Gary Burton's Advises To Me

OK, so how did I do in Gary Burton's BMP-112 Jazz Improvisation Class?

This is the follow-up article of my original post.

Well, the course is over now so let's review the types of things that were pointed out to me:

• Need to build up more Jazz vocabulary (this was the whole point of the class.) Key ones are common chord scales, guide tones among others. Isn't saying "it's a tri-tone sub" good enough?
• My fingers getting in the way of playing the piano. Verdict: He has handed a sentence to me as following:  Your hands will chained to Hanon in all keys and Czerny etudes in the classical dungeon of Château de Chillon with kindergarten violin students for life until you can do them in 168 bpm no wrong notes or shall not emerge or touch the Grand on upstairs visitor center area. Ugh! One of my classmate -- she will likely say: "Take him away immediately! And you will enjoy it!"
• Too much emphasis on playing on both left and right hand together. Gary, I am very well coordinated between two hands. What can I say?
• Not sticking to the theme (isn't 2 measures really enough, Gary?) and start to tell more story about the song. Gary's approach is to demonstrate unique compositional features of well composed songs. This, of course, will require our ability to recognize what are the key features in compositions in the first place.
• You don't know how to swing (so to speak): Well, Gary that's a complement to me, you just paired me with Dave Brubeck.
• Play like a butterfly. Well Gary, my wings are still damp, my fingers won't turn on a dime in just 12 weeks. OK?
• Using too many bag of tricks (unlearn them and learn new ones). Actually I even did not know I had a bag.

Final Grade: Given there were a couple of other formidable players in the class, given my hobbyist Jazz musician status, I actually did not too badly. Certainly a lot better than I thought I would.

Jazz Transcribing Tip, Slowing Down The Playback

 Note: There is a Follow Up Article to this. Be sure to read both!

Well, I am now done with Gary Burton's Jazz improvisational class and I will be moving on to studying Piano with a prominent Jazz recording artist in LA.

One of the first assignments I have gotten is to transcribe (to mean duplicate, not necessarily write out) solos.

If you are skilled at this, you can hear the quality of voicings and you'd be able to tell what the voicing are.  Occasionally you also run into people with perfect pitch and they can do it while in sleep.

While I got a hang on Jazz harmonies, it will not be an instant recall at this time, so it will be a bit of uphill battle for a while as I get up to speed with it.

As a musician in the digital age, I always try to use tools to make my jobs easier. That's tools are for!

So to transcribe a song, it is better for me to slow down the song. In the older time with tape only this would not have been possible, since if you slow down the tape, then it will also alter the pitch. But today, you can do the digital re-sampling and be able to play the songs slowly and at the same time with the original pitch.

If you have a digital audio workstation (DAW) this is a familiar territory. But for the purpose of just playing something slow, a dedicated tool is a much faster option. Also for many soloists, they do not have a full DAW setup.

So I did some search and I just came across the tool called Amazing Slow Downer, which sells for about $60.00 online. With it I can slow down songs as much as 20% of the original.

While you are processing the signal heavily it is not exactly like the effect of slowing down a MIDI track, but the processing quality is surprisingly and you can change speeds interactively, real-time, with just a slider; much more musician friendly!

On this tool, you just open an CD track or audio file and play with the slider. You are in business in a matter of a few minutes.

With looping presets, so you can  recall in-out points and loop around the parts that you want to practice or analyze. You can set up 10 or so pre-set in-out points.

Another nice touch is a MIDI event control. It learns your MIDI control signal, and you can program it to start to play or play a loop. That's quite nice since you can focus on your work from your keyboard. I mapped start and stop on the joystick so I do not have to reach the computer keyboard to start and stop it.

It's available on Mac and Windows and it can play CDs as well as common music file format like MP3 and AIFF.

Sewing for Musicians - Fixing a Torn Ear Pad on Sony MDR-7506 Headphones

I have a pair of Sony MDR-7506 headphones, which is really great. It fits well, the sound isolation is very adequate, and it is the old tried and tested production engineers choice. It's well worth $100. I had it a little over 3 years. There are other Sony headsets like Sony Studio Monitor Series Black Headphones - MDR-V6 (Google Affiliate Ad)

This weekend, I noticed that one of the ear pads was torn inside. One of the inside seam was split exposing the sponge inside and getting worse.

You are supposed to be able to buy the replacement. At one vendor I checked, they are out of stock. It runs about $7.00 each.

But because of this design, fixing it is also quite easy.

