Jazz Thinks

Semi Somnus

2009-07-09T09:06:00.001-07:00

Just got done with the main tracking on the next Diatic Records release under my name, Semi Somnus. It features Jed Wilson on wurlitzer, Jessyka Luzzi on vox, Bill Athens on bass, Ken Ollis on drums and percussion and myself playing elecric, acoustic and fretless guitars(plus some tibetan singing bowls and vocals). It was all recorded at Diatic's in-house studio, Platonic Recording. I feel very fortunate to have this provided; a rare thing these days. The musicians made some real magic happen and I am very grateful for the experience and the end product!
The record will be released on Sept. 5th, with a party at Jimmy Mak's in Portland.

ExStatic

2008-01-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! The Diatic Collective had a great time playing the Dec. Sundays at Someday Lounge. Thanks to everyone who came to hang and listen!

This Goodfoot show will be alot of fun, featuring Damian Erskine, Russ Kleiner, and Paul Evans as Chris Mosley's ExStatic Band! Opening things up will be my good friend Mike Pardew with the Cubist Quartet(kind of a mini Eleven Eyes).
See you out and about,
C

Sundays in December @ The Someday Lounge

2007-12-08T17:51:00.000-08:00

Hi All,
Every Sunday of December I'll be playing at the Someday Lounge(125 NW 5th) with the Diatic Composers Collective feat. Mary Sue Tobin, Farnell Newton, Justin Durrie, Drew Shoals and myself. Good music, good times!

Diatic Collective @ Someday Lounge(125 nw 5th)
Dec. 9th, 16th, and 30th
10pm $5

Chris Mosley and Friends @ Someday : Solstice Bash!!
Dec. 23rd 10pm $5
feat. Michael York, Mary Sue Tobin, Matt Weiers, Bill Athens, Drew Shoals, Chaz Hastings... and all the other friends that come with instruments!

Also:
Drew Shoals Collective CD Release Party!! @ Design Counsel(1020 NW 18th)
Chris Mosley Quartet - 7pm
Saturday Dec. 22nd
See you out and about!

David Bowie

2007-11-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

youtube!

2007-10-11T16:44:00.000-07:00

Me on my baby fretless playing with Chaz Hastings, poco tabla meister! We're messing around here, displaying a disturbing lack of discipline and just having an all-round good time.

Jazz Society of Oregon Featured Musician

2007-09-08T14:06:00.001-07:00

Yours truly is the JSO musician of the month for September. Check out the little interview at the JSO website and learn more about me, all right!

Floatilla Retrospective

2007-09-08T14:06:00.000-07:00

The good news is we're all alive; the bad is that everything is still rocking... the sidewalks, the chairs, the house. Everything is rocking like a sailboat on the river. Surely that will wear off, and we'll be left with the recollections of an amazing trip with some awesome people and alot of water and sand and dampness and sandyness. A good part of the experience was captured by the camera of filmaker Jake Janofsky with his lovely assistant, Heather. We'll see when and if it all gets edited down, but I would say it has the makings of a very fun documentary. A brief rundown of events:
Day 1:
Meeting time is set for 10am, amended to 11:30, we leave at 12:30. Beautiful sunny day, and we're well equipped with J's and half gallon of Seagram's. We cruise for about 4 hours, and pull into a dock in Washougal, WA. We load all of our musical stuff onto a corner stage that is about a 4 foot triangle and proceed to introduce free jazz to the hoards of Labor Day water sporters. Some are appalled, others enjoy it. Afterwards, the band is handed a bill for the musicians meals. After paying for the way overpriced and shitty food, we all make about 20 bucks. Thanks alot Puffin Cafe. We pack up and float on down to a nice little sandy-beached cove, softly run ashore and unload to set up camp.
Day 2:
Everybody wakes up early(9 or 10), ready to pack up and set sail. Plans change quickly, however, as we learn that the mighty Columbia has mighty tides. The boat is approximately where we left, but the water line is not. Our vessel, the Makaleka, is now about 10 feet from the water, up on her side, completely beached. Nobody is much stressed by it; we have breakfast and beach jam session(graced by the presence of Ryan Dolliver, who camped with us that night and met up with us again later in the week). After a day-long effort of pushing our 3,000 pound boat closer to the water, the tide finally comes all the way back in at around 11pm. We load up and float down to the next island, hit sand, set up camp.
Day 3:
We wake up to see the boats again on the sand, but this time much closer to a drop off in the water. Only a few big pushes get us going. We sail 20 miles down the Columbia and take a left onto the Willamette. We pull into the docks under the St. John's bridge in time to take our acoustic guitar, upright bass and accordian to a warehouse that is set up for amatuer professional wrestling every tuesday night. Best show I've every played, even though I lost some dough on 'Tex', who turned out to be a pansy once he was clotheslined a couple of times. Afterwards we have a full on dock party with the songs lined up back to back and the beers bottle to bottle. Before we had run the hang aground we set the boat to sail and headed and hour back up the Willamette til we found a nice island camp site on the Multnomah channel, which happens to be where Cap'n Matt resides in a quiet lil' marina.
Day 4:
After a stellar egg breakfast on the dock and dose of coffee that you had to chew, we kept it rolling towards St. Helens. Just as the myriad american flags of the the little river town came into view, it's possible that your's truly steered the Makaleka into a sandbar, immediately high-centering and maybe, maybe, cracking the wood around the tiller and allowing the process of 100 gallons of water joining us on board to begin. Maybe. After we were pulled of the sandbar by our floating counterpart, 'Surely', we made it the last 150 yards to St. Helens, hitched a ride the the pizza place we were playing and did the gig. Afterwards, we headed to Sand Island right across the channel and set up camp.
Day 5:
As soon as were half awake we were greeted by the Fun Guy with the Fun Gi. That is, Guy Tyler's smiling face holding a mason jar full of boomers. We sat in a circle, to set up the intention and vibe and the group of us planning on it dosed. We couldn't have been on a more friendly island or ingested more friendly mushrooms. While Lauren, Matt and Jake went back to St. Helens to try to patch the boat, the rest of us wandered the island like a bunch of crazies. Top image of the day: Guy sitting on the beach in nothing but a pork pie hat and a bag of potato chips giving a huge passing cruise liner the finger. Thanks for the memories...
We finally got the boats back to the island and loaded up and set course for the illustrious Goble Tavern. We were all tired, and I've never heard anyone bitch as much about playing music as Guy did that night, but it turned into a right sprightly jam session ending with a shout chorus of Heather Hawkins' hit single, Semen Balloons. We also met an old hippy Kerr-vert songwriter who was staying in a little solar-powered trailer behind the bar who gave us some pretzels and raisins for the morning. At 2am, with the thought of floating the remaining 40-mile stretch in a sailboat that had regained it's onboard water by that time while towing the motorless Surely, we said to hell with it and called Floatilla 2007 closed. We pitched tents behind the Goble Tavern and drove home the next morning with a little from our friends with cars.

The stuff of legend, I tell you. Just wait til the Doc is edited, maybe you'll see what I'm talking about!

Floatilla 2007

2007-09-02T00:26:00.000-07:00

Sept. 2nd- 7th I'm gonna be floating down the Columbia river from Portland to Astoria, every night playing a show with Guy Tyler on bass and Matt Weiers on keys. Our vessel is Matt's 20-something foot sailboat that has just recieved a new mast, made up of two 4x4's attached by metal brackets. I've yet to see the real effectiveness of the new addition, but I'm sure one way or another we'll make our way down to Astoria for the final blow-out show. We expect there to be a fairly dense crowd of fans awaiting us at the final stop, as the rumour of the floating band of players will have turned into something of legend. Assisting with the overall success of the venture are my wife, Lauren and Jesse and Jennifer Lavere. So that not one moment of Floatilla 2007 will go to waste, we have Jake the filmmaker in a second boat, faithfully documenting all Floating activity and delivering it to the hungry masses upon our return.
For a full listing of shows go to www.ChrisMosley.com.

Nick Sweet Quartet

2007-08-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

I've been having a great time playing with Nick Sweet's band this summer. He's a great trombonist, musician, and composer, and a very chill guy. He's in Berklee right now, so we only get him in Portland on breaks... I'll take what I can get. Here's a cool YouTube post of us playing one his tunes at the Red and Black Cafe, a location that will soon be evacuated... Check it out.

Eddie Daniels Homecoming

2007-08-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

I had never heard Eddie Daniels play before I got this double disc, Homecoming: Live at the Iridium in the mail. The record has a blend of standards and originals played by Daniels on clarinet and tenor, Joe Locke on vibes, Tom Rainer on piano, Dave Finck on bass, and Joe LaBarbera on drums. In terms of traditional jazz instrumentation and performance, this has been some of the most enjoyable music I've heard in while. Daniels interprets the melodies very honestly and tastefully, with a gorgeous tone and balanced, lyrical phrasing. In improvising he is both light on his feet and very grounded in approach, playing with such forthrightness and ingenoutiy that the musical language comes out crisp and his expression is clear.
The whole band plays with great intelligence and feel, but the next voice to really catch my ear is the vibes of Joe Locke. I really dig the way his improvisations expand rhythmically and harmonically while usually retaining a central point of focus in whatever he's doing. I feel like he really takes you for a ride. Eddie has an amazing sound on the clarinet, which is what he's known for, but he also has a cool thing going with his tenor playing. I would place it as closest to late Joe Henderson, with the nicely spread tone and the feeling that any corner could be a big waterfallish arpeggiated gliss. It's just good music, so check it out if want to!

Tim Miller

2007-08-12T16:14:00.000-07:00

Tim Miller Trio
My bassist buddy Damian Erskine recently hipped me to the guitarist Tim Miller, a 30 yr old jazz fusion guitarist that is teaching at Berklee. I was unaware of him when I was in Boston, so he might be a recent addition to the faculty but I'm glad I found him now. After checking out as much youtube as I could find with him featured (most notably with the Janek Gwizdala group feat. Randy Brecker, Elliot Mason(the Mason Bros are Crazy!), Tim Miller and Gary Husband). At his best, Miller builds his solos with an architectural precision, balancing melodic groundedness with gradually expanding intervallic structures to create very effective and fresh improvisations. To see what I mean, check this out:

His legato phrasing is similar to that of Allan Holdsworth, but his trio with Joshua Davis on acoustic bass and Take Toriyama on drums leans more towards jazz than Fusion with a capitol 'F'. The record is nice blend of many different feelings tied together by his strong style of composition. None of the tracks are much over 4 minutes and most offer a nice progression from his melodies to his improvisational language and back, with tasteful features of his rhythm section somewhere in between. I think my favourite tune is the 9th track entitled 'TR'. The melody and his voicings are absolutely beautiful in the way they twist and turn into one another, always balanced and always fresh. He takes a solo that is short but still manages to 'get there' before he hands it off to Davis for an equally truncated solo before they take it out.
My only qualm at all with Tim's playing is that sometimes he jumps a little quickly into the fractally world of his angular motivic developments, leaving me feeling a little disconnected. But considering how much I've listened to his record, it must not bother me too much.

CD Release Party @ Jimmy Mak's (July 6th)

2007-06-17T16:51:00.000-07:00

My new CD, Outside Voices, is very near completion and we're gearing up for the big release show at Jimmy Mak's this July 6th. We'll be playing two sets, the first of which(8-9pm) is open to minors. We'll be playing alot of the new material from the disc along with some re-interpretations of tunes from the last recording I did(The Miraculous Aspect of Time). I'll also be trying out my newly adapted half-size fretless guitar on some new stuff - woo0!

Joining us will the Ben Darwish Group, featuring Drew Shoals, John Nastos, and Eric Gruber.

Jimmy Mak's CD Release
July 6th
Chris Mosley Quartet (8-10pm)
Ben Darwish Group (10:30- 12:00)
$8 door

Get a copy of Outside Voices for $5 with a student ID!!

