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01-30-2021, 12:46 AM #51joelf Guest
I've been taking the plunge into singing lately---sort of inevitable since it's always been about the songs for me. I mean THE SONGS, NOT Joe jazz player's interpretation---a fine way NOT to learn the melody and composer's changes.
And ballads; medium swingers; and comic songs are what I can pull off best. I thought F and Eb were my keys, but I sound best on I've Got You Under My Skin; Street of Dreams; and Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye in C. My own songs I wouldn't take a chance, say, demoing myself. There's too much at stake not to hire a real singer. But on low-key gigs...
It's for me the superior way to internalize both the melodic contour and what the song's about. If you do that HW---and it doesn't HAVE to be by singing---I believe you then, and ONLY then, deserve as wide a berth as you desire. Go ahead and do what you hear, what the creative muse whispers in your ear. You know the song.
The ballads I've been singing at home lately: Guess I'll Hang my Tears...; Wee Small Hours; A Time For Love---and some Stevie Wonder/Syreeta classics I'd never have the nerve to try in public: Seems So Long; Where Were You When I Needed You; Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer; Too Shy To Say; All is Fair in Love; Something Out of the Blue.
(Then I hear Shirley Bassey or Barbra do them---and I REALLY get that I should play, not sing those in public).
But as a learning tool and for sheer enjoyment I highly recommend singing...
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01-30-2021 12:46 AM
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01-30-2021, 01:04 AM #52joelf GuestOriginally Posted by Hep To The Jive
Imagine where jazz would be if all the great ASB writers never were born (and Ellington; Strayhorn; and Waller belong in that canon to me)...
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Even for people with low quality singing voices its very important to Know The Lyrics to the Song so you will understand what its About!!!
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01-30-2021, 01:17 AM #54joelf Guest
And sorry, but I didn't care for her performance either, though she can certainly play the instrument and has some good ideas. More about HER than the song, and her touch has a ways to go---slamming those chords and such.
You have to play these songs for YEARS before even beginning to understand, let alone interpret, them.
When I went to Holland the 1st time a roughly 20-year-old woman was one night singing Blame it on my Youth. Well, I applaud her good taste, but really? Silly me for thinking her youth was now, and what the hell is there to reflect about?
All the songs about lost or misspent youth, a theme that hits me in the heart BTW, were written by people who had lived enough life to make sense writing about it. And George Bernard Shaw had it right, too.
But the young are inspiring in other ways: they're often as yet untainted---free of dogma (like I'm not---LOL). I like the freshness many of them bring to bear. I learn from them concepts I might miss out on if I failed to listen...Last edited by joelf; 01-30-2021 at 12:31 PM.
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01-30-2021, 01:20 AM #55joelf GuestOriginally Posted by steve burchfield
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Originally Posted by joelf
4 guys with college degrees and a singer that shows up with her Louis Vuitton bag and iphone 12 in order to sing old blues songs about hardship .. You're saying that something is wrong with that?
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Originally Posted by joelf
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Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Originally Posted by christianm77
I'm assuming you're referring to Limburger . . . I agree. Play live . . . Marinero
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01-31-2021, 01:17 PM #60joelf GuestOriginally Posted by Lobomov
I said---and meant---you can have the taste, even vision, to want to sing certain songs. But some people haven't experienced enough of life to have the right to sing songs about looking back. What could a 20-year-old look back on? Breast-feeding (or worse, as Woody Allen said 'from falsies')?
Let's say there was a very gifted and sincere 22-year-old guy singer wanting to sing It Was a Very Good Year (a guy singer b/c it's a 'guy' song).
He'd sorta be dead in the water after V2.
(A gray wig, perhaps, and electronic 'aging' equipment---in reverse of how it was used in The Irishman?)...
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Originally Posted by joelf
Originally Posted by joelf
It's a performance .... Singers perform?
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01-31-2021, 01:37 PM #62joelf GuestOriginally Posted by Hep To The Jive
The problem here is simple: I have a different slant than most here. I did my jazz guitar studies in my 20s. Didn't say I MASTERED anything then---still working on the basics at 66.
