decided to become a freelance music engraver. I'm still a freelance music engraver. I'm very good at it, and I'm proud of the work I've done. (1,300 publications and counting!)
6. After a year of struggle, my freelance music engraving endeavor really began to take off. I had lots of work and was making very good money. I had finally found out what I was going to do with the rest of my life, until my (then) wife gave me a guitar for Christmas!
7. Learning the guitar rekindled my dreams of being a performing musician again, so I set to learning guitar with a vengeance. (Unfortunately, this had a detrimental effect on my marriage, and that's all I'm going to say about that.)
8. I started off wanting to play Celtic music and singer/songwriter music similar to David Wilcox or Susan Werner, but then I hooked up with a jazz guitar teacher, and then I got hooked on jazz guitar.
9. Over the next few years, I was in and out of a few jazz groups, and I started and stopped a few of my own. Eventually I found a balance between my own solo playing, subbing in big bands, and my jazz vocal combo, Tea for Two, which I think is going to be a big winner.
10. While working on my jazz guitar chops, over the years I also became more and more involved with the music program at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation. I never really wanted to start going to church, but I went because my (then) wife wanted to go. She eventually left, but I stayed, and there I remain. I started off singing with the choir, and then I worked up the courage to begin playing guitar for services. I eventually became a substitute conductor as needed, and I served as interim music director three times. This last time, when the job opened up, it seemed like the right time to apply, and tomorrow I'll be standing in front of the choir.

I'm the type of person who likes to plan. Unfortunately, life often seems to have different plans! Maybe it's the improvisatory nature of jazz that has influenced me, but lately I've just decided to let the universe have its way. I still make my plans, but I'm no longer surprised when life takes a detour. For now, I'm equal parts music engraver, performer, and church music director. This finally feels right, like I'm where I'm supposed to be.

Why Jazz?

Twenty years ago, no one would have predicted I would someday be pursuing a career playing jazz guitar, least of all me. I didn't even like jazz very much back then. I played classical trombone, and I enjoyed playing in big bands when I had the chance (as long as I didn't have to improvise), but I rarely listened to jazz.

The phrase "jazz guitar career" seems like an oxymoron. There's the standard musician's joke. What's the difference between a rock guitarist and a jazz guitarist? The rock guitarist plays three chords in front of a thousand people. The jazz guitarist plays a thousand chords in front of three people. This is an exaggeration of course, but not by much.

So why do I like jazz now, when it didn't do much for me before? What set me on this lucrative path, where I can make literally tens of dollars a night?

When I first began learning to play the guitar, I started out wanting to sing folk songs and be a fancy picker. I love folk music, especially of the modern singer/songwriter variety. David Wilcox and Susan Werner figure prominently in my iTunes playlist. I had every intention of being a folk musician with fast fingers, but my first guitar teacher, Bob Shaw, was a jazz guitarist, and a mighty fine one at that. From him I learned how to unlock the entire fretboard. I'm sure I still own a capo, but I'm not sure where it is! From Bob, I also learned how to arrange some of my favorite jazz songs for solo guitar. As a trombonist, I frequently wrote arrangements for trombone quartet, and I was thrilled to be able to apply my arranging skills to my new instrument. So, part of the reason I play jazz guitar is that Bob Shaw turned me to the dark side.

I think I also am drawn to jazz for the mental challenge. I enjoyed music theory in college, and I briefly toyed with the idea of pursuing a graduate degree in music theory. I eventually gave up that idea, because I realized the only thing I could do with that degree would be to spend a career torturing undergraduates who didn't like theory as much as I did. I like puzzles, and I've found jazz to be an endless, fascinating musical puzzle of substitute chords and voicings.

Much of jazz is flying by the seat of your pants. There's a heavy improvisational component that you won't find in classical music. Sometimes you'll hear a little bit of improv in folk music, but it's usually very brief. As a classical trombonist, the thought of improvising petrified me. As a jazz guitarist, improvising excites me. Sometimes I come up with something brilliant, sometimes I come up with pure schlock, and most times it's somewhere in between. When you're improvising with others, there's a shared energy among the musicians and listeners when things are going well. You never quite know what's going to happen when the group starts improvising. I often think of jazz as stepping off a cliff and trusting that a bridge will appear.

I don't like all jazz, just like I didn't like all classical music. When I was a trombone player, I never enjoyed Bruckner or Wagner, which is ironic because they wrote some particularly juicy trombone parts. There is some jazz that I don't like as well. It doesn't mean it's bad. I just don't enjoy it. For example, I don't especially enjoy Coltrane. Blasphemous, I know, and I can't wait to hear comments on why I should love him. Yes, he was a genius and a musical pioneer, but I just can't get past his sound. It's abrasive to my ears, and genius or not, I have trouble listening to an entire album when I have to hear that tone quality. (Short tangent: I find it ironic that some musicians who say they enjoy the freedom of jazz also tell me that I must love Coltrane or I'm not a true jazz musician. So much for freedom.)