Bad+Plus

2007-05-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

A couple of nights ago I saw the Bad Plus for the first time at a rock club here in Portland called Berbati's Pan. Somehow, we actually arrived early and got really good seats at one of the few tables available. A solo act by singer/songwriter/loopmaster Marcus Eaton started things off pretty nicely. He kept surprising me with his abilities throughout the set, which is always nice. By the time their Badness hit the stage, the club was packed with a bunch of excited and vibing people all anxious for what was to come. When they hit, it was clear we wouldn't be dissapointed. Everybody was so into what was going on that I didn't even once hear shouted "play 'Smells Like Teen Spirit!'"(which they didn't play). What the Bad Plus are doing is truly remarkable. The music they are making is undeniably relevant to all sorts of different people. The complexities they reach are balanced by clear energetic impact that doesn't need an ear full of jazz lineage to appreciate. In fact, the opposite may be true. Knowing the pop music of the '80s and '90s gives the listener much of the reference needed to feel connected to even the craziest improvisations going on. It gives me some impression of what it was actually like for jazz musicians to play show tunes in the '40s. To be honest, when I hear a standard, I'm hearing what are really pretty abstract things like the melodic contour and the way it interacts with the harmony and the way the chord movement functions. Needless to say, this is not how music is recieved or concieved by anyone other than a musician. Back in the day, people just heard songs that they knew and liked. What the Bad Plus have done is tapped into a more collective musical conciousness, and based on the 300+ people they had in the palm of their hand the whole night, it is deeply effective.
I shouldn't make it seem like all they do is cover pop tunes, because all three of them are really terrific composers whose tunes, given the success and distribution of their records, are turning into something comfortably recognizable in their own right. I guess I need to go pick up the new record...

PDX Underground Jazz Series

2007-05-07T20:57:00.000-07:00

We've been having fun playing alot of adventurously improvised music at the PDX Underground Jazz Series hosted by Mississippi Pizza every 1st and 3rd Tuesday Nite. I started this creative music series a few months ago to get this music out in the town and we've been able to keep it going because of the support of folks out for an earful, showing up and listening to good music. I usually throw together a group of folks that I play with for one night and get a different group to play the other night. So far we've had my quartet, Trio Subtonic, the Ryan Dolliver/Matt Schevchenko Ambient Duo, and lots of other thrown-together groups like last week's tribute to Ornette Coleman with Tim DuRoche, Jeff Picker, and David Valdez. Here's what we've got coming up:

June 5th: John Nastos

June 19th: Phelan Gallagher Quartet

July 3rd: TBA

July 17th: Drew Shoals Band (w/Ben Darwish, John Nastos, Damian Erskine, Chris Mosley)

All shows are 9-11pm, $2-5 suggested donation.
Hope to see you there!

Recording Session at the Magic Closet

2007-04-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

This past monday and tuesday I was in the Magic Closet recording studio doing the tracking with my quartet for the upcoming cd to be released on Diatic Records. After an un-thrilling first day in which we didn't get much done(I was trying out a big ass fender amp that wasn't working for me) we came back the second day and charged through all ten tunes on the list. There are for sure some rough spots, but what the hell, it's live. I really dug the way Randy Rollofson, Tim Willcox and Bill Athens played my tunes - they really put some effort into pulling it together and go in the direction intended when I wrote them. The playing was all round very strong and the energy and atmosphere seems like it's coming across. We just started mixing this so there is still
alot to listen to.... Many thanks to Bryan Daste for a great job with the engineering!

Unfortunately, Tim wouldn't stop picking his nose long enough to get a proper picture...

Good Times

2007-04-04T14:36:00.000-07:00

Damn last night was fun.
Myself, Drew Shoals, Matt Weiers and Guy Tyler played the PDX Underground Series last night to a nicely full room of people(many thanks to everyone who came) who actually dug the hell out of the crazy shit we were playing. The high points for me were probably the two free pieces that we began and ended the first set with. Playing with these musicians is a very powerful thing for me and I felt more excited about the music we made last night than almost any other show I've played since I got here. I think we reached a level of open-music playing that is most often neglected in these parts. Everyone was listening and reacting and playing such great, creative things that I really got high from it. There will surely be more of this group playing around.

Be sure to check out the next PDX Underground date:
April 17th, 9-11pm
Trio Subtonic
They play great brazilian/hip hopish groovy jazz.

Also coming up:
The Guy Tyler Band
w/ The New Sound of Funk and Copacrescent
April 7th @ the Fez Ballroom
Show starts at 9pm, GTB plays at 11
I'm really excited about playing the Fez with this funky soulful band. Please come out and dance and listen, you won't regret it.

Something to check out:
Matt Weiers has been interviewing prominent musicians and composers for some time now and he's finally taking them from the type writer to his website. There are some great, informative conversations here, and a picture of Matt on his sailboat.

Roy Hargrove at the Fest

2007-02-26T13:12:00.000-08:00

Last friday night we went to see the Roy Hargrove Quintet play at the Newmark Theater here in Portland. It was a good show, but one where you look at the ticket prices and thank god you didn't actually pay for them. The band was good - great bassist and drummer, green but tasty piano player, overblown but interesting altoist - and there were times that I was really taken in by the drama of their performance, but it also seemed to lack a certain depth of authenticity. Frankly, the best shit going on was the rhythmic playing. Lots of great creative cycling around a clearly felt pulse - whether it was the bassist being playfully and loosely deviant with accents or the saxophonist playing big swirls of finally-resolving time twisters - I was into it. Roy's playing, though, didn't get me much past what his pure energy took the room. And it did, people were into it, but as for really artfully exposing a musical form, there's not much there. If nothing else, it was good to hear some music from NYC to give me a break from what seems to be a state of perpetual slumber which inhabits much of the jazz playing in this city.

My small involvement in the Portland Jazz Festival was playing a few 'Next Gen Jazz' sessions where I played with folks like Jonas Oglesbee, Patrick Harry, Tim Duroche, Dan Duval, David Valdez, Chance Hayden. I also met and played with Devin Phillips for the first time, which was nice. The last night at the Armory session, Kurt Elling's rhythm section came and played a couple of tunes. Good listening.

PDX Underground Jazz Series!!

2007-02-10T15:37:00.000-08:00

A new venture of mine has been to start a bi-weekly music series for tuesday nights at Mississippi Pizza Pub, called PDX Underground Jazz Series. The first night will be this coming Tuesday the 13th, and will be the first of four trial nights to see how it goes. If people show up, it should take off from there. Not only is the series a good excuse for me to play with lots of different people in different configurations, but it will provide a chill setting for other creative music groups to perform their stuff. If you're around the Portland area and are bi-(weekly-jazz-series) curious, drop by on these coming tuesdays:

Feb. 13th - Dan Duval, Matt Weiers, Chris Mosley, Bill Athens playing lots of originals and some other tunes by people like Kenny Wheeler.

Feb. 20th - Chris Mosley Quartet w/ Tim Willcox - sax, Jeff Picker - bass, Randy Rollofson - drums.

March 6th - Ryan Dolliver / Matt Shevchenko Ambient duo. Guitar and Turntable soundscape stuff!!

March 20th - David Valdez / Chris Mosley Quartet w/ Jeff Picker and Jonas Ogelsbee.

Guy Tyler Band w/ Klezmocracy

2007-01-22T19:12:00.001-08:00

Guy Tyler's kickin' funk band in which I am the guitarist just shared a bill with the Portland-based Klezmocracy, an avante klezmer jazz band in the general direcion of John Zorn. Cortney Von Drehle is a prominent part in the direction of the band, and he has great skill in creating strong, pertinent music. The whole band was fantastic and just a blast to listen to.

They were just about to record their new record, which must be tracked by now. Check it out!

Diatic Records

2007-01-15T12:14:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to announce that I've joined forces with a small portland jazz label called Diatic Records(www.diaticrecords.com). Run by saxophonist Dusty York, it's been a uniting the PDX jazz underground and helping build a real community of great musicians and people. With about ten releases so far, Diatic brings the extremes old school drummer Mel Brown and barely-out-of school Ben Darwish under the same roof. I feel that Dusty is doing this town a real service by seeing the potential of the players around here and encouraging them to make non-conformist original music. Making records with established local players like Brown, Dave Frishberg, John Gross, and Gordon Lee gives the label a certain amount of recognizable names, which serves the younger players like myself, Darwish, Farnell Newton, etc. by providing some reputation to align ourselves with.
The Old Church has been a site for label mate shows that showcase a couple of the bands on the label sharing a bill. I'm hoping there will be more of this, as I would love to be sharing a bill with any and all of these guys. The Ben Darwish Trio record that just came out is particularly killing. Ben is a serious writer and pianist, and the trio with drummer Drew Shoals and Bassist Zack Wallmark play all the tunes with a light tightness. It's really worth checking out if you're into the Bad Plus kind of aesthetic and attitude.
As for my forthcoming record, it's beginning to come together in my head with it's tone, flow and content. I think it will be called Life in the Cloud. It will be mostly on my Washburn hb-35, with little micro or fretless playing. I've been enjoying the writing process that's been happening, and feel like it's going to come together very cohesively. Part of that cohesiveness will come from a certain loyalty to a certain tone system. We'll be in the studio in a few months....

Raymond Lull

2006-09-16T11:28:00.000-07:00

Check out Raymond Lull's site, it's got all sorts of super metaphysical stuff on it, including some great elemental pieces using 31 ET and the BrainWave Generator. I've been wanting to find some stuff on the direct correlations between specific frequencies and the parts of the body. This is an interesting start.

Also check out this list of microtonal music to be sampled online.

Dom Minasi - The Vampire's Revenge

2006-09-05T12:26:00.001-07:00

I have recently been listening to the new double-disc, large ensemble, thematic work by bonified avante guitarist, Dom Minasi. I have been periferally aware of Minasi for a while, hearing small amounts of his cd of re-interpretations of Ellington classics, but this is the first time I've really spent time with a work of his. He brings together a huge collection of NYC players in all sorts of different combinations, the larger of which are conducted 'comprovisations' (someone else's term, but I feel it applies). Many parts are very clearly composed, the musicians playing certain melody and harmony lines with a wonderfull blend of individuality in the voices and an overall sensitivity to the scope of the sound. Other areas are further out - Minasi likely gave them some ideas of what to do, but he probably didn't do it in standard notation - graphic notation (follow the sqiggly line through the page) seems more likely to me. Finally there is the level of playing that perhaps is signature to Minasi, which is the half-muted-strings-with-frenetic-tremello-picking thing, which the many guest have little trouble in matching. All through out the two discs, the players do a real job of bringing out these different energy levels so as to communicate real drama, which, tied with humour, is what this monumental piece is all about.
One of the most enjoyable things for me to hear in this recording is the expansion of sonorities and pitch movements. When you take alot of players with strong voices and throw them together into a musical-system-breaking arrangement, you end up with alot of beautiful things happening that couldn't be expressed in our 12-tone system on which we have trained our musical intellects. This music is avant garde because it reaches beyond the approaches that have the stood the test of a certain amount of time and intuitively moves past even the intent of the instrument makers into the future of our ears and percepts.
The majority of the players I am unfamiliar with but I was excited to see John Gunther on as a guest on tenor. When I was living in Colorado in high school, I was fortunate enough to have some time with John as a combo instructor and inspiration. He is a very musical player and one of the kindest musicians I've been aquainted with. He is currently teaching at CU Boulder and I ran into him at the microtonal concert we just played at Old Main Hall on the campus. The other name I know is Mathew Shipp, appearing on just one track, but lending his pianistic magic generously.
This work is really worth a listen if you have some open ears to what music can communicate. It is a very accomplished balance of so many different impressions, and is good for a little ear refreshment, or a slap in the face, depending where you are....