Assuming further delay, I looked into it a bit how it is built and in my case I was able to patch it up quite good by just sewing around the tear.

You may want to do that too. It should take only about 10 min to do this type of a fix. If you do not sew (you should have some basic skill on this though) I am sure someone close to you can.

Quick Tips:

Take the pad off the headset, turn it inside out to expose the torn seam. And stitch around like in a spiral fashion.

There, it is now complete and ready. If you use black thread, it would be un-noticeable.

 

Why The Style Does Matter for More Japanese Jazz Musicians

First of all, please forgive me if you feel like I am painting this picture with too broad of a brush. I am the first to admit it, and writing this to demonstrate some points.

Right now, I am back home in Japan for a week while I am also studying Jazz improvisation and a lot of this in my thoughts at this moment, and came to a bit of enlightenment why "Defining My Own Style" is so important. So I decided to jot down some of the thoughts that came to me just now.

Quite often we get all excited while I am back in the Bay Area when some "name" Japanese gig show up in the area's Jazz venues.  We get all excited but then in the end we left the concerts thinking, "We are not stopping by to buy the CD."
 
It so happened this week, I had to attend to a lot of ceremonial aspects surrounding a recent loss of both my parents, and thinking about growing up, we have been and still are a product of a lot of cultural pressure that shape how we are today.

From the early on we really all have been taught to be good service to the community and also the stress of living and working harmoniously have been put into our head. This does not mean we as individuals have harmonious life inside of ourselves, actually quite an opposite, but that's a whole different story.

The foremost importance of though is to getting taught good skills to service the society.

All these manifiest in high quality cooking, products, and even execution of services.

In looking at many American musicians life, they are taught and encouraged to be more competitive by providing more individually unique style from very early on in their life. Actually in many situations, they are not taught so but that's the only one choice to survive; lots of the life decisions are left to their own.

Back to Japanese musicians, when we go listen to them, they can make them sounds really like big name musicians. They have all the licks, inflections and fast fingers. Very high quality playing, but lack the uniqueness that make them "them."

The difficulty to them is that is very very difficult to undo and get out.

Suppose that if you pick up a semi-acoustic Jazz guitar and if do not sound like "Wes" then you'd be ridiculed by your Japanese Jazz teacher, colleagues and so forth. There is a proposition of huge risk not doing so, and you'd be even taught, if you do not attain that level, you are not even permitted to do your own. You may also not even get a gig unless the bill says to the effect of  "you sounds like Wes." Everyone expect you to be one unique way as they expect you to be.

This kind of style permiates from going after the mastery in Buddhism or Judo or even cooking too. They encourage you to have years and years of training to get the enlightenment. It's very heavily built into our culture.

It is certainly necessary to the training, but I think that these kinds of cultural pressure seem to distract us from getting free, take some risks, and be unique, not "just as good as" someone else.

We got to be noticeably better and different than the competition through enlightenment and also through what uniquely define your style as yours. One positive aspect of this is that you can use both, the first will come natural to us.

If you are starting out in music, please give this bit of thought. Style does matter.

Mastered for iTunes

Update: 12/11/12: Added a link to Bobby Owinski's Video Instructions (see the bottom of this article.)

The AES meetings gives out very interesting information and this time was no exception.

Now the online sales of music has surpassed CD, mastering for online distribution has become more important. I did not completely realize this until yesterday.

Before Yesterday

I though that I can create good sounding CD tracks, give it to CD Baby and I would be all set. At least I know that data is lossy compressed by them or iTunes. That's their business.

After Yesterday

CD is now becoming obsoleted in many respects. First the sampling rate of 44.1 KHz is no longer the norm. 96 KHz or even 192 KHz are now standard. Also the sample size of 16-bit/channel is no longer the norm on the mastering side of the equation, it is now 24-bit or 32-bit float format using the AAC encoder that can go into the masters.

Data to the end-users will continue to be lossy compressed but as more bandwidth become available and more storage space is available at lower cost, higher resolution materials will become more available. It also appears from as much as I can gather so far, that the end result will still be 44 KHz down-sampled data is what will be supplied to the consumer today as existing mobile devices and such need to be supported but that's about to change in the next few years.

In fact they talked about Neil Young's new venture PONO which promised to distribute contents at higher resolution than Apple does today. We will have to see when that comes out.

With these types of changes, the big labels are asking for masters to be provided in more modern forms (and not just a CD), so that your content can be certifiable by the Apple standard, especially most important is clipping.

