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Writing music can be so exhausting!
16th November
About a week ago, I learned that Frank Taylor, a guitar player and good friend whom I've worked with on different occasions in the Brighton area had died. Ten or possibly fifteen years ago I made some recordings with him (in the dining room of my house) and Frank was more than happy with the results. I then forgot about the cassette I'd made until the other day. So I have put six of the tunes on youtube. This Alice in Wonderland... From here you will find links to the others as the visual format is identical except for different colours.
30th September
All musicians find some excuse for not playing as well as they wish to. So next time you're thinking up an excuse, think of this Korean girl who plays piano with only 2 fingers on each hand.
This video is an inspiration for everyone.
19th September
Put some new videos on youtube. Look for Fingerman's channel. The titles are Savannah Sunrise, 2'n'2 is Tutu, Forest Walk, Celebration Day, The First Rains, Arusha and In the moonlight. You can click on any of these titles to see them. All but the last one were originally on a CD I made to raise funds for the draught that affected parts of Africa about 10 years ago.
This one is called Something over herd and shows some things that can be done with a cowbell.
I have turned off the comments section as it really annoys me to read some of the foul-mouthed and racist comments that some people write, often not even about the video itself.
23rd August
I've been not too well since getting back from India. Started with a fever which I put down to malaria, a swollen lump in my neck which I assumed was cancer, a headache which I knew was meningitis, and aching limbs which must be Asian flu. Actually, it's probably a cold virus I picked up on the plane - long haul flights with recycled air can harbour all kinds of germs I'm told and my body doesn't have the antibodies to ward off viruses from the tropics. Feeling better now though.
My impressions of Kolkata - very colourful, vibrant and full of life and a spirit of entrepreneurship. It was not the poverty which surprised me (although the conditions under which the slum dwellers and pavement dwellers live is appalling - see this document). No, it was the close juxtaposition between the poor and the middle-class, not in segragated areas which I would have expected. In amongst a very poor area was a hotel with rooms at £90 a night (not the one I was staying in, I hasten to say.) Apart from the poverty, there are also affluent, highly-skilled people and great technological expertise within a thriving cultural background.
On the streets: buses, lorries (trucks), cars, taxis, bicycles, bicycles hauling heavy goods, motorbikes, auto-rickshaws, bicycle rickshaws and hand-pulled rickshaws competed with pedestrians, dogs and the occasional cow. Absolute mayhem.
A scarey thing happened on the way back to the airport. About 15 minutes from the time we were due to check in (an hour before the flight left) the car ran into a road that was flooded in 2-3 foot of water. Even so, cars were overtaking us causing large waves. Of course we didn't know how much deeper it was going to get, only that we had to put out feet up as the leg room was flooded. Then the car stalled and stopped. Some men immediately appeared and for money pushed us out of the flooded bit of road. They (and me too) then pushed the car back and forwards to get it to start. Finally it started and with smoke pouring out of the engine we set off at high speed to the airport. In Britain there are signs saying "Try your brakes" after going through floods. Our driver did not believe in that and charged up to buses and other heavy traffic braking at the very last moment. Fortunately, the car did not skid and stopped immediately. Amazing! We made it to the airport in time, but needed a long sit down (which we had.) I guess Ganesha worked overtime that day.
Something I noticed - well, I would. Nearly all the women wore beautiful saris everywhere. Even women mending the roads wear saris. It makes the clothes people wear in England look very dreary.
Surprised to find how important to people their religion is - a part of their daily life, even the taxis all carry a small icon of the god, Ganesha below the windscreen. In England we live in a secular society, except that some people go to church on Sundays.
I didn't hear much classical Indian music which I very much like. Most of the music on the TV comes from the Bollywood films. However I did enjoy a lot of it and the dancing that went with it was superb. We kept remarking how fit all the dancers were. Strange that the women's voices seem pitched much higher than English and American voices - is this cultural or physiological? I am used to accompanying female vocalists whose top range is about B above middle C. Is this a result of feminism, I wonder, where old fashioned femininity is shunned in place of a more macho assertive style, just as Margaret Thatcher lowered her voice to give it more authority.
And the wedding? What a wonderful experience! What a spectacle! So different from what we are used to. We saw so many ancient rituals which have deep meaning to everyone and we met so many charming people.
I'd like to recommend a fantastic book on Kolkata. City of Joy written by Dominique LaPierre, published by Full Circle.
The Maharajah of Scored Changes
14th August
Got back from Kolkata (Calcutta) a few days ago. Spent 2 weeks there as we were invited to a Hindu wedding - unbelievable. A big hello to anyone from India who might be reading this. Back to work soon.