Two Micro Shows

2006-08-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

We just got back into Portland last night, fighting our way through a midnight traffic jam coming through Vancouver... In the last crazy two weeks, we managed to have a wonderful wedding and rehearse and perform with the Microtonal Project.
The band of Danny Meyer, Mike Thies, Guy Tyler and myself was a new combination of players, and the music really stretched all of us. The system we used was grounded in the 36 tone guitar I was playing, but really stretched to a 72 tone gamut of possibilities. This allowed us to use frequently the intervals found between the 11th and 31st harmonic of the overtone series, and less often into the higher 30's. It was a very challenging thing get everyone dealing in a sort of linguistic way with such a deep pool of possibilities. As Guy put it, it's "freestyling in a language we just made up". The process has continually reminded me of learning the jazz language - the harmonic and melodic structures and tendencies and then more subtlely the identity and character of a tone, modified endlessly by the avenue of approach.
While there is still alot of work to be done on and off the guitar, I feel I am moving steadily in the right direction, guided by an overall vision of where I must be going. I continue to use the 18-tone(sometimes 24) scale I found in the music of Ezra Sims as an ideal extension of the diatonic scale and to follow the implications of resultant tones(the harmonic sounding of two tones creating a third, in natural harmonic relation) towards a fuller understanding of three note structures. These structures are at the core of what i'm working on for a couple of clear reasons. First, because I take them to be fractal-like extensions of our most comfortable chord, the major triad. By rubbing a bunch of different sized diads together, you get all sorts of varying triads that are inherently acoustically(physically) in harmonic relation. The second is a point of understanding character. How do we understand the character of a Major 7th? First we hear it against the root, and understand it's tendency to want to move up to the root. But then we hear the 7th going down to the 5th of the chord in the interval of a Major 3rd. This adds a different dimension to the character, as now we don't only hear it's tendency of movement(or it's relation to the fundamental as the 15th harmonic) but we hear the stability and clarity of Major 7th relating to the 5th of the chord as it's 5th harmonic(major 3rd). Then, assuming we are in a Maj7 chord, we hear the Major 7th relating to the Major 3rd of the chord in the interval of a Perfect 5th. This is even more stabilizing. So when we ask ourselves how we understand the character of the Major 7th in a Maj7 chord, we have three places to refer to, all of which stabilize and lucidate the image. Thus, as music is a study in perception and feelings, as we introduce new notes and characters to our ears we must be sure to do so in such a way that is most convenient for our perception process. It seems to be pretty much working so far...

A Micro Wedding

2006-08-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

What a crazy time! On August 12th, Lauren and I get married, followed closely by two shows with the brand new Microtonal Project. We play the 14th at Dazzle in Denver and the 16th at the Old Mane hall on the CU campus in Boulder.

The players are Danny Meyer on tenor, Mike Thies on drums, Guy Tyler on bass and Jon Grigsby on tuned water glasses, along with myself on 36-tone guitar. Everyone will be contributing compositions and playing for the 21st century!

CD Now Available!!

2006-05-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

The CD is now available!! Follow the link to CDBaby and get a copy. If you want a full listen, check it out on my site. It's all streaming there. If you're feeling generous, you could even write a review of the CD.

Saturday, May 20th is the big release party. Tune in for a 4:00 on-air performance on KMHD 89.1 fm that afternoon.

John Stowell

2006-04-10T11:15:00.000-07:00

Here I am at a jam session in town playing a tune with John Stowell, a really wonderful guitarist. His harmonic approach is a huge array of melodic minor sounds coming out of tons of really intelligent, beautiful voicings. I saw a clinic of John's while at Berklee and very much look forward to learning from him while i'm here. It was a pleasant surprise that he is based out of Portland and makes himself available around town. Check out his tunes and books!

On another note: The entire LP, The Miraculous Aspect of Time is now streaming from my website, start to finish. I'm really proud of it, and I think you'll enjoy listening. Just go to chrismosley.com, turn on your speakers, and relax a while(64 min).

Recording Session

2006-03-20T12:23:00.000-08:00

So we recorded 11 tunes yesterday at Salon Studios in NE Portland. It went really well and i'm excited to do the mixing and design and get it printed! Drew and Damian both played wonderfully and, as always, were great to work with and be around. Our engineer, Graham, is also a fantastic worker and a very chill man! In a week or so the tunes should be up on the music player at ChrisMosley.Com so check it out when you can, and if you want to, you could even let me know what you think about it, so long as it's all positive.

The official release date continues to be May 20th. Tune in at 4:00 to 89.1 fm for the radio show and then come down to the Blue Monk on Belmont for the real party!

The Miraculous Aspect of Time

2006-03-15T11:27:00.001-08:00

The Chris Mosley Trio is going into the studio this Sunday to record our debut CD of fully original instrumental music! The release will be called The Miraculous Aspect of Time and will be the first release from my new label, RED BUTTON RECORDS. It will feature the wonderful playing of Drew Shoals on drums and Damian Erskine on bass. These guys have really been bringing my compositions alive at the shows and I really can't wait to see how it all comes out on record. The official release date is May 20th (release party at the Blue Monk) but it may be available a little before then. I will be playing two tunes on fretless, alot of fretted and maybe one freebie on my new 36-tone! Stay tuned for more.

Harmonic Division and Sims' Scale

2006-02-21T18:55:00.000-08:00

This diagram represents the extent of Sims’ 24 note scale that is generated by pure harmonic division. You can easily see that it is really just a matter of showing the new tones that show up in each new octave up the overtone series. Take the section that has 9:8,11:8,13:8,15:8 and look at the doublings of the previously attained notes as they fit in the spaces. 5x2=10, (3x2)x2=12, 7x2=14. This shows that, in this octave, all of the harmonics are present. 10,12, and 14 are old, 9,11,13, and 15 are new. This process continues for every new octave up the overtone series. 9 now doubles(that is, rises an octave) to 18 to fill the gap of the two new tones 17 and 19. So how is this harmonic division? Let’s look at 5:4 and 11:8. First we’ll put them in the same octave by doubling the 5:4 so it becomes 10:8. The 4 and 8s represent the fundamental, while the 5(10) and 11 represent the harmonic number. So we have 10 and 11 interacting with each other. If we look at the summation tone(as described by Sims) we get 10+11=21, which you will notice is the tone in the next octave between the 5 and 11. Another way to see it is: (10x2)=20 and (11x2)=22. The 21 which fills the gap is the harmonic mean of 20 and 22. By harmonic mean, we mean that numerically each side is equivalent (1) but in terms of space, they are different(the bottom is larger). Such as the interval of the fifth(3) is numerically right between 2 and 4, but we know that a fifth is certainly larger than a fourth. This pattern of division that characterizes the progression of the overtone series is very similar to the division pattern of the golden ratio, expressed in a continued fraction as: 1 plus 1 over 1 plus 1 over 1 plus 1....
How does harmonic division relate to resultant tones? Let’s say now we want to use 5:4 and 9:8 to give us 7:4. First the resultant tone method. 5+9=14 summation and 9-5=4 difference tone. The difference tone fills its name in more than one way. In the harmonic division method, (2x5=10, 2x9=18) the difference tone is the difference from each of these extremities to the harmonic mean or summation tone of 14. This approach, it seems to me, works for all the examples I could think of, including tones that are not in clear harmonic relation to one another. For example: 445 Hz and 764 Hz produce resultants of 319Hz and 1209Hz. (445x2=890, 764x2=1528). 890Hz and 1528Hz are both 319Hz (the difference) away from 1209Hz, the summation and harmonic mean.
To fill out the scale that Sims has used since 1970, we take the upper tetrachord divisions and superimpose them over the lower pentachord. This is clear even at glancing at his full scale (see below) because many of the notes that appear early on(25:24, 13:12, 7:6, 29:24) are ratios based on the 3rd harmonic. By doing this, he takes full advantage of the interval space generated by the upper tetrachord, the space that supplies the perfect evolutionary step for intervallic structure. In this way, he sidesteps the obvious problem of the Fibonacci sequence (being sent too quickly to the harmonic stratosphere) while still preserving and amplifying the characteristic growth structure of the Fibonacci and Golden Section. One of the aspects of the Fibonacci/Golden Section that I find very important and pervasive is the centrifugal force created by the smaller and smaller spiraling of the Fibonacci around the irrational Ratio. I feel that this principle is very much in effect in musical harmony, and that resultant/harmonic mean tones are a potent way to guide the listener’s perceptions into the vortex. The difference being, in a working musical system such as Sims’, there are many focal points that create many vortexes. For a visual on the diagram, look at the zigzag of 5:4, 9:8, 19:16, 37:32. This is the level that I feel the Fibonacci is active.

Sims’ 24 note scale (in ratios):
1:1 – 33:32 – (25:24) – 17:16 – (13:12) – 35:32 – 9:8 – 37:32 – (7:6) – 19:16 – (29:24) – 39:32 – 5:4 – 21:16 – 11:8 – 23:16 – 3:2 – 25:16 – 13:8 – 27:16 – 7:4 – 29:16 – 15:8 – 31:16 – 2:1

Note: The ratios in ( ) are the ones produced from the upper tetrachord of the octave, but superimposed over the bottom to stabilize upper tones with a fifth below and to flesh out the scale with more simple relationships than could be attained purely through harmonic division. You can tell that they all relate to the 3rd harmonic because all of the denominators are doublings of 3. Because all of the ratios ultimately relate back to the fundamental, what this means is ‘make an interval above the fundamental that is the same size as the interval of the 24 harmonic to the 25’.

Microtonality and Jazz

2006-02-20T20:31:00.000-08:00

There are many places to find evidence of microtonality in jazz. A good place to start is a transcription of Robert Johnson's microtonal singing at Tonalsoft, Joe Monzo's site. Louie Armstrong is another player that naturally made use of a broader, more expressive and precise pallette of tones. It makes since that improvising musicians, working from their ear and experience, put to use what would be the logical extension of the Western tonal system. Alot of electric blues players like Jimi Hendrix and Buddy Guy obviously get alot microtonal stuff going on. Have you ever known a good blues player that didn't bend all over the place? It is funny that when current musical theory cannot explain what 'folk' musicians play, it becomes a real wishy-washy, 'unexplainable something' that is, nonetheless, demanded. Bill Frisell, on a track on 'Blues Dream', plays very distictly the two blue thirds(being a 1/6 tone under and a 1/6 tone above the ET minor third).
Then you have saxophonists like Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, who played very intsinctively, intonation wise. This is all very much related to the artistic interpretation of a melody or solo, meaning the players are mostly playing the microtonal intervals intuitively in performance. Another aspect to consider is the actual harmonic progression of jazz within 12-tone ET, and the ways the sytem points beyond itself.
First let's look at blues harmony. In blues, what we think of as a dominant 7th chord is tonicized. So the tonic chord of the tune has a major third and flat seventh - a chord which would demand resolution in Western harmony. But in this case, we are talking about a naturally extended 7th chord derived from the overtone series where the 7th harmonic is in fact a flat seventh, 30 cents lower than the ET interval. So already the harmony of blues demands an interval that cannot be supplied by the piano. This is where the lower of the two blue thirds comes from. The interval 7:6 from the fundamental. (In C it would be the interval from G to 1/6 low Bb, moved down to the lower pentachord:C to 1/6 low Eb). This is called the septimal(7) minor third and represents the first step beyond what the piano can give us.
But many piano players have also made significant contributions to the move toward microtonality. Take for example, Bill Evans. He introduced a way of playing cluster voicings that could treat an entire diatonic scale as consonant harmonic material. This has two things working for it. 1)It simply continues the tradition of extending what is thought of as consonant within the diatonic scale by creating structures that adequately support in our new ears an extended amount of 'resting tones'. 2)Based on the phenomenon of resultant tones(as Sims calls it; I see it also as taking a harmonic mean) when the interval of a minor second is played, it implies a third note in between the two played and an octave up. So by playing cluster voicings, especially with minor seconds, Evans created a microtonal atmosphere 'above' the notes he actually played on the piano. Monk was also known for this same technique.
This is all just to show how surrounded we are by this development and how natural the transition will be. We cannot, however, continue to incessantly imply these advanced harmonies without actually modifying our system. That is what is such a pain in the ass about alot of jazz players; they feel like they are being courageous and on the forefront of harmonic development and bitch about the low level of their audience's ears, when they are really just spewing alot of very unnatural, contrived crap. There becomes a very large disconnect between what we hear and what our cognitive process knows we should be hearing, and as these drift further and further away from each other, the experience of listening becomes more and more an intellectual one(piecing together the puzzle) rather than a wholistic, resonant, energetic, spiritual, bodily one.

I've been working on writing three part harmony with the 18-24 tone scale of Sims that I record with my fretless one part at a time. I also will be getting my 36 tone guitar in just a few days. I believe a full fledged microtonal project with keyboardist Matt Weires will be getting under way.

Portland Jazz Jams Tv

2006-02-09T12:43:00.000-08:00

The Chris Mosley Trio recently filmed a live performance and interview with Darren Littlejohn, the founder of PortlandJazzJams.Com.

You can watch the whole thing right here!

