the jazz audience

I go out to clubs to hear jazz --   our local artists, headliners from NYC, European jazz groups on tour.  I'm often at the Jazz Bakery, since I live a few blocks away, and I've recently been at Spazio's, Cafe 322, Steamers, the Crowne Plaza, in a word, the usual suspects.  Here's something I notice - a good part of the jazz audience consists of jazz musicians.  I usually run into players I know when I'm at concerts or clubs.  I also see musicians from other disciplines - classical players, film composers, what have you.  

As is often noted, the clubs are under-attended and it's difficult for jazz or any musical acts to fill a house.  

I hear sometimes hear musicians talk about audiences with an "us- and-them" mentality.   I'm going to float an idea here -- We're a big part of the audience -- "them" is largely ourselves.  if we musicians attend more clubs and concerts, we'll be supporting the venues, helping our colleagues get repeat bookings, and  even diagonally supporting our own musical endeavors by keeping the places open.  The clubs are often small to begin with and a few tables would make the difference between profit and loss for the night.

On an off-night, it's nice to stay home, get to bed early, rest the ears.  Go home and make pasta, see what's come in from Netflicks, rule despotically over our minions, that sort of thing.

YES, AND -- If we musician types extend ourselves a bit - push away from the table after the strudel, oof... and go see people's sets, look what awaits us:

We'll be able to dig a little jazz ourselves, crack wise with the band on their break, pester the club-owner with our CDs, have a drink, keep the club in business, have the gratitude of our colleagues whom we've come to see, guilt them into coming to hear us play...  Wotta great setup, itza perfect evening.  Really all that's required is finding the shoes, putting them on again, that's it... getting in the car and driving to a club.  Happy music-iarse, Louis

New (ish) ways to practice

At Jerry Kalaf's Christmas Party this year, bassist Larry Steen and pianist Rich Ruttenberg got into a discussion about how they practice and stay inspired as soloists.  Here are a couple of methods I've gotten mileage out of lately:

It's possible to practice silently -- doing everything you would do with your hands but not pressing down on the piano keys, plucking strings, etc.   It's a way to stay warm between pieces of music and prepare for piece you're about to play.  A few years ago I started doing this and started seeing some unexpected benefits -- Hey, it also means that when someone is making a windy speech you can be soloing on "Moment's Notice"...

Playing soundlessly (on piano) means much smaller motions than usual.  I had always wasted energy before -- lifting higher than necessary off the keys.  As I got into this kind of practicing -- there was a steady gig I was doing with classical accompanying, and lengthy pauses between the pieces-- my hand and finger motion became much more efficient.  

I took it further and got into playing so that my fingers would seldom lose contact with the tops of the keys -- the vertical motion became really minimal.   As I was doing this I was also practicing leaping accurately up and down the keyboard without looking at the keys.  Looking down at the keys interferes with sight-reading, watching a conductor or soloist, etc.  So I got more control of my vertical and horizontal hand motion through this kind of practicing.

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I got one of the 80-gig ipods a couple of years ago.  I started doing what everyone does -- uploading CDs I owned or borrowed and buying music on itunes.   It really improved the quality of my listening -- I had access to a lot of great music at any time.

OK, I have insomnia.  At some point watching TV or reading at night evolved into searching for jazz or ethnic music on the internet with youtube, pandora, and allmusic.com.  I started listening more intently -- not using the music as background, but listening pretty intently, often playing tunes several times, focusing on one instrument at a time.  I would sometimes finger a small keyboard with the sound turned off while listening.  I got more into music (and less into NPR) when driving.

Through "active" listening, one "gets better" at musical concentration...   I got into a whole phase of listening to great drumset players, checking out the vocabulary and the endless possibilities...  Lately listening has become a big part of the evolution of my soloing.  I'm getting interested in, or evolving in areas I hadn't considered before... (Yeah, OK, like counting to 8...)