15th July
I have made up my mind on what to follow the Brighton Jazz Suite with. It will be TH'E SUSSEX JAZZ SUITE which will relate to the county of East Sussex, hence the apostrophe in the title. I've been doing a bit of research into things and have written some of the tunes, but no arrangements yet. That will have to wait until I am back from the Hindu Wedding that my wife and I have been invited to in Calcutta early next month. When things have progressed a bit more, I will start a new page in the Projects section.
Footnote (20th July) - now finished writing all the new tunes for the next suite. Itching to get started, or perhaps I'm just itching. Will start the new account of writing the tunes in the middle of August. Meanwhile, have a look at the videos from the Brighton and Watermill suites
1st July
Yesterday I had to play solo piano at a James Bond-themed cocktail party. Fortunately I found a book with 30 of the title tracks in it and I spent a lot of the past week trying to get them under the fingers. In the event, I don't know why I bothered. In the same room, just feet away, was a shooting booth with pictures of Casino Royale all over it. The guns were all electronic things and the bangs they produced were enhanced to make it sound like world war 3 had broken out. It's always the case: you practice hard for a gig and no-one hears you or bothers; you don't do much practice and you find yourself exposed in a very quiet place.
On the subject of James Bond and other such films, I much prefer the music written by film music writers. The tendency nowadays is to get a pop musician/group to write the music instead and to my mind it ends up being banal, run-of-the-mill pop music. If you need a tooth out you go to a dentist. If you want good theme music, go to the guys who know what they are doing, instead of pandering to the adolescent tastes of younger people, thinking it will increase film ticket sales.
14th June
My approach to writing big band arrangements has changed markedly since I started the 2 jazz suites (Watermill Jazz Suite and Brighton Jazz Suite). Having chosen a whole band-full of wonderful soloists I want to find ways to show them off. It is sometimes said that you need just a few good soloists with the other players being very reliable good-readers. This might be the case where there is a shortage of good soloists in the area, but not where I live.
In fact, I think that the limiting of solo space to just a handful of people is detrimental to the music as the other players never get a chance to develop their own musicality. Mind you, being given a solo to play does carry a responsibility. The soloist has got to get to grips with the chord sequence and play a solo that the chart demands. Nothing makes an arrangement go flat more than an insipid solo. If the band has been roaring away for some time, a duff solo can immediately kill it all stone dead. I've heard this in other bands where the players have been chosen because they are good readers. They need to devote as much time as they spent on learning to read towards learning how to solo. But I digress...
A lot of arrangements that are around are showcases for a band. This can be great, but it can also be pretentious - hard stuff that no-one can play well. In writing arrangements now, I have reversed the roles. Each chart is now a showcase for the soloist or soloists that are featured. My function has become one of finding a suitable framework for the soloists.
This involves a number of different aspects. It means that the solo sequence has to be chosen for its potential to generate good solos. Where there are too many chords, some of them can be weeded out or simplified. It means that backing for the soloists must help to build intensity without overpowering the solists themselves. And it means that however much an arranger prides himself on writing good ensemble passages, nothing can match a superb soloist. In other words the arranger has to keep his ego in control.
Jazz is intrinsically linked with improvisation. But some arrangers have turned big bands into a form of classical music by getting rid of the improvisational element. I believe this trend has to be reversed.
2nd June Website stats for May 2011
41,397 hits from 80 countries. 1,866 downloads of music. 4,254 downloads of tutorials.
29th May - In praise of musician's wives/partners/husbands
It takes someone very special to live with a musician. They have to put with the musician being out in the evenings, and sometimes being away from home for weeks or months on end. They have to put up with us being temperamental or depressed when things haven't gone well. They have to face the fact that a musician's greatest love is for music which surpasses everthing else. They have to provide meals at odd times and often have to feed other musicians too if they are around. They have to put up with someone practicing for hours at a time and sometimes having rehearsals at home. They have to put up with their zany sense of humour, their irresponsible behaviour at times, and their procastination in doing things around the house. And they have to balance it all with their own lives and the lives of the rest of their family. On behalf of us musicians, can I say a big thank you to you.
14th May
I have been busy putting up videos of my big band on Youtube. You can find links to them on the Watermill Jazz Suite and Brighton Jazz Suite pages. Or go to Youtube and look for videos by fingersman channel. I decided to make them public as I am not sure whether any of them will ever be recorded in a studio. These are live sessions after just a few rehearsals and the music has not been doctored up, so please excuse the blemishes.