Red and Black

2006-02-07T08:29:00.000-08:00

The Trio played a great show on the 2nd at Red and Black Cafe, the host of a really great creative music series put on by Mary Sue Tolbin and Paxselin. They have really created a great atmosphere for the musicians and listeners alike. It's a pleasure to feed a roomful of hungry ears and look up to see a roomful of faces looking back at you instead of huddling closer together to continue the conversation. Thank you Mary Sue!

On another note, I just went to the Reel Music Fest showing of a film called the Legacy of Coltrane. It was really just the full reproduction of the Jazz Casual performance and a couple other filmed performances from the Quartet(and one Quintet with Dolphy) interspersed with interviews with 'fellow musicians and friends of John Coltrane' which turned out to be a few(forgive me) rather inane comments from Elvin Jones. It didn't get into his real 'late' period or even interesting discussion the entire time. It was good, though, just to spend some time watching the Quartet at work. I was very much struck by Elvin's playing in particular. What I had in the past experienced more as 'Elvin sure plays alot' turned into a realization of the deep groove going on, especially in his left hand. His snare chruns out some extremely propulsive beats. As for Dolphy, I can't say I have ever liked his playing with the Trane band. To my ears, his playing developed more out of Bebop that is just really different harmonically, whereas Trane was on another level of harmony beyond the stressed out squirelly lines of out-bop. And let's be honest, Dolphy's flute playing is pretty bad. That said, I do enjoy discs like Out To Lunch and the Illinois Concert.

Ezra Sims

2006-01-26T09:11:00.000-08:00

I have recently been listening to 'The Microtonal Music of Ezra Sims' alot! I have also been fortunate enough to be in correspondence with the composer, and i've just waded through a packet of articles on his music that he sent me. In my opinion, Sims clearly represents a very strong step forward in the evolution of our Western tone system. He has emerged from the creative crises that was responsible for serialism with a wholly intact understanding of the asymmetrical beauty of a tonality-grounded musical system. He has arrived at his scale of choice in a very natural way - led intuitively by the creative process of composition and listening. He uses intervals from higher up along the overtone series to create an 18 or 24 note scale as a subset of the 72-tone ET octave division he employs. The harmonic structures found in his music are largely generated by the 'combination tones' of seconds(the interval).
This brings up a very important aspect of Sims' music, and the microtonal movement in general. What are combination tones? Combination tones are created (often as much a physchological impression as a sonic phenomenon) by the interaction of two tones. From each generating pair of tones, there are two combination tones: one above(the summation), and one below(the difference). When we say 'summation' and 'difference', we are talking about the harmonic number produced by the harmonic numbers of the two generating tones added to each other or one subtracted from the other. (Example: say we are in the key of C and our generating tones are G and C'. The G comes from the third harmonic of C and the C' comes from the fourth. The summation tone, then, is 3+4=7. The difference tone is 4-3=1. We now have a four note chord as 1/1, 2/3, 4/1, 7/4.) You will notice that we are propelled into the septimal(7-based) region and beyond the range of equal temperament from only the tonic and fifth. When we use more complex generating tones, like seconds, they create more complex(and smaller intervallicaly) resultant chords. This is how microtonal 'space' is created, which allows for further development of melodic and harmonic movement in smaller intervals.
This process of finding the resultant tones is essentially the same as getting a harmonic mean of an interval, a pattern of growth found in the golden ratio/fibonacci sequence phenomenon. To find the harmonic mean of 3/2, for example, we multiply both digits by 2 to get 6 and 4. We then fill in the middle number, 5, and get 4:5:6, or 5/4(major third) and 6/5(minor third). In this way, the next step up the overtone series is generated. From the 3rd harmonic to the 5th. Now, the fifth is taking us to the 7th, we're finding 11 and 13.
Sims is the best example i've heard of all of this, and it's really beautiful music. Do check him out.

Reasons for Change

2006-01-17T08:40:00.000-08:00

I have made a couple of comments on this blog suggesting that the tuning system of 12 tone equal temperment that we use almost exclusively is ill-equipped to express new music. Following are some reasons behind these statements.

The first step is to realize how in- and out-of tune 12-ET is. The idea behind temperament is that by compromising the in-tuneness of some of the intervals, we gain a great amount of flexibility in modulation, or moving tonal centers. By making all of the 12 intervals the same size we get 12 keys of equal relationships and the possibility to move freely from one to the next. The problem with this is that musical intervals are not all the same size and cannot be reduced to a common denominator of the equal tempered semi-tone. The purest picture of harmonic structure comes from the overtone series generated by a single fundamental tone. In this form we see the natural musical intervals in all their shapes and sizes well expressed in the whole-number ratios so largely dealt with by the Pythagoreans. The series begins like this:

Fundamental 1/1(C)
Octave 2/1(C)
Fifth 3/2(G)
Octave 4/1(C)
Maj. Third 5/4(E)
Fifth (3/2)(G)
Nat. Seventh 8/7(Bb)
Octave 8/1(C)
Ninth 9/8(D)
...and so on.
These are pure intervals, meaning maximally in tune.
The descrepency of 12-ET in tuning can be great. The first interval we become aware of is the major third, one of the most important intervals in contemporary and classical music. The 12-ET third is approx. 15 cents sharper than 5/4(100 cents being one ET semi-tone). This is quite apparent to the ear, especially with direct comparison. The next is the Seventh. The interval 8/7 is 30 cents low of the ET flat seventh, untouchable on a piano. Along with this specific interval comes other intervals related to and generated by it such as the septimal minor third(the interval of the fifth to the seventh) and a large whole-tone(seventh to octave). As these finer regions of harmony develop, our over-stressed system of 12 equal intervals is quickly left behind.
The question that naturally arises is of course, 'if it is such a flawed system, what about the great works that came out of it?'. One must realize first that this system without question served a purpose and was, in one way or another, completely neccesary. It played it's part in the development of many cultures and thoughts and feelings around the world when those thoughts needed to be thought and the feelings needed to be felt. At this time, however, it's usefullnes is fading, and new musical images are seeking expression. The 12-ET system is deeply connected to the phase of human development that brought about the current world situation, and is in parallel, deeply unbalanced. It really is impossible to seperate a mindset such as capitalistic greed and waste from the tone system of the culture.
Another thing that must be understood is that orchestras don't really play in equal temperament, as it is actually impossible. The musicians naturally tune the chords they are creating through many small ear-based adjustments. The only time a violinist is going to be playing ET intervals is when he/she is paired with a piano to keep them in(or out of) line. These intervals are not distinct enough to be heard truly, but only as shadowy references to real harmonic structure. It is time we came to a system based on experiential truth and expansion, and move away from ignorance and confinement.

More on this topic to come!

Upcoming Shows

2006-01-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

Hey Portland residents! Check out the Chris Mosley Trio this Friday night at the Bitter End Pub and next Wednesday(18th) at Mississippi Pizza Pub. Listen to the trio at chrismosley.com.

Website!

2006-01-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

Check out the new and official Chris Mosley homepage at www.ChrisMosley.Com! You can hear and download full recordings of original tunes played with the trio (Damian Erskine and Drew Shoals) and see the full schedule of upcoming dates. If you are into it, be sure to join the mailing list for updates and showtimes.

I also have a Myspace page at www.myspace.com/chrismosleymusic where you can listen to a few tracks without having to download anything. Feedback is always appreciated, and if you know someone that might like the music, please let them know! That is how things happen.

Portland Scene

2006-01-02T13:07:00.000-08:00

The city of Portland has been treating me well. I've been very busy building something of a niche here and i do believe it's happening. I have been enjoying meeting and playing with alot of really great players and people and getting involved with different projects. I have been playing alot or original stuff with my trio, which constists of Drew Shoals on drums(on of the baddest portland has to offer) and a either Damian Erskine or Jeff Picker on bass. Damian is an absolute pro on his six string electric and Jeff is an absolute prodigy(17 yrs) on his upright. And they both catch when I fall(obviously the most important part, right?).
I am also in a project called The Through Line with a great percussionist, Clif Koufman. Usually with a couple other players added in, we improvise a film score to movies projected onto the wall. The last show we did was Jeckyl and Hyde. Very fun stuff.
I've been playing alot of fretless, which brought me into the realm of Indian and microtonal music. Very soon I will also be building a 31-tone equal tempered guitar. I will definately be posting the progress of that project. While in Boston, I was able to study some with microtonal godfather and saxophonist Joe Maneri, who really opened my eyes to alot of things. Someone who I feel might be a little further along with the composition with the 72-tone scale(the division Maneri uses) is Ezra Sims. Also in the Boston area, he is in my opinion hugely important to the development of microtonal music, as he has developed a system of harmony and composition that does not rely on the triad. This in itself is a pretty huge deal, and something that is really not possible in the 12-tone ET system that dominates now. He represents a strong movement forward in the natural evolution of the musical tone system of which are steadily closing in on.

More to come on that!

Peace

Summer

2005-05-22T15:30:00.000-07:00

Well I haven't done this in a while. Something about school makes me not want to do anything. At all. But school is done. Forever. That's right, Berklee, the great school of musical redundancies is a thing of my past. Good things happened there; dumb annoying things happened there that tought me all about what the words dumb and annoying really mean. Now i'm out. Not only out of school but out of the jazz elitist mind set where all the good ideas where taken up by 1964 and possibilities were only possible if they fit snugly inside someone else's idea of "JAZZ." I'm also finished, to a certain degree, with the 12 tone equal tempered system that we play in. It happens to not really work, which is a drag. I've been playing some fretless guitar and getting more into some middle eastern and Indian music.
From here i'm moving to portland, or which is exciting in many ways. I hear great things about the scene and have experienced great things with the people and city.

multiple tonic systems (g. steps)

2004-11-18T11:58:00.000-08:00

I think i finally understand what giant steps, and other multiple tonic tunes(such as central park west) are really meant to be and coltrane blows the way he does over them.

The basic premise:
The name multiple tonic means more than one home base, basically, and implies that these different home bases are completely equal to one another. Therefore, within a multiple tonic system, the equivalent cadence chords are also equal. For example: in a two tonic system of two maj chords a tritone apart such as CMaj7 - F#Maj7, the II chords and V chords are equivalent. So, D-7 = G#-7 and G7 = C#7. Because of this relative equallity, they are interchangeable. Check out the possibilities of cadences in a 2 tonic system.

D-7/G7/C
G#-7/C#7/C
D-7/C#7/C
G#-7/G7/C

G#-7/C#7/F#
D-7/G7/F#
G#-7/G7/F#
D-7/C#-7/F#

Now, if we are going to use all these different possibilities, it becomes clear we cannot to much to the individual chords. This works because each cadence chord belongs directly and strongly to one of the two equivalent Maj tonalaties. So no sub Vs or altering of the dominant chords, and the clear each chord is spelled out, the stronger the overall tonality (both tonalities combined) is. This is where coltranes scale patterns of 1235 and 1b345 come in.
Think of it as a big intervallic house (maybe more like a yurt) made up of two tonalities and all the rooms made up of each little chord. The walls of each room is made up of the specific scale pattern intervals played over each chord. So you see, if we are not very accurate and intervallicaly precise, the walls distort, the rooms scatter and the house falls down. What a drag. So the reason Coltrane blows so 'stiffly' over the changes is because these aren't changes, this is a goddam house!
What all this comes down to is the possibility and persuit of a universal key. In just this two tonic system we already have all the notes in the twelve tone scale and eight different cadences we can play to get to each tonality. Think of how the possibilities multiply when we go to a three, four, or five tonic system. What comes out is basically ordered chaos, like cracking ice.
So. Giant Steps is an unmusical excercise-sounding tune if we play all our bop scales and substitutions over it, because that is not at all how it is meant to be played. If you put mashed potatoes in a nice big waffle cone instead of ice cream, it will probably taste like shit.
This happens to be just about the only thing i've ever learned in a class room that was worth jack shit. School is inherently anti-artistic and caters to homogenization of musicians and their music. So i'm getting the hell out and moving to Portland, OR. Does anybody live there or know of things happening on the scene? Let me know.

Steve Coleman

2004-10-24T11:45:00.000-07:00

Time to understand Steve Coleman's music. Here's his site. I just can't tackle this before breakfast, but it's later in Boston so I figured I'd put this up now.

http://www.m-base.org
http://www.m-base.com/cnmat_ucb/Symmetry_Movement.html - check this out first.

