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Where did you Learn To Play?
Despite playing gigs for over a decade I learned to play on a duet gig that was two nights a week for over three years. Pay was fine. Each night it was Ron Davidson and his muted trumpet directly into a mic and I through the same amp, projected through the large 2 room restaurant Vesuvio's, Brampton Ontario. The new thing for me was a couple or foursome sitting right there having a conversation and I'm right here trying to find inspiration. Duets are great. Ron's book was larger than the New York phone book and it was at this time that I memorised chords to about 400 tunes. I love and miss Ron, Tara, Ron's daughter is a terrific alto who would sub occasionally. I'm thankful for the chance and that Ron had a high end cassette player recording almost the whole three years.
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Please share where, how, when you got it together.
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Alan, you sound great on these, fully formed, in charge of your playing, great rhythm when soloing too! Impressive.
I’m still waiting to get it together!
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Nice! Thanks for posting for Alan. I notice Ron is playing with such a great sense of pulse, he must have been an ideal duet partner.
Last edited by Christian Miller; 08-01-2023 at 03:07 AM.
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As for myself, I’m not sure I’ve got it together haha.
I think playing lots of dance gigs (100-150 a year or so for a few years) taught me the basics of jazz standards harmony, a repertoire of tunes and the importance of time keeping. I played with some great musicians as well over that period.
About the same time I went through a short period of playing long Sunday afternoon gigs with a guitar trio (guitar, bass, drums) which taught me I didn’t know any melodies.
Last edited by Christian Miller; 08-01-2023 at 03:08 AM.
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Like most of us I’m still learning and don’t expect to ever stop but I learned chords and comping playing in a 17 piece big band about 10 years ago.
That experience taught me to keep out of the way of the piano player and keep my chords simple!
I never learned the heads back then so I’ve been going through a process of building a melodic repertoire, which is also improving my sight reading.
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Rob, Christian - Thanks so much. Yes Ron was a good easy going man (think Humphrey Bogart with a horn) who never minded my occasional clanger.
'Got it together' of course refers to the proverbial iceberg poking it's head above ocean level.
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I don’t have it together but 2 years of going to jam nights taught me somebody has got to take the lead or else it’s a big mess.
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Again, not sure I’ve got it together.
But me and a friend used to put a reading session together in Broadway Junction. We’d just call a bunch of people and whoever could come would come to my friends apartment and we’d all read each others tunes-in-progress.
It was a bunch of former Berklee dudes so the vibe was very pop-fusion, and it was a blast. Just working on writing, but also the ability to take a piece of paper with a little idea on it and turn it into something. Thats kind of a lovely thing. A bunch of people willing to take whatever scribble they have on their music stand seriously enough to turn it into real music. That’s kind of peak music-ing for me. Learned a lot just from peers and stuff.
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Also I used to take the bus to a regular session in Brooklyn that was run by John McNeil. That was really cool.
It wasn’t a big cutting session, so everyone was very supportive. But also the level of musicianship was super high and there was polite lack of patience for nonsense.
Also just a weird idiosyncratic vibe. It was super interesting watching John interact with people.
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I had a great intro to playing standards. I started out during the Folk Scare of the early 60: Kingston Trio, Limelighters, Tom Rush, Joan Baez, etc., on nylon string guitar. My dad was a weekend drummer/singer/harmonica player in a trio with two cousins on bass and piano. They played all the standards jazz players liked, and once I got into a more advanced place, I got an electric guitar (Barney Kessel model Kay) and a little Premier amp, and started sitting on their gigs. Just trying to comp and learn the changes until I could play some fills, then an 8-bar solo, etc. I studied the tunes at home from the old fake books, took a few lessons from a pretty good local player, went to Berklee after high school, for one semester, but studied with Bill Leavitt, who was just putting the Modern Method together and had me proofreading parts of volumes 2 and 3 as part of my lessons. Still and all, that experience with the trio when I was still in high school really got me listening closely to Burrell, Hall, Byrd, Kessell, Ellis, etc., especially for accompanying. I found that listening rather than playing was appreciated by the pros of the day, in other words, knowing your place, and I became quite busy in the jazz/swing/general business community in Boston. Worked on classical guitar and on reading, and got to play with the "stars" that came through, from Tom Jones to Johnny Mathis, etc., did some recording sessions, pit work, teaching as well. Of course back them in the cultural Mecca that was Boston, there was a ton of work for guitarists that could read, and I stayed busy as a journeyman for hire for several years. Never really had a plan, just tried to do what was interesting and challenging.
Still doing that.
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Ronjazz.
That's fascinating. Thanks so much.
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Definitely still growing here, slowly, even though I’ve been playing on and off for decades. I can think of a few definitive gigs. Gigging in a wedding band in the early 1980s soon led to a guitar scholarship to play in a college big band in Westchester, which involved studying with some New York jazz musicians. Remo Palmier was my main guitar teacher. Along the way I studied with Mark Slifstein and Chuck Wayne, took arranging with Irwin Stahl and bass with Arnold Evans, and played upright for a student workshop led by a trumpeter whose name I can’t recall. After that, I continued to play in wedding bands and a few club dates, big band gigs, and trying to hustle together a living supplemented with teaching. I suppose a seminal moment for me was when I realized that the gigging lifestyle was not for me, and so I left it.
Sold all my gear and used my savings to travel and study, including a teaching stint in Dubai where I got a Taylor and started playing at home after nearly 2 decades. Eventually, I settled into a teaching job in Japan. The husband of one my colleagues was a jazz saxophonist who played in New York, New Orleans, Seoul and Tokyo. He was enthusiastic about finding people to play with in the smallish city where his wife worked. When he heard I was a guitarist, he invited me to sit in on a club gig to “blend our musical colors,” as he put it. I was mortified at the prospect of playing out live again. But he was very supportive and said that I could pick any three tunes I would like to play, and there was a couple of months to practice. And so I dug out some old lessons I had with Remo and worked on “All the Things you Are,” “Autumn Leaves” and “Just Friends” with a looper to get the head and changes down. I suppose that gig was seminal. A couple dozen work colleagues showed up, one of which referred to me as a “hot shot guitarist.” I did a few more gigs but the old discomfort with gigging had returned.
Then, about 6 or 7 years ago, partly through the sax player I mentioned above, I discovered that there were several small venues in the area that hold jam sessions at which there was a community of musicians getting together to play jazz standards. There seemed to be a real love of the music. It wasn’t about gigging, it seemed to be just enjoying playing together. I remembered what Frank Zappa is quoted as saying, “Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny.” Through participating in jam sessions, I felt that jazz is alive and well and living in Japan!
So perhaps our lives, which for many of us have already been long unpredictable journeys, there are a few influential moments that urge us a little further along the path of learning to play jazz. I feel privileged, even blessed, to still be on that journey that has no end in sight.
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