Patterns

Here's what I'm practicing today.

"1+2! 1+2 more fun for me and you and you!"- Richie Aldente

So, yeah. Me and my metronome here just leaving a mark.

Come to think of it, I've travelled quite a bit these past 7 years.

The job I have playing guitar on the cruise ships of Holland America Line has been a real education in geography and the world's cultures.  Even though we spend only a day or two at each destination, my perspective has been enriched by this experience and I am grateful for the opportunity to open my eyes and ears to people I would not otherwise have met.  As T.S. Eliot so aptly put it, "The journey not the arrival matters." That being said, it is good to be home and after seeing a fair part of the world, I have a better idea where home is.  I think he said something like that too.  Anyway, right now I am happier than ever to see my friends and family and I am grateful for their continued support as I look forward to embarking on my 3rd world cruise in 2012.  I'll miss you guys and girls!

• Create your own travel map or travel blog.
• Find the best vacation rentals at TripAdvisor

Blah, blah, blog.

I opened up Jim Snidero's Jazz Conception today and played through a simple blues etude. It was 6 AM and the sunlight wouldn't let me rest so I gave in to the impulse to play guitar and it has been a long time since I've looked at that book. It reminded me that simple is almost always better. I soon tired of reading the notes on the page and set off to improvising, developing themes that I'd read. Here's the thing: they were good notes on the page. Good for reasons that would seem obvious to experienced musicians and perhaps less so to beginners but they'd sound good to practically everybody. It got me thinking, as I was improvising, about the vocabulary I choose and the challenges I'm willing to tackle in order to express something of worth. Music has always been about communication for me. If I have to utilize advanced concepts and cover new ground in order to satisfy a curiosity or be hired or just be relevant to my audience I will, but I am more often called upon to just play the music honestly, clearly and with some measure of joy. I can only do that if I start with simple materials.

Here's a story. When I was in high school we attended the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival and I took part in a soloist competition for guitar players. I took second place out of 15 or so players. This surprised me at the time but not as much as hearing the guy after me. He played perfectly even bop eighth notes and had a superior harmonic grasp. He had it all over me with his vocabulary and his phrasing and I was inspired by this fact. I remember that for the rest of the day, I walked around listening to a mental muzak of even eighths over all kinds of changes played on the guitar of course. The sound of the guitar and the articulation of the pick was an important facet of that exercise in imagination. It was the beginning of an ongoing process. I had an ideal to aspire to. The ideal was this epiphany of what he and others had that I wanted. A sound. It got me asking all kinds of questions about the minutia of tone production and picking technique and chord scales. The simple stuff I needed work it out! The idea that I had a lot to learn was solidified when later that same day I took part (played a blues) in a jam session with Russell Malone and John Stowell. Russell was unbelievably fluid playing over Giant Steps at a fast clip and it made me aware that something I had never known was possible, was both possible and very, very compelling to me. Beautiful is the word for what I heard. His technique was seemingly flawless, the guitar was a hand-crafted Buscarino Monarch (featured on the cover of his album Black Butterfly), and his attitude toward the music and the musicians was humble yet assertive. John Stowell was less accessible to me at the age of 16 but no less compelling and I have been a fan of his music ever since and consider him an important friend and mentor. I was not prepared to understand it just yet but I was old enough to be inspired by it.  He got me studying close interval voicings and harmony more carefully. I also learned the ins and outs of melodic minor thanks to John. John's influence led me to places of musical introspection and Russell's influence led me to ambitious musical extroversion. I have since thanked John for that Jam session which took place in his hotel room in Moscow, Idaho, many years ago. Thankfully there is still much I don't know and new facets of my ideal emerge daily. I do my best to chase the sound I'm after and make it mine. What I hope to do is make it relevant to the community of aging jazz musicians as well as the younger generation of innovators and basically play real nicely. I simply want to enjoy the music.