Steve Lacy Tribute

2004-10-13T14:40:00.000-07:00

I went to a concert last night that was a tribute for Steve Lacy held at New England Conservatory(where he tought). The fist half was alot of the top NEC jazz guys(some players you would have really been into, Dan) but the second half was different arrangements of the following: Dave Leibman, George Garzone, Danilo Perez, Bob Moses, Ran Blake and a few others that i was unfamiliar with(including Lacy's wife who is a singer). It was a really amazing night of music. Ran Blake(who, when on stage, prefers all the lights off) played 'Round Midnight in such an ingenious and extremely, extremely advanced way that the only real way to tell it wasn't Scriabn or someone was the fact that he still played the melody strongly(a rarity in this sort of setting). Leib blew is ass off. Perez is a comper to rival Herbie. Garz on soprano is unreal. Things like that.

Steve Coleman, Roswell Rudd

2004-10-06T16:28:00.000-07:00

Alot has been goin on here recently. Last night i saw berklee's Ornette Coleman ensemble with Roswell Rudd. Rudd has recently been to West Africa studying the culure and music and overall sounds. He said the town he was in was very acoustically homogeneous and he brought back the overall sounds. From the little i've heard of him before, i dismissed him as being to blatt-y, which at times he is, but last night he played some trully masterful music. It's the closest an instrumentalist has come speaking in words that i've heard in a while.
Then today i saw a clinic over at New England Conservatory of Steve Coleman, who, after recieving visions of ancient egyptian symbols when he listened to trane and bird went to egypt and has apparently been studying some extremely advanced theoretical concepts since. His main point was basically illustrating how duality exists in music. He showed how we hear music as going up(typified by the authentic cadence(G7-CMaj7)) and that there is a whole other side of harmony going down. He referred to these things as Terrestrial Gravity and Concentric Gravity, and started using the term of 'negative keys.' It was all very fast and very unique, but what i saw it as(without giving much of the extremely in depth logic to explain it) is this.

C Maj
(neg) G
-G in terrestrial terms is F-6(D-7(b5))
the resolution of this is now F-6 to CMaj reversing the typical direction in which we hear on the level of the root.

there is alot more, including the logic of the concentric gravity voice leading and big diagrams of frequency ratios and yadayadayada. It was such a different world, but it made a deep kind of sense. This was the first time i've been actually engaged by a theoretical discussion since i got here. people are typically such theory idiots that normal college level theory is really suited to an 8th grade level mind and that's where it stops. it's pathetic. But this stuff really requires some thought, just like the other stuff did when i was a kid. I'm excited. I'll try to get a hold on it better and explain it a little more.

shows

2004-09-30T13:56:00.000-07:00

the other night i saw Mulgrew Miller play a few tunes. he has great command of his musicallity and plays some very interesting harmonic things. more out than i would expect by looking at him. after that show we went to see the Fringe but instead of Garzone, it was a trombonist Jeff Galindo with John Lockwood and Bob Gulotti. pretty different than when garz is there, but some really fantastic, mature, musical, sometimes avant sometimes folk song-ish, music. i'm heading to my new ensemble now, we'll see how it is.

Noise

2004-09-20T13:52:00.000-07:00

Today, I stood in a pool full of noise and meditated. When I opened my eyes, the pool was still.

session

2004-09-19T18:00:00.000-07:00

I just played a pretty good session with and alto player and bass and drums. he's been studying with Garzone and working on alot of triadic stuff(just like every body else these days) so it was fun to bounce off some ideas on him. drummer's a little loud a little quick sometimes but he's not really too terribly insensitive. we played at a practice facility about 2 blocks away from my place, run by berklee. it's pretty amazing. all decked out with amps and drums and keyboards and everthing. amps are pretty nasty, though.

Sco's a Ho

2004-09-17T10:41:00.000-07:00

I saw John Scofield Trio with Steve Swallow and Bill Stewart last night in Boston. Needless to say, i was beside myself and quite optimistic about the whole. Unfortunately, it was terrible. No, seriously. Really Bad. Very Boring. Depressing. Tear-Jerking. Evidently Sco does not feel the need to progress as a musician at all, staying not only within himself as a player, but also sticking to nauseatingly tradition format for all the tunes: guitar solo, bass solo, drum solo, trade 4s, head out. It was ridiculously unengaging on all levels. I think his playing has actually gone down in the last five or so years. He apparently has no idea what is going on harmonically and just plain improvisationally in the music these days. Most of his ideas(when not basically diatonic 8th notes) consist of some kind of Sco-cliche or even just guitar cliche. Last night he was nothing more than a guitarist(even if a guitarist who invented his sound). Steve Swallow. I don't get it. There's nothing special about is playing and the blowing he did was eye-wateringly boring. Bill Stewart sounded good but after seeing Jeff Ballard less than a week before, i was hardly moved by his drummeresque playing. I am sadly disillissioned.

Fly

2004-09-16T13:01:00.001-07:00

I went to see Mark Turner's trio, Fly last sunday. it was an extremely profound demonstration of how mature jazz as an art form can be. they only played one swing tune, and everything was completely soaked with a huge array of musical influences and the highly developed language of Mark Turner combined with the couldn't-fuck-up-if-he-tried time feel of jeff ballard. and then there's Larry Grenadier who, in my mind, was made a superstar with his work on Mehldau's Art of the Trio 4 record. he delivered one of his trademark groove-like-maceo solos and played some ridiculous poly-things all over the place. it was a trully elevated listening experience for me, as if i wasn't listening to music so much as i was experiencing art on a purely vibrational level.
Tonight i'm going to see John Scofield with his en route band, steve swallow and bill stewart. pretty excited about that one, too.

Fly

2004-09-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

Boston

2004-09-10T10:42:00.000-07:00

I'm back in boston, now. Just finished my first week of school. Privates with Mick Goodrick is gonna be killing. i also have a lab with him. My ensemble at this point is just me and the instructor(we played some nice trombone/guitar duo) and hopefully will get a rythm section. I went to the MFA with Eric last night. Good to see him. I can get anywhere in town on my new old road bike, Helios. It's great. I'd like to go see Mark Turner Trio tomorrow night(Larry Grenadier and Jeff Ballard) but i'd also really like to eat next week. we'll see.

Composers

2004-08-31T21:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back in school... Luckily, that means I've started composing again. Needless to say, this has had an obvious effect on my listening habits. This time, though, I'm not listening to Maria Schnieder or Charles Mingus. This time I've fallen in love with Gil Evans and Thad Jones. They're just fucking amazing.
I revisited Sketches of Spain for the first time in practically a year and I have to admit I haven't had a listening experience such as this in quite a while. First of all, I think Miles plays wonderfully, but not in the way im used to. I've always respected Miles for his voice. Too few musicians have developed a voice in the same way he has. This record is different, though. I respect Miles on Sketches of Spain because he fits himself into the music in a completely unobtrusive way. More often than not I think, "I love what the Trumpet just played...oh yeah, that was Miles."
Gil Evans is a genius. I just can't say that any other composer is a better technician. Any time I listen to his music I get the impression that every idea was exactly what he wanted to say. Every time I work on one of my own compositions and find myself unable to voice the music thought that I'm having I understand the brilliance of Gil Evans.
We are playing Thad Jones' Three and One. Check it out. The melody is a juxtapostion of a beautiful bass, flugel, and trombone melody and biting harmonic line the rest of the band plays. It's about as hip as you can get. The next CD I buy will prolly be one Thad Jones'

*
Christina is freaking amazing. I don't deserve this. I'm an asshole (dont even think about commenting on that that).

1958

2004-08-31T16:25:00.000-07:00

I listened to the Miles Sextet at Newport 1958 the other night and could really only come up with one word to express my thoughts: questionable. It's an extremely transitional record for just about everyone on it and while this is interesting to hear, it remains it's sole offering. Coltrane is pretty heavy into his sheets of sound playing(which can be effective if you look at it more like a Pollock splatter painting instead trying to find traditional musical ideas), Cannonball is great but his real genius doesn't come through as often as it does on some other recordings(how's that for criticism?), Bill Evans is just waiting to record Kind of Blue, Paul Chambers sounds great all the way through, Miles plays relatively well but lacks his typical laser-like focus. Possibly the most interesting thing for me is the way Jimmy Cobb plays. In my mind he has always been the Kind of Blue drummer; the way to play cool jazz, but on this he's more like a grandfather to Tain Watts than a stylistic bar line. I have a new respect for his musical understanding and versatility.

*******************

On a different front....
I'm going back to school on thursday so i'm uploading all of my brother's good CDs. Needless to say, our tastes vary in just about all ways(except quality). Some of the highlights:
Spearhead Home. This is just a really great record. I don't even know what to call it. It has some hip-hop influence, but i'd probably be scalped for calling it that; it's got some R&B sounding stuff... very, very cool.
Jimi Hendrix Blues. Anadulterated, at times surprisingly hip, blues playing. This is the real deal.
Nirvana Nevermind. I used to listen to alot of Nirvana, then I became a snob and now i'm returning to being a real person. I love this shit.
Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek Reflection Eternal. I think I could safely call this hip-hop. Good hip-hop.
....and alot of other worthless stuff that doesn't have an upright bass or a single II/V7 to be found.
See, i'm kidding.

2004-08-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

Perfection is the tip of a needle that happens to be a mile wide.

Am I wrong?

Books

2004-08-28T21:56:00.000-07:00

I'm just finishing Tom Robbins' Villa Incognito. He's a trully fantastic author and he deals with some very heavy worldview/metaphysical kind of stuff in a trully artistic, rather covert way. His writing is completely original, but similar in ways to Kurt Vonnegut. Lined up to read a is a book called Off the Map, a journalistic kind of thing of two girls and their summer sqatting around Europe, and i just picked up Nieschte's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I'm pretty excited about that. Finally I can add my on regurgitated opinions on Existentialism when it comes up over bad coffe and hand rolled cigarettes.

I wish I was in NY

2004-08-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

check this out!

I'm back I think

2004-08-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

One of the interesting things about road-tripping with Lauren is that i have a very limited allowance of time to put any kind of jazz in the cd player, and when i do i typically just worry that she doesn't like it and that maybe i should just say to hell with it and put in something with a beat and she probably didn't even dig the way he just played that alt chord and..... and so over about 5 days i end up listening to about 3 jazz discs very half-heartedly. And that's ok. No, really, it is. I get in touch with some of the other wonderful music that's happening these days such as: Dave Mathews. Especially Listener Supported. It's just plain killin' all the way through. Ben Harper. Earthy, soulful, spiritual, good music. Sarah McLachlin. She's just about it for me. Every time i hear her i get pretty buzzed. Even Fiona Apple is killin'. How's that for breaking the jazz snob mold, huh? Anyway, i'm back and good ol' Keith Jarrett gave me a nice little slap in the face last night.

I think i'm going to live in Portland, OR next summer with Lauren. I've actually heard really good things about the scene there, and i saw some encouraging signs the few days we were there, but we didn't check any of it out.
The tattoo's bombin'.

If only the world could be this soft.

2004-08-23T23:47:00.000-07:00

To continue sharing. Everyone please go to http://www.asofterworld.com/. It's a very nice site.

Nguyen Le

2004-08-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

Check out Nguyen-le.com. He has scores to some of his pieces. Very interesting stuff. Also a few audio clips you'd prolly enjoy.

Charles Bukowski

2004-08-19T03:12:00.000-07:00

Be Kind
Charles Bukowski

we are always asked
to understand the other person's
viewpoint
no matter how
out-dated
foolish or
obnoxious.

one is asked
to view
their total error
their life-waste
with
kindliness,
especially if they are
aged.

but age is the total of
our doing.
they have aged
badly
because they have
lived
out of focus,
they have refused to
see.

not their fault?

whose fault?
mine?

I am asked to hide
my viewpoint
from them
for fear of their
fear.

age is no crime

but the shame
of a deliberately
wasted
life

among so many
deliberately
wasted
lives

is.

Trippin' Dayses

2004-08-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

I'll be pretty much away from any computers for about two weeks. I'm gonna go find America.... You'll have to deal with just danny's dumb opinions for a while. Be safe.

Hip Metheny?