January 6th - some New Year thoughts about arranging/composition
The influence of classical music is very strong. Jazz theory books and books on arranging and composition are full of it. The performance of pieces is also measured in terms of classical music.
But hold on. Jazz is jazz and does not have to be regarded as a form of classical music with the addition of some improvisation. Surely jazz can stand on its own two feet. For instance, true to classical music ideology, you should use very little new material in writing an arrangement. True, this does give the arrangement a sense of unity and homogeneity. But the arranger should also be permitted to improvise and see where it leads. In performance, the emphasis is always on tightness and precision. But this can be at the expense of spirit and excitement. I would rather hear a band play slightly inaccurately at times but be spirited, rather than yet another neat, precise rendition of what the arranger has written. The arranger might be the king, but is that right? Surely the players are just as important.
The essential ingredient that jazz has is improvisation. Yet in so many arrangement, it is regarded as an add-on, rather than being the main focus which is what I try to make it. Improvisation is a fantastic resource and should be embraced as such. It can be used not just for individual solos (usually limited to a few chairs in the band.) To produce an effect, classical composers can use thousands of notes. In jazz, you can get the same general effect through improvisation (communal improvisation). All it needs is the use of dynamics, instructions on what you are trying to achieve and maybe a set scale or motif to base it on. Yet how many books on arranging and composition deal with integrating improvisation, apart from writing background pads? Very few, if any.
Jazz that features a lot of improvisation as the main focus is alive and vivacious. Hear some old time jazz or sessions where there are no written parts and you also find this liveliness. Compare that to something which is controlled, controlled by the written parts. There are ways of combining the two approaches which is what I am currently trying to do.
When a classical composer writes a piece he knows precisely how it should sound and one orchestra playing it will hardly vary from another one. But when a jazz composer writes a piece, he/she has in mind from the start the sounds of the individual players, their own stylistic preferences and their strengths and weaknesses. If this is taken into account together with improvisation, it seems inappropriate that we should still be reading from the same hymn sheet as classical music. A new approach is needed in which jazz can evolve for its own sake.
November 27th
I just wanted to say how much I am enjoying my latest project, writing tunes about Brighton (see second and third projects page). It is absolutely fascinating researching various facts about a certain town, particularly the history as everywhere has its own unique history, its own store of legends and myths and its own cultural background.
Putting them into music is great fun. I always wanted to write music for films, but the only time I did this was to write music for a golf promotional film in the Bahamas when I lived there, nearly 40 years ago. I've always like mixing art forms and representing visual things (films/photos/pictures) in music appeals to me.
Having a topic helps to give you ideas. For instance, I've just finished an arrangement about the buses in Brighton. So what does that suggest? Traffic jams, horns honking, stop-starts, and trying to negotiate obstacles along the way. What this approach to writing also does is to help you communicate with the audience.
A band usually plays tunes with no connection to where the band is playing or with the audience from there. A tune about Alabama, for instance, will appeal to certain people in the US but to people elsewhere the title is meaningless (no slight intended for people who live in Alabama). But a tune that everyone in a locality can identify with can get the audience on your side. It also means you can be as graphic and outrageous in your writing and it will be accepted as it fires people's imagination. This has worked for me on 2 occasions and I feel it will continue to do so. At the last concert, the audience was hanging on to everything I said in the announcements and then listening intently to the music. Everyone - the audience and the musicians - went away happy.
So if there are any composers or arrangers reading this, give it a try. And if there are any bandleaders out there, why not commission someone to write something original. The public will take a lot more interest in your band if you do and people who don't even like jazz will suddenly find that, well, perhaps it;s not what they thought.
November 23rd - The solo pianist
In ranking of kudos (hipness), the solo pianist probably lies at the bottom. I have played solo piano in a 5-star hotel for 20 years or so, and it is the most soul-destroying job any musicians could hope for. Don't think for a moment that I play cocktail piano - i hate that style - far too many notes and meaningless runs and arpeggios. What I play is standards, some jazz tunes, some Latin tunes, folk songs and some pop songs, particularly by Bacharach, the Carpenters, and the Beatles (in retrospect they wrote some good tunes.)
I've got piles of music on the piano - much to the annoyance of the hotel manager, but can play hundreds of tunes by ear. Not so easy with pop songs though. I look around the room and if I'm not too distracted by things which a man gets distracted by, I take note of the age group and play accordingly. If it's young or youngish people I stick mainly to pop tunes and I can spend the whole 4 hours playing them if necessary. (Too bad if they want older tunes - that's unusual.) For more elderly people, I play standards. I have noticed that nowadays even people in their 60s often want just pop music. But I feel I have a duty to play some good quality standards too to educate them. If it's a mixed age clientel, I mix pops with standards.