Everyone has their own tastes. My tastes run toward lyrical, singable music, even if it's instrumental. This is reflected in my own playing as well. My technique has improved leaps and bounds over the past year, yet I still prefer to play lyrical, singable lines when I improvise. If music has lyrics, I like to hear a clever turn of a phrase. Some of the lyrics from the Great American Songbook are pure poetry. Maybe it's my folk aesthetic coming through, but I'll probably never be a truly adventuresome jazz explorer. I'll always be expanding my technique and searching for ways to become a better player, but it'll be in the service of a lyrical style of playing. As a trombonist, I tried to emulate the style of a singer, and I guess that I'm doing the same thing with the guitar.

Twenty years ago, I never thought I would be pursuing a career as a jazz musician. It might be interesting to read this blog in another twenty years to see what else has changed.

What I Miss Most

A couple nights ago, I sat in on a combo rehearsal. It was a blast! It was six horns plus a rhythm section. All the arrangements were well written, and everyone was a strong player. We started off reading some vocal charts with Lynnette, who is the primary vocalist in my Tea for Two trio. After rehearsal, and knowing my background as a former trombone player, she said that whenever the trombonist played a solo, she wondered if I missed playing trombone.

I enjoyed being a trombone player, but I don't really miss playing it. What I miss most is having the kind of mastery over an instrument that I had as a brass player. To blow my own horn, so to speak, I was an awfully good trombonist before my overuse injury brought me down. If I were still able to play today, I would most likely be a trombone professor at a college or performing in an orchestra (or both).

As a relatively new guitarist of a little over 6 years, I struggle daily with technique, and my command of the guitar isn't even close to the level I had reached as a trombonist. I constantly practice scales, arpeggios, and other exercises. For me, the whole purpose of practicing technical exercises is to have them be second nature, so that when it comes time to make actual music, you can forget all about scales and just play.

The bad news is that I'm not as a good a guitarist as I was a trombonist. The good news is that, barring illness or accident, I should have another 30 or more years to practice. So there's hope! Some day, maybe in another 10-15 years, I'll reach a level on the guitar that surpasses where I was as a trombonist. I'll won't want to stop there, though. I hope that when I'm in my 90s, I'll be hunched over my guitar every day, trying to learn one more lick.

Embarrassing Moments in Music History

We all have our moments when we wish we could crawl into a hole and hide from the world. As musicians, our lives can be intensely public, so we often get to share our most embarrassing moments in front of an enrapt, often bewildered audience.

One experience in particular has been permanently seared into my brain. I was a student trombonist at the University of Illinois, playing with the U of I Symphonic Band, which was the top group of five concert bands. Our conductor, James Keene, was your stereotypical hard nosed conductor. You simply didn't want to make a mistake when Professor Keene was waving the stick. It was an honor to be in that band, but it was also a high pressure situation.

We had been rehearsing Arnold Schoenberg's Symphony in B-flat. This is an incredible piece of music, and it's incredibly difficult to perform. It was nearing concert time, and we had never managed to play all the way through it without falling apart. This rehearsal was about a week before the concert, and Mr. Keene wanted to get through the piece, come hell or high water. He told us that we simply weren't going to stop. We were going to pretend it was concert time and play all the way through it.

Surprisingly, it all came together. Not only did we make it all the way through, but the band sounded marvelous. It was magic. We worked our way to the final, glorious chord. The only thing that could have possibly ruined this moment was…me.

I was holding my last note (an F above the bass clef staff), playing as loudly as I could. While Mr. Keene was holding the chord, a little voice of doubt made me look down at my music to be doubly sure I was playing the right note. The split second I looked away, Mr. Keene gave the final cut-off. The next sequence of events took no more than a few seconds, but it seemed like minutes to me. Time slowed down. I looked back up, not yet aware that the entire band had stopped playing. Mr. Keene was looking at me funny. I knew something was wrong, but my addled brain couldn't figure out what that strange sound was. I realized that the strange sound was me, playing an excruciatingly loud F all by myself. Making a sound like ripping sheet metal, I tore the trombone away from my mouth and stared bullets into my music stand. Nobody said a word. That was the last note of the rehearsal. I quietly packed up my horn and slunk away.

The moral of the store? Always watch the conductor!

Another fine moment in music history involves a trombone trio at a friend's recital, but that's a story for another day.