The good news for us, independents, is the tools are open to us as well, and also CD Baby will rep your masters made in this new way. To this effect Apple is also providing information and tools.

As usual there are usual caveats associated with this.  From what I understood, if you want to go this route, then your 24-bit master cannot be released on other services outside of iTunes. So you'd need to re-master the output in the standard CD rate... may be to sell at other sources. Another one is that if you make an EP and even a single track out of that does not meet the Apple standard then any future re-assemblies will not qualify for "Mastered for iTunes."

There is quite a bit more to be learned from this on my part, but you can get started from the links below and there are tons of info and discussions by simply Googling for "Mastered for iTunes."

• Apple's Mastered for iTunes Page
• Digital Domain's Info on This (who sponsored the talk at AES) 
• Bobby Owsinski Video Class of Mastered for iTunes on Lynda.COM (Free!)

Interim Review of Gary Burton Jazz Improvisation Online Course at Berklee

I have been continuing my Jazz performance studies this semester with Gary Burton's Jazz improvisation class. This is an online 12-week course.

Before dive in to this article, I need to tell you my specific situation. Playing Jazz is not my career, but I have been seriously perusing music in one way or another since my childhood. I am not technically great, but I can play fairly polished sounding stuff. I do not instantly sight read music nor typically write music I play. Mostly I listen to the tunes, get a lead-sheet or sometimes I write my own (just) chord chart and play with it. In short, I'd be a guy you'd run into with a full of bad habits and cliche riffs under my belt and say I am influenced by Bill Evans.... you are darn tootant!

So now you know what type of person I am perhaps the best way for me is to do this in a Q/A form, since that would be something I'd do with someone curious about taking the class.

Q: I have never really played Jazz. Will this be a right course for me?

Personally, I would recommend against it if you only know how to play rock, pop and blues. You are going to struggle if you do not have some basic understanding of Jazz harmony. Can you play Jazz standards like Green Dolphin Street, Autumn Leaves, or Desafinado from a fakebook in one week? Have you seen chords like Em7b5 or A(b9) or Gm11?

If the answer to above is "never" then I would first suggest taking a basic Jazz improvisation class. I think you can get through the class without that but I think you are not going to get much out and may end up dropping it as the pace could pickup half way the class.

Q: Do Gary Burton really teach the class?

A: Yes. He listens to your improvisation which you need to record and submit every week! You will get to talk to him on weekly video chats! The course materials are all per-recorded as QuickTime videos and web pages. You are supposed to digest them weekly. They are very clear, concise and easy to understand.

Q: For you, how challenging is it?

A: Well, you do get one week to do scoring assignment plus recording. In terms of recording, Gary Burton provides both backing MP3 tracks with his very own piano comping or with just bass and drums. Depending on how fast you are with these sort of things, but I would say most people spend about 8 hours or so a week on it. Materials are very straight forward to understand. Demonstrations of the concepts are both done in video, audio and also often with accompanying music PDF sheets, or if you have a scoring software (like Finale, Sibelius or Noteflight.com), they provide the scoring XML file that can be imported directly.

He will also throw some more newer difficult pieces like Carla Bley, Steve Swallow and Chick Corea pieces at you. Honestly though, some people, including myself, will struggle a bit. But do not worry much, because just about anyone else would.

Q: Do you need to read music well?

A: You do have to be able to read standard lead-sheet format charts with chords and melody. No need to sight read them but you do have to play them. In addition you do have to write scales or such and submit. If an assigned tune is not familiar to you, first thing you can do is to find the recording on YouTube.COM, you are likely to find old recordings uploaded by someone. Next you can check iTunes or the like and buy a track. You should and can listen to various renditions.

I recommend using some computer based scoring especially when you don't write them often like me. There is a free web based scoring software called Noteflgiht.COM This is not only free, but also scores are stored online, you can pull them anywhere you have an internet access.

Q: How difficult is the terminology used in the class?

A: With the basic understanding of music I do not see much problem from anyone exposed to music performance have issues. The instructions are very very clear and new concepts that are not familiar with people who have not really played Jazz before are well explained.

Q: Do you have to play well to be in the class?

A: I do not think so. This is not a performance class per-se so your recording do not have to be top notch. You will be evaluated on whether you have understood the materials. Gary Bruton is not going to expect that you'd play the Locrian scale in all keys on 16-th note up and down going at 160 bpm in a week and no need to. You will likely run into people from all different levels from the working professionals to those just turning from rock piano playing with basic understanding of up to 7th chords.