2004-08-10T20:07:00.000-07:00

I heard Pat Metheny's 80/81 for the first time last night and was actually inspired by it. It's very 70's movement kind of thing(you should see the picture of 'em on the inside) with Jack Dejohnnete, Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman(!) and Mike Brecker. It's some pretty adventurous music, delving at times into free playing very effectively. Metheny's tone is soaked in reverb and chorus and so sounds very dated, and he still has some annoying characteristics(like sliding into every note he plays) but overall he sounds damn good. Dewey sounds fantastic, of course. I was in the car, so i have little opinion on how Charlie sounds. Brecker wasn't to bad, but he had his own special reverb that made everything he played sound like a solo on an 80's power ballad. Very distasteful. Jack D. sounded just like himself. I like Jack D. I was also informed of a cd of Metheny's called Rejoicing with Charlie and Billy Higgins featuring all Ornette tunes. Sounds cool. How do you like that? I just talked about Pat Metheny in a civil manner! I must be getting soft.

Top Five Bands

2004-08-09T03:10:00.000-07:00

To suppliment my last post....
My Favorite seven-ish Bands (today).
in no particular order

1 Miles Quintet and Miles Sextet (you know which ones) - sorry, I couldn't pick just one.
2 Footprints Live band
3 Dave Douglas' Band
4 Dave Holland Quintet
5 Claudia Quintet
6 The Fringe
7 MMW

M M and Wood

2004-08-09T02:35:00.000-07:00

I saw MMW live at Mishawaka the other night and I think I'll have to consider it my virgin MMW experience because I can't really believe the Aspen Jazz Festival counted (heavy petting in comparison). First, I must tell you that the Mish is probably on of the best places to see music in Colorado. Beautiful environment, few people, fair prices (except on food) - $25 ticket, and, most importantly, great sound. From this experience I have to believe that this band is easily one of the greatest bands ever. They breathe together better than any other band I've seen. Sadly, this obviously wasn't the best concert they've put on, but I really can't hold it against them. The play by play:
The first set started very strong. Wood was on acoustic and everything was good in the world. They were obviously jamming, but it sounded great nonetheless. Then, Wood dropped his acoustic for his electric and the whole vibe of the band changed. It was amazing to the watch them as they morphed from an intensly musical entity into a reasonably talented jam band. The rest of the set was lame.
The second set started with Wood still on electric. I was scared. Luckily he picked up his acoustic before very long. You wouldn't have believed the difference. Most noticeably, John Medeski phrases extremely differently behind an acoustic bass. Again, everything was good in the world. Wood eventually picked up his electric again, but it was to play Shackman so I forgave him. The rest of the concert was great.
Chris Wood is one of the most outstanding bassists alive. I needed to see him live to realized it, but, now that I have, there really isn't any question. I just wish he would spend more time on acoustic in this band. As a rhythm player he is understandibly one of the best. He plays in a glorified funk band for christ sake. He only surpasses his abilitly as a rhythm player through his soloing. One of the most creative bassists I've seen - technically and musically. All I can say is, "you must see him live."
This is definitely a band I would like to see again.

Beat Degeneration

2004-08-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

Ok. Beat Degeneration is the shit. it is. I admit it. Kenny Werner sounds amazing. Ari Hoenig sounds amazing. The bassist(i know, i am remiss) is amazing. the composition and execution of the tunes in a piano trio format is nothing short of revolutionary. The other piano trios that come to mind with the same amount of originallity are the Mehldau Trio and the Esbjorn Svenson Trio. But neither of those are approached quite like Kenny's. His charts are basically little big band charts played on piano. One of the most refreshing aspects for me was the intensity of Kenny and Ari's phrasing. In some places, at the end of a line from Kenny, Ari actually completely stops playing, and then starts in again(often with a slightly different shade) with the next line. It really is one the more exciting things i've come across musically in at least 2 weeks. In some places you hear some Jarrett influence in Kenny's playing. One of the tunes is very Koln Concert-ish.

----------------------------------------

On a different note.....
I've had realization fairly recently that the biggest limitation on technique is uncertainty. This may sound obvious, but it's often not talked about in this way. Look at Sonny Rollins' recordings of those annoying tunes, Be Swift and Be Quick. He doesn't have especially jawdropping chops, but changes are so under his fingers that he makes it through. Another aspect of uncertainty is time. You can't play clean double-time if you're not exactly clear about where the 16ths are falling. By the time any attention goes to time, your technique is another notch down. Of course, the most important key to having perfect access to your unflawed technique(other than working it up in the first place) is complete relaxation, and complete relaxation is impossible when any uncertainties are present.

A Blind Guy Who's Really Into Picasso

2004-08-07T21:35:00.000-07:00

Check out this article
on Coltrane's later years and tell me what you think. I personally almost feel sorry for the guy that wrote it, having wasted so much of his time trying interpret things that he is wholly unprepared for. It reminds me of the kind of ideas i would cultivate when i was around 10 or so. I'm not saying that everything is completely off the mark; it's actually quite interesting on an informational level, but it's written by an atheist(no offense to any atheists out there, just don't start formulating any grandoise ideas about coltrane's spiritual path) who takes a very analytical, very literal view of things. One of the many flaws is that he approaches time in a linear sense(says he's pretty sure coltrane thought Om was the Big Bang) without even realizing that coltrane was dealing with eternity. but don't take my word for it.....

Thanks Tim

Randoms

2004-08-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

I think my favourite Josh Redman is Passage of Time, over Ya-Ya 3(honestly, i think he's square as hell on that record). Aaron Goldberg is a really good pianist that i don't really hear much from. the compositions on this record are really happening, too.
---------------

I listened to the Ornette Coleman Trio Live at the Golden Circle last night. It's definately some of my favourite Ornette i've heard. The trio is very different than his quartet; the drummer, David Izenzon, has quite a bit to say. I find the way ornette plays really up tempos that he can't possibly manage pretty fascinating. People should get their technique up to par and then go listen to this or some Wayne Shorter(Plugged Nickel) to learn how to really play these tempos musically. Funny that it takes someone without the chops to really show us what's up.

Super Stupor

2004-08-05T19:51:00.000-07:00

I listened the Directions in Music cd with Hargrove, Herbie, Brecker, Brian Blade, and Patitucci last night. I would say it's Hargrove at his best. He plays some very interesting and creative things and he sounds very good with Herbie and Blade. There's a pretty amazingly different arrangement of Impressions that he just kills. He also plays really nice on Stella. After Stella, all is quiet except....is that?.... yes it is. It's Mr. Brecker Swaggering up to the microphone. This is how it went:

Mike: Hey, man check this shit out, it's real sensitive................
Yours Truly: Hey, nice. Naima right? That's cool you're doing an intro.
Mike: Yea, it is cool. Real cool. Just listen to the way I play these changes, man, it's hip as hell.
YT: Oh, sorry, man I thought we were still kinda on the melody. Well, i guess it's not that nice of a melody, anyway.
Mike: Dude, i referenced it really strongly.
YT: Oh, yea. Cool.
Mike: Yea, it is cool. But check it out man, you probably don't even know where i am in the form, do you.
YT: Well, I can basically-
Mike: Yea, well, i do, man. I know exactly where i am and playing the shit out it. Seriously.
YT: Wow, man, you sure outline those chords really, really well.
Mike: Yea, well, you know, without a rythm section you're a little more free to really let go and blow just about all the notes that fit within a chord. But check out what i'm about to do, man. You'll freak out.
YT: I bet it's nice not to have those pesky guys trying to comp for you. Like, both times you left a couple beats of space on that last tune, they practically jumped at the oppurtunity to play some shit they probably haven't even practiced. What a pain in the ass.
Mike: Hey, man, listen to me.................................................................................................
YT: Mike..........Hey Mike...........................MIKE!!
Mike: Oh, hey, man.
YT: What the hell are you talking about, man?
Mike: Oh, well check it out. For each chord I play all the way through the Coltrane subs for the relative two-five, right, which is cool, but pretty tame so after that I take that around once, well, then i start taking that whole progression and i start moving it around the diminished cyc-
YT: Mike! I don't give a shit, man. I just don't care. At all. Really. None.
Mike: Oh, well, check this out then man. It's a little different.
YT: This isn't an intro, is it, Mike?
Mike:................................................................................................................................................
YT: Oh thank god! He's parroting Coltrane's ending. He's got to be done now. Yep, here it is. This is it. One more note and we're.......................... Oh, Jesus Christ. Get OFF her, Mike, she's done. Naima just wants to go to sleep. Roll the hell over and turn off the light, for godsake!
Mike:............................!
YT: You're sick, man, sick.

I think this would be a trully great record if the Breck from Heck wasn't on it. That's my story and i'm stickin' to it.

Someday My Toad Will Appear

2004-08-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

I've never actually listened all the way through Miles' Someday My Prince Will Come. Frankly, if I want to listen to old school miles, I usually pick one with Coltrane on it instead of the ever-weary sounding Hank Mobley. But last night I listened all the way through and found an alternate take of Someday at the end. It offers an extremely interesting look into Miles' creative process and how he develops those quirky ideas. The alternate solo contains in it almost all of the ideas he plays in the published take, but they are overall much less successful. The alternate take also doesn't have the outro solo by Coltrane. What good could it possibly be?

Quote of the Week

2004-08-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

MTV did for music what KFC did for chicken.
Lewis Black

Jacques Loussier

2004-08-03T21:55:00.000-07:00

My uncle gave me this cd called Jacques Loussier Trio Plays Debussy yesterday. It's a piano trio putting debussy compositions in a jazz setting. I was very doubtful, hearing in my head all the ways it could sound just terrible; thinking it was some hokey little thing he played on cruise ships or something. Luckily, it is actually done quite tastefully, leaning heavily on the sound ECM has produced for the past thirty years. Sometimes the drummer bothers me a bit. He plays two much with just his brushes, even on the ride, making it sound uncomfortably like a wedding reception. He does do some interesting and tasty things, though. I also feel like Loussier could express the changes more vividly than he does when he's blowing. I don't think Debussy would appreciate the almost condescending diatonicism the pianist steadily employs. Very interesting recording, really, and the melodies are gorgeous and played well. I think if the rythm section from Tomasz Stanko's quartet did this, it would be mind blowing.

Ballad Sessions

2004-08-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

Have you heard Mark Turner's Ballad Sessions? I listened to it last night for the first time in a while. If there was any question as to how much Mark and Kurt have added to the general vocabulary of contemporary music, this is the confirmation. Most of the ballads are pretty standard standards with pretty trad changes, and the harmonic concepts employed by Mark(more dominantly) and Kurt create a stark contrast between the old and the new. It is a wonderful listening situation because the things they are doing comes out so clearly at these tempos and with the 'solid color' background of the original tunes. Kurt plays beautifully and extremely articulately on Nefertiti(one of the few more modern forms), making it very clear that he has replaced Metheny in the Holy Trinity of jazz guitar(scofield, frisell). I look forward to absorbing the Gospel according Mark'nKurt.

Top Five

2004-07-30T22:31:00.000-07:00

Top Five Tenor Saxophonist - in no particular order (I just can bare to number them).
(Basically, the top five "tenor saxophonist that don't play anything that really bothers me right now")

John Coltrane - Mostly later Coltrane. I have to admit...hes just the shit [rhyme]
George Garzone - He is possibly the best "saxophonist" I've heard. Luckily he also plays real music.
Jerry Bergonzi - a.k.a. the jazz mafia (ill explain some other time) a.k.a. the Great White Jazz Musician. To me, he exemplifies educated jazz. He understands every note he plays. Both his greatest asset and his greatest weakness.
Joe Lovan0 - He just plays some beautiful music. Truthfully I wouldn't always put him on this list, but today he gets his place. It's a good day for Joe.
Mark Turner - Basically he just doesn't bother me right now. Besides...I love to listen to him play his harmonic stuff.

I know there are others and I've prolly forgotten someone very obvious. The only dead guy I felt I could put on the list was Trane and only because the music he played yesterday would still be considered original today.

***

I listened to Blue Line (Heartcore). I agree. Why doesn't Kurt blow like that on the rest of the album?

***

I'm still trying to recover from the gig tonight. It would be easier to recover from cancer. It was cancer.