Email with Tyler Lieb

Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:11:55 -0800
Subject: Hi Tyler,
From: danielrainard@gmail.com
To: tylerlieb@hotmail.com

Hi Tyler, I am writing you from the Amsterdam near the coast of Namibia where we are making land fall tomorrow morning. This will be the end of 8 productive sea days and I wondered if you wouldn’t offer me some encouragement by letting this email act as my next blog post. I haven’t done much to the blog and I have a feeling that giving it a personal touch would do a lot for my motivation. I am basically really enjoying all this free time and wanted to share some of what I am learning/trying to learn. So here’s the first thing... Slash chords are pretty cool and useful. I’m enjoying D/Bb and C/Bb as voicings of Em7b5. It was also a sort of “aha” moment when I realized that moving that up a minor third would make it a suitable V chord in a minor ii-V-i, and that moving it up again this time by a major third would likely make it a great i chord. I don’t know if you’ve ever read the Mel Bay Complete Book of Harmony Theory and Voicing by Bret Willmott but, it is really ear opening and just too comprehensive. It is a tome which offers a really amazing education in its pages. Just playing through it has given me some really fresh ideas. I use band in a box and mute the chord instruments so I can have free reign over the middle voices and play thorough the examples that way. Good times. There aren’t any jazz musicians per se on the ship and I am certain that the level of repetition that I embrace in practice would drive any of them mad. So computers are good. On the other hand, I would never perform with one in place of a real band. In my experience tracks suck! I play shows sometimes where the act uses one or two and we just stand there. The second thing I am working on is reading and executing pentuplets with grace and precision. I have started by just alternating them with sixteenth notes using a metronome and playing combinations of 5 notes on different strings, using different articulations. Thirdly, I am working on 4 note licks to play in the various spots of Rhythm Changes where the harmony is briefly different from the norm. Specific licks to plug into those trouble spots where a tritone sub needs your specific attention. By practicing these licks you gain an awareness of what is really different about them (aurally and mechanically) and can proceed more intuitively. I don’t advocate lick based playing but it is a way to learn.

So how is Victoria treating you? What’s new? Don’t worry, your response won’t go on my blog unless you want some of it to. Thanks for letting me bend your ear or whatever the email equivalent is.

All the best,
Dan

On 2/22/10 9:50 PM, "Tyler Lieb" wrote:

Great to hear from you!

You can use this reply as a blog post if you want, although I don't know how much you'll find in it!

Really neat insight on using slash chords... Whether as looking at them as "true" slash chords or inversions, they certainly open up neat doors. In terms of chords, voicings, and the like, lately I have been spending time at tedgreene.com, an amazing harmony resource.

Try moving your JM based voicings up a half step from the altered V to make your I chords nifty maj7+5 chords. I love that trick.

Have been studying with Mike Moreno over skype. Has been amazing. We have been talking a lot about phrasing, leading me to check out Hal Crook's How to Improvise book... Amazing. Having been spending a lot of time with his play/rest approach, and I think it's been doing good things for me.

Pentuplets are scary. :)

When are you back near this landmass?

Tyler




Brendan Odonnell - Bringing It On

I wanted to write something for my friend and fellow guitar player Brendan Odonnell. This kind of an open letter, as all blogs are I suppose.
This young man is an inspiration to me and many others I know.  I just want to publicly acknowledge that he is amazing and innovative and that I have supreme confidence that none of it will go unnoticed by the world at large.  Big things are in store for this guy and I am exited to see them manifest.  He is a devotee of Peter Bernstein and Mike Moreno.  Kind of an old meets new kind of a guy but he has his own unique personality that comes across in every note.  I admire especially his rhythmic ferocity and seeming ease with modern sounds.  His use of motives is very compelling and I feel that there is a personal narrative being delivered in every extemporaneous moment.  You're fresh Brendan!!!  That is all. 

I played with Earl Klugh!