Also for solo instruments like Saxophone, Gary will provide you with play-alongs with his comps (rare chance to play with him on the Piano comping and he is much better than any of us!) But, say, if you are not confident about your left hands on your piano playing, you can also do that. In fact, I often recommended to my class mates first try developing the piano solos with his comping then add the left hand.

Q: How Do I Record?

A: The course provides a very basic web-based recording tool. Top people who have been doing it as a semi-pro or pro will usually record great with Pro-Tools or Logic, and some do submit using the basic tool. Some people ahead of you can demonstrate also to you how things should be done. Gary Burton will clearly indicate in his tone of comments on the responses (you will see all of the responses), so you get a good feel who is doing well.

Personally, in this day and age, you'd want to get up to speed with Garage Band or Cakewalk type tools to get some basic recording.

Q: Grading, Due Dates

A: Gary Burton understands that some people are busy so he does not strictly ask you to stick with the weekly legmen. He can cut some slacks on week or two where your submissions can be late.

Q: What would I get out of the course?

A: It will likely depend on your goals and also your current level of the understanding of Jazz, but for me, I will be given a set of professional asset to prepare myself to approach solo situations; both in terms of the correct mindset, Jazz vocabulary,  and with the technique that will be pleasing to the audience.

So... if you are in a situation like me and want a chance to improve your understanding of improvisation, this would be a wonderful experience with you to study under one of the Jazz legends of our time!


12/27/2012: Well Gary has turned in the grade so here are the final comments from Gary (read the article).

Collecting Payments with Google Checkout From Clients

As a musician or an artist, you will often need to collect money from people. One of the easiest way to collect money is use Google Checkout. Since it uses credit card and all major cards are accepted. You may want to do this in addition to PayPal.

You may have seen Google Checkout buttons on searches and some catalog merchants. But there is one more mode in Google Checkout that you can use to invoice people directly.

If you have not yet set up a Google Checkout account, it is fairly straight forward to do, just go to https://checkout.google.com/ and set up your account. Now you are a Google Checkout Merchant. The word Merchant is important to remember because

Review of Stanford Summer Jazz Workshop Jazz Piano Course

After more than 30 years of “playing it by the ears” I have decided to take the Intermediate Jazz Piano course at Stanford Jazz Workshop this summer.

For those who are thinking about doing the same next year, or thinking about taking one similar to this in your area, here are some thoughts about this.

Mr. Franc Sumares taught this class. He is a very accomplished Jazz pianist. He has been teaching Jazz at various colleges in San Francisco Bay Area for decades.

The format was just 4 sessions over 4 weeks. So things go very (very) fast. To get the most out of this, you do have to have some basic understanding of Jazz theory. For example, you would need to understand major and minor scales, and you should have been exposed some common chords such as 7^th or Major 7^th, minor 7th and diminished, augmented etc.  You do also have to be able to read the music in all keys but do not need to sight-read.

In the class he will go over various scales, related modes and how they are applied in a Jazz progression. Most notably you will learn a lot about what to do with the standard II-V-I progression, and especially how V can be altered.

All the assignments are based on some well known Jazz standards and Franc will provide you with enough guidance on how to enrich the progressions by applying scales and chord notes that would go well. All of the examples are basically in the key of C. But Jazz as such a tune in C would have chords such as Db and F#m. You will need to write your solos and take turn playing. One big plus is that he is a very accomplished pianist so he will play the progressions and you will hear what he means and how they sound to your ears.

He provides you with his book (Contemporary Jazz Piano from Voicings to Improvisation in Three Sections) with a CD. You can consider the class as mainly someone taking 4 weeks to carefully explain what's in the manual. 

Rest, as with most music training, you would try to read the book, apply the tricks, practice voicing in all keys and apply what you have learned to the songs you already know. Honestly, the live instruction was essential to fully understand what's in the book, mainly because Jazz sounds are hard to understand out-of-the-context, and need someone showing it right in front of you live and ask question right when there is one.

The highlights for me were to finally understand the Alt chords (altered scale), tritone substitution, and various chord voicing on the same chord. I now fully understand the complex chords using b9, #9, b5, 11, #11, 13, b13 etc. and how to voice them properly with 80% of my 10 short fingers (hint you can often get away with just 3 of the notes, even 2.)

If you have taken a “Jazz Theory” class and still feel like you did not understand much of what was taught, then I think this is one of the most effective 4 weeks you can spend learning about it. This is much practical course than anything I have taken or learned on books.