Folk Forms

2004-07-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

In my less-perused book of cds i came across Charlie Mingus' Folk Forms. It was given to me by a non-jazz fan, so I had always had the misguided idea that it probably wasn't very hip. I'm kind of a moron sometimes, I guess. Anyway, there is some great Jackie Mclean(i see alot of compositional influence come out on Jackie's Destination Out. He and good ol' Grachan Moncur III were definately brought up with Mingus) and some extremely musical Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet. I actually dig his playing on this a little more than other more stylistically advanced Dolphy i've heard(which i admit is not a real impressive amount). Mingus, of course, sounds stellar. I look forward to spending more time with this record.

New Tradition!! Weekly Top 5's

2004-07-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

Top 5 Recordings:
(list subject to change with little or no notice)

1) Keith Jarrett Standards Trio - 1985 Standards Vol. I
2) Bill Frisell - Blues Dream
3) Miles Davis Sextet - Kind of Blue(i'm sorry, i can't help it)
4) Joe Henderson - So Near, So Far(in my opinion Sco's playing on this is the best jazz guitar recorded to date)
5) John Coltrane - 1961 Complete Vanguard Recordings

That's my story and i'm stickin' to it.

Dave Douglas

2004-07-28T21:05:00.000-07:00

Last night I listened to Dave Douglas' Soul on Soul. In his recent releases I have to admit i've been dissapointed. He is a wonderful trumpet player. His composing technique is, at times, remarkable. He has just about the best band you could ask for, not only as a group, but as individual improvisors. I think Chris Speed (and Potter on Strange Liberation) and Josh Roseman are absolutely top notch on each of their instruments. And yet, by the overall product, i'm dissapointed. I rarely feel that i am listening to the music from the inside, but instead feel like i'm sitting outside of the performace passively observing. This comes mainly from a lack of subtly, and this lack of subtly comes mainly from Douglas' playing. HE PLAYS TO GODDAM LOUD ALL THE GODDAM TIME! Even on what I surmised was meant as a ballad he's playing like he wants to rally the quarterback going into the fourth quarter. This sort of playing seems exhibitionistic to me, and exhibitionism is the usual suspect for leaving the audience on the outside. On top of his playing, the tunes can feel the same way to me, and he seems to encourage the slightly cringe-worthy side of Uri Caine.
All this said, I respect him very much and when I saw him a couple months ago, it was powerful just to be in range of his horn.

Arkansas' Best

2004-07-27T14:01:00.000-07:00

I went to a jam session at the jazz club in little rock last night and rubbed elbows with Arkansas' elite jazz musicians. It was a pretty impressive turnout, actually. Five dollar cover for non-players and the tables were all full. It looks like every monday they actually have live jazz, and once a month it's an open session. The first two sets were hideous; lots of bad singers and what not. The third set finally got going with myself and a few students from UALR. Quite good players, really. The house drummer, Dave Rogers, is apparently good friends and used to play alot with Ken Walker(did you know that his sextet is being sent to Australia or something to endorse a new Yamaha stick bass?) and sounds really good. There were also two very piano players. One west coast guy who was sure to let me know that he had played with Stan Getz and Richie Cole and had opened for Dave Brubeck and was generally just playing all over the solar system.... Then there was this older guy who was a little less inventive, but a very solid player. I'm going to play some duo sessions with each one. Psyched. After the session, Dave offered me the feature artist gig next monday night playing guitar trio. Psyched.

Ya Ya 3

2004-07-27T02:39:00.000-07:00

I've finally figured out what I like so much about Joshua Redman's playing on this album: Brian Blade's comping. I had never noticed before, this album may be one of Brian Blade's best. Blade and Yahel (mostly Blade) paste almost all of the ends of Josh's lines and although many of his lines end on one, the effect is still great. Nothing against Josh...he plays great on the entire album (his best in my opinion), but I honestly believe he wouldn't sound as inspired if he was not playing with such a beautiful musician as Brian Blade. Sam Yahel still disapoints me. I wish there was a musician out there with a balance of Sam Yahel and Joey Defrancesco. I've seen a few trio albums with Jerry Bergonzi, Adam Nussbaum, and a B-3 player named Dan Wall. I'd like to hear him. _______________________________

BTW - I'm going to go ahead and register with myself BMI. It seems like it will be easier in the long run to have each person create their own name. It looks pretty easy. If I run into any problems I'll post them here so you don't have to deal with them.

The Big Mystery

2004-07-25T21:00:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking about Bob's last email...

" First night is questionable because of tuning. I really don't want to have to use auto tune. If we
have enough from day two we'll be good."

Considering how impossible it really is to have a whole day of bad tuning, I've decided that Bob must have lost the 1st day. The computer probably crashed and day 1 is gone forever. Maybe not, but I would rather think that than believe that he will be throwing out a whole day of music without our giving us a chance to listen to it. ~

Stirling Newberry

2004-07-25T17:37:00.000-07:00

The guy over at Symphony-X has some interesting things to say about the development and direction of harmony and how it is percieved.

Symphony-X

Heartcore

2004-07-24T16:28:00.000-07:00

The last couple days I've spent some time with Kurt Rosenwinkel's Heartcore. I have now realized that I have no choice but to make this statement: Kurt's solo on 'Blue Line' is the single most important recorded guitar solo of the last five years. Not only is it a masterpiece of melodic and harmonic control, but it serves as a window into the future of jazz guitar. That is how many young guitarists will play, guaranteed. I also found out that Kurt plays all the bass and drums on the record. Very impressive pocket playing, and only a couple of times(the last track, for example) it becomes clear that the job should have been given to professionals and not been over dubbed. Kurt also makes some interesting comparisons between the harmony that occurs in hip hop to that of schoenberg. This is an interesting quote from the vervemusicgroup.com page:

It is in this sense that Heartcore draws from hip-hop, where powerful beats are so often deliberately countered by bubbling, mysterious loops and tracks. In fact, says Rosenwinkel, it is in hip-hop that he finds some of the most sophisticated harmonies around. “A lot of the harmonic moments in hip-hop remind me of what I hear in, say, Schoenberg’s music,” he says. “He’ll create a chord that is very much dependent on the dynamics of the performance - the strings are mezzo piano, the oboe is mezzo forte, and the piccolos are piano piano. Together they produce a harmony that might not work in jazz theory, but works perfectly in reality. You hear the same things in a hip-hop mix. It’s all in the ear – something works because it sounds like it works,” he continues. “Those kind of lessons are very important for the jazz musician. It’s a great antidote for the pedagogical, theoretical school of jazz.”

Amen.

Radiohead

2004-07-23T14:43:00.000-07:00

I listened to Radiohead's OK Computer last night. Overall it's a really powerful and intelligent cd. The composition is very impressive but it tends to lean towards functional minor kind of harmonies and melody. The singer is more than i expected. Kind of where female jazz vocals shoud be by now if she had stopped singing about what they can't take away from her.... The guitarist is a master of textures and soundscapes; I wonder what it would be like if he put out a solo cd and really played alot. I can't wait to hear more of this band's work now that i'm in a more receptive place for it.

coltrane blindfolded

2004-07-22T22:51:00.000-07:00

on downbeat.com they've got a coltrane blindfold test from '59. kinda cool.

Papa Bill

2004-07-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

As I often do when I need to clean a lot of shit out of my ears, I listened to Kind of Blue last night. In listening to Blue in Green, I decided that Bill Evans is basically the father of contemporary harmony. It's largely the concept of taking the individual chords and milking them for all they're worth extension- and upper strucure-wise(same thing, really). Furthermore, I feel like Evans presented the future musicians with two great lessons. 1) How to exploit all the colorful harmonic possibilities of a chord. 2) How to do so in an extremely melodic way, showing that the true reason for harmony is to elevate the meaning of melody. Every note he plays on Blue in Green is just the melody those chords are singing at the time. I think that it is the second lesson which finds itself to often lost on the more recent generations, eclipsed by lesson number one. This is part of what is so drab about Branford's playing; he gets so excited about the chords he's blowing over that he forgets to really play anything exciting.
Cannonball makes me cry.

RH Factor

2004-07-22T05:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, RH factor is a pretty good album. I'm really not thrilled with every thing Hargrove plays, but the band is pretty killin'. Track 8 is exceptionally hip. Hargrove plays some suprisingly Randy Breckeresqe material on a few of the tracks, but it doesn't really do a whole lot for me. Sadly, very little of his playing ever does. Check it out. The hip hop stuff is nice and the R&B tunes are really pretty good. I just wish ol' RH would have risen to the occation.

It was a Long Long's Journey

2004-07-22T04:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back. Back to the blogging and back from Longs Peak. I left Caleb's house last night at 3am, drove home, ate a few microwaveable burritos, and headed straight for Long's Peak. I reached the trailhead at 5:30 and started to hike. It was a very cold any windy morning and I was could already feel the lack of sleep kicking in. The first mile hurt, but the second and third carried me towards exhaustion. My legs were still torn up from the run to Ft. Collins. By the time I had completed my 3rd mile I wasn't sure if I would be able to get back to my car let alone the Boulder Field or the Summit. All I could do was keep moving, so, in almost zombie like fashion, I made my way forward. My mind was unusually clear. This level of exhaustion had taken me to a place somewhat similar to meditation. This "meditation," though, was different than any other I had experienced previously. I had reached high levels of awareness through activity before, but that was through excellence in the activity. A good race or a hard practice. This place had been reached through tiredness and pain. Steadily, I moved forward. About 3 hours later (I had made it in 2 last year) I reached the Boulder Field. Almost instinctively, I found a small camping area and fell sleep on my backpack. I was cold and there was a lot of wind, but I slept very deeply. Nearly 2 hours later I awoke. The pain and exhaustion had left, but the my mind was still clear. I was still "meditating." Looking towards the keyhole I decided to continue my ascent since 2 hours of sleep seemed like enough =). The sun came out and the wind stopped as I easily crossed the Boulder Field and and stepped through the keyhole. Until this point I had felt comfortable. The skys were blue and the day was beautiful.but as I reached the backside of the mountain, everything changed. Clouds could be seen coming toward the mountain, the wind had started again, and the sun could no longer be seen. It was as though a line had been drawn and on either side stood the opposing faces of nature. One was nurturing and the other deadly. Masculine and Feminine. The experience was shocking. I moved along the back side and experienced the power of nature. The clouds which were once in the distance were now too close for comfort, moving at incredible speeds. The wind which once blew gently now struck viscously. Perhaps the most surprising trait, though, was the ice. This ice was not only remarkably cold but exceptionally slippery. The wind had polished it into almost frightening pockets of danger. I kept pushing forward until the clouds stood almost directly above me. Storms almost religiously blow in at 11 and since I had wasted my best climbing window sleeping I was forced to turn back. As I made my decent the exhaustion began to show up again. Two hours of sleep undoubtably wasn't enough. Eventually I reached my car and made the trip home. I ate and almost immediatley fell asleep. I'm happy to be back.

--------Side note ---------
Between the run to Ft. Collins and the trip up Long's peak, I've traveled close to 25 hard miles in the last 3 days. What the hell is wrong with me?!

Branford

2004-07-21T13:19:00.000-07:00

A couple nights ago i put in Branford Marsalis' Requiem. It had been a while since i listened to any Branford and i remembered Requiem being a refeshingly different recording. The first couple tunes are pretty good. Some really interesting, gypsy sounding soprano playing one of them. The third tune I remember seeing performed on a tv program with his quartet(Joey Calderazzo in place of Kenny Kirkland) and he talked about how the piece was influenced by Keith Jarrett's approach to playing freely with tempo, emulating in some ways the fluidity of classical. I thought this was vaguely interesting at the time, but now as I return to it I find it is not so much 'influenced' as completely ripped off(go listen to Jarrett's tune, Vapallia). Not only is it compositionally and concepeptually near identical, they try to add in gospel kind of bluesy licks to immitate Keith's kind of '70s playing. It's an embarassment, especially considering Kirklands already well developed sense of earthy, Ionian-based playing that he sneaks into many recordings. It saddens me to see him overreach in such a hopeless way when he had all he needed to make the music his own. The next tune was an obnoxiously loud funk groove(no, Tain, no!) with branford tastlessly blowing his nuts off. I took off the cd.
So last night I figured I'd give ol' Branford a second chance and put on Crazy People Music. This is some of Branford's most inspired playing, as far as i'm concerned. This is probably the band high point of their career with Kenny. Still, I couldn't get through it without a certain level of disapointment. Branford's playing get's monotonous to me fairly quickly. The one ballad they play only takes off when Branford takes his horn out of his mouth and Kirkland delivers a little lesson in musicality. The last tune is a nice straight swinger that stays on a minor the whole time with a nice happy melody. You can practically hear a big voice talking over the little groove, 'You've been a really terriffic audience. We had so much fun tonight and I hope...' Then the unthinkable occurs. That's right, another shoot-me-in-face-it's-so-goddam-tastless funk groove from Tain with branford actually playing cheesy licks. I took off the cd.