So I play for an hour and three quarters (the first set) without stopping, carefully going from one style to another, from one style to another and from one tempo or time signature to another to try and build up an ambience and produce enough noise so they can discreetly belch or pass wind without everyone noticing. I also play requests, knowing that I will not be thanked for doing so (see footnote).
The reaction of people to seeing a real pianist is strange. Sometimes they seem embarrased to see a live musician: sometimes they pretend not to see me at all and stare through me or avert their gazes; sometimes they complain that I'm too loud or not loud enough. (Another former pianist in the hotel was sacked on the spot after 14 years playing there because someone said he was playing too loud.) Sometimes, but very rarely, they may say good evening to me, and sometimes on extreme occasions, they may actually comment on my playing. But the waiters and waitresses, and all other staff are thanked no end for doing what they do. Good for them, they shoud be thanked. But am I not too contributing to the occasion?
I'm glad to have this job which provides a steady income for me. But like other solo pianists I can get pretty fed up with it at times. The general public are a funny lot. It's convinced me of one thing: The British do not like live music or at least they are embarrassed by it.
Footnote to the point about requests. I was once asked to play La Mer so I immediately launched into the Charles Trénet song. Up came the man after I had played it. "I mean the Debussy piece - La Mer", he said. For those of you who don't know, La Mer is also the name of a 23-minute orchestral impressionistic piece by Debussy. Apparantly, the composer stayed at the hotel when he was writing this together with his mistress, while his wife was giving birth in France. I wonder if mis-spelt the title and meant La Mére! Needless to say, I had to apologise for not being able to play it!!
November 9th - The X-Factor-isation of Britain
Millions of people in this country are addicts of the X-Factor. This is a talent show (mostly singers) who are judged by a panel in a competition to find a winner.
I would like to say a few things about it. I have myself accompanied acts in talent shows and am cynical about them. The winners of each heat are not usually the most talented, but the ones which appeal most to the judges. Most performers are... how can I say it politely...crap! The acts are so full of their own egos that they blame the band for not getting anywhere, and those that do, don't acknowledge the help given by the band. I stopped doing the talent show when they let the performers use pre-recorded backing tapes which I don't think should be allowed.
My points of contention are that ranking musicians or singers in terms of how good/bad they supposedly are is against my philosophy. Everyone has something unique and comparing people to other people is not right. Can we say that Miles Davis is a better musician than Louis Armstrong, or Ella Fitzgerald is better than Billie Holliday? Or that Bach is better than Beethoven? Of course not.
That brings me to the issue of having judges. What an impertinence this is! How can they set themselves up to judge how good someone else is? What qualifications have they got to do so? They are all talentless individuals who make money through managing and manipulating the music business, which is the worst example of raw capitalism anyway.
Then there is the issue of instant fame. As we musicians know, you have to practice hard for many years, and get a lot of experience to play well. Yet these contestants seem to think that they don't have to do this - no hard work is required at all. And yet some of them are rewarded by recording contracts and have money thrown at them.
My other grouse is that I understand that most of the songs are covers of existing recordings, with the singers copying the original singers. What a waste of time! Meanwhile genuine talent is ignored. So much for Britain being a musical nation - pull the other leg.
May 6th Lots of different Freebies now in the small band section.
April 5th - Web Statistics
Some statistics for March 2010.
Total number of hits: 29.974, representing 69 countries. 1723 downloads of music. 2717 tutorial files downloaded.
April 3rd - Spring
Up the lane, the daffodils are fully out now and there are some clumps of primroses. The birds are busy flitting over the hedges and singing their hearts out and there are buds and new leaves on all the plants. It's still quite cold, but you can feel that Spring is in the air.
There is a common belief that jazz is an urban thing. It's hard to think of Charlie Parker pruning his roses or John Coltrane collecting eggs from his free-range hens. But many jazz men do live in the countryside or at least not in the heart of the city. The dynamic stimulus provided by city life is thought by many people to be necessary for innovation in jazz. Personally, I think this is a load of crap. Jazz can reflect life in any environment. It can thrive in the city or the countryside.
Similarly, although a lot of great jazz players are American, there are also some great jazz players in other countries too. And yet so many people here in Britain ignore British players simply because they are British. This also happens in other countries I am told.
