What Time Is It?

Although we may not realize it, every decade brings with it the end of another era of musicians. For instance, when I was in college, during the 1980s, many of the 1940s-50s jazz musicians of the bebop era were still around. I could speak with Max Roach after concerts, take lessons from Billy Taylor, and perform with Charlie Persip and many lesser-known players from that era. Now, that era is gone and I would do anything to be able to ask a few well-chosen questions of Dizzy Gillespie, for example. A few decades later, history is repeating itself with the [...]

Here’s a fun video one of my students, Ralph, shared with me this week. It’s been out for a while, but I just saw it and thought it may make you smile: Tupractis https://youtu.be/Yv8AmiIF4C4 Even though the video makes a good point about practicing, we all know that practicing alone won’t get us to where we want to get with our music. After all, countless aspiring pianists practice for years and never reach even the minimum level where they can sit down and simply play tunes the way they’d like. Even more important than “what” to practice, is “how” to [...]

This week, someone asked me on the KeyboardImprov YouTube channel about looking at the keys while they played piano. They said they had trouble playing ragtime and music with an active left hand part without looking at their hands and they keys, and they asked for my advice. Here’s what I replied: It's OK to look at the keys when you're playing. Piano teachers tell their students, particularly beginning students, not to look at the notes so they become able to read music without constantly looking down. But when playing without sheet music, the truth is that everyone looks at [...]

We’ve all had those days right? We’re playing piano at home, or in a rehearsal, or maybe even in a concert. And it’s not “happening.” The music isn’t flowing. Or it just sounds bland. Or we’re just playing the same-old-same-old bring stuff over and over again. What do you do when this happens? (And yes, it’s going to happen at times!) Over the years I’ve become fascinated with these moments, because they afford us a special opportunity to go “beyond ourselves” at the moment. In fact, going “beyond ourselves” is really the only way we’ll begin play better. This is [...]

Is it worth $200 - $300 to see Elton John in concert? That’s the question I’ve asked myself several times over the past year, as Sir Elton tours the world one (long) last time, on his Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour. You see, even though Elton’s Greatest Hits cassette tape was the first recording I ever bought and I’ve performed his songs countless times since then, I’ve never seen him in concert. So when tickets for his Madison Square Garden shows originally went on sale months ago, I eagerly logged into the Ticketmaster website 30 minutes before tickets went on [...]

It’s only after we know the history of each tune, artist, and style of jazz that we’re truly free to either stay within it, alter it, or seek out a new approach entirely. The most radical jazz musicians are often the ones with a deep sense of what’s come before them. Sometimes this applies to an entire style of jazz. Early New Orleans Jazz is a good example of this. Every time I listen to one of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five recordings, I come away with a new arranging idea that I can apply to ant style I’m currently playing. [...]

Do you ever listen to classic rock on the radio? I sometimes do, in the car, and while I enjoy many of the songs they play, I’ve come to realize it’s only a tiny sliver of the range of classic rock. In a way, it’s kind of like “pop rock that most listeners will keep listening to instead of changing the station.” So they play the same 5 Pink Floyd songs, the same 6 Billy Joel hits, and maybe the same 7 Led Zeppelin selections, week in and week out. But as musicians, we want to go deeper. We’re musical [...]

I was going to title this “Attaining a good understanding of jazz history as it relates to piano performance practice” but that sounded a little too much like those kind of academic papers that end up in some drawer in the back room of a University library. (I’m sure some of the most wonderful writings about music are collecting dust somewhere. Let’s go read them!) So… Let’s talk about jazz history and how it can help us as pianists. I’ve been thinking about this a lot over the past 2-3 years, because this important topic comes up every time I [...]

Imagine that we’re sitting down and writing a pop song together. It’s going to be a ballad, and we begin by noodling around on the piano with some chords in the key of Ab major. After a minute or two, a groove gets established. But there’s a small “problem.” Although we like the chord progression, we notice that it’s the standard I vi IV V that’s already been used in tens of thousands of popular songs over the years. Indeed, every kid knows it as the “Heart and Soul” chord progression that Tom Hanks played in the movie “Big.” It’s [...]

Have you ever played the Miles Davis tune “Four?” It’s a fun tune to play, and if you’ve played it, here’s a follow-up question: have you ever played it correctly? And here’s yet another related question: does it even matter if we’ve played it correctly? The reason I’m asking is that first learned “Four” from the old 5th edition of The Real Book, and although I didn’t realize it at the time, both the melody and chord changes were wrong. Actually, I think I did realize it at the time, but I frankly didn’t care enough to do anything about [...]