Why Did the iPod Have to Die?
Yes, I am "that" old...
I’m always looking for ways to maintain a more relaxed daily state when I pick up the bass and work on music. I rarely get it to where I want, but the process of searching generally keeps me away from the manic end of the stress spectrum.
I know this might be a foreign concept to some younger readers, but for the longest time, between the end of the physical media (CDs) era and the digital streaming revolution, we would custody our own digital music on hard drives, iPods, iPhones, and a plethora of other since retired devices.
The original iTunes, as frustrating as its limitations with large volumes of music was, happened to be my player of choice. In searching for value in my listening time, the “shuffle” feature was always one of the best ways to find something to work on that wasn’t predictable.
I went back to that mode today by opening iTunes with several music archive hard drives attached to my computer, and out popped this Woody Shaw clinic excerpt. The clinic is almost 30 tracks, and they all have a little nugget of information about melody, harmony, trumpet-specific technique, rhythm, time, feel, and a ton of other stuff.
The one I’m sharing with you needs little explanation from me. Woody goes note-by-note through the phrase, and then gives a performance of it at the end of the clip.
If you’re a bass player like me, then I think we can be thankful this shape is about a million times easier to play on our instrument than the trumpet. I think the power of this process though, hearing something from over 30 years ago played on an instrument so completely different from ours, is that we get to approach our practice in a very unpredictable way. We get to momentarily live through the process of a jazz legend and escape into the past, into their world, and come out the other side with something that is still very relevant today.
My goal with this line is to place it in as many contexts that are applicable to me and my music. If you’re curious enough to learn it, I would suggest you do the same.
It would be pretty easy to just get a modal vamp going and play this all over the instrument to create some approximation of what we think of as “out” playing. But when you start to think about this shape of stacked fourths moving in minor thirds, there are so many other options like composition, building chords, and simply having more vocabulary to react to other musicians around you.
In this short clip of me working on the idea this morning you can hear the phrase in its original form as Woody explained it, and then various combinations of moving in minor thirds, whole steps, half steps, and also losing one note of the four note cell to make it feel like it’s crossing the bar line in places.
I hope you have hours of fun with it.
More soon,
Janek
P.S. Tour dates are fast approaching!
November 20th - Los Angeles/Baked Potato with Bob Reynolds and Clarence Penn
December 9th - Seattle/Jazz Alley with Mike Stern
December 10th - Seattle/Jazz Alley with Mike Stern
December 11th - Santa Cruz/Kuumbwa with Mike Stern
December 12th - Los Angeles/Catalina’s with Mike Stern
December 13th - Los Angeles/Catalina’s with Mike Stern
December 15th - Oakland/Yoshi’s with Mike Stern
December 16th - Oakland/Yoshi’s with Mike Stern
December 17th - Phoenix/Musical Instrument Museum with Mike Stern
Just this week I decided to have the battery on my iPod fixed and (try to) get it back in my life. My, huge, iTunes library on shuffle is a wonderful practise tool when I feel like a challenge. By the way, it was a delight to hear Ghost Story appear in your recent 30 minute practise video. A Sting/Gwizdala collaboration would be a winner.
My second iPod Classic still works, and I take it out on walks sometimes. The first one I had got stolen, and I am still sad about that. One, it was a gift from my Mom, and two, I had the perfect mix of music on it, you could shuffle it and it was always awesome. Even though I built the replacement from the same iTunes library, it never seemed to have that magic.