One other thing. Although many great jazz players have been black Americans, white/hispanic and other races have also been very influential. Today, jazz is played all over the world and that is what is great about it. Men and women and people of all ages can play jazz so don't let anything put you off. Support local players, incorporate elements of your own culture within your music and just go for it.
September 17th
I have been commissioned to write a big band suite for the Watermill Jazz Club in Dorking, which I'm very excited about. I've written all the tunes and am now copying out the 3rd of the arrangements - that's the tedious bit, doing it on computer.
At long last, it is nearly time for our holiday. We always go late in the year when the weather is warm but not overbearing as we like to do a lot of walking. This year we are off to Prancj near Kotor in Montenegro - a beautiful area, so I believe. Hope to hear some local music. Anyone know where I can find it, or anywhere else that might be interesting?
August 23rd - Influences
As a young boy, I thought that Beethoven was the greatest composer of all time and didn't listen to much else. Gradually, I began to accept other classical composers of the Romantic period - Mendelssohn, Grieg, Tchaikovsky. To this day, I still have a soft spot for these composers, particularly Beethoven, whereas I just can't identify with Mozart, Hadyn or Bach. Beethoven still appeals to me because he was one of the great ground-breakers, never satisfied in sitting on his laurels and just like Miles, he transformed the music. He also took risks musically and had no luck with women. Thank goodness, perhaps, as marital llfe might have deprived us of a lot of his music.
In my teenage years I discovered Ravel and Debussy, amongst others, which maybe paved the way for my acceptance of modern harmonies found in jazz. About this time, I heard some jazz (Glenn Miller and some traditional jazz bands (Kenny Ball and the like) and then Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson. This started my passion for jazz.
At about this time (the 1960s) the Beatles and other rock bands were becoming popular. But I hated it all, and stuck to jazz and classical music. In hindsight, I can now see that pop tunes in those days were really good. Not the way they were performed, but the actual melodies and harmonies...compared to the stuff that is mass-produced these days. But in 50 years time, I might change my mind!
The next landmark was hearing Bill Evans, Miles Davis and Gil Evans. These influences will stick with me for ever. On growing older, I have discovered Stravinsky, Rachmaninov, Bartok, Berlio, Ligeti, Walton, Charles Ives (an underrated composer if there ever was one). I've also grown very fond of folk music - African, Asian, East European and of course, Latin American music. Other kinds of music also appeal to me to a lesser extent - some rock music, country and western, film music, and so on.
I say all this to make a few points:
1. People are turned on to jazz often by accident - hearing jazz coming out of a house while they are walking down the street, or hearing it on the radio (although the chances of this happening are remote nowadays). If they allow themselves, their taste changes over the years. To many people, hearing free jazz as the first jazz they encounter, can be a turn-off, whereas to others it can become an instant hit or an aquired taste. On the other hand, hearing something gentle, like the MJQ, could be a turn-off to a Heavy Metal fan.
2. Jazz tends to be incestuous - jazz lovers often turn their backs on all other kinds of music. However, influences from other music can be a great source of inspiration and can be accomodated within jazz.
3. Jazz players can be great listeners, which is good in itself. But listening to other players too much can stiffle your own creativity. I think you also have to develop your own thing. So listen to yourself, explore things, be confident in your own evolving creativity instead of continuously imitating other players.
April 27th - Listen with Mother
Listen with Mother was a children's programme broadcast by the BBC between 1950 and 1982 (a time when people were more clean-minded than they are today). This is a clip from it which sounds rather sadistic Click on that word.
April 24th - Singers
As a gigging musician you get used to doing gigs without much rehearsal, if any, where very often the nuances of the music are too often ignored. It is my pleasure then to work with a choir- The Sovereign Singers in Eastbourne in which the leader makes certain that all the dynamics and the exact length and timing of each note is paid attention to, as well as the breathing and other points. Vocalists are usually like a red rag to a bull to me and to many other pianists who have to take a lot of stick from prima donnas. But the ladies in this choir are a lovely bunch of people and I feel privileged to have the job of accompanying them. You can hear them here:
April 10th - Violinist in the Metro
This has been sent me by various people. It's not about jazz but could equally apply to it. You know the saying - even if Charlie Parker were to play in this venue, you still wouldn't get anyone to come.
A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin. It was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.
Three minutes went by and a middle-aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.
A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip. A woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.
A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3-year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.
In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. he collected 32 dollars. When he finished playing and silence took over, no-one noticed it. No-one applauded, nor was there any recognition.