I was exposed to LP Broadway and film soundtracks from infancy. Melody and song were implanted.
I got hooked on jazz at 17---having passed through the Woodstock era (I was THERE). Been at it ever since. BUT that GASB background has always been one room and jazz the other in a 2-room let's say 'house of worship'. They are equals.
And 'guitar this, guitar that'? Not my thing at all. I know it won't do much for my popularity here---but I don't come to sites like these to be popular. Anyway, it's music; song; improvising, in no particular order. Guitar is what I play best, and a fine instrument. But why stay in the 'ghetto' with a world of MUSIC out there for us all?
That young woman plays very nicely. Maybe I was overly grumpy (was? LOL). My head's just in a different place, has been for years.
That's all it is...
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01-31-2021, 01:50 PM #63joelf GuestOriginally Posted by Lobomov
Life. Learn a few things about THAT 1st. Then there's something to sing about.
It's the same thing with players. One clique---and they're all my friends and play great---sound like brilliant students at the head of the class. I enjoy hearing them and they play cleaner than I ever will and do other things I can't.
But they learned from records (and in some cases from the mouths of masters on the stand---and I can always tell those, but it's not most). They didn't come from the culture that music grew out of. As a metaphor: remember cassette tapes? When you recorded off the other media that 1st tape was '1st generation'; 2nd '2nd generation, etc. Weaker and less true with each copy.
(However we ALL---and I'm about 15 years older---were ACCEPTED by those black elders for our sincerity and talent). So they're good, even near-great in some cases. They are sincere as hell and sacrifice for music. I love them for it.
But there's in the end an authenticity, and feeling tbh, missing---at least for me...Last edited by joelf; 01-31-2021 at 02:06 PM.
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Originally Posted by joelf
It's not that we disagree about the core .. which is authenticity ... The thing that bugs me is that a lot of jazz is stale thru the simple act of locking it self into the GASB playlist.
A lot of that is no longer reality .. Human joy and suffering is off course universal
If we look at the suffering side It's pain, heartbreak etc etc .. But it's just how that where these things originate differ.
I mean, You and I are old and lets face it that neither of us can deliver Tony Bennett's "How do you keep the music playing" .. in reality very few men can. At our age the great american song is "Screw that woman, but God how I love my kids"
You grew up with the GASB and love it .. I'm just not sure the lyrics to many of those song are relevant ... The happy ones might be fine or something like "Just one of those things", but many of the negative ones just don't sit well in 2021.
I dunno .... We've all been doing circled debating jazz this month in several threads and end if day I'm amazed how stale and conservative this forum is.
You're out there writing songs, gigging (at least pre-pandemic) ... is it better in the real world than in this dusty forum?
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01-31-2021, 03:53 PM #65joelf GuestOriginally Posted by Lobomov
There are people breathing new life into old songs all the time. (And a few of us trying to write new ones).
What makes any art of communication great? It can be fresh as a cool breeze in summer; as unexpected as an audit of a pauper---but it ought to have something universal in it somewhere. A guy named Jimmy Norman taught me that.
Imagine 'Imagine' if it were meant as an angry rant instead of a plea for unity? Who WOULDN'T want that (fascists don't count)?
I don't care about being branded 'conservative'. One guy here called me 'retro'---as a compliment*. But they only see part of the picture. Yeah, I stand (IN PART) for conserving the author's versions of songs---but mostly because I know how hard it is to write a good one and also see so many violated, largely by 'hip' jazzers who seem too lazy to dig deeper than the rendition by whatever hero they're satisfied with (or not capable of doing more than) copying. Anyway, that's THEIR business.
*But the nice and well-meaning cat that said I was 'retro' never heard 'The Third Wrong Man'---an insane theater piece parodying the Dante Trilogy and film noir I started in 1995. It used a narrator and mixed orchestra, and is easily the most original, radical thing I ever did. But that's only b/c it's never been financed and produced.