It also seems that there is something to be said for listening or working on music before being "fully awake".  It seems as though the whole "what-the-notes-are-for-and where-they're-going" thing can burn in deeper before starting the "words-sentences-and-decisions" part of the day...  It's also nice to spend time with just-plain-excellent, "Swiss-pharmaceutical-laboratory" music -- I mean, if you're going to make yourself deaf, it might as well be with late Coltrane, Fauré's song-cycles,Teddy Wilson, Kenny Barron, Bulgarian folk, Palestrina, John Abercrombie, Joao Gilberto, Bartok's quartets, kna'meann?

I'd like to hear how other players practice, especially for memorizing tunes, which can be hard for me.  Comment-ses, anyone?

Web publicity for your music

I met publicist Lexi Kavanaugh (lexi@k2mgt.com) when I was playing in Chicago last November.  She was working with Lili Haydn, who I was performing with.  Lexi now lives in So Cal and she has had some easy and mostly free suggestions for promoting my trio that I wanted to share with the Jazz community...

1) Make html rather than flash websites because the text in them is not readable by search engines.  (I already had a flash site up, but all text in it is duplicated in an HTML site)

2) Whatever web presence you have, make sure the sites all link to each other, makes it easy for search engines to find them.

3) Write a wikipedia article on yourself, very easy to do.

4) Sell your music on http://cdbaby.com.  From there it will be picked up by itunes, napster and other music sites.  Also, their articles on marketing are really helpful.

5) If you don't have reviews of your music yet, get blurbs (short statements) from fans, musicians you play with, employers.  Put them up on your website.

6) Start a blog, let your listeners get to know you through writing.

7) Write thank-you notes to the people who come to your gigs or by your albums.

8)  Make a lens on http://squidoo.com about your music, create myspace and facebook pages.

9) Enlist the help of your audiences to get the word out about your music -- ask people at your gigs to blog about your group.

10) Update your work in http://allmusic.com, http://imdb.com, list your gigs in http://lajazz.com

11) Pianist Tamir Hendelman suggested Marty Khan's book on the business side of jazz called Straight Ahead. http://www.outwardvisions.com/straightahead.html

12) Create T-shirts and other merchandise your fans can order with http://www.cafepress.com

---None of these are bookings for your group.  They are all ways to expand your web presence and expand your fan base.  When you talk to a club about a booking, the booker will google you to find out more about who you are than your press package can tell him.  There will be more there for her to see.  The same when someone hires you as a sideman, considers taking lessons with you, decides whether to go out to a club and see you.

Personal differences in swing feel

(thanks to Jerry Kalaf for Jazz musicians talk about the nature of swing: the subtle aspects of how a rhythm section plays together and reacts to a soloist. One aspect of music with swing 8th notes is that at different tempos, people hear and phrase differently, sometimes influenced by the particular instruments they play. At very slow tempos many players prefer to count or feel the music in triplet subdivisions – so they’re feeling everything in 12/8.  There seems to be different “break points” for this – some players are comfortable with slower tempos than others; some players don't have s trong internal sense of time and expect the drummer to play time pretty constantly in order for them to feel comfortable…     

At fast tempos, the tendency on most instruments is for the swing 8th notes to even out a bit..  Drummers, however, bounce the stick on the cymbal for a fast ride pattern.  Often the swing 8th note gets more pronounced the faster they go – closer to dotted 8ths and 16ths. Sometimes players can get a very relaxed feeling in playing by delaying the “ands” at slow tempos - giving a feeling of laziness. Ray Charles did this well. I am not talking about back-phrasing at this point; that’s a terrific sound when done well. I’m just talking about where the “ands” are positioned in relation to the beats.  On the other hand, we’ve all heard music where delaying the “ands” in swing sounds jerky or corny, anything but relaxed.  I’m not sure what makes the difference; sometimes it's playing accents that are too strong and disrupt the continuity.  Comments, anyone?