No-one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theatre in Boston and the seats averaged 100 dollars.
This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour. Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?
One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:
If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?
April 10th - a few words on talent
When I was younger I played in various dance-halls with medium-sized bands (usually 4 horns, 4-strong rhythm section and a couple of vocalists). As well as playing ballroom dances we had to play pops, which meant trying to sound exactly like the record. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't. With the development of technology in recording studios, it simply became impossible to mimic the recording. Gradually, the pops took over and the bands were reduced in size and then got rid of completely.
I used to think then what a waste of talent this is for such good musicians to have to play what was often pure garbage.
Nowadays, music has been taken over almost completely by the capitalist ethos - music is a commodity to earn money; nothing else matters. What has replaced talent to a large extent is image - young, rich, slim, healthy and supposedly sexy people singing and playing pop music which is written to a formula which is guaranteed to sell the music and other merchandise linked to it.
I am not against pop music - the energy it produces is stimulating, some of the chord sequences are very interesting, some of the rhythms are fantastic, some tunes are really catchy and some of the sounds are intriguing. But there is pop music and there is pop music.
What I am against is the way that the media concentrates all its efforts upon the formula stuff - the dross. You hear it on TV and the radio, in shops and pubs and restaurants. There is no escaping it. Meanwhile, all other forms of music are ignored. A monster has been created and it is destroying everything in its path. This is the case particularly in Britain where everything has become standardised - the same shops in every town, the same films at all of the cinemas, the same tabloid newspapers owned by a handful of people. People have been brainwahed to believe that all exists is what they are presented with and there are no alternatives.
All of you reading this already know this. The problem is knowing what we can do about it. If we continue to ignore it, the number of jazz gigs will dry up entirely - maybe not the big festivals with top names, but the smaller venues where local musicians can get to play. And without these training grounds for players there will be fewer top players around.
March 21st - Excitement
Life as an arranger can be really exciting. Well, not quite as exciting as being a rare-book seller, but not far off. I remember the time when I added a thirteenth to a minor major seventh chord. I couldn't sleep for a week afterwards. Take the other day, for instance. I was just putting the finishing touches to a tune when suddenly... See what I mean!
March 16th - Eau Dear
Up to now, I have put odd comments in the update section of the News page. Now I will restrict that to just notify people of new material has been added to the site and use this page for other things.
So what's been going on? Well, as you will have noticed I've been writing a lot of piano music lately. Writing for piano is really hard and I've wanted to try and improve that aspect. It's also been useful in trying out different ideas, particularly relating to harmony, without being having to think of arranging them for other instruments. However, some of these pieces will be arranged for other ensembles in the future.
The last piano piece added to the site is "Eau de Toilette". The Gents toilets in the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne where I often work (I mean in the restaurant there, not the toilets) inspired this piece. The cistern above the urinals had such a musical sound I simply had to write this piece. Unfortunately it cannot be heard now because they have installed an extractor fan which drowns it out. The other nice thing about the toilets was that they used to have glass-fronted cases above the urinals so you could catch up with the news from different newspapers whilst being otherwise occupied. I think they removed them because certain men would turn towards the person next to them if anything interesting caught their eye and say "Here, look at this.". The remark was not always interpreted the way it was meant to be, and the cost of dry-cleaning someone else's trousers was too much. But I digress...
With piano pieces I always record the whole thing so that you can hear what I have in mind, which makes for rather long soundbites. It's also challenging for me to try and get them right, which I don't always do I must admit, but there are plenty of other people around who will be able to play them better, and they are useful exercises anyway for those who are less skilled.
Pianists often have timing problems and I would recommend using a metronome to help. We pianists are also so obsessed with chords that we sometimes find it difficult to think melodically. Being able to play a front-line instrument in addition to piano does the trick. I once played vibes (on gigs) and a bit of trombone (only once on a gig and that was so bad, the trumpet player immediately left the band. I gave up trombone because I kept waking up babies in the neighbourhood and became rather unpopular. If only silent mutes had been invented then I might have perservered.
As you get older I have found that your wrist tends to loose its flexibility. I was therefore very pleased to be given a power-ball for Christmas. It did take 3 days working at it until I managed to get it to work, but since then, I have found it excellent in exercising the wrist. Of course there are other ways of doing this, but you can play with your power ball in public without fear of being arrested. The web-site is http://www.powerballs.com or just google power balls. Have a look at the videos. There's a guy who's got one of these things in both hands. It's absolutely amazing what he can do with his balls! They are also useful for guitar players, drummers and vibes-players. All for now.
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