So for now I'll continue to be thought of by some as the village old fart. Hey, it's a dirty job but SOMEONE'S gotta do it...
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01-31-2021, 04:06 PM #66joelf Guest
And the people who write about the GASB are mostly crusty, musty, fusty old white men. They are NOT inclusive.
Where's blues? Gospel? Even white Gospel or other liturgical music? Stevie Wonder? Beatles? Carole King? Billy Joel? Donny Hathaway? Nina Simone? Johnny Cash? Afro-Cuban (Machito worked HERE!), etc., etc.
These composers are in the tradition of the 'song pluggers' of yore, they're just not recognized as such by old buggers like Stephen Sondheim or the late Alec Wilder (both of whom I greatly admire---OTHER than their endless bitchiness about the 'other').
Where is it written that American music is JUST theater or film music? Well, that's the 'rub'---it's written everywhere. But it's such an outdated concept it has hair.
Writers, take your damn blinders off already---or at least loosen 'em a little.
Pretty please?
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Originally Posted by joelf
We like you around these parts Joel .. No reason to hide your light
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Originally Posted by Marinero
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Originally Posted by joelf
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Originally Posted by Marinero
And if a 'coy' smile (if I can add- of a pretty lady no less) makes you angry....? Listen to one great Louis Jordan, it's tongue in cheek, but marvelous song.
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02-01-2021, 01:28 PM #71joelf GuestOriginally Posted by Hep To The Jive
Talk is cheap---we've all heard that, right?
Let me use the example of the paper tiger in bully's clothing: B/c I'm small and don't take shit from anyone w/o the business end of a gun at my temple I hear, in Philly, (and thank the Lord I'll be outta this sad-ass burg by Spring) a lot of rightfully pissed-off black guys rail very angrily, and menacingly at me. But threatening ME not only is misdirected, (I have no POWER to right wrongs) it shows what cowards they are in the end. (Plus I never start any shit).
'I'm a slap the shit outta you' (the 'infraction' is usually car-pedestrian related if not actual road rage). Musta heard it hundreds of times.
But I stand right there and try not to laugh b/c they're fat-mouthing bullshitters. People who REALLY mean to do things act, don't talk.
So I take many comments in chat rooms as chuckle fodder---especially when I hear some of these guys 'play'. If someone posits something thought-provoking in an articulate manner, sure I'll respond. But the $5 words of academia or idiotic Benson v Metheny drivel? Well, guess?...
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Originally Posted by Lobomov
Good point, Lobo!
May I restate: early Miles.
Play live . . . Marinero
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Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
Hi, Hep,
I've had more polish in my ears than most after a lifetime of living/loving music. However, it would be fair to say that I have some stringent standards and real likes/dislikes. I have little free time and want to be moved by music . . . ergo, although I give many people a "listen," it usually doesn't make it past the opening melody for most newcomers. So, if I have an hour to listen to music, do I choose to listen to musicians that move me emotionally/spiritually, or . . . do I listen to a flurry of newcomers with short exits? However, that's how I found Birelli LaGrene, Yamandu Costa, Joey Alexander, Pavel Steidl, etc.
In regards to attractive women, I'm a healthy, heterosexual male and love physically beautiful women especially if they are talented. My first wife and current are both very physically beautiful women and very talented visual artists(painters). However, if I judged them by their Art, their physical looks would not be a consideration. Thanks for your honest reply.
Play live . . . Marinero
P.S. Great video, Hep! You want to now why Jazz is terminal? Because people stopped dancing to Jazz when it went to the concert hall. Music was both Art and Entertainment. And, "Schtick" and novelty songs were part of the show. That's how they made the money. But, along with the "schtick" came some great Jazz music! M
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Originally Posted by Marinero
OK, so you're saying Miles ran out of art at some point and no longer could play, so he had to resort to showmanship for the last couple of decades of his career?
I mean .. You can't both be a showman .. and an artist, can you?
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Originally Posted by Lobomov
Life is based on a percentile distribution.
palm muting techique
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