Self-Realization and the Art of Listening

2004-07-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

One of the great reasons for art's existence is to act as a spiritual mirror for the people of a society. In every piece of True Art we see a piece, shade, reflection of ourselves. This is how we tell if an artist is for real or not; and if the artist is not in deep communication with him/herself, this deep, elusive, human truth does not show up in their work. When this 'honesty essence' isn't present, the consumer isn't moved past purely aesthetic(or perhaps nostalgic) appreciation. So why so do many pathetic, drooling artistic failures recieve such widespread recongnition when some of the trully genius contributers are virtually unknown and often scoffed at? Art exists on a higher plane; not only the artist has to find this level of expressive purity, but the consumer also must rise to the level of the art personally.
      High Art is, without fail, created from a space of meditation. In every note or brush stroke the artist is asking, 'Who am I?' and clearing the channel of the Muse enough to recieve the answer. This question and answer saturates every facet of their work. Given this, it is not reasonable to think that the consumer could fully assimilate the work on the normal, scattered conciousness that most people live their lives in. Approaching High Art from this level of awareness is like standing in front of a mirror with your eyes closed. You reach your hand out, away from yourself, and feel a smooth hard surface that could be a mirror, but which could also be a window.
    Standing in front of my first original Pollock, I came upon something I soon realized was very important. I thought, 'If that's Jackson Pollock, then Who Am I?' And so I began to understand why High Art is High and the level of interaction needed to understand any of it.
    In meditation, one might ask, 'Who Am I?' and then lunge upward through the forehead in seek of the answer; this happens again and again until they might lunge once more and this time not come down. Filled with light and disorientation, again the question, 'Who Am I?' but this time the same voice answers, 'Who is this 'I' you speak of?' At this point the person is merely a place for light, a womb for the Almighty seed, purely receiving. This is how music must be listened to. This is how we begin to hear what the great musicians are talking about and why they are great. The entire body must be transformed into merely a place for sound.

paint

2004-07-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

The brand new sounds I remember hearing are painted Orange on my wall

Who carries Masada?

2004-07-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

Listening Masada's Live at Tonic, i began to agree that Dave Douglas does constistently out shine John Zorn. That's his role. But nevertheless Zorn is definately indespensable. Even without being the musically outstanding player, I feel like the band still somehow revolves around him. It's mostly an attitude thing, i think. Joey Baron, as always, is rediculous. Anyway, they're a trully killin' band that i really need to see live.

*

Strange Phenomena: I'm in Arkansas with my parents for a while, and today i realized an interesting fact indeed. When someone speaks to you with a heavy southern accent, it seems rude and snobby not to reply in kind. ya'll have a good'un naw.

Scofield's Lethargy

2004-07-17T09:13:00.000-07:00

I sometimes feel like John Scofield is just plain tired. His recent straight ahead playing has seemed very sedentary a large part of the time. A break in the chain of this musical apathy is, surprisingly enough, Uberjam. His playing on this record has the edge and excitement that is very lacking in other recent recordings like OH! and Works For Me(a pretty inspired title right there). The most frustrating thing about this is that he is without a doubt one, if not the, best jazz guitarist alive. Metheny is no longer even considered competition in this field(although he has put out some promising acoustic work recently). Frisell has reached a greater level of personal artistry, but he is so far out of the tradition of what makes a good jazz player it's hard to say he's a more accomplished guitarist. Kurt Rosenwinkel is fantastic and i think Sco's closest match, but he is so schizophrenic it's hard to say what the hell he's doing right now without seeing him play live recently. Adam Rogers is a great jazz guitarist but without the depth of Scofield. I think he rises to challenges(Joe Henderson's So Near, So Far and A Go Go with MMW) and thrives on challenges and when he's not challenged it comes out clearly in his playing.

Freedom-ish Suite

2004-07-16T21:28:00.000-07:00

There are some very basic things i don't understand about the Freedom Suite by Sonny Rollins. Why did he write such an awful melody for the first movement? Why do he and Oscar Pettiford feel like the need to end every damn line on the tonic? Why does Pettiford try so hard not to swing at all on the second movement? Overall, I would say the first movement sits at about the same failure level as the fusion movement in general. They're trying to do something they aren't prepared to do. They're trying to play really hip without trully adopting any of the 'really hip' vocabulary. Every once in a while Max Roach shows some attitude, but then he'll go back and do the 'swing on the hi-hat' thing that was popularized around 1870 or so and ruin the whole deal. There are, course, some high points throughout. Sonny plays some interesting and typically melodic ideas. Somehow, though, his playing loses impact when you take away one of his biggest weapons: harmony. Not that it's gone completely, just played very differently. I want to hear this Sonny and Don Cherry i hear tell of.
Anyway, that's where i am now with it. Maybe someday i'll find the answers to my questions(like "No shit the melody sucks, you moron, thats the point." I guess I just don't get the point).

Masculine, Feminine

2004-07-16T17:15:00.000-07:00

I had my Watsu with Art's wife (Aubrey yesterday. Hard to describe...maybe like meditating with out gravity. Intense shit. During that meditation, images of masuline and feminine began to float through me. Memories of myself and others. I felt truely balanced for the first time. I had an intense moment of clarity in which I saw the 'masculine in feminine' and the 'feminine in masculine.' As we have discussed previously, Masculine is to give and Feminine is to recieve (in the most basic sense). Yin and Yang. I now feel another dimention to that. Masculine is not only to give, but also to take. Feminine is not only to recieve but also to nurture and care for. Aubrey gave me a yo-yo yesterday. I have to go eat. I'll finish this post later.

the past few days of listening

2004-07-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

Last night I listened to the John Hollenbeck cd, I,Claudia for the first time all the way through. i would say it is without question one of the most exciting releases of the year and it definately surpasses the first cd compositionally(although i would like to hear a little more Chris Speed blowing on this one). texturally, i believe the band has officially arrived. Some of it is studio work, but some of the most impressive examples aren't(the transition section on the first tune with just clarinet and accordian dancing around the major 2nd). Finally, what really killed me was the very end of the last song, moving around the Maj 7 chord in the most ambient way i could imagine, and for minutes on end. In a high meditation and pity for the ancients and angels, i opened the top of my skull as much as possible so those up in Celestia could hear what i was so blessed with. i think it worked, but i haven't heard back.

Secondly, I spent some time with Dave Douglas' Witness. It really is an interesting record, but sadly, i wasn't quite up the task that night. The sixth track is one of the most ambitious improvisation/through-composed pieces of heard, and Chris Speed plays some extremely intelligent and sensitive clarinet. I dig the avant approach to the record but, like i said, i wasn't in the right place.

A good showcase for Peter Bernstein's playing is on his(i think mid 90's) cd, Heart's Content. The listener is also treated to some great Brad Mehldau outside of his usual BradMold.

On The Turn

2004-07-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

The "turn," the moving meditaion done by Mevlevi dervishes, originated with Rumi. The story goes that he was walking in the goldsmithing section of Konya when he heard a beautiful music in their hammering. He began turning in harmony with it, an ecstatic dance of surrender and yet with great centered discipline. He arrived at a place where ego dissolves and a resonance with universal soul comes in.

-Excerpt from 'The Essential Rumi'

You have said what you are.
I am what i am.
Your actions in my head,
my head here in my hands
with something circling inside.
I have no name
for what circles
so perfectly.
-Rumi

No better love than love with no object,
no more satisfying work than work with no purpose.

If you could give up tricks and cleverness,
that would be the cleverest trick!

-Rumi

Mother Russia, John Coltrane

2004-07-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

my poor, quavering heart has recently been reassured of the sanctity of struggle, human struggle, by Nikos Kazantzakis. As he diverged from his path up the grassy hill to meet Buddha and arrived in the skin-cracking cold of the breath of Mother Russia and the eye of Father Lenin, i discovered my 1961 complete recordings of John Coltrane. i had only very recently, and only once, risen to these recordings. they were still a mystery to me. as i listened, i realized that what he is talking about is struggle. to some thin ears(like mine, in the past) hear this struggle as the torturings of a novice, a confused student, struggling with music. but at this point Coltrane isn't even talking about music. he speaks of struggle as if he were speaking about balance, he speaks about injustice as if he were speaking about equality. Coltrane is not walking on unbendable grass to find Buddha, he is crushing the gravel of the path under his feet as he slowly ascends with the cross on his shoulders, against his neck.
We are men, and we are women, and so we are inherently unbalanced. everywhere there is too much yin, too much yang. the only hope of the artist is to balance these opposing forces as much as possible. no art is possible with the one and the other. the feminine energy is the driving creative force within us, the womb for expression, and the channel for divine direction. it, perhaps, embodies the Question. the masculine is the discipline of practice, control(quality control), and the sure, unhesitating(don't ask directions, don't go back) footing that is needed for any improvisation. this equilibrium is where Miles playing a ballad and Coltrane playing Chasin' The Trane converge. in Coltrane's playing you can hear the struggle to make these ends meet, and at the apex of the struggle, of effort, we hear effortlessness. He is riding in a flaming chariot across the sky, pulled by two huge mares and in all the twists and turns and ascents the horses make, he is right behind them, slack in the rope, challenging them for more. and so balance occurs; every humble, inquisitory idea is put forth with the force of a gale, uniting the question and the answer into One. this music cannot be listened to by the ears, only the chest and forehead; that is where it comes from.

Qualities of a Musician

2004-07-15T05:20:00.000-07:00

On the drive back from boulder today I started wondering what we listen to when we hear a soloist. What makes Mark Turner different from Lee Konitz different from Thelonius Monk different from John Coltrane. I started listing musicians and tried to put each into group with similar musicians. I decided on four basic categories of musical mastery (there are undoubtedly more, but for the sake of argument I've chosen four). All great musicians have hold on at least one. Many have control over a few. Here are the categories and musician who fits mostly in that category:

Melodic - Lee Konitz
Harmonic - Mark Turner
Rhythmic - Thelonious Monk
Spiritual - Late Coltrane

Of course, we tend to listen to musicians who have at least one category "mastered."

Why, then, don't we listen to some one like Mikey Brecker? He is a very powerful melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic player. Tears shit up, you might say. He has a deficiency in the spiritual sense.
If a player is just average in one category but genius in another we are able to overlook their obvious short comings in favor of their brilliance. BUT, a player who has a deficiency in any category (below average) we are unable to overlook their fatal flaw.

Is any category more important than the rest? No! A deficiency in any category is unacceptible. Ned Gould was a very interesting Harmonic and Rythmic player, but melodically he played a whole lot of bullshit. There are examples of artists who have fallen in each category. They are also each prime examples of musicians we do not listen to.

brand new thoughts

2004-07-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

well, it's up and going now. that's exciting. i'm excited.
the brand new news of today is i finally recieved Garrison Fewell's new cd Red Door Number 11. Pretty happenin'. he's definately playing an old Gibson-y archtop, but it sounds good. strangely enough, i hear similiar qualities in some of Kurt Rosenwinkel's early tone. his harmonic concept ranges from pretty bop influenced to inposing some pretty interesting 7th chord arpeggios over different changes. something i need to spend more time with. as most things seem to be with Garrison, it was an Italian Job. Attilio Zanchi on bass. very solid tone. everything about him is pretty swingin. Gianni Cazzola on drums. slightly older guy. apparently played with Lady Day back in the 'Day'. The pianist, George Cables, has a raw kind of touch and so blends well with garrison. sometimes something lacking.... A very straight ahead sounding record but with a decent amount of forward thinking in some subtle sort of ways.

Just finished Report To Greco by Nikos Kazantzakis. pure genius. you should read it sometime. started reading a little Rumi. it's nice.