Well today I am a very happy guitar player. I've never played with a better guitarist than Earl before in my life. I once played with Russell Malone but I was 16 and it didn't count! Both are great and I'm not going to make that call! Better is a designation I try to make of my present self compared to my former. I have paid a certain price for pursuing academic success and musical growth but what I was doing at 16 and what I'm doing now are different things. All in all, I'm grateful for the improvement colleges have helped to facilitate but I can honestly say that one song with Earl (after many hours of listening to and enjoying his music) was more inspirational and informative, more educational in the most practical way than most of what I learned in college. I have CWU and their faculty to thank for the opportunity to meet Earl of course and I understand that players like Earl cannot be commonplace in any college. I am just so glad I met him and heard him.

As a solo guitarist, I rate him among the very best because he so easily strikes the balance between playing chords and melodies and he has fingerings which are specific to his vocabulary and fit so perfectly in the harmonic and rhythmic structure of a piece. When you listen to Earl, you are hearing someone who has practiced at great length and loves and cares for his music. I played one tune with him at the end of his talk on life on the road, a subject he knows plenty about. His story about playing at a casino and being paid in quarter a sum which weighed 50 pounds and later fell on his foot was a laugh. So, the clock was running down and I just had to ask if I could play a tune with him, which was "All The Things You Are." I played an intro and as the form began I think asked him if he'd play the melody since he was Earl Klugh. This was odd and funny and only overshadowed in its amusement by my taking the first solo, even after he played the break. I didn't know I was doing it until it was done. I guess I was thinking that maybe I shouldn't follow Earl Klugh! Earl's playing is gracious and fluid. Rhythmically you are always comfortable and often surprised and his harmonic vocabulary is second to none. He really has ears like Bill Evans. I can't think of another guitarist with his vast repertoire of substitutions and fluid chord melody chops. Anyway, I was trying to be present in the moment and not do anything stupid when I played some wrong chords and I apologize but I guess nerves got the better of me and I should have been paying attention to the music which was beautiful and joyous to my ear. I was hearing what could be as well as what was. Someone like Earl has a lot to teach us about dedication and its rich rewards. He makes the impossible look easy and I walked away feeling like I had just made a friend. He's an incredibly kind-spirited person and a natural mentor. I listened to the playback in my car and picked out all the flaws and missteps but for what it was I could not be happier. If we didn't make mistakes we wouldn't have to learn.

I really want to transcribe more of his recordings and publish some articles on his chord melody stuff and substitutions. In other words I want to listen to more Earl Klugh and find more of his grace in my own playing and more of his kindness in my attitude. As he spoke he would often punctuate his words with a chord or two. His words and his music are coming from the same place. I wish I had more time to talk with him but I will probably have to settle for the hour and a half we had in the band room at CWU. That's where he told us about how he used to practice on the road and ask George Benson how to play stuff, which he would show him at Benson speed. He described how hearing something night after night would make an impression on you and if you were diligent in practicing you would find your way to it. I've got to play some guitar now and try to work out some of those amazing things I just heard. Today was just so good! If you ever get a chance to hear Earl, do. He and Denise were just wonderful and I feel so privileged to have met them. Music is a life long journey and a stop like this helps you remember where it is your going! Okay, enough blogging, I have to pick up a guitar now.

-Dan

A technique which has not been widely duplicated.

Actually, I know of no other guitarist besides Pat Metheny who uses this technique and it's one that I really struggled to figure out, as it demands attention and a lot of practice. For my part I have been running this over different scales and on different string sets. One unique aspect of this technique is the way Pat changes positions with a hammer on. It's kind of like a musical long jump or triple jump. It's athletic. The second half demonstrates a kind of hammer-on tumbling, if you will. The idea of using hammer-ons in this way is one which will yield a lot of melodic inspiration if practiced properly. It is very economical and you need that at fast tempos. Pat's technique has obviously served him very well. There aren't any other guitar players I can think of who play 3 hour sets night after night, year after year. He's doing a lot of things right and we've have been listening. Hope you enjoy and watch the video on YouTube of "The Real Pat Metheny Lick".