First off, the weather has been really confused lately. Last weekend it was all warm with promises of spring, and then it turned cold and stormy and just plain weird. Saturday it snowed the whole day, but it melted almost as fast, so it really just made everything wet. I had meant to rake the yard as the first part of the spring yard cycle, but had too punt. Sunday it was cold, but by late afternoon the sun came out and it felt nice to be outside, so I took care of the front yard. But then yesterday it snowed again. This time it picked up when night fell, so by morning it was something like 6\u201d of snow that had tuned into 3\u201d of slush the consistency of wet cement. Oy.<\/p>\n
Saturday night Jeannie and I went out to hear Mike play piano at the Underhill, a local restaurant\/bar. It turns out it\u2019s a pretty swanky place \u2013 we\u2019ll have to go back for dinner sometime. Mike\u2019s wife (who\u2019s also Lizzy\u2019s algebra teacher) and some other friends were there too. We heard the end of Mike\u2019s middle set, which was mainly standards, and his last set, which was mainly rock\/pop. Heavy on the Billy Joel and Elton John, which is his thing. Mike says he does mainly standards during the dinner, and mixes it up later when it\u2019s just folks at the bar. As far as the standards go, he didn\u2019t really solo on any of them, and his voicings were pretty trad, but sometimes he got into a good Red Garland kind of vibe.<\/p>\n
It turns out the owner of the club just installed a grand piano a few months ago, and they have live piano music five nights a week there. He’s trying to make the piano bar thing happen. So now I want to see if I can get a gig there. Mike says I should go for it. Only thing is I don\u2019t know that many standards. I know a few, plus a handful of modern jazz numbers, but not two set\u2019s worth. Here\u2019s the list:<\/p>\n
East St. Louis Toodle-Loo – Duke Ellington
\nPannonica – Monk
\nRound Midnight \u2013 Monk
\nPowerhouse – Raymond Scott
\nCantaloupe Island – Herbie Hancock
\nLetter From Home – Pat Metheny<\/p>\n
So I decided to learn a few more:<\/p>\n
Manhattan – Rodgers\/Hart
\nMy Romance – Rodgers\/Hart
\nMy Funny Valentine – Rodgers\/Hart
\nSomeone to Watch Over Me – Gershwin
\nNaima – John Coltrane
\nDolphin Dance – Herbie Hancock<\/p>\n
As you can see I picked mainly ballads. This saves me from having to learn to play them fast. My intent is to solo on them. It turns out most of the ones I picked are by Rodgers and Hart. They just have a brilliant sense of melody and how to back it with great harmonies. Pop music definitely lost an important dimension when rock\u2019n\u2019roll came in as far as that goes.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m at the point now where I\u2019m working thru them, trying to get up to real time. But as I do I\u2019m also working thru how I want to approach the voicings. This is no small matter. It gives me a chance to put into effect a lot of what I studied earlier this winter with the Metaphors book. I definitely have a sound in my head I\u2019m going for. It\u2019s fairly Monk influenced and rides the cusp between lyrical and dissonant. Manhattan feels like it wants to have a stride approach, cuz that\u2019s the main way I know for an uptempo song without a rhythm section. This whole thing is also good cuz it gives me familiarity with some new jazz chord progressions, so next batch of standards I learn will be easier.<\/p>\n
Still, it will take a few weeks to get these songs together. But with these, and the ones I already know, and the not-really-jazz-but-work-in-a-jazz-context ones I have, I ought to be able to handle it. I\u2019ll let you know if it pans out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
First off, the weather has been really confused lately. Last weekend it was all warm with promises of spring, and then it turned cold and stormy and just plain weird. Saturday it snowed the whole day, but it melted almost as fast, so it really just made everything wet. I had meant to rake the … Continue reading “Standard Issue”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2093\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zingman.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}